Goldman Sachs’s Griffiths Says Inequality Helps All (Update1) - Bloomberg.com: "Oct. 21 (Bloomberg) -- A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy.“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths," No we do not. Brian is touting the discredited "trickle down" theory, which is demonstrably u... Read Full Story

Brilliant article by Will Hutton in the Observer on Sunday, but I cannot find it today. You'll have to check your recycling basket. Page 8 Take home points: He is talking of a Tobin tax on financial transactions, such as dealing in derivatives . The tax will not just go to poorer countries, but also to insure and cushion against the next Credit Crunch. A tax of 0.01% on Sterling deals would raise £2bn a year. This is a big moment, because the Treasury has been against Tobin Taxes up to n... Read Full Story

Copied from :Rupert Read See the MediaGuardian: 'Sidewiki changes everything'. Now _we_ can start to take back the power from the PR people... ____________________________________________________ Read what Google has to say And when you're done, and have set this up on your computer (it will take you less than a minute - the privacy sacrifice is a relatively small price to pay, in my view), go visit Nestle' and see what we've done to Nestle's website...! See also the sidewiki Ruper Read... Read Full Story

There is a story that a couple of weeks before the Berlin Wall fell, an English hippie was standing in front of the Wall, rattling his can and wondering what to write. The immortal words "Never fear, Baldrick has a cunning plan" came to him, so he put them up, and two weeks later, a sense of awe, of being part of a Great Plan Beyond Comprehension stole over the hippie as he watched events unfold on his flickering snowy black and white TV screen.Maybe it was that graffitum that caused the wall... Read Full Story

Interesting Globescan poll survey here about how people in many different countries view free market capitalism:Twenty years on, this new global poll suggests confidence in free markets has taken heavy blows from the past 12 months of financial and economic crisis. More than 29,000 people in 27 countries were questioned.In only two countries, the United States and Pakistan, did more than one in five people feel that capitalism works well as it stands. Almost a quarter - 23% of those who respo... Read Full Story

Thanks to Gerry Wolff for this extremely valuable resource. There is no question that renewables can meet the UK's present and anticipated future demands for electricity, even allowing for future uses of electricity for such things as space heating (eg using electrically-driven heat pumps) and the electrification of transport by road and rail -- more below. Here is some of the evidence: A network of land-based 2.5-megawatt (MW) turbines restricted to nonforested, ice-free, nonurban areas o... Read Full Story

email from 300-350 organisation: this week the UK government found another £40 billion to bailout of the banks just one week after the EU heads of state were unable to guarantee any new money to meet their obligations and to poor countries and to seal a fair deal in Copenhagen…That sums it up. Governments are pumping money into the wrong end of the financial system Read Full Story

Image : hat tip to BanksySHOCK NEWS, HOLD THE FRONT PAGE:Gordon is saying the right thing for once.He is calling for a Tobin Tax on financial dealings, the proceeds to go to help poorer countries and to fund future bank bailouts. Telegraph: Predictable opposition coming from the expected quarters. Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary, said: "That's not something that we're prepared to support." Canada's finance minister, Jim Flaherty, said: "It is not something we would be inter... Read Full Story

Under a rare bright white September sunthe grey path climbs through wind combed treesto a machine gun post, second world war.It rakes a view of Sand Point, QuantockMinehead, Steepholm, Chepstow, Wales.Coleridge loved this broad light placebut that was when the Severn gaveso many salmon that servantssickened of their taste.The estuary now ’s a brown conveyor beltfull of good Gloucester topsoil,bound for the latest seabed siltand - in good time - for rock.North west, inlandtowards the smooth ... Read Full Story

I get choked when I watch these videos of the current pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran. The sheer courage and persistence of the Green Movement, the students of Iran, in the face of the cowardly swaggering police and Basij militia is an example to all who aspire to something better than the moronic, thoughtless exercise of power that holds in Iran, and in a different way, in Britain, where the authoritarians in Tory, NuLabour, the Civil Service and the Police Agencies are slowly nudging ... Read Full Story