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  1. Perhaps alchresearch didn't take the trouble to listen to Hannah Fry's expose? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1s4
  2. Of course, Osborne's austerity rhetoric was bogus. His claims were based on a flawed research paper, as Hannah Fry details in part ten of her Uncharted series on BBC Radio 4, titled Devil in the Detail. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001r1s4 Don't expect such revelations to humble George Osborne though. His motivation was entirely ideological, the same ideology that the failed premier Liz Truss attempted to enact in her disastrous policy impositions.
  3. As the conservatives contemplate the collapse of their support in the next election, commons officials, in an oh so reasonable sounding proposal, are arranging that MPs losing their seat should enjoy tax-payer funded training from HR contractors to support them as they face unemployment. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67629470 But let us not forget that once the tory/lib-dem coalition had been formed in 2010, George Osborne lost no time in unleashing his ideologically imposed austerity, which led to a staggering number of public sector employees being made redundant. For example, the police nationally lost twenty thousand skilled and experienced officers and even more civilian staff, HMRC lost thousands of tax officials, and local authorities across the country were forced to make front line staff redundant, which led to a rapid decline in service provision. But things didn't end with these cynical neoliberal assaults on the public sector. Osborne and his tory colleagues then went on to demonise unemployed people, with shirker and scrounger rhetoric (with the eager assistance of the right-wing press). "According to the document, a scheme could see defeated MPs offered "on-demand" career coaching and access to "networking opportunities". It adds that they could also have access to a career coach to help them identify their transferable skills, and write a CV "that stands out in the crowd". Nice! The hypocrisy is stark.
  4. Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 21 June 2023 (1:51:25 - 1:57:31) Presenter; Nick Robinson Robinson: We're Sorry. We got it wrong. What we told the public, the media, even the courts, was not true. Yesterday Sheffield City Council issued a lengthy and extraordinary apology for its highly controversial programme to fell seventeen and a half thousand street trees, many of which the council now accepts were healthy. An independent report published earlier this week concluded that the dispute had done significant harm. We're joined by the leader of the Sheffield City Council, Labour's Tom Hunt, and also by Rebecca Hammond, who's a member of the committee of the Sheffield Tree Action Group. Morning to you both (both: 'Good morning'). Tom Hunt, first of all, as the new leader of Sheffield City Council, why did you decide it was right to apologise, and what, for those listening beyond the city, are you actually apologising for? Hunt: We have published the apology because we are truly sorry for the actions of Sheffield City Council during the street tree dispute. We know that there were significant failings and they caused significant harms to people in the city. As you've mentioned, that caused the loss of healthy street trees. But it also meant that there were a number of individuals, campaigners, who suffered individual harms. People were wrongly taken to court, there were harms to the people of Sheffield, [who?] have lost their faith in the council, and so our public apology is to the people of Sheffield for our actions throughout this whole street tree dispute. Robinson: Underpinning it though, Tom, was the fact that the council simply didn't tell the truth, did they? When it was alleged that there was a programme to replace an arbitrary seventeen and a half thousand trees over twenty five years the council kept saying no no, no, there's no target at all, and there was one. Hunt: That's right, and when people were rightly pointing out that we were getting things wrong and raising concerns, instead of listening and engaging with them the council doubled down and sought to escalate rather than de-escalate and change course. Robinson: Have you as a new leader analysed why this happened? Let's just assume that most of the people involved in public life are doing it for the right reasons, this was a mistake by officials as well as by councillors, how did they come to set a programme that wouldn't have got public support I suspect, and then when there was a dispute about it to lie about it? Hunt: As a resident during those years, I wasn't a councillor then, I had the same questions. We all wanted to know how things had got so bad, and that is why in 2021 the council commissioned Sir Mark Lowcock to complete a full public enquiry into the street tree dispute. His report, as you've mentioned, was published earlier in the year, and this week the council is implementing every single one of those recommendations. We did that so that we could understand just what went wrong, so that now my job is to right those wrongs so that a dispute of this magnitude can never happen again. Robinson: Well let's turn to Rebecca now of the Sheffield Tree Action Group. Having fought this for years how did it feel to hear those words? Hammond: It's been a long time coming, but it is very much appreciated. Sir Mark Lowcock's report, which was published in March, did make us feel vindicated, everything that we thought was actually correct, all the things that we thought had been going on it turned out had been going on, and this apology this week is, like I say, very much appreciated. I think now the question for us is whether the council is capable of making the massive cultural change that is necessary to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. Robinson: