GRIMLY FIENDISH

Who? Maggie Thatcher or Meryl Streep.....?

[quote name='Suedehead2' date='Jan 30 2012, 12:05 PM' post='3882 Cameron and Osborne were both trying to claim last week that they had no power to block the bonus as it was a contractual obligation, a claim denied by Labour. However, there are millions of people - both in the private and public sector - who thought they had a contract that guaranteed them a pension based on their final salary. Their employer changed that unilaterally and there was bugger all the employees could do about it. Why couldn't the government take an equally heavy handed approach towards Hester's "contractual obligation"? That is indeed the, ahem, million dollar question.. Apparently, according to Ian Duncan Donut, it would "cause chaos" to interfere in the compensation arrangements of the big City Fat Cats, but he doesnt seem to give a shit about the chaos his "welfare reforms" are about to cause for wider society, including the Working Poor, the disabled, pensioners, etc.. Whether it's Blue Tories or Red Tories, the only thing they seem to be concerned about is how things affect that one Square Mile in the centre of London. No wonder more and more Scots, Welsh (and probably Northerners) want independence from Westminster... -_-

RBS boss Stephen Hester rejects £1m bonus http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16783571 Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester has turned down his controversial bonus, worth nearly £1m. BBC business editor Robert Peston said Mr Hester would renounce the £963,000 shares-only payment after succumbing to "enormous political pressure". Chancellor George Osborne said it was a "sensible and welcome" decision that now let Mr Hester focus on getting back billions of pounds for the taxpayer. Labour leader Ed Miliband said the RBS boss had "done the right thing". Earlier, Labour said it would force a vote on the issue after Prime Minister David Cameron refused to block the bonus from the mostly publicly-owned bank. 'Out of touch' It was Labour's decision to put Stephen Hester's bonus to a Commons vote that gave the RBS chief executive no option but to say he would not be taking £963,000 in shares. As an RBS director put it to me, it would have been a great mistake for the semi-nationalised bank to fight Parliament to preserve rewards for its chief executive seen by many as excessive. MPs were expected to vote against the bonus payment, and in those circumstances, it was untenable for him to pocket it. Or at least that was the conclusion that Mr Hester reached in conversation with the bank's chairman, Sir Philip Hampton. That said, RBS's non-executive directors stand by their decision to award Mr Hester 60% of the maximum bonus he could have earned - because they feel he has strengthened the bank, and they argue that Mr Hester is paid less than his peers. But when it looked as though MPs were going to vote against it, the general consensus amongst the directors was that the "game was up", he added. Last week, the prime minister drew criticism after he said it was up to Mr Hester whether he accepted the bonus. Mr Miliband said: "It is a shame that a feeble, out of touch David Cameron did not realise he should do the right thing and stand up for the interests of the British people. "Labour was right to seek a parliamentary vote on this so that the people's voice could be heard." Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna said Mr Hester was already being adequately rewarded for his performance. "He received £1.2m a year - that's 46 times the average salary of an average employee in this country - to do that job," he said. "Usually you receive a bonus when you've done something above and beyond - exceptional, extraordinary." "But many of the things that have been cited in terms of things that he's done for the bank are things that you would expect him to do." But William Wright, investment bank analyst for Financial News told the BBC: "It sets a very dangerous precedent for RBS. "It raises the level of political risk and political interference in the day-to-day running of RBS to what some people many consider to be intolerable levels. "It raises very serious questions about who actually is running RBS day to day. "Shareholders, in this case the UK government, appoint a board, which in turn appoints an executive team to run the bank, and here we have a situation where the board agrees something, which has been signed off by shareholders and then they have been forced into a U-turn by political opinion." Former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said Mr Hester's decision was "better late than never". "I'm glad that eventually Stephen Hester has seen sense and seen the outrage of most people in this country, and Lib Dems who have been complaining bitterly about this for weeks," he said. Bob Diamond Mr Hester's bonus would not look big compared with that of Barclays boss Bob Diamond, Mr Peston says "I'm very sorry that David Cameron and George Osborne didn't see that, and have been defending the indefensible right up to today." Mr Hester was appointed chief executive at the end of 2008 to replace Sir Fred Goodwin, after the bank had to be bailed out by the government, which now owns 82% of it. RBS chairman Sir Philip Hampton had already announced that he would waive his payout. He had been on course to claim 5.17 million RBS shares in February, but it is thought he told the bank's remuneration committee it would "not be appropriate" to take a £1.4m payout. Robert Peston said RBS's directors now recognise it would have been better to delay Mr Hester's bonus decision until after it was revealed how much Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond received. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RBS shares are worth roughly 40% of what the taxpayer paid for them RBS' balance sheet has shrunk by roughly £600m RBS has shed this year over 4000 jobs So, what on earth made Mr Hester or the board even think they were entitled to a bonus anyway...? The board of directors of a company's main function is to maximise shareholder wealth, I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't happening. I rather think that once the tax-payer is in a position to sell the 83% stake in the bank and make a return on the investment, THEN we can talk bonus.. And, let's bear in mind here, that Mr Hester and the board aren't exactly working for the minimum wage, the "basic salary" for Hester is over a million quid anyway (this being negotiatied by the previous Labour Govt), so not exactly crying into his pint (of Dom Perignon) is he....? Of course, it'll be predictable to get the procession of people who will come out and defend Hester and say "oh, he's a risk taker"... Really..? What "risk" exactly is he taking personally..? Is it his money...? No, it's OTHER PEOPLES' MONEY.. Actually, to be more precise, it's OUR MONEY.... People try to make out that RBS is making a profit... Well, does this mean we can now pull out our stake...? Could it stand on its own two feet..? I somehow doubt it.. And this doesn't take into account the off-balance sheet debt that the tax-payer is on the hook for. Max Keiser has talked about "Zombie Banks" on his RT shows.. Well, that's precisely what RBS, Lloyds, et al, are, Zombie banks, the walking dead, feeding of the flesh of the tax-payer.... To be honest, I think for them to even talk about bonuses in a reality where the ordinary person is forced to suffer as a consequence of their irresponsibility, Ponzi Schemes and casino banking is at best, a tad insensitive and at worst, downright insulting.... I await what Bob Diamond is going to say about his bonus with interest... If you'll pardon the pun...

