UK DK

Below is a recent article from the Daily Express, which highlights the damage done to our economy by both Labour's economic and immigration policies:

BETRAYAL OF BRITISH WORKERS
Friday October 24,2008
Macer Hall

Angry builders yesterday protested against a move to use foreign labour on a major British construction project.

Up to 200 jobs on a new power station in the Midlands are destined for Spanish workers, unions claim.

It follows growing concerns that the vast majority of new vacancies created in Britain in recent years have gone to migrant workers, as the country faces its highest level of unemployment for 17 years.

Jobless builders joined a Unite union protest at the site of the new power station at Staythorpe near Newark in Nottinghamshire yesterday. They called for the work to go to skilled construction workers in the Trent Valley.

French construction firm Alstom was contracted by German-based power giant RWE to build the gas-fired power station. Alstom is using two Spanish contractors – Montpressa and FMM – on the project. They are understood to have lined up Spanish workers for jobs.

Patrick Mercer, Tory MP for Newark, was yesterday planning to meet company bosses to raise concerns about the use of migrant labour. He said: “I did think that in the short to medium term there would be a number of jobs created, particularly in construction.

“Anything that threatens the vast majority of those jobs going to local people flies in the face of what I understood.”

Hundreds of protesters at the site of the £850million project yesterday condemned the deal as a betrayal of Gordon Brown’s claim when he became Prime Minister last year that he wanted to promote British jobs for British workers.

Plate-fitter Trevor Tacey, 58, has been out of work since August. He said: “I’ve been working in this industry all my life. My father worked in it for 20 years, and my son was also hoping to come into it as an apprentice, though it doesn’t look like that will happen now.

“I’ve been waiting seven years for this project to begin. I could have walked to work, but instead they’re going to fly in workers from Poland or Spain.

“It was a real kick in the teeth. Gordon Brown said: ‘British jobs for British workers’. We feel contempt for that statement and shock and anger for what is happening.”

Alstom said a small number of its 14 sub-contractors were not British, and employed both local and overseas workers. But it would not say how many overseas staff were likely to be involved in the project.

Derek Simpson of Unite said the move was scandalous. He said: “The country is in the grip of a credit crunch and the construction industry is one of the worst-hit sectors.

“There are qualified people in the local area who are out of work and ready and willing to do the job.”

Unite said Alstom and energy giant RWE, which will run the power station, should put pressure on sub-contractors to give British workers a fair chance of employment on the project.

“The UK needs to upgrade and build new power stations and there are huge opportunities to create thousands of well-paid and highly skilled jobs,” Mr Simpson said.

“It will be a disgrace if UK workers are shut out from building their own power stations.”

The union said Montpressa and FMM used a site meeting earlier this month to reveal that foreign labour would be used for most of the project. FMM told union officials that because they had no direct employees themselves, they would supply their workers directly from abroad.

Unite said: “This would mean that there would be no consideration given to employing local construction workers with years of experience in building power stations throughout the Trent Valley. The national agreement for construction workers, of which both the employers and trade unions are signatories, states that consideration should be given to available local labour.”

A spokesman for Alstom said last night: “Our priority lies in ensuring we build and deliver a safe, effective power station by engaging companies and personnel with the appropriate skills and expertise necessary for this major project.

“Alstom today employs just over 700 people at Staythorpe. Of these, the overwhelming majority, more than 90 per cent, are UK nationals.

“Two out of our 14 sub contractors at Staythorpe are non-UK companies and will source some employees from both the UK and other EU countries for a specific role fitting parts of the station.

“We actively encourage our sub-contractors to employ UK and local skills to ensure people have an equal opportunity to gain employment on our sites and encourage the recruitment of local workers to deliver the skills we need.”

When Mr Brown became Prime Minister last year, he vowed to promote “British jobs for British workers”. The Government has introduced tougher skill tests for migrant workers coming to the UK from outside the EU. But Spanish builders imported for the Newark project will not be affected because of EU freedom of movement rules.

THE FAT CATS

Eric Daniels Lloyds TSB chief executive has told his staff that they will still receive their bonuses despite the nationalisation of the bank. In a recorded message to employees, referring to the possibility of restrictions being placed on Lloyds as a result of the £5.5billion of taxpayers' money they have received, Mr Daniels said:

'If you think about it, the first restriction was not to pay bonuses. Well Lloyds TSB is in fact going to pay bonuses. I think our staff have done a terrific job this year. There is no reason why we shouldn't.'