What about your own group because as it were you didn't start it, but your own group, the Sheffield Tree Action Group, had to apologise for its treatment of public officials. Hammond: Yeah, so within a couple of days of Sir Mark Lowcock's report he did highlight that at times the behaviour of campaigners had not always been as it could have been, and we did make an apology for that, particularly bearing, we were particularly mindful of, for example, the more junior council employees who got caught up in the débâcle because of decisions made by their seniors. Robinson: And we've only a little bit of time left so, Rebecca, if you would, and then Tom: what do you reflect is the wider national story about this, about how to get these relationships right between councils and those that they serve? Rebecca first. Hammond: So, the apology makes a specific reference to a culture unreceptive to external views, discouraging of internal dissent, and prone to group-think. And I think that's really important for all councils across the country to bear in mind. You know, this happened to be about street trees, but it could have been about anything. You know, we've recently heard about the situation in Woking which has just got itself into an absolute financial mess, probably because of a lack of reception to internal challenge to 'is this the right thing to be doing?' Robinson: Tom Hunt, is openness the lesson that you learned? Hunt: Openness is absolutely the lesson that we learned. Openness, transparency and accountability are the watchwords by which we will now be proceeding at Sheffield City Council. The council is there to serve the people of Sheffield. That means we must always listen, we must learn, yes we may get things wrong but we can never then just plough on. We must understand where things go wrong if they do, and then but always, always be on the side of people and implement a culture of engagement that runs throughout the council. Robinson: And a final word to you Rebecca Hammond, trees matter. Hammond: Absolutely yes. Street trees are there wherever people are, and they have benefits for peoples' health and wellbeing, even if you don't live on that street, but people travel along those streets every day, so they are hugely important for everyone. Robinson: Rebecca Hammond of Sheffield Tree Action Group, Tom Hunt, new Labour leader of Sheffield City Council, thanks for joining us.
  5. Following record breaking temperatures in the UK yesterday of over 40°C, and the unprecedented experience of intense heat we all had here in Sheffield, no reasonable person can continue to deny the climate emergency.
  6. To be clear, just seven percent of children in the UK have a privileged independent school education, and these go on to take over half of the places at Oxbridge (many other places at these, the UK's most prestigious centres of learning, are grabbed by wealthy foreign students - they are not welcoming of ordinary people who might wish to share in the educational and cultural advantages on offer, in spite of any claims to the contrary). To send a child to an independent school for one year will cost more than the average annual salary in the UK. Our children are excluded by our lack of wealth. Because we are not from that high-income privileged sector, we are not permitted to enjoy access to high-status education or the networking opportunities that come as part of the package. Our children can only hope for 'training and skills', not education and wealth. Also, around seven percent of the population have ease of access private healthcare. The rest of us are dependent upon the NHS, that former public service now being vigorously eroded by the tories by privatisation and the associated employment techniques that mean a slow decline of skilled staff because cheaper labour is more profitable for the private contractors taking over our NHS. And these contractors are not interested in providing services, their only aim is profit. Who are these contractors? All those tax- abusing multinationals and the in-crowd with tory connections that enjoy those 'warm' introductions. Anyone who doubts this need only cast their mind back to the PPE and test & trace scandals last year, shocking crony capitalist scams that cost the taxpayer £billions, that's public money that went to fraudulent and incompetent outsourcing companies, or who used their tory contacts to win bogus contracts, a scandal that cost thousands of lives in the UK during the pandemic. The political project of the tories is to support this seven percent, maintain their privilege and work to further enrich the already enormously wealthy class, and to do so at the expense of everybody else. There are a few hangers on of course, who see themselves as members of this privileged minority and gather the crumbs from under the table, but around 90% of the population are exploited, forced to live a life of subservience to the few and watch our living standards erode and our childrens' schooling decline in this 'not what you know but who you know' culture of independent school, Oxford or Cambridge University and the old boy crony network that is revealed by the transcripts in my OP. Unless you are from that privileged section of society, a vote for the tories is a vote against your own interests. Always. There are those who will still seek to distract and confuse. Their bluster and blather is as easy to spot as Boris Johnson's. Ignore them. These themes will never be covered in the mainstream media. Even when some elements are revealed by the BBC or the Guardian, it will be in their documentary programmes or special reports, never on the front page, never on the Six O'clock News. The dots sometimes emerge but they are never connected so that we ordinary people might get an idea of what is going on. My work here on Sheffield forum over the last ten years has been an attempt to reveal what is hidden.