Tilda Swinton's performance in We Need To Talk About Kevin is astounding... Tilda Swinton is astounding. Full stop... I have so much admiration for her as an actress and the fact that she takes on some incredibly difficult and challenging roles. Drive is very good, and, yes, it should have been in there.. It's incredibly reminiscent of a 70s film called "The Driver" with Ryan O' Neil and Bruce Dern.. I recommend that wholeheartedly if you enjoyed this.. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077474/

I have to disagree slightly, a five minute song is five minutes for a reason. I dont question the artist, it's their creation, and I trust they made it that way for a purpose. But then, one lf my most favourite bands in the world is Opeth, and they regularly write 10 minute opuses... :lol:

Yep, annoying indeed. Heaven forbid a single lasts more than 4 mins, eh....? -_-

Was thinking precisely the same thing myself... The exclusion of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, We Need To Talk About Kevin or Shame is frankly ludicrous.. The Ides of March should have been in with a shout as well.. Moneyball?? Christ, who on earth except a small group of Americans would give enough of a shit about a baseball film? Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close?? Does any load of old flannel vaguely connected to "9/11" get a nomination now? Extremely poor and incredibly boring more like. The Descendants??? Pass the sleeping bag.... It really is a pretty grim list of mediocrity.... -_-

Wow, amazing. Shame the Feds dont operate with the same ruthless efficiency when it comes to bsnking fraud on Wall Street... -_-

BREAKING NEWS - apparently, Iran has done a deal with India for its oil. But the trade will be in gold and not dollars... PMSL... Well, I sure called that one, EU's loss is India's gain, and with gold prices going up too... Waiting for a deal with China to be announced now.... :lol: :lol:

Welfare cuts: now they're slamming the door on the truly desperate http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...P=FBCNETTXT9038 Polly Toynbee No, said the Department for Work and Pensions, you can't visit a jobcentre to talk to social fund claimants. That's the first no I've ever had from the DWP's press officers, always helpful under both Labour and Tory governments. I have frequently sat in on interviews, so long as claimants were willing. But the Iain Duncan Smith-Chris Grayling regime has pulled down the shutters. What's to hide? Much human misery, as the welfare reform bill hastens through parliament with disappointingly minimal Lords amendments, for all their bluster. On Wednesday they debate the social fund – an awkward lump in the social security system, small potatoes, yet a last lifeline for the utterly destitute. Now it's to be abolished: cut by 39%; the remaining £178m will be dispersed to local authorities but not ringfenced. Many councils admit they will spend it on other things. No wonder ministers don't want journalists meeting the people about to be cut adrift. The social fund section in a jobcentre office is set apart, the locked door opened by an official with a swipe card, by previous appointment. It's like an airport VIP lounge, but this zone isolates the VDPs, Very Desperate People. There they sit, glimpsed through the glass, waiting, sometimes for hours, for cheques they can cash at once at the post office. No, you can't go in without an appointment, said the man at the door. Waiting at the job search computer until another official took over, I pretended I had an appointment to collect a cheque and he swiped me in. Why would he be surprised at my well-heeled appearance, when all kinds of people are down on their luck on a January Friday afternoon? They have only one thing in common – whatever their varied occupations, social backgrounds or family circumstances, all found themselves penniless. Explaining to the waiting claimants that I was a journalist reporting on parliament voting away the social fund, almost all were eager to tell their stories, starting an anxious debate in the room as they listened to one another's plight. A mother recovering from a hysterectomy was barely getting by on £67 a week, but her cheque hadn't turned up. Until the operation she was working as a receptionist. But her wayward 19 year-old daughter had moved in with her, with a one and a two year-old child and another on the way. At her wits' end, she said, "There's just something badly wrong with her." A 24 year-old man was sleeping rough in the car park behind the Rolls-Royce showroom in Berkley Square. He wasn't registered sick, not a drug addict and couldn't prove how long he'd lived there, so he didn't qualify for a hostel, he said. He was selling the Big Issue while singing in the street, but had just signed on for Jobseeker's Allowance, needed cash until his first cheque came. At first he seemed fit and normal – but he had a prison record. Besides, would any employer take on someone who can't stop talking, a compulsive talkaholic spilling out his whole life story and every passing thought about the world in an unstoppable flow? Probably not. A student soon starting an osteopathy course had good prospects, but hadn't eaten for days. A car mechanic in his early 40s had worked all his life until recently suffering severe epileptic fits. He'd been waiting for his missing employment support allowance cheque all day, coming in from Heathrow, where he was temporarily sleeping on his mother's floor. "Will I get another job? I know plenty, plenty of mechanics looking for work now, not much hope." Like most others here, a glitch in the payments system had brought him to beg for a crisis loan. All the money dispersed here will be taken back within a few weeks from future benefits. Most get a £70 loan to last them a fortnight: £5 a day is the rule of thumb for survival. A young woman had come for money to get her broken boiler fixed. She was depressive, a serial suicide attempter, and in and out of treatment. "I'm spending £10 a day on electricity, with no boiler," she said in clipped, middle-class tones. Out of £90 a week in sickness benefits she was paying £25 a week in debts to loan sharks. Social fund crisis loans were supposed to save people from using the likes of Wonga, whose interest rates can soar to more than 4,000%. With the social fund gone, there'll be nowhere else. Eventually, seeing some unexpected animation in the usually dead-eyed queue in the lock-in room, two officers hauled me out. Who let me in? I wasn't telling. The claimants had praised the staff here. "That man there," said one woman weak at writing, pointing to the official behind the bulletproof glass, "He helps you say the right things on the form to get a loan." "That one in the sari, she's kind", said another. Nor were these two managers stern with me – we talked of the imminent abolition of the social fund and the quarter of DWP staff cut despite unemployment claims skyrocketing, so they didn't call the police. The pretence is that local authorities will each voluntarily set up their own social funds to dispense small loans. Few will. Yet again, a universal national system gives way to nonexistent "local knowledge" as council tax benefit is also devolved and optional. Why would one council risk attracting claimants from neighbouring boroughs offering nothing? "Localism", like "reform", is code for dismantling a national welfare state. Now the benefits system is losing the one small corner for people who fall through the cracks – and the only rescue from hunger when benefit cheques fail to arrive. The dismal housing benefit debate revealed how tens of thousands will be tipped out of their homes, schools and jobs into the arms of cash-strapped councils who have a duty to house the vulnerable and families with children. Iain Duncan Smith has become increasingly belicose and irritable in his assertions that cuts will not create more poverty but will help the poor into work. Or so he tells the BBC, but he tells the Sunday Times he's warning claimants, "This is not an easy life any more, chum. I think you're a slacker." He has never dared refute the Institute for Fiscal Studies' predictions of 500,000 more children made poor as a direct result of his colossal £18bn benefit cuts. Taunting Labour with polls that show a large majority support his cuts, he forgets those same citizens may yet be horrified when they see effects far crueller than most may think tolerable. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This Government is now so wrong, acting so far against the interests of the citizens of this country and just so morally bankrupt, I think we'd have every right in the world to rise up against them... Here's hoping for more riots, only this time, can they be done for the right reasons please...? And actually target the scum who "run" this country...? Actually, come to think of it, where's Anonymous when you need a Govt taken down a peg or several.....? I think a bit of strategic targeting of DWP or Ian Dunan Donut is in order.... The Social Fund isn't even a hand-out, it's a LOAN... A bit like a Pay Day loan actually.. It's what the truly desperate turn to instead of turning to loan sharks who will break their legs if they dont pay up the "vig".. And if you dont think that there really are people out there who are that desperate, then you live a truly sheltered life... As for this supposition that the Govt has that local authorities would use the money to disperse to the needy... Yeah, right.... With local authorities having millions cut out of their budgets... SUUUUUUUUURE they will... F**king morons.... <_<

