KHOODEELAAR! updating evidence on fanatic, cult-like peddling for Big Business CRASSRAIL done by the EVENING STANDARD via Andrew Gilligan [120]

1120 GMT 1220 Hrs London Thursday 18 September 2008/18 Ramadan 1429 AH:

KHOODEELAAR! TOLD YOU SO!

That CRASSrail was being plugged as a religious cult or as a cult by Big Business... Even the over-hyped investigative 'journalist' Andrew Gilligan has been engaged today by the DailY Mail group to peddle CRASSrail.... They will never tell the truth. They will never know the value of telling the truth.....[To be continued]


PLUG for CRASSrail by ANDREW Gilligan, posted on the CRASSrail hole scam Big Business agenda plugging London EVENING nostandards STANDARD web site a couple of minuets after midday London time  Thursday 18 September 2008


From the web site of the CRASSRAIL hole plot peddling London EVENING nostandards STANDARD:


HEADLINES:
Lloyds agrees £12.2bn deal for HBOS..... Bank to pump billions into markets..... FTSE holds on after Asia turbulence..... Mortgage lending at three-year low..... Blaze body identified as Kirstie..... MRSA infection rate 'down by third'..... Smith: Ministers focused on job..... Four more held over Shaquille death..... Inmates total to top 95,000 by 2015..... Hutton: New N-plants indispensable.....

The word on the streets: the Mayor must not only adjust his policies to the new times but also people's expectations
Tighten your seatbelts: the big spending days are over
Andrew Gilligan
18.09.08

A week ago in this space, I mocked those who forecast that we would all be consumed by a black hole shortly after breakfast one day last week. How pitifully wrong they were. It is, of course, this week that may mark the end of the world, or at least the world as we know it.

When something as strong as Halifax Bank of Scotland, with deposits of £250 billion, can be swept away as an independent institution in a morning by the panic gripping the markets, the pain will spread far wider than Hackett account-holders with large houses in Wandsworth.

When the US government's effective nationalisation of the world's biggest insurance company, AIG, fails to stem the tide, simply leaving everyone looking around for the next victim, the ground is starting to shift beneath our feet. And it's only Thursday.

The immediate effects on the economy are obvious enough. The credit crunch, which was easing, has returned, worse than ever. Property prices will fall further. Thousands more people are going to lose their jobs. Millions will be spending less.

But what I want to consider is something that hasn't been talked about much: the effect on London government. What hasn't yet been widely understood — not least by the politicians themselves — is that in this new world, many of the cornerstone assumptions that have governed London politics for years are going to be destroyed. Huge numbers of things London's rulers have been talking about as recently as the May election are either at serious risk, or are effectively already dead.

At that election, one live issue was the best way to get developers to build affordable housing. Ken famously promised all new developments would be 50 per cent affordable. Boris rejected quotas but still promised to deliver 50,000 new affordable homes in his first term.

That argument, and both those policies, are now as quaint and irrelevant as the debate about Irish home rule in 1912. Some new homes, started during the boom, are still in the pipeline — but nobody will be building any more, affordable or otherwise, for quite a while. Several developers are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Tall buildings is another one of those live issues which might be about to die. There is already a glut of office space. Whatever your views for or against, whatever the mayor decides, it seems highly unlikely that many tall towers will ever get off the ground.

Even the election's top issue, violent crime, may become less of a concern. Recessions usually reduce crimes against people and increase crimes against property. Because property crime is common and violent crime is comparatively rare, however, that could also halt or reverse the recent reductions in crime.

Above all, the finances will get much tougher. Nearly all the GLA's income comes not from its own tax-raising powers but from Whitehall. For eight years, City Hall has enjoyed a kind of fantasy existence, awash with other people's money. A beneficient national government has shovelled wildly disproportionate amounts of cash into London.

It's little wonder, for instance, that the buses are better here than anywhere else. London has about 15 per cent of England's population but gets about two-thirds of England's bus subsidy. Its buses get about twice as much from central government as the other six-sevenths of the country put together.

