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WIKILEAKS AND 9/11

Some say Obamaland connived at these leaks. 9/11 (the whole 9 yards) is a lie. A lie that Obama has told us - more than once - not to question. If NOTHING emerges from the Wikileaks disclosures, relating to the '9/11 Show', WE WILL KNOW THE FILES HAVE BEEN 'CLEANED' PRIOR TO RELEASE.

Be alert - be very alert.

SURELY THE STUDENTS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY DEMANDING INTEGRITY?

Not a word I have ever heard put to a politician by any expensive interrogator. Time for change, in the interest of fairness, going forward?

Wasn't life simple when everybody on a good salary paid 60% income tax and university education was provided free !

This is a dilemma about the numbers of university students and the country's ability to pay for them.

Started by Tony Blair's promise that 50% of school leavers would go to university without a plan to pay for them. Totally unaffordable.

In my day very few went on to university. Most of us left at 16 with good enough 'O' levels to go into professional jobs with ongoing study on a part-time basis thereafter.

Only about 5% of students went on to university and they were in general the brightest and the best. Most of us didn't really see going to university as a first choice including myself.

Polytechnics were seen as the way forward for those wanting HND courses going on to be engineers etc. Now they have been renamed universities with courses that could once have been taken at night school.

Todays children have to accept that if they all want to go to university the taxpayers cannot pay for them and the only alternative is to go back to a situation where only a small percentage will receive state funding.

The whole education system has been turned upside down and peoples' expectations wrongly built up by politicians have been dashed

Sadly they are turning their frustrations on the wrong parties so perhaps a bit of 'tell it as it is' instead of 'beating around the bush' may be a better way of getting through to them.

We have had thirteen years of unaffordable giveaways and those having to
claw it back need a more people friendly language to explain why.

After all many have not yet gone and some never will go to university so are unaware of the terminology of our chattering classes.

EQUIVALENCE (#4)

I scraped into Grammar via Secondary, left with nothing special and did day-release to scrape ONC Chemistry. My brother sailed into Grammar and won prizes; he went on to university and graduated in Electronics.

We ended up, many years later, 50:50 partners in business. He had none of my artisan skills and I had none of his intensely cerebral ones.

Qualifications are not the same as ability.

5 Barriesingleton

'Qualifications are not the same as ability'

Apologies for not putting 'brightest and best' in quotation marks.

You are of course quite right.

RESPECT (#6)

Thanks vsl. I think you touched a nerve. (:o)

PREZZA IS OFF TO CANCUN - WESTMINSTER-MAN WRIT LARGE - VERY LARGE (#7)

Hi Bro. Giant Despair was tramping his Carbon footprint all over The Daily Politics today. I emailed re Piers Corbyn, but meeja just want to live in the lie.

What a pathetic shambles we are now caught up in.

#9 barrie

#9 barrie

Perhaps this link sums up the likes of Prescott's covert ideology, couple of good informative videos summarising the true scientific British position featuring Lord Monkton, the man Newsnight dare not invite onto their programme ?

This has very few views despite its date and may have some important home truths in it ?

This is quite interesting hiding behind the weather !

Surely Newsnight will be covering Cameron's utter pasting of Miliband at PMQs today? Oh no, maybe not.

In an act of solidarity with our fellow students, my house mate and myself staged a sit in in our living room this afternoon. We watched a bit of TV, had some tea and coffee. All in all I think we really made an impact on the debate on tuition fees.

Student Fees:

Has anyone done a cost : benefit analysis of Cable's proposals?

1. The cost of running the scheme - high
2. The impact of loan repayment vs. paying for education via income on individuals - close match between VC's scheme & simply raising income tax instead - indeed a tax-based system is much more progressive.
3. Impact on graduate ability to buying housing - significant
4.Impact on graduate pension contributions - significant

I'd therefore make the following claim:

Vince Cable's scheme offers no practical benefit or greater fairness compared to funding the cost of higher education through income tax because the payment profile of student debt payments mirrors the distribution across the income scale of what people would be paying through an income tax funded system, whilst the overhead in running this complex loan system are a substantial and unecessary additional cost of zero benefit to society or the individuals.

By directly saddling graduates with large debts this will dramatically reduce their ability to get mortgages and make responsible pension contributions for the future, so the long term effect of student debt will be a huge additional cost to the taxpayer when these students reach retirement age in terms of welfare payments, which will probably be two orders of magnitude higher than the original cost of providing their education.

Therefore the whole idea of making individual pay for their own education is not justified by the impact of this policy on society, on taxpayers and on the individuals either.

If we cannot afford the cost of higher education, we should only provide the number of places on the courses we as a society feel we need - resources must be allocated and this should be on the basis of ability, not price - that means there is not alternative to rationing places on the basis of ability.

VC's scheme is a bad government, it's irresponsible in the long term and represents a political fudge that masquerades as fair and progressive, but actually wastes large amounts of money in running the scheme whilst doing nothing to cut our coat according to our cloth.

