by Robin’s ‘Hood Many of us have had concerns about the executive mayoral model, especially in unitary councils run as one party states with no effective opposition. Recent events in Newham, East London, illustrate what can go wrong. Three councillors (5% of the total) have currently been placed in administrative suspension by the national Labour Party, […]
Posts Tagged ‘Corruption’
When it comes to FIFA the FA’s not got a leg to stand on
Jun 1st, 2015 by Mark Perryman.Mark Perryman of Philosophy Football is unconvinced by English football’s occupation of any moral high ground vs FiFA Corruption I’m incredibly disappointed with the timing of what the BBC seem to be proposing with Panorama. To do it the week before the vote – I don’t think think it’s patriotic.” So said Andy Anson, Director of […]
Governance deficit – the burning issue entirely absent from the Queen’s Speech
May 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Three related things became apparent on the day of the Queen’s Speech which show what is seriously wrong in the running of this country, but which got not a peep in the government’s legislative programme. They all relate to the key issue of governance in each area where the deficit of accountability is greatest – […]
Banks have taken over the State and got away with it
May 25th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Six global banks, two them British, have just been fined £5.6bn in what the FBI has called ‘massive scale’ criminality, yet no individual executive has been prosecuted and no bank has been deprived of its licence to practise which would have happened in any other sector given such monumental wrongdoing. Indeed State regulators have gone […]
Can private banks ever be trusted, after fines of £61n?
May 3rd, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The size of the penalties imposed on the UK’s Big 4 banks for illegal misconduct since the crash in 2008-9 is stunning. It amounts to £42bn already levied up to 2014, plus a further £19bn for conduct and litigation charges this year and next. That £61bn total is a staggering figure, equal by one measure […]
Hound of Hounslow shows non-regulation of banks remains extremely dangerous
Apr 29th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.No-one had heard of Navinder Singh Sarao until on 6 May 2010 he ‘spoofed’ the international stock markets while sitting in his room in his parents’ semi in Hounslow and made $879,000 on that day alone and, it is alleged, $40 millions fraudulently over 5 years. He is now awaiting extradition to the US to […]
It’s time for politicians to stop swooning before billionaires
Apr 8th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.If you ask people who runs Britain today, they will almost certainly focus (correctly) on the banks, media and corporate bosses, plus the police, lawyers and accountants who are their agents in protecting their supremacy. Politics and finance have become one, with business leaders trooping into No.10 as regularly as heads of state. There’s nothing […]
How to put right the corruption, secrecy and non-accountability rampant in Britain
Mar 26th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.The Independent Police Complaints Commission has cleared armed police officers of any wrongdoing over the killing of Mark Duggan over 3 years ago, following an inquest verdict of lawful killing a year ago. However the police officer who fired the fatal shots refused to be interviewed by the IPCC; why could he not be compelled […]
Cameron lets energy privateers write the rules that are supposed to regulate them
Mar 7th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Cameron prophetically described lobbying in 2010 as “the next big scandal waiting to happen”, but by 2015 he has himself made it happen. It was already revealed some months ago that senior representatives from the Big 6 energy companies had been seconded to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to ‘advise’ ministers on […]
Whistleblowers do more to hold governments to account than parliaments
Feb 26th, 2015 by Michael Meacher.Whistle-blowers are worth their weight in gold, though governments certainly don’t think so. Some of the most important things we’ve learnt about the nature of the societies we live in have come exclusively from whistle-blowers, without whose help the democratic holding of governments to account in critical areas of policy would have been impossible. The […]