This may help explain why TfL has become such an extravagant organisation (I noticed yet another absurd example in Islington yesterday — it has started putting expensive, burnished bronze-like plates on manhole covers, proclaiming its “London Streets” corporate identity to anyone who doesn't mind getting run over). Billions have also been given us for that other gross government-imposed waste, the Tube PPP. As a recession squeezes government spending, Whitehall's favouritism towards London simply cannot last, even under a Tory chancellor. Big, necessary projects are at risk.

Unfortunately, many London politicians still clearly assume that the next eight years are going to be like the last: that spending is an end in itself, and the only problem is what new item on the bulging wish-list to get next.

Even this week, amid the meltdown, the London Assembly was still, incredibly, whingeing about the likely cancellation of the Cross-River Tram, an obscure project to send trams from Peckham to Camden Town many years in the future. People: the world just changed. Don't give the Cross-River Tram another thought. You need to concentrate all your energies on saving Crossrail.

So what should the new times mean for Boris? Obviously, it adds urgency to his so far unconvincing effort to slim down TfL and the rest of the “GLA family”. I've sometimes been accused of favouring cuts for their own sake: actually, I favour cuts in unnecessary vanity projects to ensure that we do not have to cut the things that matter, such as bus and Tube services.

It means entirely new policies in some areas. City Hall has to use its substantial resources more directly to stimulate the London economy, or protect parts of it. The LDA needs to return from being an agency of social engineering to its original purpose, of economic and business support.

London's housing problem has not gone away because there is likely to be a recession. Boris might like to consider using his (quite sizeable) housing budget to build houses directly, rather than bribing private developers to do it.

There is a case for cutting some of the GLA's few taxes, above all the western extension of the congestion charge, which is already doing serious damage to west London retailers and coupled with a recession will almost certainly drive many to the wall. The revenue impacts would be small.

But the other thing Boris should do is just as important as adjusting policy. It is adjusting expectations. He needs to tell people, while he is still on honeymoon, that he will probably not be able to keep his promise of building 50,000 affordable homes; that times will soon become tougher; and that difficult decisions will soon have to be made. All these things will be a great deal easier to say now than later.

Link to:

KHOODEELAAR! updating on CRASSrail hole plot-funder Gordon Brown's role as an agent of Big Business destruction and looting of the economy [119.b]

The external web site operated by the London EVENING STANDARD [17 september 2008]

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Brown humiliated as ministers ignore him at Cabinet session
Anne McElvoy and Joe Murphy
17.09.08
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Gordon Brown's grip on his Cabinet weakened today amid startling leaks of dissent at yesterday's meeting.

A senior Cabinet member told the Standard that the special pre-conference session was "excruciating" and that several ministers were clearly unhappy with the Prime Minister's presentation.

One minister even demanded to know why the No 10 meeting was not discussing Labour's unpopularity rather than focusing on the Tories.

"This can't go on for much longer," the source told the Standard. "It's not just the country that's not listening to Gordon any longer, his ministers aren't listening to him. The meeting was just excruciating - an embarrassment."

In a strongly worded attack on the PM's waning authority, the source added: "Something is going to give. Either it will end up as a Cabinet entirely made up of Brownites, or a Cabinet without Brown. There were people staring at their hands, some scribbling on their papers, someone else on a Black-Berry. The mood was awful."

As Mr Brown told his Cabinet that issues about the direction of the party should not be raised until after the economic turmoil dies down, the minister said: "Gordon is now measuring his survival in two-week horizons. He just wants to get through conference. It's humiliating for everyone. All he does is re-state the problem, he doesn't address it."

Children's Secretary Ed Balls and deputy leader Harriet Harman called for loyalty to Mr Brown in the meeting. But it emerged that another senior figure challenged the Premier for focusing entirely on the problems facing the Conservatives, who are currently ahead by 19 points in the polls, and not on Labour's shortcomings.

A source said: "Someone asked, 'Why can't we have a presentation on what people think of us?' The only answer offered from Mr Balls was that Mr Brown knew perfectly well what people thought of him."

Senior minister Tessa Jowell today admitted there was "infighting" in Labour. Speaking in Beijing, she said: "The infighting in the party is not affecting my job at all. I am here focused on the Paralympics."