  7. Why does this matter? What are the consequences of tax abuse? Why are the Panama Papers, like the series of previous exposés, so important? Well it is foundational to the neoliberal project to accumulate wealth in the pockets of the already rich and privileged. These few, still not satisfied with their riches, have been equipped with the means to pervert the system and enrich themselves even further. And that wealth, enjoyed by the one per cent and their hangers on, simultaneously drains resources (that's money) from local communities everywhere. It has a real impact on the lives of ordinary people, people like most of us here in Sheffield. Even if we are managing, our children won't, as the low wage economy is increasingly established, and now that tax abuse is firmly embedded. And once people are shunted into a low-wage existence, they cannot afford to buy a house. Enter the landlords, enjoying unearned wealth (in fact that wealth is earned by others, of course, their tenants, who must labour day and night to pay the rent, to enrich the rentiers) and using that wealth to buy yet more property to add to their portfolio and fill their pockets with ever more unearned income. And the tax abusers recycle some of their stolen money into the funding of compliant political parties, as the Pandora Papers reveal, parties wholly hostile to the needs of ordinary people (as I demonstrated earlier in this thread with reference to the Imperial College study on life expectancy). And the tax abusers are also financing the neoliberal think tanks and lobbyists that champion the Mont Pelerin doctrine of neoliberalism. When businesses abuse the tax system, and when they exploit and underpay their employees, these neoliberal scandals drain localities like Sheffield of the funds required to provide vital services and allow communities to flourish. As I explained in my very first posts here on Sheffield forum more than ten years ago, tax abuse is an integral component of the neoliberal project. That project is destroying the world, and these facts are now clear for anyone to see, if they choose to look.
  8. Here are two BBC Radio 4 offerings from the last few weeks which reveal the deceit at the heart of the neoliberal claim that we should all stand on our own two feet and that the state should be reduced to force this bogus doctrine upon us. (Listen on BBC iPlayer) You and Yours, BBC Radio 4, 7 October 2021, presenter, Winifred Robinson Robinson: Why do you think it is that few black owned businesses in the UK have burst through into this unicorn group of people? Kent-Braham: It starts really at the very start of an entrepreneur's journey. One of the biggest barriers to overcome is raising capital. If you're from a certain background and you haven't essentially gone to a very good school and a very good university, you don't have the network to be able to raise capital from friends and family and venture capitalists. And so venture capitalists will often say, 'look, for me to invest in you, you need to have a warm intro to us.' But that warm intro's really easy to get if you literally went to the same school as someone or to the same uni, it's very hard to get when you're from a very different background. And so already there's a big barrier there. Robinson: And how about you, did you have those warm links that helped ease you in? Kent-Braham: We just got very, very lucky. Part of our first investment round, we just, someone we worked with knew someone at Monzo Bank who then we had a coffee with, who then offered to introduce us to one of their investors. And so we got that warm intro. It was just really, really lucky. Robinson: That was Oliver Kent-Braham, one of the founders of Marshmallow Insurance. (31:15 – 32:17) Today Programme, BBC Radio 4, 8 October 2021, presenter Justin Webb Webb: A new play is being staged next week: Grenfell: Value Engineering, Scenes from the Inquiry. It uses transcripts from the inquiry into the 2017 fire which caused the deaths of 72 people, that inquiry of course still going on. It opens at the Tabernacle in nearby Notting Hill, it moves then to Birmingham. And it aims to give an overview and access to some of the most important evidence that's been heard so far at the inquiry. Nicola Stanbridge has been to meet the people involved. (1:21:26 – 1:21:57) Stanbridge: Yvette Williams' campaign group Justice 4 Grenfell is working with the production: Williams: I've lived local for thirty something years, called to the fire on the night because a friend of mine lives underneath, the horror of it. I know two people that lived in the tower who died amongst the seventy two. Now I've been in the inquiry when evidence was given. None of the corporates mention people, you know, you hear about money, you hear about, you know, free lunches, you hear about them getting contracts for their mates... (1:22:25 – 1:22:59) As ever, it's who you know not what you know that eases the path to privilege and opportunity. Independent school and the right university are basic requirements. Without that privilege, and those warm intros and jobs for their mates, standing on our own two feet is a very difficult and precarious thing to achieve and maintain.
