Prospa B2B DJ Seinfeld on Rinse FM 2024-05-01
2 hours ago
Wednesday 30 November 2011
George Osborne's every blow falls on those with less not more
Class war, generation war, war against women, war between the regions: George Osborne's autumn statement blatantly declares itself for the few against the many. Gloves are off and gauntlets down, and the nasty party bares its teeth. Here is the re-toxified Tory party, the final curtain on David Cameron's electoral charade. No more crocodile tears for the poor, no more cant about social mobility or "the most family-friendly government" or "we're all in this together". Forget "vote blue go green", with this mockery of husky-hugging. Let the planet fry.
Exposed was the extent of pain for no gain, exactly as Keynesian economists predicted, a textbook case. Things are "proving harder than anyone envisaged", says Cameron. But precisely this was envisaged by Nobel-winning economists. Extreme austerity is causing £100bn extra borrowing, not less, while everything else shrinks – most incomes (the poorest most of all), employment, order books and exports. Pre-Christmas shopping – already discounted – heralds more imminent company collapses, and the only high street growth is in pawnbrokers, charity shops and Poundlands filling up the black gaps. For all the flurry of small announcements to kickstart business, infrastructure doesn't create jobs fast enough to replace the 710,000 more public jobs to go. The iron envelope of public spending is unchanged. Osborne learns nothing from experience.
What was missing from his list? Not one penny more was taken from the top 10% of earners. Every hit fell upon those with less not more. Fat plums ripe for the plucking stayed on the tree as the poorest bore 16% of the brunt of new cuts and the richest only 3%, according to the Resolution Foundation. Over £7bn could be harvested with 40% tax relief on higher pensions, while most earners only get 20% tax relief; £2bn should be nipped from taxing bankers' bonuses, but the bank levy announced was nothing extra. There was no mansion tax on high-value properties, though owners don't even pay their fair share of council tax, and property is greatly undertaxed compared with other countries...
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Polly Toynbee @'The Guardian'
Ironic eh?
NaomiAKlein Naomi Klein
Just doing my morning "I'm not Naomi f-ing Wolf" corrections. Love that half the people I have to correct r journos.
Just doing my morning "I'm not Naomi f-ing Wolf" corrections. Love that half the people I have to correct r journos.
dudeonabike Ross X
Recall LAPD's motto: "To Protect and Serve." Bus boarding LAPD at Dodger Stadium to evict@OccupyLA reads: "Not in Service."
Recall LAPD's motto: "To Protect and Serve." Bus boarding LAPD at Dodger Stadium to evict
drugmonkeyblog Drug Monkey
Call the transit cops! RT@Dirk57: RT @willrolls: There's a guy on the train doing nothing, no smartphone, just staring out of the window.
Call the transit cops! RT
Ross MacManus RIP
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Massive WWI Human Sculptures
(Click to enlarge)
It's almost impossible to comprehend the scale of these historic photographs by Englishman Arthur S Mole and his American colleague John D Thomas, who were commissioned by the US government to take the pictures as a way to raise morale among the troops and raise money by selling the shots to the public during WWI. In the photo above, "there are 18,000 men: 12,000 of them in the torch alone, but just 17 at the base. The men at the top of the picture are actually half a mile away from the men at the bottom," explains Arthur's great nephew Joseph Mole, 70.
Mole and Thomas were the first to use a unique technique to beat the problem of perspective after they devised a clever way of getting so many soldiers in the pictures. Joseph explains: "Arthur was able to get the image by actually drawing an outline on the lens, he then had the troops place flags in certain positions while he looked through the camera. It would take a week to get all the outlines right, but just 30 minutes to move all the men into position to take the shot. It must have been amazing to watch."
What's makes the story even more fascinating is that instead of profiting from the sale of the images produced, the photographers donated the entire income derived to the families of the returning soldiers and to this country’s efforts to re-build their lives as a part of the re-entry process...
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MetPoliceCO11 Metropolitan Police
I only ended up in this job because of my youthful fascination with the music of Sting and a truly terrible misunderstanding.
I only ended up in this job because of my youthful fascination with the music of Sting and a truly terrible misunderstanding.
WTF??? Drug-sniffing dog aids family interventions
DJ Smith works with Xanax the dog in a search for drugs at a Santa Monica sober living home on Nov. 18, 2011. (John McCoy/Daily News Staff Photographer)
As DJ Smith watched Xanax, a drug-sniffing dog, search for narcotics around a sober living home, he couldn't help but think how a dog like the eager Belgian Malinois might have changed his own life. Smith, 23, had become addicted to prescription drugs and alcohol at age 16. His family suspected, but they never knew the extent of his problem. Nor did they find the pills he'd hidden in innocuous over-the-counter medicine bottles or disguised in other ways.
So the Agoura Hills family constantly worried if and when Smith would come home at night, or if he would survive his latest hospitalization.
"Unfortunately, I didn't have a service like this," said Smith of Narc with a Bark, a North Hollywood-based business that uses Xanax the drug detection dog to find drugs in private homes and rehab facilities, and doesn't involve law enforcement.
"A service like this would have intervened a lot quicker," Smith added.
Now nine months sober and training to become Xanax's handler, Smith likes the fact that the service is geared not toward catching people with drugs in order to report them to police, but to offer solid proof of use to those interested in helping them recover.
"It's not to get anyone in trouble," said Smith, who is now working on a counseling degree. "It's not like a bust, it's not to get you expelled from school. It's strictly for gaining more information for a family that is worried and doesn't know what's going on..."
Protesters Storm British Embassy in Tehran
“Dozens of Iranian protesters screaming ‘death to England!’ stormed the British embassy compound in Tehran on Tuesday, tore down the British flag and ransacked the offices, according to officials in London, Iranian news dispatches and images broadcast live on Iranian state television.
“The assault came a day after Iran’s Islamic leaders moved to downgrade relations with Britain because of harsh financial sanctions imposed by the West — and Britain in particular — over Iran’s suspect nuclear program, and it appeared to be the most serious diplomatic breach between the two countries in more than 20 years of troubled relations.”
@The New York Times
♪♫ Jamie Woon - Lady Luck
Tuesday 29 November 2011
♪♫ Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes faturing Teddy Pendergrass - If You Don't Know Me By Now
Lead singer Teddy Pendergrass died of respiratory failure on January 13, 2010
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