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.’

Scroungers? According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, 57% of households below the poverty line had someone in work. Half of the UK’s child poverty is in wage earning families. Capitalism causes poverty.

Haiti’s poor forced to eat mud. As food prices soar, the poor can’t afford a bowl of rice any more. So they make up biscuits from clay, mixed with water, salt and margarine. They bake them in the sun and eat them. At least you don’t feel as hungry.

Ama Sumani was deported to Ghana in a wheelchair by immigration authorities. Cancer sufferer Ama was shipped out of the University Hospital of Wales to what friends described as a death sentence. That’s what you get for overstaying your visa. Doesn’t it make you proud to be British!

‘Agency nurses on £120 per hour’ screams the London Metro. Of course the workers don’t get all that money. But isn’t that a monumental cost to us for incompetence by NHS management?

On Thursday, 6th
March, supporters of Hands Off Venezuela at the University of East Anglia had an emergency resolution to the National Union of Students passed calling for
affiliation to the HOV campaign. This motion will be sent to
NUS conference on April 1st-3rd, opening the prospect of
the whole of the NUS (which comprises something like 4
million students) affiliating to HOV. This will give the campaign a massive
boost in the UK and in Venezuela.