Friday 1 November 2013

Why we need to look at the Super Rich: BBC's Britain on the Fiddle is a disgrace




LISTEN TO MADAM MIAOW'S CULTURE LOUNGE "THE SUPER RICH" ON RESONANCE FM

You'd suspect all that talk about the BBC being left-biased is a crock designed to take our eyes off what the corporation is doing in service to the Tory mindset.

Their new series, "Britain on the Fiddle", sticks it to the poor again. Their blurb implies that we lose £20bn per year to benefit cheats. (It's actually £1bn while £16bn goes unclaimed.)

It's a national disgrace - £20 billion stolen from the state in 2012 by fraudsters. Richard Bilton goes on the front line with investigators chasing a woman who won £95,000 in a game show but did not stop claiming benefits.

The disgrace is that this is more smoke and mirrors taking our eye off who's wreaking havoc with the economy. Only this month, the Royal Mail was sold to private interests at a loss of an estimated £1.6 BILLION while the banks advising the government received not only a £17mn fee, but sold the shares they bought at the knock-down price for a profit of £29mn.

Vodaphone, Boots, Amazon, Ideos, Starbucks all escape paying proper tax while people already on the breadline are charged more than £60 per moth for a measly extra bedroom. Building more homes might be a more civilised solution to the housing crisis.

And pressure on companies to pay a living wage to their workers would do wonders to get people off the dole ... if only the government, whose job it is to create jobs, would do their job instead of blaming desperate people for not finding jobs that don't exist because the government isn't doing its job. Big jobs all round.

Join me for Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge this Tuesday 5th November when Aditya Chakrabortty and Kate Belgrave will be looking at the Super Rich. With Charles Shaar Murray.

Madam Miaow's Culture Lounge
The Super-rich
Resonance FM
5.30-6.30pm, Tuesday 5th November 2013
Listen live
or
listen afterwards online.

Above: Tax the Rich: an animated fairy tale narrated by Ed Asner, produced by the California Teachers Association and recommeded by the Ripped Off Britons blog.

Aditya Chakrabortty's Guardian article on how champagne-swilling councils are selling off our housing to developers.

John Kampfner on the history of the super rich.

2 comments:

thetruth said...

Excellent post. This 'news' programme is really nothing but a hit piece on the poor to enable the conservatives to cut spending on welfare. P.S. I watched a recent episode of 'The Kaiser Report' on RT news service and a guest there recently said that around 70% of the UK's land is undeveloped - so the logical solution would be to build more affordable housing, right? Well, it appears that nearly ALL of the 70% of undeveloped land is in PRIVATE hands, and the owners won't sell. I'd really like to know exactly WHO owns the land, WHY the government isn't trying to reclaim or even develop it for the good of the public or even the reason why new affordable housing isn't being built in the first place!

Wish U the best and keep up the good work!

thetruth said...

Excellent post. This 'news' programme is really nothing but a hit piece on the poor to enable the conservatives to cut spending on welfare. P.S. I watched a recent episode of 'The Kaiser Report' on RT news service and a guest there recently said that around 70% of the UK's land is undeveloped - so the logical solution would be to build more affordable housing, right? Well, it appears that nearly ALL of the 70% of undeveloped land is in PRIVATE hands, and the owners won't sell. I'd really like to know exactly WHO owns the land, WHY the government isn't trying to reclaim or even develop it for the good of the public or even the reason why new affordable housing isn't being built in the first place!

Wish U the best and keep up the good work!

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