March 2008

Last Thursday it was Carlyle Capital’s turn to
go belly-up, a corporation that has George Bush and John Major on its board and
has done very well out of the Iraq war. It is a private equity company – firms
that borrow other people’s money in order to take over other firms and loot
their assets. Under capitalism firms do eat each other. Now it can be argued
that, without jackals, the veld would be full of wildebeests that had died.
Jackals keep the place tidy. But you wouldn’t really praise jackals as wealth
creators.

Five years ago the USA, Britain and various wretched bribed
‘allies’ invaded Saddam’s Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a monster – but imperialism
knew that when it backed him in his aggressive war against Iran and supplied
the chemicals for him to gas Iraqi Kurds. The invasion was justified by the lie
that Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction.’ He didn’t.

Last month 100,000 American private sector workers lost
their jobs. This is the third monthly rise in the unemployment figures in a
row. Capitalism is out of control. It’s
not delivering the goods. And it’s not just in the USA. Across the world alarm has greeted every bit of bad news from the States. Even if capitalism doesn’t fall
over and crush you this time, it will always be a threat to the welfare and
happiness of workers all over the world.

Marbles, the bank that lends to ‘sub-prime’ borrowers, has decided that if you can’t be good, then you’d better be careful. They’re walloping their customers with interest charges on their cards of up to 33.9%. So the financial crisis may be bad news for millions, but it’s all grist to the mill at Marbles.

Meet the Henwis. These are high-net-worth-individuals. You have to have $1 million to count, plus your home obviously. There were 11.4% more of them last year and they’re ‘worth’ $37 trillion all told. We now have 485,000 of these in the UK. Aren’t we lucky? They’ve raised the bar for our Rich List. You have to have at least £70m to get in. That should keep hoi polloi out!

According to the TUC, 5 million workers in this country are putting in £5,000 each in unpaid overtime. If they started working at the beginning of the year, they wouldn’t earn a penny till February 22nd. Nobody does this unless they’re under the cosh at work.

Also from the TUC (They’re a useful research body. Pity they don’t do something about all the facts they uncover) – we lose £13 billion through tax avoidance by the rich and another £12 billion through corporate tax dodging. As workers, can somebody tell us how to avoid PAYE?

Daily Mail gets it right! Tony Blair is on a part-time contract as ‘adviser’ with JP Morgan Chase, a bank that did very well out of the illegal invasion of Iraq. The Mail quotes Reg Keys, whose son died in Iraq as a British soldier, who said that the award was ‘almost akin to taking blood money.’