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6 Articles on Throwing Taxpayer Money vs. Value added policy writing for Votability
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ARTICLE 1
Cut tax to flat 30% rate, axe stamp duty and ditch national insurance: An expert’s plan to boost the economy – by Political Correspondent – PUBLISHED: 00:08 GMT, 21 May 2012 | UPDATED: 09:48 GMT, 21 May 2012
George Osborne has faced calls for a flat rate of income tax. The Chancellor should introduce a flat rate of income tax and abolish levies such as national insurance, stamp duty and inheritance tax to boost the economy, experts have said. They are calling for a single income tax rate of 30 per cent and the abolition of eight major taxes, including corporation tax and air passenger duty. The 2020 Tax Commission, a joint project from the Institute of Directors and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says the changes would lead to a tax cut of £3,400 for the average two-earner household. A 400-page report from the group concludes that the measures could lead to an 8.4 per cent increase in the UK’s gross domestic product after 15 years – the equivalent of lending £5,000 to each family.
Allister Heath, chairman of the commission, said: ‘It is time for Britain to make a vital choice between tweaking the status quo and letting our economy continue to be crippled by complex and punitive taxes, and drastically changing course with a radical but realistic plan for a tax system fit for the 21st century.’ Under the plans, both employee and employer national insurance contributions would be scrapped and replaced with a single 30 per cent rate of tax on income, with a £10,000 personal allowance.
Plans: Allister Heath, the chairman of the 2020 Tax Commission, says the current tax rate is ‘crippling’ the economy
Corporation tax and capital gains tax would be replaced with a 30 per cent tax on dividends, interest and rent, and inheritance tax and stamp taxes on land and shares would be dropped, as well as air passenger duty. Fuel duty would be cut by 5p.
Overall, taxation would be limited to a third of national income – as would public spending. The proposed flat-rate income tax would increase the budget deficit by £49.1billion in its first year if the changes were not phased in, or if there were no further cuts to public spending. However, the commission predicts that the boost to the economy would result in a £35billion fall in annual borrowing after 15 years. It says the measures would result in a tax cut of around £3,400 for a two-earner household with an income of £28,000.
¦ Collecting taxes costs as much now as it did 50 years ago, figures show. Despite technological advances, bureaucracy accounts for £1.14 of every £100 collected, compared with £1.16 in 1958. A report from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, based on data from the Paris-based Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, revealed that since 2001 the annual cost has been less than 1 per cent of tax income just once.
Commentator comments :
Is the DM stupid or what… I’d quite like to live in la-la land where tax is zippo %… There is Bob Hope, no hope and envelopes chance of the government making the average person £3k better off. Purely because it’s 3k they wouldn’t have!
– silvertail, midlands, 21/5/2012 12:12
Once again, a proposal to stick it to families that scrimp and save to allow one parent to stay home with the children. Traditional families are apparently evil and must be stopped. Such a statement about this country.
– anon, uk, 21/5/2012 12:11
So, a two-earner household benefits, and pensioners pay 50% more tax than at present. There seems to be a concerted effort to solve the aging problem by starving the elderly to an early death. In a few years time they will wonder why they have thousands of old people on the streets begging for coppers. Oh, but those who don’t retire until 2016 will get bigger pensions, so it’s just those of us who got caught in the middle who will suffer. Thanks a lot!
– PAJ, Sussex, 21/5/2012 12:11
Angy Anderson 11.50 Who really knows where our money goes and what it is used for. When I began work at seventeen I was told I would pay tax and national Insurance. I would be entitled to a weekly payment if I lost my job and I would receive a pension at sixty. I would also receive treatment on the NHS and dental treatment on the NHS. I am not getting a pension at sixty so the government has broken a contract with me and thousands of others like me. Tax and National Insurance is all the same, forced to pay but get little out of it.
– Mrs Iri-Tated, UK, 21/5/2012 12:11
Until the suits understand the simple concept of *sharing* things will never change.
– june, bedworth, 21/5/2012 12:08
And the rich get richer.
– Barking Mad, Lancashire, 21/5/2012 12:05
The suffering 99% should all be given a course in basic economy . Atleast their mind will not get agitated and confused when they suffer . Unless the rich and the wealthy get richer and wealthier , how can the 99% pick up more crumbs from under the table, silly ? It is for the good of the 99% only that it is important that the rich and the wealthy should become richer and wealthier . For the orderly existence of the universe we all should have an all- powerful God , for the orderly existence of the world we should have one superpower. Similarly, for the orderly existence of the superpower , we should have a 1% or even less number of the super-rich ! It’s Nature’s Law…Elementary , dear Watson!
– Zeitgeist, London , uk, 21/5/2012 12:05
Looking at the worst comments, I see a lot of people don’t understand how percentages work…
– Sres, Chorley, 21/5/2012 12:02
THis is an EXCELLENT IDEA and has been mooted more than the ONCE. THis type of scheme WORKS as the rate of tax is low enough to not AVOID or EVADE. THus everyone will pay as it is not worth avoiding. It will be easy to collect and thus we can get rid of a lot of Tax Collectors!!! This has happened in some of the Eastern Eurpoean countires and they soon found that they were running a positive budget and had to cut the rate of tax so as too not build up too much SURPLUS. It will take a TOUGH GOVERNMENT TO TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS and iMPLIMENT but it would be fantastic !!! LET THE PEOPLE CHOOSE HOW THEY SPEND THEIR MONEY not the fools in charge !!!!
– Tel BOY, Bromley Kent, 21/5/2012 11:58
Rating 2
Bill Crawley West Sussex. I don’t agree with the proposals but you have forgotten that you will stop paying NI contributions that are currently around 12% of earnings above £146 per week.
– Puzzled, Southampton UK, 21/5/2012 11:57
Clic
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Politicians (2 terms only, or no votes for the Oligarch MP in question) could try this below tax strategy for ‘winnability’ in politics :
Profit margins of Telecommunications companies (also ALL companies) may not exceed 10 times overhead costs once the CEO has reached wealth level of 20 million. All excess profit must be returned to the state for re-distribution. Maximum sequesterable funds by a company is at a quantum of 10 times whatever the total invested by shareholders. Excess may not be sequesterable if insufficient.
Penalties may not be levied by banks for early repayment. Interest is waived from point of early payment.
Housing Developers may not be affiliated to lawyers or financing firms.
ARTICLE 2
‘Cut interest rate to zero’: IMF calls on Bank of England to go below 0.5% to boost Britain’s faltering economy – By James Chapman – PUBLISHED: 11:11 GMT, 22 May 2012 | UPDATED: 11:41 GMT, 22 May 2012
Christine Lagarde has said that the move will be good for UK homeowners and businesses
A zero rate would be the first in the Bank of England’s 300-year history
Tough: Christine Lagarde has told the Bank of England to cut the record rate even lower to help Britain’s ailing economy. The head of the world’s economic watchdog today delivered an extraordinary call for the Bank of England to slash interest rates even further to try to boost the economy. Christine Lagarde, of the International Monetary Fund, said the Bank should ‘reassess the efficacy’ of cutting rates below the current record low of 0.5 per cent to reduce the cost of borrowing for businesses and homeowners. Her intervention raises the prospect of the first zero per cent interest rate since the Bank of England was founded in 1694. Japan cut rates to zero in the 1990s when it suffered a decade-long depression. Mme Lagarde also suggested that the Bank considers a fresh round of money printing — so-called ‘quantitative easing’ – to stimulate growth. Both measures would be grim news for savers, who have already been hit hard by low interest rates and earlier rounds of QE.
