IS BIG GRAVY JUMPING ON THE GRAVY TRAIN?

It's June 2002, and Hartlepool's Labour MP, Peter Mandelson goes bananas upon hearing the news that a candidate whose main election manifesto proposal is free quantities of the nutritious fruit for all primary age schoolchildren, the town's first (and only) directly elected mayor. His name is Stuart Drummond, and one of the key skills he brings to this important role is his ability to perform in public. That's as H'Angus, the monkey mascot for Hartlepool United Football Club!

More monkey business in Hartlepool

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

Go anywhere in the world and you can't fail to find someone who is familiar with the Hartlepool monkey hanging legend. From Barcelona to Buenos Aries folk have heard how the good people of the town hung the poor animal thinking it was a French spy.

But there's another bit of monkey business that Hartlepool has become associated with. It was

Stuart Drummond, Mayor of Hartlepool
in 2002.

an event that totally changed the way I view politics and people. A turning point in my life.

The day that Hartlepool United's football mascot won the poll and became one of the very first directly elected mayors in the country, taught me how the political system can be used by people for their own selfish agendas. It also led to my sacking but we'll put that part of it on the back burner.

When H'Angus the Monkey decided to throw his banana into the ring and stand for election to the £60,000 a year post, it was done as a joke. The Hartlepool United football club chairman paid his election deposit and supporters of the club and a local rugby club threw themselves behind his campaign.

Stuart Drummond, the man in the monkey suit, promised free bananas for all school kids in the town and submitted an interesting curriculum vitae to the local newspaper of which I was editor, boasting of a degree and proficiency in a number of languages. It did make us wonder why he was working in a call centre on a pittance but hey, did it matter, he was a joke.

As it turned out it did matter. He won.

EVERYBODY KNOWS THE DEAL IS ROTTEN . . .

It's Friday. It's financial. It's Friday Financial with JULIAN SAYER.

They're not bankers, they're gamblers and they are playing with a rigged deck of cards. Worse still they're playing with our money. Read on for the low down on how the banksters are fixing everything.

LOADED DICE IN THE WORLD CASINO!

As I have explained previously, banking and finance is at the very heart of this system we live in. It promotes economic growth and allows companies to conduct their business around the world, in a fair and honest way. Or so the story goes? Well that's alright then isn't it? But what if I told you that the whole system is rigged?

The entire financial world is governed by the central banks who oversee the large investment banks that make the markets of finance and commodities. There has always been rumours of rigging within the financial markets, but it is only just becoming clear what a toxic industry it is. It seems whatever the market is, they will fix it.

Conspiracy theorists of the world, we sceptics owe you an apology. You were right. The players may be a little different, but your basic premise is correct: The world is a rigged game. We found this out in recent months, when a series of related corruption stories spilled out of the financial sector, suggesting the world's largest banks may be fixing the prices of, well, just about everything.

Currency trading is the latest addition to the "rigged" column, here is a summary of the known market manipulation scandals (because it can be problematic keeping track of them all by now)

Libor - interest rates

ISDAfix - swaps

Platts - oil prices

WM/Reuters - FX

High-Frequency Trading - equities

Aluminium

Energy.

The latest to hit the headlines is the foreign exchange markets and this one is particularly troublesome because the Bank of England seems to have known about it for some time. A fair review of the foreign exchange scandal can be found here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26523995

The principal charges in this allege that currency traders at some banks made rigged trades designed to lose money — then took cash kickbacks from co-conspirators who made money on the deals. Yes, it's very easy to understand.  There's a lot of money involved and very, very few consequences.  If power corrupts then absolute power corrupts absolutely.

THE BRITISH BULLSHIT CORPORATION

Are you thinking that with so much Government propaganda and 'interference' now is the time to adjust your sets?

Proudly telling you what the government wants you to think.

ByHARRY BLACKWOOD

I'VE been a huge critic of the BBC for a long time, so it may surprise a lot of people to know that I worked for them for a while.

Considering the money they waste and how much the top brass are paid, working for the BBC in an 'ordinary' capacity isn't going to make you rich; in fact the pay is crap. But I'm really glad I spent some time working for 'auntie'. For starters I enjoyed the work and especially the interaction with listeners, but best of all it gave me a useful insight into a totally dysfunctional organisation that nowadays is nothing more than the mouthpiece of the Bullshit Factory aka The Establishment.

There are some good people working for the Beeb, but largely it's infested with middle class, posh people from privileged backgrounds and top universities who have no idea what it's like in the real world. Arse and elbow spring to mind.

A recent story that featured on BBC Breakfast illustrates my point perfectly. They reported on a survey that showed personal saving in the UK was at an all-time low and queried why.

Well, I'll tell them why: just about every working class person in the country is on the bones of their arse. They can barely put food on the table every month and pay for fuel and electricity without stashing a few hundred quid every month into a flaming ISA or a savings account.

The further down the pecking order you go, the worse it is. It's no wonder that pay day loan sharks like Wonga (big Tory donors) are reporting record profits. No wonder also that Food Banks are opening up across the nation at alarming rates.

BAKER'S DOESN'T

David Christopher Kelly, CMG was a British scientist and expert on biological warfare, employed by the British Ministry of Defence, and formerly a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq.

How come MP and author has stopped asking questions about death of Dr David Kelly?

 byHARRY BLACKWOOD

When I was sacked eleven years ago as editor of the Hartlepool Mail after political interference from Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson. I received support from a very unlikely source - a Liberal Democrat MP.

Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker and
author of the book The Strange Death of
David Kelly. Since being appointed
Minister of State for the Home Office
 in October, 2013, his research on Dr
Kelly's highly suspicious death has
been inexplicably discontinued.

Norman Baker didn't strike me as much better than the average MP, but the old saying "my enemy's enemy is my friend" sprang to mind and in fairness to Baker he asked a few very pertinent questions.

For reasons that will become apparent I was very interested when Baker was appointed Minister of State for the Home Office last October. You see this is the sort of government position that allows access to some of the most sensitive material in the government's secret files.

So, as Baker is the author of the only book ever to be written about the death of Iraq weapons inspector David Kelly, I was hopeful that he might delve into the vaults at the Home Office and answer some of the questions that were left unanswered in his book. I mean, how could he not?

Well six months has passed and nothing. This proving that Baker has the same level of integrity of the rest of them - zero.

I've always been convinced that Kelly was killed. Reading Baker's book made me more certain.

It's ten years since Kelly's death and there's hardly been a month gone by that I haven't read something in a newspaper or magazine about the mystery. I'm now more sure than ever that he was 'got'.

It astonishes me that there are people who believe the official bullshit about this case. To use an old song "there are more questions than answers". Norman Baker has obviously given up asking any questions so here's a few that really bug me.

MIND THE GAP . . .

It's Friday. The topic is financial. It's FRIDAY FINANCIAL with our resident expert JULIAN SAYER.

Poor people pay taxes and rich people avoid paying tax. How the hell can that be right? Read on . . .

MIND THE GAP . . .

It's killing you!

MILLIONS of people have an uneasy feeling that something is not right in the global economy –

but they struggle to put their finger on what exactly the problem is. Now pay attention and don't fall asleep, when I tell you the very root of the decay is tax, and in particular, the abuse of tax rules and regulations.

As I mentioned in last week's blog, the middle and working classes have endured ten years of a reducing real income, while the super-rich have got richer. The tax burden is forever increasing on the people who can least afford to pay, while the wealthy and multinational corporations are paying less and less. This scenario is widening the income inequality gap, and is the root cause of the social breakdown.

Governments have to raise tax in order to pay for the services a society needs. The more tax they can generate the better the services and pensions they can provide. If tax revenues start to decline, then those services have to be cut. If you really want the breakdown of how much the UK and where it raises these taxes from, you can find it here.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/statistics/receipts/info-analysis.

Tax avoidance has become a real issue of late and has to be tackled if you want an equitable society. Corporation tax avoidance is the one that has made the headlines, with companies such as Google, Amazon, Vodafone and Apple making billions in turnover but paying very little in tax.

BLAIR'S BIGGEST LIE CONDEMNS A GENERATION TO SLAVERY

Tony Blair's education policies represent the biggest con trick in political history.The gullible, who went along with his deceit are now realising just how cruel this charlatan's lies actually were. Because there are few jobs for graduates or anyone else, just unemployment and mountains of tuition fee debt.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

WHENEVER I hear Labour Party supporters discussing Tony Blair, I always think of that fantastic scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian; "What have the Romans ever done for us?"

The man who Labour Party members thought of as a Messiah is now treated like a foul fart in a lift. So reviled is Blair that Labourites are pretty much trying to airbrush him from history. And no bloody wonder. The Labour imposter achieved less than zero and those who were taken in by him know it.

But it's not the Iraq war or the other heinous stuff that Blair did that I really take exception to. No, his big crime as far as I am concerned is when he mouthed those immortal three words: EDUCATION. EDUCATION. EDUCATION. The biggest con trick in political history.

Blair pressed all the right buttons and used all the right language. He wanted all kids to have access to good schools. He wanted all kids to go to university. He wanted kids from council estates to go to the top universities. He wanted working class kids to become barristers and surgeons and nuclear physicists. Everything was possible in his new Labour dream. It was all bullshit to hide the truth.

BEER, FOOTBALL AND FISH AND CHIPS

Peter Mandelson, Prince of Darkness (left) and former Prime Minister and War Criminal Tony Blair (right).

How Blair and Mandelson Hijacked the Labour Party.

byHARRY BLACKWOOD

I'm a man with a very good constitution, so there's not very much that makes me feel nauseous. But if I cast my mind back to the victory celebrations following Labour's 1997 election success, I'm guaranteed to come over all bilious.

The sight of Podgy Prescott dancing with his tarty wife was nauseating enough and the sight of Mandy, Prince of Darkness singing along to "Things Can Only Get Better" had me reaching for the sick bucket. But what really did it for me was all of those 'genuine, ordinary hardworking' Labour supporters worshipping at the feet of Blair like he was some sort of Messiah. Oh yeah Messiah, at criminal, murderer and money grabbing con man.

It still boils my piss to this day thinking back how smarmy Blair arrived in the former mining village of Trimdon (just a few miles from my front door) and started glad handing local party members as he laid on his best acting to ingratiate his way into getting one of the safest Labour seats in the country.

It was truly sickening to hear local party chairman John Burton regaling people with the story about how Blair had turned up at his house one night and there was European football on the television "Tony sat and watched the match with a can of beer and we didn't talk politics" or some such bollocks was what Burton used to tell people ad nauseum. What Burton failed to realise was that Blair would have drunk horse piss filtered through a shitty sock and watched reruns of Crossroads if it meant he'd secure the nomination.