  9. All tax abuse is unacceptable, whether it's called evasion or avoidance. However, this is in fact a bogus distinction. Whilst the billionaires and corporates have the bent accountancy firms arranging their tax abuse and working inside HMRC to rig the system, no one is helping the little people to cheat, and the small traders trying to scrape a few extra quid out of their labours in the informal economy are the only ones criminalised. And rightly so, if it were fair, but it clearly isn't. Steal a little and they throw the book at you, steal a lot and you can fly to space. Off shore is now off world, for the big tax cheats. But this sneering distinction is important, because it reveals just how important taxes really are to the neoliberal project - the taxes we ordinary people pay, us 'little people' that is. It's what funds what little there is left of our public services, and I'm sure we none of us need reminding who are increasingly contracted to deliver those services. That's right, those very tax abusing corporates who don't trouble to pay taxes themselves. Indeed, every individual and company making a profit or enjoying an income in the UK should be pay all tax lawfully demanded and properly payable.
  10. Once again: the very suggestion that laws are not broken in the scandal of tax abuse is simply another bogus attempt to muddy the waters, a cynical and entirely empty claim. Tax laws have been deregulated. Laws that levy tax on businesses and wealthy individuals abolished, diminished or riddled with carefully introduced loopholes, that's what deregulation is all about - paving the way for people in positions of privilege to evade their legal responsibilities. The conservative-led coalition hollowed out HMRC, sacking thousands of staff (those who policed the tax laws), using the lie of austerity to justify cuts to essential public services. Then private sector staff were seconded at staggering expense from the very City accountancy firms that facilitate tax abuse for and on behalf of their clients. As one might say, poacher turned gamekeeper turned poacher again since, once their contracted secondments were served, these people went straight back to their posts, cheating HMRC, and therefore the public, via the very loopholes they had devised, of the revenue necessary to fund education, healthcare, social services and the DWP.
  11. To repeat, the claim that no laws are broken in tax abuse is just another sleight of hand. George Osborne hollowed out HMRC (effective deregulation by sacking the regulators), from which there were thousands of redundancies (public sector cuts). Then private sector staff were seconded from the very City accountancy firms that have been and continue to game the tax system (privatisation). These personnel, remunerated by the taxpayer (that's us little people) then wrote tax law, complete with carefully crafted loopholes which, upon returning to their employers, they exploit (tax abuse). And as the Pandora Papers reveal, the offshore world is not only a place to hide the spoils of tax abuse or engage in illicit deals, it's also a source of party funding. The tories have been in receipt of significant sums from this lucrative sewer of sleaze and corruption, and it's there on record thanks to the hard work of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
  12. Of course, what was significant about 2010 within the Imperial College research findings was that this was the year that the Conservative-led Coalition arrived on the scene. And using the financial scandal as cover, they began a direct assault upon the public sector. Cuts to welfare and healthcare were immediately made. VAT, the tax that hits ordinary people hardest, was increased while Corporation Tax, the tax that big business was supposed to pay, was reduced. And tax abuse was allowed to flourish unchecked, as the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, and now the Pandora Papers reveal with force.
  13. Life expectancy falling in parts of England before pandemic. Many areas in the north of England have seen life expectancy fall within the last decade, a new study suggests. Differences across England have now become stark, say researchers - such as a 27-year gap in life expectancy for a man living in Kensington and Chelsea, compared to Blackpool. Although Covid caused life expectancy to drop, this research suggests it was already in decline in many areas. Researchers described the trend as "alarming". "There has always been an impression in the UK that everyone's health is improving, even if not at the same pace," said Prof Majid Ezzati from Imperial College London which carried out the study. "These data show that longevity has been getting worse for years in large parts of England." The study, which has been published in The Lancet journal, analysed all deaths in England between 2002 and 2019. It then worked out the life expectancy for different communities, based on the death records in those places. It found that while life expectancy rose in most places during the first decade of the millennium, from 2010 it began to decline in some places. Areas in London and the home counties still continued on the path of living longer - but life expectancy fell in some urban parts of Leeds, Newcastle, Manchester, Liverpool and Blackpool where life expectancy was below 70 for men and 75 for women. By 2019, the researchers say there was a 20-year gap in life expectancy between a woman living in Camden (95.4 years) versus a woman living in one area of Leeds (74.7 years). And for men, there was a 27-year gap in life expectancy between areas in Kensington and Chelsea (95.3 years) and parts of Blackpool (68.3 years) Average life expectancy in the UK is 79 years for men and just below 83 years for women, according to estimates from the Office for National Statistics. "Declines in life expectancy used to be rare in wealthy countries like the UK, and happened when there were major adversities like wars and pandemics," said Prof Ezzati. "For such declines to be seen in 'normal times' before the pandemic is alarming," he said - and he called for action to be taken. The researchers say the differences are down to poverty, insecure employment as well as reductions in welfare support and healthcare. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58893328
