Eileen Kersey writing out of Yorkshire, England

Andrew Marr, Trump, Farage, Corbyn and Le Penn

13/11/2016

Trump and Farage New York this weekend

Jeremy Corbyn and George Durack will attend ceremonies at the Cenotaph Sunday

Op-ed: It is Sunday November 13, 2016.

In the UK it is Remembrance Sunday. A day when parades and ceremonies remember those who died in WWI.

These days we also remember those who died in WWII and selective later wars.

Last year's Remembrance Sunday a fairly newly elected Labour Party, leader Jeremy Corbyn, was attacked by sections of the mainstream media.

Why?

Some claimed he did not bow his head low enough at the Cenotaph opting to ignore the fact that other attending politicians such as David Cameron quickly left for a VIP lunch while Mr Corbyn stayed on to watch the parade and chat with veterans.

This year Remembrance Sunday falls on the one-year anniversary of Bataclan.

Ninety people were massacred by terrorists at a packed rock concert in the Bataclan theatre November 13, 2015. Saturday night English singer-songwriter and former Police frontman Sting appeared at the Bataclan's first gig at the 150-year-old venue since the deadly terror attack.

But today BBC News has opted to invite extreme right-wing French politician Marine Le Penn to appear as a guest on the Andrew Marr show.

While many have condemned the timing of her appearance others have said today is the perfect day: that however may be too subtle for some.

There are protesters outside of the BBC building.

Le Penn has said there is a hair's breadth between her political party, the French National Front party and UKIP here in the UK.

UKIP has tried over many years to distance itself from the far right of politics but it is what it is.

Defending its decision to allow Le Penn prime political air time today the BBC has said it will be inviting all French political party leaders as that country gears up for national elections.

If Le Penn is elected President of France you can kiss goodbye to the EU and perhaps peace across Europe and beyond.

It says something that UKIP leader Nigel Farage met with US President elect Donald Trump in New York Saturday.

UKIP have been milking that meeting for all its worth stressing PM Theresa May is not due to meet Trump until next year.

For many in the UK Farage is a joke and not a very good one. Fox news however, another Murdoch based media outlet, is giving him airtime.

Remember Farage is not a UK MP as he lost the election he fought.

The Andrew Marr show has just kicked off and I am tuning in.

There will be one voice of sanity among the right-wing madness, that includes General Francis Richard Dannatt, Baron Dannatt, GCB, CBE, MC, DL a retired senior British Army Officer joining the paper review on Marr, and that is Jeremy Corbyn.

Dannatt touted Dan Jarvis MP as a future Labour leader, good guy and more. But Dannatt is a Tory. He worked for David Cameron 2009 to 2010. Dannatt thinks Jarvis is a good man but they are friends.

He touted Jarvis in front of Corbyn who was sat close by. Mr Corbyn's interview is early in the show as he has to leave for the Cenotaph. This year he is taking a friend, a war veteran with him, George Durack.

The west is taking a big lurch to the right and we face uncertain times.

We need people like Jeremy Corbyn in power and soon.

Corbyn is an honest and genuine person which is a rare commodity in politics old and new.

Andrew Marr tries the "Corbyn is London and out of touch approach" but it is you Andrew who does not live in real world.

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Sajid Javid Tata Steel woes

3/4/2016

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Op-ed: Do you tune in to BBCs political slots Sunday that begin with the Andrew Marr show?

This show has been painful to watch at times since the tory government threatened the independence and continuance of the Beeb but at least this Sunday Marr allowed Tory business secretary Sajid Javid to hang himself.

Javid was not convincing and I say that even if I try to put aside my obvious left of politics leanings.

Questioned about the possible future of Tata Steel he wrung his hands and dithered while adding nothing was ruled out, yet.

Currently thousands of jobs could go in Wales and across the country if the Tory government allows the steel making industry to go to the wall.

It would also as I said days ago leave the UK totally reliant on foreign steel.

As this war torn world of ours shows no sign of wide scale peace any time soon that is a scary thought.

Sajid Javid the man presumably tasked with fixing a sorry situation looked ill-prepared Sunday.

He almost became a bumbling wreck at one point.

He was quick to try to acknowledge that he is fairly recent in post probably to cover up Tory government shortcomings.

Prior May 2010 it was the Tory party in government but with coalition partners the Liberal Democrats.

Javid has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Bromsgrove since 2010 and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills since May 11, 2015. He is one of those Tories touted as a possible successor for David Cameron.