The IMF boss, in London to deliver her annual assessment of the UK economy, delighted Chancellor George Osborne with a strong endorsement of the coalition’s deficit reduction measures. She said that when she looked back to the last election in May 2010, and tried to imagine what would have happened to the British economy without the Government’s austerity programme: ‘I shiver.’ Pressure: The Bank of England has held interest rates at 0.5% for several years but is being asked to go further.
Mme Lagarde backed a suggestion by David Cameron that the Government should consider using hard-won credibility on the international money markets, which mean Britain is able to borrow at record lows, to do more to underwrite infrastructure and housing projects and loans to small businesses. The IMF also suggested there was scope for the Government to boost growth through higher spending on infrastructure projects, which would increase employment and demand within the economy and could be funded within existing budgets by imposing further public sector wage restraint or reforming property taxes. If the UK recovery fails to take off, ministers must be prepared to use temporary tax cuts and more infrastructure investment to give the economy a shot in the arm, even if this means reining in the Government’s austerity programme, the watchdog added. Chancellor George Osborne says the IMF report is backing the Coalition’s economic strategy
Welcoming the report, Chancellor George Osborne said: ‘The IMF couldn’t be clearer today. Britain has to deal with its debts and the Government’s fiscal policy is the appropriate one and an essential part of our road to recovery. ‘I welcome the IMF’s continuing support for the UK deficit reduction plan. They agree that, in their words ‘reducing the high structural deficit remains essential’ and make clear in their statement that they consider the current pace of fiscal consolidation to be appropriate. Mr Osborne said the eurozone was reaching a ‘critical point’ and confirmed that Britain was preparing to deal with the shock of a failure in the single currency. ‘In the UK, we have a flexible exchange rate and an independent monetary policy which allows us to ease the process of fiscal adjustment with a lower exchange rate and supportive monetary policy,’ he said.
‘But in the eurozone, indebted countries have to deal with high budget deficits without that support. ‘It is clear that we are now reaching a critical point for the eurozone. ‘Eurozone countries need to stand behind their currency or face up to the prospect of Greek exit, with all the risks that that could involve. ‘The British Government is doing contingency planning for all potential outcomes. It is our responsibility to ensure that while we work for the best, we prepare for something worse. ‘The IMF must also prepare for the consequences if members in Europe don’t follow its advice.’
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Interest rates based on earnings :
ARTICLE 3
Microbloggers post Locke’s assets online – by Xu Tianran (Global Times) – 08:22, May 16, 2012
Chinese Web users have posted details of US ambassador to China Gary Locke’s personal assets to their microblogs after a Beijing newspaper demanded Locke disclose his personal assets. Richard Buanga, spokesman of the US embassy in China who uses the Chinese name Bao Riqiang, also responded to the newspaper yesterday by uploading the foreign services salary table issued by the US Department of State. The Guangdong-based New Express Daily first reported the episode Monday, saying many Web users are encouraging the Beijing newspaper to make the same demand of officials in the capital. Beijing Daily, official newspaper of the municipal Party committee, demanded on its Sina Weibo that US ambassador to China Gary Locke announce his personal assets on Monday.
“Gary Locke, please declare your assets,” the microblog post commented, after reposting a microblog user’s opinion that read, “Gary Locke lives in the US embassy which costs billions of US dollars. He commutes in a bullet-proof Limousine…can this be called modesty? And why does Gary Locke not announce these facts to the public? …So cut the show of incorruptibility!”
The newspaper ran an editorial early this month criticizing Gary Locke for traveling in economy class and using coupons to buy coffee, among other things that drew the attention of the Chinese public, as a way of promoting his image. However, the newspaper’s latest Weibo posts immediately became a new focus for the Chinese online community. Despite the fact that the newspaper’s microblog filters comments, tens of thousands of Web users managed to make sarcastic remarks by reposting the original content. Observers said a foreign ambassador’s residence or expenditure has nothing to do with the host country’s taxpayers in the first place. But Web users showed more interest in why the practice of asset disclosure has not been applied to Chinese officials. A Central Party School newspaper said yesterday that China needs 10 years to implement asset declaration by officials. Government officials in China are now required to submit annual reports about their incomes, assets and information about their spouses and children. But the information is kept within related government departments. The Beijing Daily deleted its original post yesterday without elaborating on the reason. The Sina Weibo also began to manage the information flow yesterday by encrypting Web users’ comments.
Though the government is pushing forward the idea of making officials’ assets more transparent, it still needs years to be fully realized. And obviously Chinese people are more interested in the wealth of Chinese officials than that of foreign officials, said Lin Zhe, a professor at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.
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Though the government is pushing forward the idea of making officials’ assets more transparent, it still needs years to be fully realized.
Years? This would mean all assets would have been spread out to relatives, hidden or transfered to easily moved items like diamonds and gold by then. I really hope this is the last generation of plutocrats that have benefited from being in government. Otherwise, if honest, all declarations should be done in as soon as 1 week voluntarily on public sites. A disappointing reality that could still be identifiable and corrected. How about just declaring then re-distributing immediately if above USD$ 20 million? China is Communist Red not Capitalist Green. No plutocrats until the rest of the nation catches up.
ARTICLE 4
Levitating cars already here – Note the below advert :
Levitating Globe on Stage – Innovative levitating world globe continuously rotates in midair.
May 2012 Sale $99.99 Free shipping & handling Retail $109.00
Featuring a 3” globe that is awash in the brilliant light of 8 LED lights, this handsome desktop decoration will transform your workspace at home or the office. Developed with the latest Levitron Anti Gravity technology. Electromagnetic base uses minimal power to create Real Levitation with continuous rotations of the globe. Suspended in mid-air, this globe defies gravity – inspiring wonder and amazement.
Platform can levitate up to 3 ounces. Low voltage adapter included. Observe Earth levitate and revolve in space – only touching air! Dimensions: Globe Diameter: 3″ (10 cm)
Conclusion?
– to levitate 3 oz costs USD$99
– to levitate 63493.131 oz (or 4000 lbs the reegular weight of a car) the cost will b 6 million +
– consider the use of (hellium infusion augmented) bamboo and rattan entirely in the vehicle to lower to 10% of the weeight and hence price = 600,000 million
For 600,000 a FRICTIONLESS ‘REVERSE LEVITATING’ vehicle (probably powered by limitless Fusion) will be possible.
