politics

Theresa May lies, John McDonnell says Labour to dump Universal Credit

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Theresa May lies claiming that austerity is over at her Rich Scum party speech.

 

Labour will scrap universal credit, John McDonnell declares

“I think we are moving to a position now where it is just not sustainable. It will have to go.”

Mr McDonnell accused Prime Minister Theresa May and the Tories on Saturday of lying in their claim to the public that austerity has ended.

The shadow chancellor, who spoke at an anti-austerity rally in Pudsey, Leeds, told the Morning Star: “We will be holding the government to account. This is the third time in two years the government has announced the end to austerity.

“The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that 75 per cent of welfare cuts are still to come, so if they are serious about ending austerity, in his coming budget Philip Hammond should get up and announce the end of cuts to welfare.

“He clearly will not — and we will be exposing what is effectively a lie.

“Three times they have announced the end, yet there are still cuts coming to welfare benefits, school budgets and local authority budgets in particular.”

Continue ReadingTheresa May lies, John McDonnell says Labour to dump Universal Credit

NHS privatisation and Virgin

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NHS privatisation soars as private companies win 70% of clinical contracts in England

30 December 2017

NHS spending on care provided by private companies has jumped by £700m to £3.1bn with non-NHS firms winning almost 70 per cent of tendered contracts in England last year.

Private care providers were awarded 267 out of a total of 386 contracts made available in 2016-17, including the seven highest value opportunities, worth £2.4bn.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Care scooped a record £1bn worth of contracts last year, meaning the company now has over 400 separate NHS contracts, making it the dominant private provider in the NHS market.

The extent of Virgin Care’s portfolio has angered campaigners, as the company pays no tax in the UK, and its parent company is registered in the British Virgin Islands – a tax haven.

Virgin Care also sued six NHS commissioning care groups (CCGs) last year after it failed to win an £82m care contract, losing out to an NHS provider and two social enterprises.

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Parasitic capitalism is killing the NHS

Private companies are sucking the lifeblood out of the health service, writes Kane Shaw.

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Continue ReadingNHS privatisation and Virgin

Craig Murray is the authoritative source on UK complicity in rendition and torture

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https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

Theresa May specifically and deliberately ruled out the Committee from questioning any official who might be placed at risk of criminal proceedings – see para 11 of the report. The determination of the government to protect those who were complicit in torture tells us much more about their future intentions than any fake apology.

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It is worth reflecting that the Tory government has acted time and time again to protect New Labour’s Tony Blair, David Miliband, Jack Straw and Gordon Brown from any punishment for their complicity in torture, and indeed to limit the information on it available to the public. The truth is that the Tories and New Labour (which includes the vast majority of current Labour MPs) are all a part of the same elite interest group, and when under pressure they stick together as a class against the people.

Despite being hamstrung by government, the Committee managed through exhaustive research of classified documents to pull together evidence of British involvement in extraordinary rendition and mistreatment of detainees on a massive scale. The Committee found 596 individual documented incidents of the security services obtaining “intelligence” from detainee interrogations involving torture or severe mistreatment, ranging from 2 incidents of direct involvement, “13 to 15” of actually being in the room, through those where the US or other authorities admitted to the torture, to those where the detainee told the officer they had been tortured. They found three instances where the UK had paid for rendition flights.

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Continue ReadingCraig Murray is the authoritative source on UK complicity in rendition and torture

“This is the United Kingdom for God’s sake, not some third world banana republic where the organs of state are in hock to some sort of kleptocracy”

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/uk-refused-to-raid-lycamobile-citing-its-tory-donations

The British government refused to assist a French investigation into suspected money laundering and tax fraud by the UK telecoms giant Lycamobile – citing the fact that the company is the “biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party” and gives money to a trust founded by Prince Charles.

French prosecutors launched a major probe into the firm and arrested 19 people accused of using its accounts to launder money from organised criminal networks two years ago, after BuzzFeed News revealed its suspicious financial activities in the UK. But the Conservatives continued taking Lycamobile’s money – and it can now be revealed that the British authorities stonewalled a formal request from French prosecutors to carry out raids in London as part of the ongoing investigation.

Confidential correspondence between British government officials and their French counterparts, shown to BuzzFeed News by a source in the UK, reveals that the French wanted British authorities to raid Lycamobile’s London headquarters last year and seize evidence as part of their investigation into money laundering and tax fraud by the company.

In an official response dated 30 March 2017, a government official noted that Lycamobile is “a large multinational company” with “vast assets at their disposal” and would be “extremely unlikely to agree to having their premises searched”.

The letter, from the team at HMRC that handles law enforcement requests from foreign governments, continued: “It is of note that they are the biggest corporate donor to the Conservative party led by Prime Minister Theresa May and donated 1.25m Euros to the Prince Charles Trust in 2012.” The email referred to Lycamobile’s donations to the British Asian Trust, which was founded by the Prince of Wales to tackle poverty in South Asia, not to his youth foundation The Prince’s Trust which has never received any money from Lycamobile.

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Continue Reading“This is the United Kingdom for God’s sake, not some third world banana republic where the organs of state are in hock to some sort of kleptocracy”