Javid comes from a fairly ordinary background especially when you consider his Tory colleagues.

However if the following from Wikipedia is true he is far from just another kid on the block;

When he was twenty, Javid attended his first Conservative Party Conference and campaigned against the Thatcher government's decision in that year to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM), calling it a "fatal mistake".

Javid joined Chase Manhattan Bank in New York immediately after university, working mostly in South America. Aged 25, he became the youngest vice-president in the history of the bank. He returned to London in 1997, and later joined Deutsche Bank as a director in 2000. In 2004 he became a managing director at Deutsche Bank and, one year later, global head of Emerging Markets Structuring.

While in this role, Javid spoke with the press about a $500 million EM CLO called Craft EM CLO 2006-1, which was subsequently upsized to $1 billion in the face of investor demand. However, by March 2009, losses on defaulted assets in the Craft EM CLO 2006-1 pool stood at $32 million. Arco Capital tried to take Deutsche Bank to court in September 2012 over the $37 million in losses it incurred by investing in the deal. Arco claimed Deutsche stuffed the CDO with ineligible loans that resulted in the 14.28% loss rate in the pool. Deutsche claimed the losses were due to the financial crisis, and Arco was aware of the risks it was taking on.

In 2007 he relocated to Singapore as head of Deutsche Bank's credit trading, equity convertibles, commodities and private equity businesses in Asia, and was appointed a board member of Deutsche Bank International Limited. He left Deutsche Bank in 2009 to pursue a career in politics. His earnings at Deutsche Bank would have been roughly £3m a year at the time he left.

Javid is a trustee of the London Early Years Foundation, was a governor of Normand Croft Community School, and has led an expedition to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa, to show his support of Help The Aged.

Yet again then the British economy is in the hands of a banker.

We bailed out the banks in 2008 and in spite of the Marr guest who was from the banking system claiming that was vital to save our economy few people are really fooled.

If that was true many of those bankers would, like in Iceland, be serving jail terms.

And isn't saving our steel just as important as the banking sector?

Updates available.

April 3 Steel Tycoon Sanjev Gupta keen on acquiring Tat Steel's Port Talbot plants. But at what price? There are workers' pensions to consider and surely the time for outsourcing has past and it is time to renationalise once more?
The deal that hamstrung Tata Steel
Public Sector Told To Buy British Steel - is surely a mixed bag?

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Osborne contradictions and spin on Marr made me dizzy

13/3/2016

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David Cameron's 2010 promises

Op-ed: Ahead of this week's budget British Chancellor George Osborne opted to share his economic doom and gloom predictions with the public by writing a piece in the Sun on Sunday.

Why he chose the Sun is not clear but it is clear why he did not go for the Observer; one Observer headline Sunday says "George Osborne accused of hitting most vulnerable with tax plans."

Osborne now believes the world is facing its worst global economic crisis since 2008; you may remember that particular world crisis was dumbed down and financial woes in the UK blamed on the Labour government by the Tories and their out and out lies secured the Conservative Party election success in 2015.

But then we had the pleasure of watching Gideon George Osborne try to spin the mess he is making of the British economy and budget spending when he appeared on the Andrew Marr Sunday politics show on BBC1.

Osborne will deliver his eighth budget Wednesday March 16 and he is looking at cutting budget spending to save billions of pounds.

He will tout that as necessary to fulfil the Tory plan and election manifesto which is probably closer to the truth.

He may cite lower oil prices, political instability in the Middle East and the slowdown in China but the Tory agenda always included savage cuts to social security and helping out wealthy friends.

Tory election promises included balancing the books by 2020 and moving the country into a surplus but at what a cost.

One growth industry in the UK is the Chancellor's budgets which keep on coming thick and fast.

Fairness is never a feature.

How deep the cuts will go may be affected by the upcoming UK EU in / out referendum and May local elections but fear not there can always be another budget along and soon.

So what did we learn from George Osborne's Marr interview Sunday?

Enter the cat that got the cream George Osborne. This man is unable to look anything but smug.

Osborne used the interview as nothing less than a party political broadcast ducking and diving questions and spinning facts till I was dizzy.

The ESA cuts? Fine as the Tories are increasing the money people with disabilities receive, with REAL disabilities that is??

The UK economy is one of the strongest he claims so how come the austerity axe is sharpened and poised to fall?

The country has to make savings but Osborne will select who gets hit by working to the Tory party election manifesto, giving payback for wealthy party donors and dividing the country even further.