  14. The financial scandal of 2007 - 8 was a complex phenomenon featuring corruption within the major US and UK banks and the so-called ratings agencies, mortgage fraud, the mis-selling of mortgages stimulated by the proliferation of inappropriate loans through payment of high commissions to unscrupulous sales personnel which led to uncontrolled predatory lending, the cynical development of financial instruments such as credit default swaps, mortgage backed securities, collateralised debt obligations and a host of other technical innovations sold on a rising market. It became apparent during the crisis that few professionals, let alone ordinary investors, understood the basic risks obscured in what the implicated institutions like to call 'financial products'. The scandal included illegal activities by many major financial companies operating in the US and here in the UK, and the abolition of regulations - in particularl the Glass–Steagal legislation, and the neoliberal capture of the US Federal Reserve. Certainly there were a number of factors relating to government initiatives which facilitated the deterioration of lending standards (particularly during 2004 - 7, when George Bush's Republican Party were in control), that played a part in the scandal, but do not be fooled by the neoliberal claims that these were the sole, or even the main cause of a disaster brought about by capitalist greed and corruption. As usual, the neoliberal response to the scandal was to seek to distract and generate confusion amid a shocking financial abuse, caused by capitalism, and which left the villains of the piece even richer thanks to $multi-billion bailouts courtesy of the tax-payer (that's us, the 'little people'). Millions of ordinary people across the world suffered while the wealthy and privileged grabbed huge bonuses at public expense before returning to business as usual. For a basic, though unavoidaby complex summary of the scandal, see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis However, as the theme of this thread is another shocking revelation, the astonishing scandal in which the poor are being cheated, as revealed by the Pandora Papers, this excursion seems to me but another distraction.
  15. Neoliberalism intends to bring about the disintegration of reality and it does so at a cultural level via the deployment of ideology, by orchestrating interventions intended to help create the kind of world they say it already is, to pretend that neoliberalism is the natural condition, and that its claims are scientific. It is not, they are not. For example, when a series of scientific experiments demonstrate conclusively that a theory is incorrect a scientist will abandon the theory. However, when a neoliberal claim is demonstrably false there follows an attempt to change the world to fit the theory, through press campaigns, government lobbying, and funding ideologically oriented think tanks to reorient government and public beliefs towards a position favourable to neoliberal doctrine. And as with attempts to discredit the link between tobacco and cancer, and that between pollution and the climate crisis, neoliberals will also pay pliable scientists huge sums to encourage their refutation of established scientific research, not with any hope of victory within the science community, but simply to erode the confidence of ordinary people in relation to the findings of qualified professionals. Neoliberalism is a bogus but effective project, deployed for and on behalf of wealth to consolidate advantage and drain resources (financial, cultural and political) from ordinary people. We must recall that the theme of this thread is the astonishing proportions of tax abuse revealed in the Pandora Papers (as did the Panama Papers (2016) and the Paradise Papers (2017) before them). It is surely a mystery that here on this forum there are voices championing tax abuse, a technique specifically designed and deployed to drain resources (money) from local communities like Sheffield and concentrate wealth offshore, elsewhere, in the sheltered bank accounts of the rich, powerful and privileged few. Baudelaire's proclamation that the Devil's best trick is to persuade us that he does not exist applies equally to the neoliberal project. Those at the heart of the neoliberal project (the Mont Pelerin Society; the Washington and London think-tanks; the right-wing media platforms such as Fox News, The Sun and the Daily Mail; and captured political parties (especially but not only the US Republican Party and the Conservative Party here in the UK), and their self-selecting supporters will always bluster, distract, seek to ridicule critics, and/or simply deny the reality of neoliberalism. What the neoliberal project has structured is a world of astonishing inequality (do we really believe Johnson's levelling up nonsense - are we all to be millionaires?), exploitation (zero-hour contracts; essential workers on or below the minimum wage and requiring top-up from Universal Credit to survive), unaccountable private sector abuse of public revenue (for example the shocking £multi-billion scandals of the PPE and Test & Trace debacle here in the UK) and political paralysis (the effectively dismantled HMRC; the criminalisation of protest). Are these issues a reality or nothing more than conspiracy theories? They have all been covered by the BBC which, incidentally this very minute as I write, is reporting the utter disaster of the government's response to the coronavirus pandemic. We must not allow ourselves to be distracted by spin, ridicule or abuse.
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