The British ruling class

The Savile affair is gaining even more momentum:

Labour MP Tom Watson has said police must investigate claims of a "powerful paedophile ring" linked to a previous prime minister's "senior adviser" and Parliament... 

Mr Watson said an evidence file collected by the police to convict paedophile Peter Righton in 1992 "contains clear intelligence of a widespread paedophile ring". 

"One of its members boasts of his links to a senior aide of a former prime minister, who says he could smuggle indecent images of children from abroad," he said. 

"The leads were not followed up, but if the files still exist, I want to ensure that the Metropolitan Police secure the evidence, re-examine it and investigate clear intelligence suggesting a powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10." 

David Cameron said it was a "very difficult and complex case" and he was "not entirely sure" which former prime minister Mr Watson was referring to.

Now, don't be coy, David, it's one of two possible Prime Ministers, and one of the possible Prime Ministers hosted Jimmy Savile at their country residence every Christmas for eleven years (not that that's incriminating - I'm just saying it can't be that "difficult and complex" to work out). 

Add all this to the Hillsborough cover-up, phone hacking, rate fixing, repeated deaths in police custody and, what, is the ruling class in this country just one giant 'ring', a syndicate of mobster perverts? Don't mess with their boat races, mofo, because if you do you're going down.

Dr Ugs again...

HSBC, a bank that has branches on most high streets in Britain, has been laundering drug money ($7 billion from Mexican cartels – amongst other naughty proceeds), and its executives are very, very sorry. I bet they are! Although, that said, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation has prior form on this, if you count the Chinese opium trade, which it financed.

As was pointed out before, the drug trade is a profitable business. Estimates suggest it accounts for at least 1% of global GDP. That may not sound like much (though $3-400 billion sounds more tasty) but 1% is where many significant profit margins are poised right now.

This is, of course, the logical result of neo-liberal “light-touch” regulation combined with the capitalist prerogative of competitive accumulation. It begs a question. The ruling class is like a tightly knotted fist. From warmongering politicians, to scabby print-barons, to corrupt cops, to light-fingered bankers, they are in it together and they look after their own. Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Given they are depraved and decadent, even by their own standards, shouldn’t we just lock up every rich person and throw away the key? If we let them out they’ll only do it again.

Down with this sort of thing...

Banks given until 2019 to take what they can and run

But THEN they have to stop. Until then Britain wants as much Russian gangster cash as possible. Of course, by 2019 we'll all be fighting 8ft tall radioactive scorpions (probably stamped with the Barclays logo) for the last drops of potable water:

According to the IFS, the squeeze on living standards will be the result of earnings failing to keep pace with prices, as well as the tax and benefit changes announced by the government to tackle the UK's record peacetime budget deficit.

"Welfare cuts and tax rises will act to reduce household incomes, and those with the lowest incomes are clearly set to lose the most from these reforms as a percentage of income (with the important exception of those with the very highest incomes). This is likely to increase poverty, other things being equal, offsetting some of the falls in poverty over the past decade."

Of course it isn't a record peacetime deficit (there are high levels of government borrowing, but that's another matter). The national debt was many times greater in 1948, when the NHS was founded (see picture). What's interesting in the IFS report is the line highlighted:

The IFS analysis is included in The Great Recession and the Distribution of Income, published on Monday by the London School of Economics. Professor Stephen Jenkins of the LSE said: "We were surprised at how little household incomes changed in the years immediately after the Great Recession began. This has been the worst macroeconomic downturn in most OECD countries since the Great Depression of the 1930s when there were substantial increases in poverty rates and other significant changes to the income distribution."

A pay freeze relative to inflation is a pay cut. This has been the strategy for several decades; hold down wages to raise profits. With inflation at 4-5% that's a big cut. Of course, it only half-worked, all those years. The previous mini long-boom was driven by speculation. Low effective demand combined with large amounts surplus capital, encouraged a culture of widespread borrowing and lending (borrowing to lend sometimes). It was fitting then this global pyramid scheme foundered on subprime mortgages.

Warning that pain had been delayed but not avoided, the IFS said families with children would be hit harder by Osborne's tax and benefit changes than other family types on average, with the poorest 10th of households suffering income losses of more than 8% over the next three years. "Recent IFS modelling predicted that child poverty will rise in each of the three years between 2010-11 and 2013-14, and that it will be about two percentage points higher in 2013-14 as a result of the tax and benefit reforms planned by the current government."

If you can't forsake the god of capital accumulation you will have to sacrifice your children to appease him.

Day five: still going on about the riots