No wonder he is in the ludicrous position of considering abstaining on his own policy because he is trying to cobble together a compromise between two mutually opposed positions - society's need to have and invest in a well educated and competitive workforce with the libertarian obssession with marketisation. This circle cannot be sqaured - either we go back to the best education your own money can buy, or we view it as a strategic community service that should be provided using the same socialised provision as the health service - the choice is ours.

Brenton was of course British ambassador in Russia when the British Council was caught not paying taxes ....
next time for a bit of objectivity why doesn't newsnight interview the stone they British spies were talking to?

Surely the cluster bomb story involving Miliband was much more significant as a Wikileak?

Reminder of how the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ reported the British rock story when Brenton was 'our man in Moscow' .......

How British Council attempted to evade Russian tax law - and was caught when Brenton was 'our man in Moscow' ....

What Prince Andrew said about The British Council ........ salty naval epithet ......... "EVASIVE" - and not just in
the sense of evading Russian taxes I surmise?

"Delusions in the Middle East: The Little Drummer Girl' - who sponsored 'non-existent' projects while working for The British Council - before going to work as an analyst for US General Odierno. "The West at its very worst".

The Americans may well be right about Russia and organised crime .... but neither they nor the Brits are saints.

The Russian mob may be ruthless ... but I suspect they don't use cluster bombs - or hide them on ships off Diego Garcia (a British Crown territory) and turn a blind eye as it is alleged by Newsnight was done by UK??

Have just noticed that the name Glenys Kinnock appears as one of the responsible Ministers in this story - and it was her son
who was kicked out of Russia as British Council Director in St Petersburg when her hubby Neil was BC Chair!

The Kinnock/British Council connection and those tiresome Russian and Danish taxes .....

GROUNDHOG DAY ECONOMICS? (#16)

When Phil Conners went for music lessons, his $1000 up-front brought immediate ejection of the incumbent student.

I am led to believe that foreign students pay more? Knowing just how devious our politicians are, might the introduction of fees, however packaged, be a way to inhibit the 50% indigenous attendance, to leave spare capacity for filling with rich children of foreigners?

How The Telegraph reported the story about Speaker Martin's intervention to allow MPs to keep secret all the freebie overseas trips paid for by The British Council (a registered charity?)! The Russian mob are amateurs!

Your starter for 10: 'Which leading politician entered into a business relationship with The British Council through an obscure £100 company Sheffield Data Services which provided his firm Hotcourses with funds
which Hotcourses subsequently uses to pay for properly declared office support to him in the House of Commons while he was in Opposition?'

Was it:

(a) Vladimir Putin
(b) Hillary Clinton
(c) The Right Honourable AN Other
(d) I. Thinkwe Shouldbe Told?

Cull it or reform it - Patrick Watson's commentary on the anti-competitive activities of The British Council mob

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Emily Maitlis was hardly in a position to criticise Ed Miliband’s performance at PMQ – her interviews with Peter Hain, and later with a panel discussing student fees, contributed little to the viewer’s enlightenment. We really don’t care if Ed was put down in the playground by Dave, or whether students are having ‘rites of passage’, bless them. In the panel discussion, thank God for Rachel from Cambridge, the most coherent and intelligent contributor. A pity she got drowned out so often by the less well-informed, and was allowed to be so by Maitlis.

But can we stop talking about fees and sit-ins for a while, important though they obviously are for media presenters?

I am waiting for the media to stop using this issue as an excuse to concentrate on photogenic teens and twenties doing camera-friendly things in the street, and to start addressing the real attack on higher education proposed by the government: the withdrawal of the teaching budget for all subjects apart from STEM.
What is the purpose of this?
How is it supposed to work?
If there is no allocated teaching budget and fees are not paid up front, does this mean the potential closure of arts, humanities and social science courses?

If so, how is this system supposed to operate in terms of new student choice; the management of university admissions; the UCAS system; the teaching and guidance of A Level students, and so on?

How will it reinforce the proposed ‘baccalaureate’ of humanities subjects in schools, proposed by Michael Gove – most of which will not be funded at university level?

Am I missing something in all this? Could somebody on Newsnight put some of these questions to Vince Cable, or perhaps to young Rachel – who seems better qualified to answer questions on these issues than anybody else interviewed by the programme so far?

It is perhaps also quite revealing that in its survey of 'soft power' - carried out in conjunction with a think tank headed by former Labour Minister Andrew Adonis - 'Monocle' magazine rates France's network of Alliances Francaises as 'second to noe' but doesn't actually mention The British Council. Instead they profile a SWEDISH
company which Monocle describe as the world-leading PRIVATE SECTOR provider of English language tuition!