Gordon Brown had indicated that bonuses, in future, should only be paid if they had been earned. So speaks a socialist.

Irrespective of whether someone deems the bonuses to have been earned, they cannot be paid if there is no money. Lloyds, it seems, regards using taxpayers' money to pay bonuses to an insolvent bank as perfectly acceptable.

It is not.

HOOD ROBIN

Robin Hood allegedly stole from the rich to give to the poor. Labour now have the principle in reverse. They take from the poor to give to the greedy super-rich.

Labours’ £5billion per year tax raid on the private pension schemes led to a collapse in their value, by as much as 75% even a few year’s ago. Their value today will no doubt be even less. More than £100billion was plundered from private pensions at a time when Labour endorsed the inflation-proof pensions of an ever expanding government sector.

The collapsing share prices are reducing the value of private pensions even further. It is estimated that £20,000 has been wiped off the value of every private pension linked to the stock market.

Labour backtracked from the abolition of the 10% tax band. That such an abolition would affect the poorer members of society did not bother them initially. That was because it was in the interests of the state. For any socialist, the interests of the state are paramount. It was only the public outcry and the various Westminster by-elections that compelled Labour to reverse the abolition.

In bygone years, the unions would seek to represent, in their own way, the interests of their members and promote the defence of the declining manufacturing base of Britain. No more - they are now more interested in promoting political correctness and denigrating their members.

Labour have abandoned the concept that we have to produce things and supply services. They have been dazzled by the shallow glitter of a casino society, and have sought to expand the number and size of casinos and gambling to that end. It is therefore not surprising that Labour are enthralled by the greatest gambling den of all - the City.

Originally, the City arose to fulfil the need to supply finance for manufacturing and trade. Nowadays, it exists to speculate for its own sake and manufacturing can be transferred to China. Labour have been very keen on this to happen and have allowed special tax breaks for equity funds etc.

Meanwhile, ordinary people, particularly those not employed by the state, have needed a new means of providing for their retirement, if they could afford to at all. Housing and the ever increased rise in prices appeared an attractive option. Some hoped that their homes would be their pension, whereas others took out buy-to-let mortgages to expand their property portfolio. Mass immigration reinforced the housing shortage. Prices spiralled.

Meanwhile, the various stock exchanges invented imaginative ways to create commissions by packaging and repackaging mortgage debt. The American sub-prime mortgages were sold and resold across the globe and when those mortgages ran into trouble, the bubble burst.

Now hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money have been, and continue to be, poured into bailing out the banks, whose greed and recklessness created the appalling catastrophe. Labour have just lobbed no less than £500billion to the banks in the latest instalment, and this coming after the many hundreds of billions spent already in bailing out Northern Rock etc [possibly as much as £350billion]. And still the stock exchanges continue to crash! No doubt more £billions will be in the pipeline.

That is more than £14,000 per person in the UK. £28,000 for a pensioner couple and £70,000 for a family of five. This is at a time when drugs such as Aricept, costing only £2.50 per day, are denied to many Alzheimers sufferers.

But then, it is not in the interests of the state to prioritise the poor or the sick.

£37billion of taxpayers’ money is to be invested in bank shares [with other banks possibly wanting such funds themselves in due course] and this is after City bonuses last year reached a staggering £17billion! It is no wonder the financial institutions are insolvent when their own funds have been looted to such an extent - year after year.

Meanwhile, inflation has hit its highest rate for 16 years at 5.2% and unemployment is increasing sharply and will probably exceed 2million by Christmas and some fear it may reach 3million by 2010.

So much for Gordon Brown’s claim to have abolished boom and bust. His latest boast is that the government is ‘creating new opportunities for work’ in ‘insulation, draft proofing and central heating provision’. Presumably, this is skilled work compared to Margaret Hodge’s suggestion that the unemployed can stack shelves at Tescos [see the English Rights Campaign item dated the 24 August 2005].

TORY SOCIALISM

Below is an extract of an article recently written by Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail:

Full of fake Tories, with the political grasp of a Teletubby

Last updated at 6:36 PM on 04th October 2008

David Cameron’s media bodyguard closed ranks around him last week, trying to keep the truth about him from coming out.