Consider the height of levitation and we could actually get a FLYING CAR. I really hope those governments will stop oppressing and start redistributing. Imagine caravans (or evenlarge craft) of people flying off to wherever has the laxest laws or is not governed by any government. Barring the MOST BASIC and common sense of religious laws (Self applied 10 comandments type laws, I am not referring to Hudud or whippings here, nor pedophile priests, not forced national service etc.. . . . ), WHO NEEDS GOVERNMENT OR LAWS? The only last issue will be overpopulation and redistribution of wealth and ownership of goods or food. Exciting times? But only if the best of Marx and Capitalism is used . . . Utopia is within reach via – Capitalism with Socialist Limits . . . with the identification of phenotypes and adherence to ‘Growth Outside As You Are Inside Spiritual Laws’ . . .
Ending big society via Aero-Nomadism . . .
ARTICLE 5
Privacy is being turned into a privilege that only the rich and right-on may enjoy – by Brendan O’Neill Politics Last updated: May 21st, 2012 CCTV
Keep ’em trained on the council estates, never the suburban semis Is privacy being turned into a privilege that only the moneyed and the well-connected may enjoy? Two striking stories in the news last week suggest that it is.
In the first story, it was reported that activists and hacks are heaping further pressure on Mark Zuckerberg to improve the privacy settings on Facebook, so that they might update their statuses and post photos of their social shenanigans without having the world and its mother peering over their shoulders. In the second story, we were told that social workers, backed by much of the media, are calling on the prime minister to get rid of “red tape” so that they might more easily interfere in – I’m sorry, intervene in – so-called problem families. There are a lot of damaged families out there, the social workers hinted, and thus we need to rip up some of the rules governing when it is and isn’t okay to stick our snouts into their business.
That these two stories could appear in the same week, and not be considered contradictory, suggests we have a pretty screwed-up attitude to privacy today. Indeed, sometimes the very same members of the political and media classes who believe that their private lives must remain absolutely private will think it is perfectly logical that other people’s private lives – the lives of Them – should be thrown open to state snooping.
So ours is an era in which the media goes mental when it is revealed that Sienna Miller was once photographed in an alleyway, yet raises barely a peep of protest when David Cameron says he plans to interfere in the lives of 120,000 allegedly “chaotic” families. Indeed, liberal commentators say we should be “less squeamish about intervening in chaotic families”, especially “impoverished” ones. Ours is an era where we are expected to weep upon hearing that Steve Coogan’s bins were rifled through by a tabloid hack, yet we brand as Right-wing crackpots those who question the right of their local council to police their bins to make sure they are recycling correctly.
This is an age in which civil-liberties types go ballistic over the fact that they must click a button saying “Private” when they use Spotify, but there’s little controversy when every ordinary man or woman hoping to become a schoolteacher or a youth worker must first submit to an intrusive criminal-records check. Things have come to such a pretty pass that Labour MP Tom Watson can expect sympathy for the fact that he was once followed around by a tabloid reporter, despite the fact that Watson’s own political party introduced rafts of legislation that permit the following, filming and collar-feeling of ordinary people across the land. Meanwhile, the New Statesman provides space to Hugh Grant to bleat about the “egregious abuses of privacy” suffered by the likes of him (posh people), while its star columnist, in a debate about the right of parents to smack their kids, says: “I don’t think sovereignty in people’s own homes is something we should be striving for.” No, apparently it is only right-minded celebs, not plebs, who deserve personal sovereignty.
Today there are shrill demands for a privacy law to protect celebs and other decent folk from the prurient gaze of dumb tabloid readers, alongside constant calls for better policing of the antics and habits of “chaotic” people, the impoverished. We are witnessing the emergence of a privacy hierarchy, where it is assumed that the decent class deserve a proper private life but the impoverished do not. Why? Because where Our lives are important and good, Theirs are potentially bad, certainly unpredictable, definitely “chaotic”, and thus we must pry into their bins and send social workers ir ‘moral police’ or narrow communalists to rap on their front doors in order to sort them out.
Whatever happened to the outlook of the 16th-century jurist Edward Coke, who said, “The house of every one is to him as his castle and fortress, as well for his defence against injury and violence as for his repose”? In other words, every man’s home, be it an actual castle or just a two-bedroom flat in Hackney, should be treated as a fortress that state snitches have no business barging into. These days, it seems you really do need to own a castle – or at least a plush flat in Kensington or Islington – in order for your privacy rights to be taken seriously.
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This should be applied against plutocrats who send national monies to tax havens or sequestering funds that should be circulating in local communities instead of being used to prop up foreign commodities and foreign stock markets to the demise of the global supply chain system. THAT sort of nation destroying (think riots and occupy moements due to uncontrolled Capitalism) chaos propagated by plutocrats is far more dangerous than the odd dogging couple or organic drugs grower or adult industry indulger, adult industry worker and organizer.
ARTICLE 6
Internet voting still faces hurdles in US – Posted on 25 May 2012 – 05:33am
WASHINGTON (May 24, 2012): Shop online. Bank online. Why not vote online?
Pressure is building to make Internet voting widely available in the United States and elsewhere, even though technical experts say casting ballots online is far from secure. In the 2012 US elections, more than two dozen states will accept some form of electronic or faxed ballots, mostly from military or overseas voters, according to the Verified Voting Foundation. But there is a growing expectation that online voting will expand further.
“The number one question I’m asked is when we will get to vote on the Internet,” Matt Masterson, Ohio’s deputy election administrator, told a Washington forum this month. “When you are doing everything else on the Internet and your comfort level is high, people expect to do that… You can adopt a child online, you can buy a house online without ever seeing it.” But computer security specialists say any system can be hacked or manipulated, and that unlike shopping and banking, the problem cannot be fixed by giving the customer a refund. “You have computer systems such as those of Google, the Pentagon and Facebook, which have all fallen victim to intrusion,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan.
Halderman, who gained notoriety by hacking into a test of an online voting system in the US capital Washington in 2010 — forcing the system to be scrapped — said the technology is not yet secure enough. “It’s going to be decades, if ever, before we are going to be able to vote online securely,” he told the forum at George Washington University’s Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute.
Some other countries are forging ahead on Internet voting. French citizens living abroad will for the first time this year be able to vote in a parliamentary election over the Internet, an experiment that could be extended to other elections if successful. In Estonia, an early adopter, a record 25 percent of voters cast Internet ballots in 2011. But Halderman, who has consulted with European governments and studied other attempts at online voting, said: “I don’t believe any of them are secure.” In 2010 Halderman and his students accepted a challenge from the local government and were able to penetrate the Washington voting network, change all the votes and prompt the system to play the University of Michigan fight song.
Masterson said election officials are grappling with how to make voting more accessible and looking at the costs of the technology. Internet voting from that perspective makes some sense, he said. Masterson said online voting can also help boost participation and address the issue of voters who cannot get to a polling station. “It kills an election official to find out you can’t get a ballot back,” he said. “These people are being disenfranchised.” But Halderman counters that US elections provide a tempting target for hackers, nation-states and others who might want to destabilize or disrupt the US political system. “If everyone voted online today, I think the probability of substantial fraud would be 100 percent,” he said.
