The Apprentice – or who wants to work for a bully?

The Apprentice – or who wants to work for a bully?

When I could drag myself away from the Royal Circus on the Thames, I
watched the final of The Apprentice. For those of you unfamiliar with
this theatre of cruelty the main character is a pantomime villain,
Lord Sugar, who gets to set tasks of varying degrees of daftness and
then humiliate the participants.

Sugar is a Labour Peer and acts like a less charming version of Lord
Vader. He urges his apprentices to give in to the dark side. After a
day of teamwork they are all forced to humiliate and denigrate each
other in the boardroom.

And what great ideas did these finalists come up with? One was yet
another bloody call centre – even one of Lord Vader's stormtroopers
thought this was a tawdry idea! Then there was a website to enable
people to buy ingredients for recipes. Lord Vader derided the whole
idea that people plan their meals before they cook them. One assumes
his Lordship has someone else to do that for him. A recruitment agency
proposed by someone who already runs a recruitment agency was the
winning idea.

And that leaves one. A fine wine hedge fund. If you want a symbol for
the degeneracy of capitalism this will do fine. This is not for people
who actually drink wine. No. It is for people who want to invest in
fine wine as a hedge against the economic crisis. You can see how this
is an idea to set the nation alight and improve the lives of millions
of ordinary people. Or perhaps you can't.

The apprentice is undemanding entertainment but if it is an exhibition
of the best in British entrepreneurs, heaven help us all.

"56 up" highlights plight of public services

The BBC "56 up" program follows the lives of individuals in an
unprecedented documentary narrative spanning the time since the
participants were seven. This week it highlighted the plight of public
services. Lifelong library service worker Lynn Johnson said "for the
last thirty years I have been banging my head against a brick wall but
now nobody is listening. They say that the work I do, anybody could do
it."

It is worth emphasising she lost her job as a result of "nice Labour
cuts" not "nasty Tory cuts."

Now, rather than being able to take early retirement her husband has
had to take on full time work to make ends meet. "the goalposts keep
getting higher" for retirement. "People who started work assuming they
could retire at sixty, find the situation has now totally changed."

She regrets the fact there "is no party of the left" although she says
she is not political... and adds "they haven't got a clue what they
are doing. Some people are never ever going to recover from it and
unfortunately they will be quite devastated. We have no more left-wing
Labour Party any more. Tony Blair saw to that. They all veer to the
right. "

You can still see it on Youtube if you type in "56 up documentary" and
it is well worth a look. On the same program a wealthy Tory barrister
boasts that there is no class society in Britain :) Lynn felt her work
promoting literacy and love of literature with children had been
worthwhile. How many rich Tory parasites can say the same?

New Rottweiler for Putin

Dog owners were reportedly outraged when Spin Doctor Alistair
Campbell, was described as Blair's rottweiler.

Campbell has been in the news recently in relation to the Leveson
Inquiry where he revealed for the first time that Blair's entourage
thought there was a problem with the relationship between the Murdoch
media and politicians - although there is no evidence they ever did
anything about this "problem".

He has now turned his talents elsewhere and will be a spin-doctor for
a firm whose clients include McDonalds, (who notoriously hired
million-dollar lawyers to attack two individuals for handing out
leaflets) Vodafone (whose tax affairs are regarded as a public
scandal) and Google (who have scant regard for the privacy of anyone
who uses their search engine). He will also be working for Tesco's
because every little helps.

Another client is Vladimir Putin. It is hard to tell whether this is a
step up or down after working for Blair. We can at least be sure he
wont be mocking Mr Putin for going to a "bog standard comprehensive".

If anyone wanted yet more evidence of the moral and political
bankruptcy of New Labour - well you couldn't make it up, could you?

Merchants of Death grow fat - cuts for everyone else

Tough times... for some of us. For soldiers who have lost limbs the
government is going to cut their disability payments. For the weapon
manufacturers, the merchants of death, the government obsession with
playing soldiers has earned them a pretty penny.

The government was determined to buy the F38C joint strike fighter
plane but has now opted to buy the F38B. The cost of this blunder has
been variously estimated as 40 million pounds down the toilet or 100
million pounds down the toilet. That money could have provided some of
the "help for heroes" we all hear about.