The UK has more than a north south divide these days; it has a deepening rich poor, old young, abled bodied against people with disabilities and them and us divide.

The global economy is in trouble, I would probably say in meltdown, and that could cause the UK problems but hey it is not Chancellor Osborne's or the Tory party's fault.

Britain now has a record number of people employed says George with a satisfied grin but with a record number of people employed on zero-hour contracts and unable to claim out of work benefits, for various reasons, the figures are not just flawed they are a disgrace and downright lies. Zero hour contracts will do little to help the economy but a great deal to help employers who are greedy.

With MPs set for whopping pay rises in 2016 why are the rest of us expected to endure more income cuts?

Sadly there is only so much spin and lies this person can take on a Sunday morning, or any morning, afternoon or evening for that matter.

So it is goodbye to Del Boy Osborne who was still ducking and diving, claiming the UK economy was so good but in the next breath saying more cuts were vital, as I reached for the TV remote.

Footnote:
The Tory leading lights talk a great deal about fulfilling election promises and pledges but they act selectively. No rise in VAT and no cuts to child tax credit featured in recent Tory manifestos. The first was broke back in 2010 and the latter is on the shelf after the House of Lords refused to rubber stamp the changes. But that means it will be back on the table sooner or later.

Senior Tories including Osborne, Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith, who is overseeing savage cuts to social security, have little idea about ordinary life in the 21st Century.

George Osborne has a nice grace and favour getaway - Osborne’s country pile gets National Trust hand out.

Then there is Iain Duncan Smith who "hit headlines when he claimed £39 for a breakfast – "a revelation that sparked criticism in light of comments that he could live off £53 a week benefits." As we noted in 2013 when we reported on a petition gathering support following that gaffe "Iain Duncan Smith married into wealth. He has his own overblown political income. He has perks such as a second home allowance, freebies, ministerial cars and drivers and so much more. When challenged whether he could live on £7.57 a day, he replied, "I could if I had to"." He was challenged in the petition to do just that but backed down."

And at the top is the daddy of them all David Cameron.

In 2009 the Daily Mail wrote "Claims that David Cameron has a £30m fortune sit uneasily with taxpayers. So what is the truth about his money?"

That report claimed that although Cameron denied having a '£30million' fortune rumours continued. It went on "As does gossip of his alleged personal family fortune, helped by the Mail on Sunday's disclosure that he paid off the £75,000 mortgage on the £1.5 million home in North Kensington, London, that he owns with his wife Samantha, after they took out a £350,000 taxpayer-funded HSBC mortgage on his designated Oxfordshire constituency second home."

Fast-forward to 2015 and C4s documentary "David Cameron's father left assets in tax haven" and try telling me Cameron has any idea how we the people live.

If you are working or middle class and voted Tory the question has to be why?

If you believed they would work for you and yours you were either misinformed or clueless.

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Jeremy Corbyn headline news after Andrew Marr show

17/1/2016

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Opinion: BBC news 6pm Sunday and Jeremy Corbyn is the main headline news after appearing on the Andrew Marr show earlier in the day.

Forget other main news the Beeb's news running order was Mr Corbyn, the Iran nuclear deal, the US freed hostages, a UK murder, conservation zones in British seas and a South American volcano erupting with perhaps another story but no mention of the expected hundreds of job losses at Tata steel announced earlier today or the 400 Syrians kidnapped by Daesh with many feared executed.

The Corbyn news related to his words on Labour's expected review into Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent; a review which will decide whether Labour Party policy will favour renewal, amendments or scrapping Trident.

But perhaps Mr Corbyn warranted BBC News' headlines after he said he thought striking in sympathy of other strikers was OK.

There will be some in Labour who will hold their hands up in horror at that view but they should remember it was Tory Margaret Thatcher that banned such action taking place more than 20 years ago.

Scaremongering followed Corbyn's outing on Marr yet the next general election is still more than four years away and the new Labour leadership and shadow cabinet are still settling into roles.

There is a long way to go.

Union bosses involved in Trident want to maintain the status quo to keep jobs but if Trident is not fit for purpose it could be a costly white elephant.

Mr Corbyn has been headline news almost daily since he became party leader in September 2015 unlike new Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron who is treat like the invisible man.

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Andrew Marr, Trump, Farage, Corbyn and Le Penn

Sajid Javid Tata Steel woes

Osborne contradictions and spin on Marr made me dizzy

Jeremy Corbyn headline news after Andrew Marr show

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