Susan Dzieduszycka-Suinat, of the Overseas Vote Foundation, works to make ballots more accessible, but remains uneasy with online voting. “It’s horrible to say this,” she said. “I come out of the software industry and push automation and technology for streamlining voting processes all day long, but right now, with the security issues that exist, there is no way I could advocate for Internet voting.”
GWU computer scientist Michael Clarkson said it’s not yet clear if online voting can be extended to national elections, where the risks of intrusion are high. “After 30 years of research, we don’t yet know how to do that in a way that scales to national elections, but we continue to make progress toward the goal,” he said.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, an arm of the Commerce Department, said this month its research had “concluded that Internet voting systems cannot currently be audited with a comparable level of confidence in the audit results as those for polling place systems. Additionally, malware on voters’ personal computers “poses a serious threat that could compromise the secrecy or integrity of voters’ ballots,” NIST said.
Richard Soudriette, head of the Colorado-based Center of Diplomacy and Democracy and a consultant on election issues, said he believes the technical and security problems of online voting have largely been resolved. “Over the past 10 years Internet voting firms have developed encryption and cryptography software tools that make voting much more secure,” he said. “I believe that within a decade most developed countries will conduct national elections via Internet.” – AFP
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District by district, then a ‘monthly audit’ by publishing in the newspaper who voted and for who. Indiscrepencies can thus only last 1 month at most, at least for diligent voters.
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3 Articles on Rethinking Society and the ‘Education’ method of Raising One’s Stature
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ARTICLE 1
Britain 2012: Masters degree graduate resorts to advertising himself with sandwich board after failing to find full-time work despite sending out 15,000 applications – By Emma Reynolds – PUBLISHED: 11:37 GMT, 22 May 2012 | UPDATED: 13:05 GMT, 22 May 2012
A desperate jobseeker who applied for 15,000 jobs with no success in the past ten years has resorted to advertising himself by wearing a ‘hire me’ sandwich board. Robin Norton, from Birmingham, has a Masters degree in history and several NVQs but has been overlooked by an endless slew of employers. He has now taken drastic action, spending an entire day wearing a sign reading ‘hire me please’ and walking up and down the M5 slip-road at Bromsgrove junction in Worcestershire.
Extreme move: Robin Norton stood by the motorway wearing a sandwich board for a day in the hope of finding employment
Mr Norton said: ‘I have applied for around 25 jobs a week for the past ten years without getting anywhere. ‘Sometimes I have applied for as many as 50 in one week. It is never-ending. Mr Norton, who worked for the Royal Mail for seven years, was a self-employed footcare technician until 2002 when his business went under. Since then he has had odd-jobs including cleaning, gardening and building work, but craves the stability of full-time employment.
Reaching his limits: Mr Norton has a Masters degree in history and several NVQs but has been overlooked by employers He said: ‘Things were bad before but have become worse since the recession. Now I don’t think there is any chance of me getting work. ‘It is partly down to the recession but also my age. Companies don’t want to hire anybody in their 40s. All the jobs go to the young up-and-coming jobseekers. ‘I’ve got the qualifications but I can’t get the work. As soon as they see how old you are, they don’t want to know. ‘It’s against the law to be ageist but in the real world, my world here today, it’s still here and it’s wrong.’ Despite all his efforts, Mr Norton has had no job offers – and only a handful of interviews – and he said hitting rock-bottom convinced him to try a new tactic.
‘Wearing the sign is a last-ditch attempt for me to get work, a real last resort. I spent a couple of months working up the guts to go down and do it. ‘It was not an easy step but things have become that desperate for me. I feel physically sick having to stoop to this but I have no other choice.’
Jason Fruen found a job after advertising his skills on a sandwich board beside the M60. Mr Norton has set up an email address – hire-me-pleeaase@hotmail.co.uk (sic) – so potential employers can get in touch. Latest statistics show unemployment in the UK now stands at 2.63million, falling by 45,000 in the three months to March this year.
Mr Norton is not the first recession-hit jobseeker to try such dramatic measures after struggling to find work. Earlier this month, unemployed Bennett Olson, from Minnesota, put his face on an electric billboard with the words: ‘Hire Me!’ He shelled out $300 for his face to rotate with other adverts for 24 hours. Last year, frustrated U.S. jobseeker Alisha Madkins, from Boston, walked around the city centre wearing a sandwich board saying ‘hire me!’ on one side and ‘college grad’ on the other. But the strategy did work for one lucky Briton, who managed to impress would-be employers with his spirit and dedication. Father-of-one Jason Fruen gained a job in 2009 by standing for four hours at Junction 9 of the M60 in Manchester wearing a sandwich board.
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Money cannot buy breeding, but education cannot get either money or breeding. ‘Educated fools with money on their mind . . . ‘ (Coolio – Gangsta’s Paradise, 1995) should not spend money that has no guarantees and that indebts one in the first place. Add the age factor, and ALL young graduates had better prepare to retire by 40. That means not getting a loan for education, and focusing on that loan for housing which is already overpriced as is. Then consider against the response in Article 2 below.
Congrats to proud owners of a 30,000 to 500,000 loan for a TICKET THAT ALLOWS WORK but has no guarantees except to enrich the financial institution in collusion with the state education apparatus and their pro-party jobsworths.
ARTICLE 2
‘Occupy Graduation’: Student activists broadcast debt owed with ball and chains – by Liz Goodwin | The Lookout – 3 hrs ago
Everardo Gonzalez protests his student debt at San Francisco State’s graduation ceremony. …A handful of student activists are expressing their displeasure at the rising cost of college by wearing inflatable ball and chain accessories over their graduation robes. The props state the amount of debt with which they’re graduating. The silent commencement protest, dubbed “Occupy Graduation” by its organizers, is taking place at seven universities around the country.
Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerrys ice cream, is helping pay for the protest and has raised about $400,000 to fund Occupy-related projects.
“A college education is so important and now it’s only available to people who have a lot of money or to people who end up going into debt for the rest of their lives,” Cohen told Yahoo News. The entrepreneur never completed college, but he thinks it’s crucial to job success today.
Everardo Gonzalez, a 23 year-old criminal justice graduate of San Francisco State University, said he received “a bunch of positive feedback” from parents and fellow students for his participation in the quiet protest last Saturday at the graduation ceremony.
Gonzalez is graduating with $26,490 in federal loans and another $10,000 in credit card debt that he racked up while trying to make ends meet. His parents couldn’t afford to help him pay for college, so he worked at a local IKEA, struggling to balance his class schedule with his job.
During Gonzalez’s college career, San Francisco State University cut faculty salaries across the board, laid off staff, dramatically reduced the number of classes offered, hiked tuition and trimmed enrollment, all in response to the reduction in California’s higher education budget. Gonzalez was forced to spend another year at school–and take out more loans to do so–after he couldn’t find a way into the classes he needed for his major to graduate. (The crowded classes would fill up online within seconds.) The experience spurred him to join a group of student protesters linked with the Occupy Wall Street movement, who demonstrated against the cuts and other issues this year.