It is good to know that this is what the government calls "fiscal
responsibility." No squandering money on health, welfare and pensions.
The cost of the F38C has actually doubled to two billion pounds.

Batting on a sticky wicket, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond claimed
that the decision to buy the F38C "was right at the time" but the
decision to buy the F38B was right now. Well for the time being
anyway.

It sounded on the BBC news as if he were saying they needed to fit
catflaps on the aircraft carriers but in fact they needed to fit
"catapults" and "traps". These public school boys know how to have fun
don't they? And it is with billions of pounds of our money they they
are having fun.

In addition to which the RAF air-to-air refuelling planes are alleged
to be costing the taxpayer a good 100 million pounds over the odds.

The question nobody asked, the "elephant in the room" was why on earth
the country can afford this profligate expenditure when everything
else needs to be cut. New Labour were silent on this because – you
guessed it – they suggested the F38B in the first place.

A real political opposition will not come from the hopelessly
out-of-touch political elite.

Lord Hutton's snout in the trough

Lord Hutton is well-known to public sector workers. He originated the
plan that we should work longer, pay more and get less in pensions.

Remember we are all in this together so of course the Labour Peer
(Yes, a Labour peer!) has had to take on the role of chairman of the
board of a privatised pension scheme delightfully named "My Civil
Service Pension" MySCP.

It has been portrayed in the media as an employee-owned business "like
John Lewis". John Lewis should definitely sue for defamation of
character. The employees will not own 75 percent of the business and
certainly won't be allowed to sack the chairman.

Sacking Hutton is mild compared to the views of most civil servants I
have spoken to. They would prefer more draconian measures.

Apparently Hutton is "a firm believer in the power of engaging
employees to drive innovation." and lining his own pocket.

Cutting pensions and privatising the retirement fund management is
something no employee asked for.

In the days of slavery, there were slaves who were liberated by people
who then went on to sell them back into slavery "down the river."
Clearly Lord Hutton, like John Lewis, is never knowlingly undersold
"down the river." To quote another Labour Peer, Lord Thomas who sold
out the 1926 General Strike, "I sold you all right, but I got a good
price for you!"

Abu Qatada - tragedy and farce

Abu Qatada has been tried and found guilty by The Sun and that is good enough for Theresa May. If, as they claim, Abu Qatada had been "continually" committing criminal acts in the UK, the government are being a little remiss in not bringing him to trial.

They seek instead to have him deported to Jordan where the extraction of confessions by torture is standard police practice. Theresa May gets up in the House of Commons and says with a straight(ish) face that she is reassured that he will receive a fair trial in Jordan. Well there is a first time for everything.

Amnesty International has no record of a fair trial in Jordan. Last year, for example, thirty peaceful protestors were locked up under a charge of "insulting the king." and many of them were beaten by the brave police in whom May places such touching faith.

It is not so much Abu Qatada's democratic rights which are being violated. It is yours and mine. Theresa May is avid to utilise the torturers of Jordan. This is "rendition" conducted in the full light of day and with the media baying for blood. The Liberals remain silent. The nominal opposition are so scared of being branded as "soft on terrorism" that they confine themselves to ridiculing Theresa May's incompetence rather than her authoritarianism.

And the proposals of the government to read your emails and texts becomes clear now. "Terrorists and criminals" are going to be targeted. And of course anybody who criticises Theresa May's permissive attitude towards torture is clearly a "terrorist" too and therefore fair game.

Fwd: Horsham lobby of Francis Maude 21 April 2012

Members of public service unions expressed their anger to Horsham MP
Francis Maude. In the same month that millionaires in the government
gave a massive bonus to top-rate taxpayers the pay of public servants
was effectively cut by increases in pension contributions.

Teachers and PCS members are seen here.

Phil Clarke of the NUT was among the speakers (pictured with
microphone) "Come into the garden, Francis Maude and we'll tell you
what we think of public service cuts!"

The Conservative party declined to comment having pulled up the
drawbridge at their Horsham HQ.

Derek McMillan