Most of the exclusive club of political journalists decided some months ago that they will now support the Tories and give Mr Cameron the uncritical adulation they all gave to Princess Tony 11 years ago.

This is Mr Cameron’s reward for wiping out the last remaining traces of proper conservatism in his party.

When he says he ‘gets the modern world’, Mr Cameron is signalling to these people that he is one of them – relaxed about drugs, sexually liberal, opposed to ideas like discipline and punishment.

This means that any speech he makes, however indifferent and dishonest, is praised.

Well, I was at the Tory conference in Birmingham, and I endured Mr Cameron’s allegedly superb speech – and what went before it – and I thought I might let you know what was really going on.

I know a lot of you won’t like it. You harbour the illusion that a Cameron government will be significantly different from a Brown or Blair government.

But you will like it even less when you find out that Mr Cameron, who plans to be elected as New Labour, will govern as New Labour did, too. Then where will you turn for help?

The warm-up act before Mr Cameron’s oration took the form of personal statements by a series of Tory candidates.

First up was the comical figure of Louise Bagshawe, an author of trashy novels who sported an AIDS awareness ribbon for her appearance.

No surprise there. Miss Bagshawe has the political grasp of a Teletubby and was – like so many other Cameron fans – a supporter of the Labour Party in 1996.

A couple of others, to give you the flavour of the thing, wished us ‘Happy Eid’.

This was followed by two peculiar videos. One showed Shadow Cabinet members toiling on some worthily soppy community project.

The other seemed to claim that the Tories – who devastated defence expenditure the last time they controlled it – were in some way on the side of the Armed Forces.

Then we had the man himself. His speech was in general a buttock-numbing affair, and nearly went badly wrong when he talked about how he ‘slept with an entrepreneur every night’.

Tories don’t like these Cherie Blair-type references to things they regard as private. You could feel the discomfort in the hall, and Mr Cameron (realising he was not in fashionable London) had to scrabble hard to recover.

He also made a number of references to God – one claiming that the Almighty preferred Margaret Thatcher to Jim Callaghan – which would have jarred with any seriously religious listener.

One does have to wonder if he actually understands the church services he has so assiduously attended to help his daughter into an exclusive church primary school.

Then there were the various claims that he wouldn’t put up with bad things in our society.

He wouldn’t put up with examiners who gave marks for the f-word. How will he change this? Does he think he will have the power to fire the legions of examiners who think like this?

Where will this power come from? He has no real plans for school reform, only the usual gimmicks.

He raged against the death of a woman, allegedly from MRSA.

What is his magic cure for MRSA? He has no right to make such claims. He is raising hopes only to dash them.

He made his usual declaration of support for marriage, but combined it (as usual) with a refusal to confront the fact that the State aggressively subsidises single parenthood, and aggressively undermines marriage in immoral sex-education programmes, and that as long as it does so, marriage will die.

Oh, and he also pretended to be ‘tough’ on the European Union. But the reality is very different. Two Tory Euro-MPs who are genuinely critical of the EU last week withdrew mysteriously from a fringe meeting where they would have been speaking alongside people calling (rightly) for withdrawal from the EU.

In the Tory Party you can posture about Brussels, but in the end you must support it, as Mr Cameron enthusiastically does.

You have been warned. Yes, the Tory Party is a Trojan Horse, but the soldiers concealed within it are warriors of liberalism and political correctness.

THE LOONY LEFT

Apparently, the University of Manchester has reclassified its lavatories in order to avoid supposed discrimination against the transgendered [yes, this is true].

Apparently, the Ladies has now been reclassified as 'Toilets', whereas the Gents is now classified as 'Toilets with Urinals'.

Jennie Killip said:

'Toilets are very much, you know, for boys and girls, and we've taken away that overtly-gendered aspect. A trans-student who does not identify as a man would have to face abuse and violence if they used the other toilet.

If you were born female, still present quite feminine, but define as a man you should be able to go to the men's toilet. You don't necessarily have to have had gender reassignment surgery, but you could just define yourself as a man, feel very masculine in yourself, feel that in fact being a woman is not who you are.'

If urinals were suitable for the female physique, one wonders why they are not installed and used in the Ladies?

One wonders if the academics at the University of Manchester are sufficiently intellectual to realise what a laughing stock they are?