Gonzalez has landed a paid internship for next year, and plans to get a master’s degree in political theory after that to become a teacher. Gonzalez’ debt load is actually about average for graduating college students who took out loans. By attending an in-state school, qualifying for grants and relying solely on federal–not private–loans, Gonzalez has a manageable amount of loans with comparatively low interest rates.
“I’m not the poster child of student debt,” he says, but adds that many of his friends are in a worse position. He believes college education should be free, and that existing student loans should be forgiven. Seeing his parents lose their home after the recession hit also made him passionate about advocating for more opportunities for middle class and poor people. “The entire system is set up for people to fail unless they’re privileged,” he says.
Ivonne Quiroz, another San Francisco State University protester who graduated with a degree in biology last weekend, was also forced to stay at college for an extra semester after the immunology class she needed to graduate filled up. She’s now walking down the aisle with about $21,000 in federal loans. Quiroz said the budget cuts also fueled her protest. “We’re paying so much more, but we’re getting so much less,” she said.
Various Occupy movements have advocated for changing the law so that student debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, forgiving student loans altogether, and having zero percent interest loans for education. Interest rates on subsidized federal student loans are expected to double to 6.8 percent this year, unless Congress passes a law to extend the grace period. (Private loans have higher interest rates.) Still, on average, college graduates make far more money and enjoy lower unemployment rates than their peers with only a high school diploma.
Student protesters at the University of Southern Maine. (Occupy Graduation)
Another protest is planned for Hunter College in New York at the graduation ceremony on Tuesday. Monica Johnson, a 35-year-old Hunter College graduate student who’s helping to organize the demonstration, borrowed about $15,000 in federally secured loans 15 years ago to pay for college. But in 2007, she decided to move to New York to get a masters of fine arts degree at Pratt, a private school. She took out an additional $60,000 in loans, which ballooned to $88,000 after she dropped out of the program, dissatisfied. She now has a full-time job at an arts non-profit and is enrolled at the much cheaper Hunter College, where she’ll receive her MFA in December.
Johnson recently paid off $18,000 of her debt over a period of eight months, by subsisting on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and only paying for things in cash, which she said helped her resist buying anything unnecessary. She’s encouraging indebted graduates to form a union and negotiate with lenders to get lower rates or income-based repayment.
“What really pisses me off is I should never have been given those loans,” Johnson said. “It honestly was the worst money I ever spent.”
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Some of us would look at the figures and decide not to bother with the aggravation of education and the debt caused. The clever would become estate owners or landlords instead, and have an income from sale of REAL PRODUCE and REAL GOODS cultivated from the land if not a slumlord via rental of properties to tenants. With that kind of money, one could buy several units of low cost housing (which do pay themselves off) and RETIRE at the ripe old age of 16 or 18 while those who opted for education would be indebted and if they do not ‘bend’ enough to their future bosses and toe ‘company lines’, pay monthly rentals instead of collecting rentals, will remain homeless and potentially could be bankrupt (depending on jobs market) instead. Consumerism is at an end, population growth cannot be sustained by the planet, meaning population growth cannot sustain consumerism.
ARTICLE 3
The fashionable hostility towards social mobility is just another way of saying ‘know your place’ – by Brendan O’Neill Politics Last updated: May 22nd, 2012
Loadsamoney: how the liberal elite view “social mobility”
Is there anyone the great and the good hate more than an upwardly mobile member of the working classes? A raft of abusive terminology has been created to diss these strange creatures. They’re seen as “yuppies” or “Loadsamoneys”, waving their wads of cash around with a sneering look of self-satisfaction on their faces. They’re always described as “grasping” and “ruthless”. They are treated like fish out of water, such as when The Guardian snottily said that wealthy working-class footballers labour under “the misapprehension that drinking champagne is a symbol of class”. And they are always depicted as soulless, as lacking in community spirit, as so selfish that they would rather escape the poor communities they grew up in rather than stay put and muck in. Watch the movies of Mike Leigh. Almost every one of them contains such a character: the grasping working-class man or woman who runs away from his or her council estate to live in a big but heartless house in the suburbs. How middle-class moviegoers love to laugh at such specimens!
Now Ed Miliband has weighed into the discussion about social mobility. It is always a pleasure to hear what someone who was brought up in Hampstead and babysat by professors thinks about “the assumptions behind social mobility”. According to Miliband, in a speech he gave yesterday, there is too much focus on creating the conditions to allow smart, ambitious working-class people to get ahead, and not enough focus on ensuring that inequality is not “handed down generation to generation, like the colour of our hair”. It sounds radical, but in truth Miliband is implicitly demonising, or at least problematising, the exercise of individual initiative to move on in life, since this leaves untouched the structural underpinnings of inequality. He is, in effect, playing off “grasping” members of the working classes against less fortunate members of the working classes, as if the social mobility of the former is somehow responsible for the social predicament of the latter.
His criticisms of social mobility have struck a chord with Leftists who have long felt uncomfortable with ambitious, materialistic working-class people (primarily because they don’t conform to the Full Monty model of less well-off people being hard-done-by but happy). One Labour blogger spoke for many when he applauded Miliband’s comments by saying, “The politics of social mobility has always left me cold”. Labour MP Hazel Blears has gone further, saying: “I’ve never understood the term social mobility because that implies you want to get out of somewhere… And I think there is a great deal to be said for making who you are something to be proud of.”
Blears’ comments cut to the heart of the modern Left’s discomfort with social mobility, whether it is expressed through crude, comical stereotypes of money-mad former council-estate dwellers or through seemingly radical speeches that ask “What about the rest of the working class?” What is really being expressed here is a disgust with poor people who don’t know their place, who aren’t proud of “who they are”, as Blears puts it, and who insist on leaping from one class into another. The reason these individuals make people like Miliband and Blears feel uncomfortable is because they are a stark reminder of the failure of the modern Left, and of Labour in particular, to make good on its 1960s promise to create an egalitarian, more prosperous society. The fact that working-class individuals who want to get ahead must play the same game as the upper classes of society – that is, be spectacularly self-possessed, individualistic, ruthless – is a powerful reminder of Labour’s failure to create a society in which all classes could equally pursue their ambitions. That is why so much bile is heaped on those “Loadsamoneys” who hail from working-class communities: their very existence, their attitudes and antics, expose Labour’s failure to improve the living conditions and raise the expectations of all sections of society.