Why is the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ still refusing to state with absolute clarity that the rise in tuition fees will not save the taxpayer money? Government propaganda may peddle this myth, but I expected more of the Newsnight: why didn't you put this point to David Aaronowitch and direct him to the latest report of the government's own financial watchdog, the Office for Budget Responsibility? This report shows that the massive hike in tuition fees will cost the taxpayer (who pays for the loans) over £10 billion by 2015, and will actually add to the national debt. The next time you hear 'a fair deal for the taxpayer' trotted out by a government apologist, please don't let them get away with such blatant disinformation. This assault on higher education is driven by the ideology of privatization, not fiscal necessity. There is not a shred of evidence that higher fees will raise standards: the idea that students should use their 'consumer' clout to dictate how courses are designed and assessed is simply a recipe for slicker marketing or dumbing down. This is a reckless and deceitful policy which risks a massive disruption to our universities. It is common sense that a thriving and secure higher education system is vital to our recovery, and the UK stands alone of all advanced economies in disinvesting in higher education in this way. Everyone stands to lose from this policy: the taxpayer, the student, the universities and (hopefully) Liberal MPs.

"The New Soft Sell' - the Monocle/Institute of Government multi-country survey of soft power which puts the UK and France joint first equal and which praises Aliances Francaises but makes no mention of The British Council
(except in a separate column about football diplomacy and close relationship with the English Football League)

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As for the Wikileak of the US cable from Madrid about Russia and organised crime: ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Russian expert Bridget Kendall on News 24 has just pointed out that this proves nothing .. its interest according to her is that the leak
'allows us to eavesdrop on the thinking of a top Spanish anti-corruption investigator' as reported by American State Department officials in Madrid? Curious isn't it how Britain and America take the opinions of the Spanish investigators seriously when they are voicing suspicions in the case of a Russian contesting extradition to UK
but took a completely different stance historically when Spanish investigators sought the extradition of Chile's
General Pinochet from London to answer questions about alleged crimes against Spanish citizens in Chile after
he overthrew Salvador Allende - a democratically elected left=wing leader - with active support from the CIA?!

One American legal opinion on Pinochet, extradition, the UK and Spain:



Was he extradited? Or was he visited by Margaret Thatcher? Ask Wilkileaks!

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More on the Russian mafia story in this morning's Guardian - reporting on the reaction (an old journalist trick when hard evidence is scarce?!!) - and interestingly making an explicit link to cancellation of Putin's FIFA trip?!

Meanwhile ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ 24 reports on the voting stakes in the impending FIFA decision .... and that England needs the Americans to vote for London ..... rather than for Moscow or the mafia ... or Spain?! I really hope Belgium wins!

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So English students are discriminated against in favour of EU students?!

Wake up in Scotland to ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ radio outlets leading the 9 o'clock news bulletins with the comments made by the former British Ambassador about Russia on last night's Newsnight ..... But has this story moved on? Not from
what the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's specialist Russian correspondent Bridget Kendall was telling News 24 viewers overnight? But I
also see that this guy Brenton was making exactly the same points in 2009 after relations with Russia got so bad on his watch that he was replaced by Anne Pringle and UK and US pressed the 're-set button'. Brenton may have had a hard time in Moscow - but his repeated references to Russian 'attacks on The British Council' simply don't
stand up to serious scrutiny. British Council closed its own regional offices; and was in breach of Russia law. In the case of Stephen Kinnock, he was stopped by the police and refused to take alcohol tests for goodness sake.

Brenton's line in 2009 - long before Wikileaks released the speculations of US officials in Spain and France on Russia

NB Channel 4 News led last night on the war-crimes charges against the leader of Sri Lanka who is visiting Britain and was scheduled to meet Liam Fox. Surely that is news - especially after Oxford Union withdrew
its invitation? But then maybe Sri Lanka is not a key player in today's Fifa decisions about the World Cup?!
There were also other Wikileaks about US assessments of Sri Lanka; and the British clusterbomb cover-up.

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WIKILEAKS

Nothing on 9/11 yet? 'The greatest crime ever, on American soil' - the controversy building daily - and no one sent a message to anyone??

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red mafia and 'president putin'

can't tell the difference between organised crime and the state? welcome to the western world.

there was a report a while back that made it clear putin was a weak leader as he left his people at the mercy of local and national bandits?



FO

So the FO spends it time trying to subvert uk law to protect the interests of foreign states? given its a neocon castle why is no one surprised?

Sit ins. 'here is the big society'

indeed. hayekist anarchy leads to riots. Rachel demonstrated by her words she had the correct analysis of the ideology at work. that guy was merely blustering his personal bias.

weather

met has this weather till after new year? the frozen queen of hayekism turns the land to ice?

LOOK OVER THERE!!

We are told that Wikileaks cables suggest that Western diplomats reckon it's hard to tell the difference between organised crime in Russia and the workings of governance.
But if one were to watch Black's video and read his testimony before the US hearings on the banking crisis, or watch Hudson's video of his talk at the AMI in October (or believe Max Keiser etc) one might easily think that the rot began in NY and Washington.
Is the Western media (Guardian, Newsnight etc) trying to outdo Russia Today's and PressTV's coverage of American corruption? Is Wikileaks just supposed to be a distraction from our own economic 'looting'?
Mind you, The Guardian's Wikileaks deluge also reports that for helping put Russia back on its feet, still, if it isn't truly free-market like the USA and UK, it must be corrupt?