Hot on the heels of the Ofcom censorship of Press TV, we now have an EU embargo on Iranian oil. Will this actually do a damn bit of good? Or is it just another example of U$Rael twisting arms? Will it actually end up having a more detrimental effect on struggling EU economies than on Tehran? Iran can always sell its oil to China or India, who are under no obligation to observe an embargo and certainly have the economic and political clout to tell Washington, Brussels and Tel Aviv to "piss off".. If I were a Spaniard or a Greek, I would seriously be asking myself whose interests the EU Parliament is really serving with this nonsense...

So, in other words, they cant really prove jack-shit off just having an IP number.... Funny though, they always try to make out on films and tv shows that IP addresses are like some kind of DNA or fingerprint type of deal.... :thinking:

Does he have to be quite so jolly about it though....? :rolleyes:

The fundamental discrepancy here is, as George Galloway rightly points out, if Press TV is editorially controlled in Iran, why was Press TV Ltd in London fined? And, if editorial control is in London, then why's it been taken off the air...? Ofcom has some serious explaining to do here, because their reasoning is flawed....

okdGX4JjFyY http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/01/20..._n_1218607.html Whether you agree with Press TV or not, to take it off the main Satellite broadcasting is, I feel, a pretty outrageous act, and is being done under the caveat of a supposed "administrative discrepency" with regards to the licence.. OFCOM seems to be objecting to ultimate editorial control being in Tehran.. But, as the report rightly points out, this is the model that Fox News, CNN, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, France 24 and others operate, obviously their ultimate editorial control is not going to be in London, is it..? And the licence was granted in 2007, so why wait this long to bring this up now..? It seems to me that Press TV is being singled out just because they are Iranian, and, well, let's face it, with all the sabre-rattling and military build up going on in the Gulf right now, we might be at war with Iran later on in the year if the war-pigs in Washington, the Pentagon and Israel get their way. So, it seems pretty obvious to me, U$rael doesn't want anyone to hear the other side of the story.. Yet again... I mean, if we are going to be bombing the crap out of Tehran, it simply wont do to hear the point of view of the people we are bombing, will it...? We certainly never heard the Iraq war from the perspective of the Iraqis did we....? And there has been precious little heard in the Western media of Iraqi voices ever since. Another factor is supposedly the unpaid £100,000 fine, but why was this fine levied in the first place..? Because OFCOM didn't like the fact that Press TV interviewed someone whilst they were in prison. Even though this person has gone on record saying that they wanted the West to go to war with Iran.. I'm really sure the likes of Fox News or CNN would show incredible restraint in similar circumstances if it was someone who made public statements saying that Iran should bomb the US... I think a lot of US/Israeli Govt arm-twisting has gone on here to basically muzzle Press TV..

Enjoy your one-way trip to the "land of the free" dude... Although, I bet if the Corporations had their way it would be more like a one-way trip to a certain US base in Cuba....

I want this to be a different topic to the SOPA one. SOPA appears to be finished, in it's current form at any rate, but the arrests in New Zealand and the extradition of Richard O'Dwyer are really a different kettle of fish.. Yes, they are obviously related to the current cyber-war between the US Govt and people who run Torrent sites, but there is another dimension to it, one of legality and sovereignty.. Put it like this... Recently, David Cameron effectively took us out of the EU economic restructuring plans saying that it wasn't in our best interests, and citing issues of sovereignty. How does this then scan with allowing the Americans to basically just get their hands on any of our citizens that seem to take their fancy. Cameron is not bound to continue the incredibly one-sided extradition "arrangement" that the previous "labour" Govt foolishly entered into, under a supposed caveat of "prevention of terrorism", so, now the "arrangement" has obviously gone completely and utterly beyond its original remit. As the likes of Liberty, Amnesty International, The Independent newspaper and other media outlets feared it would. If David Cameron really is "looking out for interests of the British people" (and the British Commonwealth too in the light of the arrests of those in New Zealand who run Megaupload), then he should actually grow a pair and take us out of this ridiculous extradition arrangement which is clearly impinging on our sovereignty and our right to try our own citizens in our own country under our own laws... The fact is, O' Dwyer can be charged with an offence in this country, so he should be charged in this country. The New Zealanders apparently haven't committed any crime at all in New Zealand so should be released immediately... Mind you, it's not only Cameron who seems silent on this, Nigel Farage and UKIP whom normally you cant shut up when it's the EU "interfering", are also saying nothing.... Funny that, eh...?

I was under the impression that PIPA went first.... :huh:

Indeed, the bast*rds will likely try and get it through the backdoor... Probably, as someone else suggested, by making it an Anti-Child Porn thing.... -_-

Well, what all these arrests under the caveat of "copyright law" has proven is that the likes of Liberty were right all along, all these laws and bits of legislation that were supposedly all about "prevention of terrorism" are now being used to kill the internet. The people who the FBI have arrested have been effectively "rendered" to the US. And so-called "democratically elected representatives" sit on their hands and do nothing...

...And the FBI website's gone down... :yahoo: :lol: :lol: :lol:

You'd think, wouldn't you...?

MPAA and The White-wash also attacked.... :lol: :lol: :yahoo: http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-doj-universal-sopa-235/

Statement from Anonymous... you take some of our favorite sites down > megavideo, megaupload we take yours down. fair is fair no? and thats just a taste of what is to come if you continue to censor our interwebz

The same way that the situation outlined in the link Suedehead posted is possible - the US believes itself to be the policeman of the entire world....