And so the Left sneers at these socially mobile workers, because it would prefer that they stayed put rather than unwittingly shining a light on the fact that the Labour Left’s historic talk of boosting everyone’s fortunes has been so much flimflam. Their ambition is slated because it is too much of an uncomfortable echo of the kind of life and drive that Labour once promised to deliver to all. These people should stop focusing on “getting out of somewhere” and instead, in the embarrassing words of Leftist author Owen Jones, celebrate their “working classness”. That phrase suggests that being working class is an innate trait, like sex or hair colour. But it isn’t. It’s a social condition, or a social predicament if you like, and like all social conditions it can be overcome and transformed. Ambitious working-class people shouldn’t be made to feel bad about their material desires just because they make socially accomplished people like Miliband, Blears and Owen Jones feel awkward.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Clear definitions of social types and levels, clear methods of raising in stature are needed, AND incentives associated with values based instead of cash based social mobility (capitalist plutocracies are NOT ethical or moral societies incidentally) should counter the ‘hostility to social mobility (i.e. here is what needs to be abided by, these are the classes etc.. instead of money rules all which eventually degenerates into dirty money politics and hired hitmen of the materialist plutocrat method – a person who will bribe their way into power, use the Judiciary as a weapon, will also kill their way into power, returning to the dark ages).
ARTICLE 4
U.S. Army General: The Whole Northern Hemisphere is at Risk of Becoming Largely Uninhabitable – Mac Slavo – May 25th, 2012 – SHTFplan.com
You may have entertained the idea of an improbable civilization ending events such as a ‘global killer’ asteroid, earth crust displacement or massive solar storms, but what if there existed a situation right now that was so serious that it literally threatened our very existence?
According to a host of scientists, nuclear experts and researchers, were are facing exactly such a scenario – and current efforts may not be able to stop it.
When the Fukushima nuclear plants sustained structural damage and a catastrophic failure of their spent fuel cooling systems in the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and Tsunami in 2011, it left the government of Japan, Tokyo Power and nuclear regulatory agencies around the world powerless to contain the release of deadly radiation. A year on, the battle for control of Fukushima continues to no avail.
It’s estimated that tens of thousands of people in Japan and the whole of North America have been affected, with reports indicating that children in Japan and the U.S. are already being born with birth defects, as well as thousands who have already succumbed to radiation related illness. As we initially followed the breaking news during the first thirty days of the accident, we suggested the Fukushima disaster would be worse than Chernobyl. Not even we could have imagined how much worse it would be.
If current estimates are correct, Fukushima has already released as much radiation into the atmosphere and Pacific Ocean as Chernobyl, and the potential for a disaster at least ten times worse is highly probable in the event of another earthquake or accident that leads to a collapse of the cooling structures which are above ground and have already suffered significant damage. According to U.S. Army General Albert N. Stubblebine (ret.) of the Natural Solutions Foundation, the situation is extremely serious and poses a significant danger to our entire civilization. Since TEPCO and the Japanese government have refused the entombment option (as the Russians did with Chernobyl) the world is at the mercy of nature. A mistake here would cause the deaths of tens of millions of people across the globe. If there ever existed a threat that could cause the end of the world as we know it, it’s the ongoing and unresolved nuclear saga in Japan:
When the highly radioactive Spent Fuel Rods are exposed to air, there will be massive explosions releasing many times the amount or radiation released thus far. Bizarrely, they are stored three stories above ground in open concrete storage pools. Whether through evaporation of the water in the pools, or due to the inevitable further collapse of the structure, there is a severe risk. United States public health authorities agree that tens of thousands of North Americans have already died from the Fukushima calamity. When the final cataclysm occurs, sooner rather than later, the whole Northern Hemisphere is at risk of becoming largely uninhabitable.
Fact. On March 11, 2011, Fukushima Daichi nuclear power station with six nuclear reactors suffered cataclysmic damage that some believe was a man made event,and the resulting Tsunami. Hydrogen explosions…at least one nuclear explosion… and then subsequent deterioration of the visible plants at five of those reactors have created a threat situation unparalleled in human history.
Fact. Despite denial and cover-up, the reality has emerged, that enormous amounts of radioactive material has been spewing into the atmosphere, polluting the groundwater, and the food of Japan, and entering by the tens of millions of gallons the waters of the Pacific.
There’s no way to sugarcoat these facts. Denying them, blocking them out, pretending that they are not real is of no help to you and your family, and it leaves you totally unprepared for a danger that the Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning about since the first day. As of three weeks ago the levels of radiation inside of the spent fuel pools of unit no. 2 are too high to measure. Get that… too high to measure. And, the water there is evaporating, meaning that heat and radiation could easily build to very high levels.
Very simply put, if this much Cesium 137 is released, it will destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugulistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.
We can play the denial game all day long and pretend that, because the mainstream media is not reporting on it, there is no threat, but the facts are quite clear. This is, without a doubt, the most immediate threat faced by the world. It’s so serious, in fact, that the Japanese government has considered and put into place evacuation plans for the whole of Tokyo – some 40 million people. Reports are also emerging that suggest a collapse of the spent fuel pools would be so serious that the entire country of Japan may have to be evacuated. The entire country – that’s 125 million refugees that will cause an unprecedented humanitarian disaster. Before you argue that these are the ravings of just alternative media conspiracy theorists and fearmongers, consider the assessment put forth by Robert Alvarez , a senior policy adviser to the Secretary for National Security and the Environment for the US Department of Energy: The No. 4 pool is about 100 feet above ground, is structurally damaged and is exposed to the open elements. If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident. The infrastructure to safely remove this material was destroyed as it was at the other three reactors. Spent reactor fuel cannot be simply lifted into the air by a crane as if it were routine cargo. In order to prevent severe radiation exposures, fires and possible explosions, it must be transferred at all times in water and heavily shielded structures into dry casks.. As this has never been done before, the removal of the spent fuel from the pools at the damaged Fukushima-Dai-Ichi reactors will require a major and time-consuming re-construction effort and will be charting in unknown waters.
The total spent reactor fuel inventory at the Fukushima-Daichi site contains nearly half of the total amount of Cs-137 estimated by the NCRP to have been released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants (~270 million curies or ~9.9 E+18 Becquerel). It is important for the public to understand that reactors that have been operating for decades, such as those at the Fukushima-Dai-Ichi site, have generated some of the largest concentrations of radioactivity on the planet. Regulatory agencies all over the world are warning of the potentiality of a further degradation of the Fukushima nuclear reactors and spent fuel pools, and the subsequent nuclear fallout that would follow. If these reactors go – and they could at any moment for any number of reasons – we’re looking at a situation for which you simply cannot stock enough food, or water, or supplies. Radiation would spread across the entire northern hemisphere and would be impossible to contain. While we’ve argued in the past that there is no place we’d rather be than in the United States of America in the event of a socio-economic collapse or global conflict, if these spent fuel pools collapse, then an international exit strategy may be the only option. Because details are sparse and research limited, it is difficult to predict what nuclear fall out from Japan may look like. The following map may be of some help, as it details the estimated fallout pattern resulting from a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. You’ll note that, while most of the world would be irradiated, the southern hemisphere would be your best bet to avoid the brunt of it:
Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to http://www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
The capitalist-consumerist paradigm is over. The peoples of the planet are at a cultural-conservatism, wealth-redistribution phase. A report said that solar panels covering the size of Nevada can power the whole of the USA. To protect the environment, shut down all those nuke plants and decommission all nuke warheads, Bury all of the nuclear material in a NON-QUAKE ZONE and go non-GMO. Distribute the land equally to everyone for subsistence farming, end of the food stamp and distribution or labour and work problems.