The PM is planning to slap down critics in his conference speech with a strongly worded counter-attack on figures preoccupied by the "internal debate".

Another minister said that Mr Brown was in no situation to hold a major reshuffle, adding: "He is just not in a strong enough position to make big changes."

Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell were in a state of "almost visible frustration" during the meeting, today's Daily Mail reported.

And Channel 4 News quoted a Cabinet Minister saying: "It is really all about buying another couple of weeks or months - weeks, I think."

Link to:
Reader Views (23) Add your view | Show all
Here's a sample of the latest views published. You can click view all to read all views that readers have sent in.
If Gordon Brown's Cabinet colleagues are really ignoring him, then they should have the guts to openly rebel and get this nonsense over with. The country needs firm leadership and while I can understand the reservations of those who say this is not the time for a leadership election, that is a view that looks solely to the interests of the Labour Party. We need politicians to focus on what the country needs.If Brown had any good grace - which he doesn't - he would resign. If his colleagues will not follow his lead then they should find someone else. Quickly. The speculators will thrive all the while they hesitate and the country will suffer. Doesn't the Labour Party care about the country any more?

- James Elliott, Eastbourne UK

The usual "source" story with not a name mentioned.In other words,a complete work of fiction.

- Colin, barking essex

Oh, knees up Gordon Brown
He always wears a frown
Knees up, knees up, never let the breeze up,
Knees up Mother Brown
Will Gordon the the boot ?
He's hopping on one foot
Hopping, hopping, never stopping
Hopping on one foot
Now he's whirling round and round
He's ruined the British pound
Whirling, whirling, never twirling
Whirling round and round

Oh,ease up Gordon Brown.

- Binky Boo, London


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KHOODEELAAR! updating on CRASSrail hole plot-funder Gordon Brown's role as an agent of Big Business destruction and looting of the economy [119]

0135 GMT 0235 Hrs UK Time London Thursday 18 September 2008/18 Ramadan 1429 AH:

KHOODEELAAR! updating on CRASSrail hole plot-funder Gordon Brown's role as an agent of Big Business destruction and looting of the economy [119]


0050 GMT 0150 Hrs UK Time London Thursday 18 September 2008: KHOODEELAAR! No to crassly conceived, corrupting Big Business Agenda Crossrail hole plot..." CAMPAIGN TOLD YOU SO! That Gordon Brown was fronting a Blaired regime that was in effect an outfit of Big Business interests… That Big Business was callous… That Big Business did not care whether the needs of ordinary people on transport or on anything else were being actually recognised, correctly addressed and adequately and actually delivered… ALL that Big business ‘cared’ for was profit… and the excuse the pretext to be able to loot as much of the ordinary peoples’ resources, money and rights as the Govt of the day would allow the Big business to rob, steal and misappropriate…. That Crossrail was given the ‘commitment’ of public funding by Gordon Brown acting as a stooge of Big Business, rather than acting as a responsible democrat who was actually are of the truth of the t situation in the K ands in London… hat Gordon Brown has become almost a laughing stock [see,. strictly for references. the London EVENING nostandards STANDARD report on Wednesday 17 September 2008 saying that Brown was humiliated in cabinet...] because of his brazen siding with Big business in contrast with his over-hyped alleged dithering when it comes to ordinary peoples needs….. That Gordon Brown cannot be treated as having even understood what he was saying when he said those words in tune with the then Ken Livingstone entourage as he posed in canary Wharf made the utterances of profound and unforgettable ignorance in peddling the leis scripted by Big Business and dressed as ‘Crossrail’….. That Douglas Oakervee, the hugely discredited operative who cost the public a large amount of money while he, Oakervee had been in Hong Kong, was not fit to be appointed to Crossrail, but that he was appointed and then praised to the skies by Ken Livingstone,….. That Livingstone has been lying …. Was lying and will continue to lie so long as anyone gives him a platform to lie on…. That Oakervee was involved in misleading the UK parliament about what Crossrail Company was getting up to….. that Alistair Darling as Transport Secretary misled parliament and lied to the public when he made that allocation of £100 Million to CLRL under an lyingly passed piece of corrupting legislation called the Railways Act 2005……[To be continued]