As for financing . . . Need to eat? Grow own food. Need materials for house? Grow materials from trees and build your own with some carpentry, quarry your own stones or bag up compacted soil or even compacted TRASH. Education? Based from internet FOR FREE and marked on ability to think critically (a handful of questions on ethics and logic, nominally COMMON SENSE morality (not the length of skirt or sexual orientation, if they they gamble or drink or use organics, but if one will be a corporate raider, accept golden parachute bonuses – instead of amending company policy to be fair to stockholders – when a company collapses taking out ordinary 401K type stockholders, or write a law lowering election deposits instead of assigning taxpayer finds to one’s own funeral which has not occurred by sheer skewed sense of entitlement, raising bureaucrat salaries many times above GDP growth and inflation, holding on to power after 2 terms effectively preventing the rest of the nation from participating in policy making (sometimes generationally like so many Arab Spring type dictators) . . .
The above . . . will decide who has the ethical balls, rather than being a greedy, lazy and mob minded, yet cowardly pack of followers afraid to step out of line to make a point, or simply spineless and going along with ‘the flow’ (the fundo-psyche-politico-sycophant establishments decided to punish some of us ‘activists’ and critical thinkers for making a point and a stand . . . ), to insist on the need of TERM LIMITED bureaucrats) joins the army or police, or is best suited for research and trend studies law amending studies etc., or entirely unsuitable for anything – meaning subsistence sponsored by government or their family (mainly those who ask for near 2 times 401K for their funeral funds simply because they were some bureaucrat in the past) . . . not rote, learn, memorise and toe authoritarian political lines, there are no such lines, humanity is as free as the next bacterium excepting the civilising effect of laws that prevent abuse or parasitisation of others.
The earth belongs to everyone right (99%!~)? So everyone has the right to a piece of land enough for their own families (thats right no 2nd 3rd or 10th homes for plutocrats or law makers that allow vast swathes of arable or liveable land to be unusable while the homeless who could be growing their own food or building their own homes are stuck in cities disallowed from using that same land . . . or insisting that accreditation bureaucrats and boards and buildings, building materials suppliers, building contractors or stationary and book supply contractors, bureaucrats, then canteen suppliers and food preparers who want to value add to their profits (20% to 300% increases?) sweepers and gardeners and security guards (who all would possibly rather prefer to be growing their own food on land distributed from unused land banks of ‘state land’ if given a choice) to be needed to qualify an education, instead of anyone who doesn’t mind sitting in an empty parking lot to ‘educate’ then allow those who attended to claim a degree to start working . . . a degree could cost nothing well at most everyone collectively could give the lecturer minimum wage (100 students per open air class divided by 7.50 per x10 hours = 75 cents per student per day . . . 273.75 per year of ‘University’) . . . students do you know why your degree costs so much now? Because of Education-Financier Complex described above . . . ). The cities earlier built needn’t even be abandoned though different rules could apply (Capitalist non-distribution Zones?) since those are supposed to be ‘prime territory’. WTF is UN or NAM doing?
Earth has 36.48 billion acres. However, there are only 12 million square miles (7.68 billion acres) of arable land. In 2006, there were 1.15 acres of arable land per person, world-wide (i.e. 7.68 billion acres / 6.68 billion people). With irrigation and forestration work (think Gaddafi’s GMRP Nubian Aquifer system -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Manmade_River), this could be 100 times more in as soon as 10-20 years.
Now, think 3 dimensionally in existing arable areas, where up to 3 to 20 times the amount of arable land could be created (with 15 storey high , or 50 perhaps added modularly, if needed, via the corkscrew form structures seen in link below) . . .
See Response to Article 7
https://malaysiandemocracy.wordpress.com/category/planet-earth/
See responses to Articles 3 and 4 :
Finally, voters should not vote self serving plutocrats, or fundos or undemocratic minded nepotists, into power who do not respect term limits or understand ethical prohibitions in creating blocs of relatives (much less term limitless ones) in government. Whats wrong with everyone? Too stupid? Who have you been voting for? Check the background or run for election yourselves!
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Stars and Cults of Personalty Section
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ARTICLE 1
Chivalry isn’t dead! Jennifer Lopez holds hands with Casper Smart as the toyboy lugs bags – by Leah Simpson – PUBLISHED: 02:19 GMT, 21 May 2012 | UPDATED: 16:20 GMT, 21 May 2012
He may only be a spring chicken at the age of 25. But despite the wide age gap, Jennifer Lopez’s new flame has all the qualities of a traditional and perhaps older gentleman. The 42-year-old’s backing dancer beau, Casper Smart, accompanied his lady on a shopping trip to the Grove in West Hollywood today. Age gap love: Jennifer Lopez locked hands with her boyfriend Casper Smart as the pair shopped at The Grove in West Hollywood, California today. And while a retail outing with their partner sounds like a nightmare for many men, Smart seemed perfectly happy to be at Lopez’s beck and call as she picked out fashionable items.
They emerged from the celebrity-favourite shopping centre showing no signs of bickering between the clothing rails as they held hands and walked thought the parking lot.
The young man even lugged his partner’s bulging bags as she simply carried her bag over her shoulder.
Bagsy this one! Jennifer looked smug her man carried her Zara bags around
Bagsy this one! Jennifer looked smug her man carried her Zara bags around
Nothing but a number: The performer’s younger man is 25 while she is 42
Trendy boy: Smart dressed stylishly in a trilby hat and sunglasses
While trendy Casper donned a trilby hat and sunglasses with his white T-shirt and black trousers, his girlfriend stood out as they made their way to the car.
She drew attention to her shoulders as she wore her hair in a bun on top of her head and blue jumpsuit embellished with a waist belt.
Cream gladiator sandals graced her feet and white framed sunglasses shielded her eyes.
Making a fuss: He even opened the car door for his woman showing chivalry isn’t dead
Making a fuss: He opened the car door for his woman showing chivalry isn’t dead
Casper was quick to open the passenger door for his older woman as she approach the vehicle so it’s no wonder, she has been singing his praises recently.
She unleashed a cringeworthy PDA when she performed on American Idol earlier this season with her lover also on stage with her.
In a moment that saw Casper pick confetti out of J-Lo’s hair after the performance ended in a flurry of ticker tape, she immediately said to the audience: ‘He’s so cute!’
Additionally, last month People magazine reported that he sees the star as royalty.
A source said: ‘There is a lot of love between [them], he treats her like a queen.’
Passion for fashion: J-Lo looked great in a blue jumpsuit with light-coloured bag, shoes and belt
Passion for fashion: J-Lo looked great in a blue jumpsuit with light-coloured bag
what because no other man anywhere has ever carried his womans bags? tell ya what come take pics of me day to day, opening doors for women, carrying bags for my partner, women first etc etc but i dont have a news article do i?
– Michael Smith, Pontefract, 22/5/2012 10:47
Rating 3
wish my man would treat me like that! lol am i right ladies??
– jennyfromtheblock, Sheffield, UK, 22/5/2012 00:12
Rating 16
There is nothing like a hot, fit, young stallion for some fun and rejuvenation! 🙂 Enjoy it, JLO! good on you!
– a., England, 21/5/2012 23:58
Rating 24
Will she snap off his thing if he tries to leave?
– wondering, Canada, 21/5/2012 23:21
Rating 8
Same type of pictures as LeAnn Rimes, so is she pay DM too? lol ……….. selective indignation.
– Jullou, Glendale, AZ, 21/5/2012 18:35
Rating 5
Well, she’s his BOSS & his sole source of income, right? I’m not sure he’s such a fabulous gentleman, maybe just a good employee– sorry!
– jenisoutherngirl, Bham, USA, 21/5/2012 18:14
Rating 60
And man servant is all he really is. I give it one year. Meanwhile her two kids suffer all this and will be in rehab by the time they’re 18.
– Doug Smart, New York, USA, 21/5/2012 17:49
Rating 38
HA! I love it. One photo signifies his character and their relationship entirely. If he was snapped putting it down I wonder what the article would be about….zzz
– Michelle, London, 21/5/2012 16:23
Rating 17
It’s amazing what extensions can do to Jeniifers hair, but when they come off, theres litteraloy just a small amount of hair. love her though
– Tino, Brighton, United Kingdom, 21/5/2012 15:49
Rating 29
J-Lo is millions times better than Kim
– Genevieve, bristol, 21/5/2012 15:39
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Both of them should hire a footman, maid, or few for this sort of thing if Casper wants to raise his status to that of an equal.. IDK but some cynical feminists could well be thinking how they got all the guys under control. Carrying bags or opening doors is not chivalry, this is the work of footmen glorified as chivalry. Chivalry is a mindset and for the poor who cannot afford footmen, yes this would count. But to do a high profile MSM on a couple at this level of wealth who could hire an entourage of servants and footmen, this ends up potentially (I stress potentially, so will the psychoanalysts lay off whatever presumed smartsauce – theirs or others), as a farcical take on the concept of chivalry per se to manipulate the masses with a feminist agenda instead. In fact a PA designated as a PA who has any pride of self, would (especially if pointedly asked) REFUSE to carry bags, open doors, or carry umbrellas, these sorts of jobs are decidely menial in nature, money is one thing, but job description and the ability to REFUSE to do such work, is another. The bosses who do fire for such refusals are despots and no respectable members of society.
Of course if you want to say, these are your mere ‘Sudra entertainer’ class, and to not take them seriously, we could well just ignore all MSM (and MSM manipulation) as well.
ARTICLE 2
Geri Halliwell hints of Spice Girls reunion in time to perform for Jubilee and Olympics – by Katie Nicholl – PUBLISHED: 01:56 GMT, 20 May 2012 | UPDATED: 01:56 GMT, 20 May 2012
Geri Halliwell has offered a glimmer of hope to Spice Girls fans desperate to see the Nineties group reform for the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. ‘It would be unfair of me to reveal anything now,’ Geri, 39, hinted with a wink at the Heather Kerzner and Marie Curie Cancer Care dinner.
Melanie ‘Mel C’ Chisholm, 38, added to the intrigue, saying: ‘I think we need to get our skates on and do it before we are too old!’ Sparking rumours: Geri Halliwell has dropped a hint that the Spice Girls could reform in time for the Queen’s Jubilee and the Olympics. Reunited: Fans of the 90s group the Spice Girls may not have to wait long to see them back on stage. Party girl Kate adds a twist of glamour. Kate Moss pictured with Heather at the event.
Hosting a glamorous fundraising party at Claridge’s in Mayfair last week for Marie Curie Cancer Care, socialite Heather Kerzner tried to persuade pal Kate Moss to get up and sing with music legends Ronnie Wood and Sam Moore. Kate, pictured with Heather at the event, has been known to have impromptu singalongs – once joining in with Primal Scream and on another occasion duetting with Boy George – but this time insisted her singing wasn’t good enough. But she did jump on stage to dance and help at the auction. ‘It was amazing to see her on stage with Ronnie and Sam,’ said Heather. Kate turned up with husband Jamie Hince and Heather said: ‘It was lovely seeing them so happy.’ The party raised more than £620,000. Charlotte Church is turning to Florence Welch for inspiration as she prepares to relaunch her singing career.
The 26-year-old is making her comeback next month at the philosophy and music festival How The Light Gets In, which is running alongside the Hay literary festival at Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border. Charlotte, who rose to fame as a classical singer before crossing over to pop music in 2005, will perform live for the first time in two years. ‘Her sound is a cross between Florence and the Machine and Kate Bush,’ said a spokesman for the festival.
Charlotte said: ‘It’s a great festival and I’ve missed playing live. The music is different to anything I’ve done before, so I recommend people come with an open mind.’ American Pie actress Tara Reid has been canoodling in Cannes with 60-year-old gems tycoon Fawaz Gruosi. The blonde Hollywood star, 36, was spotted at a Raffles boat party that the founder of de Grisogono luxury jewellery was hosting with Eva Longoria for the film festival. ‘Tara and Faraz could not keep their hands off each other,’ a source says. ‘She sat on his lap and he ran his hands all over her. They left together and he certainly seemed to be her sugar daddy.’ Fawaz counts Naomi Campbell among his many younger female admirers.
[[[ *** RESPONSE *** ]]]
Has been ‘time out’ for a decade or more for these married mothers. Come on girls, look for and even FUND replacement lookalikes and give some younger kids a chance in the spotlight. Spicegirls can live on but don’t make a Mubarak or a Gaddafi out of the girl power. Some memes just don’t grow better when their creators get older. Burnt out vs fresh faced! Try the below charts for ‘rating’ stars :
Rating Stars (or any public figures like television hosts, though a programme with a target demogrphic that consists of married people can ignore the marriage factor)
+2 Unattached Bisexual
+1 Unattached Hetero
0 On and off with someone not too unpopular
-1 Attached (+1 for the ‘loves to break up relationships type’ but this isn’t exactly healthy to promote . . . )
-2 Married (+1 for the ‘cast eyes on wives type’ but this isn’t exactly healthy to promote . . . )
-3 Married with children (+2 for the ‘MILF chaser type’ but this isn’t exactly healthy to promote . . . )
+2 Plays typical heroes / real historical heroes (may backfire if entirely off casting expectations)
+1 Plays cartoon/fiction(cosplay)/fuzzy-animals(furries)/heroes
0 Plays typical characters
-1 Plays atypical characters/atypical-non-fuzzy animals
-2 Plays villians
+2 extreme good looks
+1 good looks
0 average looks
-1 bad looks (but if matched with the corrct film ideal for such looks can be +1 memorable)
+2 extreme bad looks (but if matched with the corrct film ideal for such looks can be +2 memorable)
+1 consistent character depictions/style type (i.e. ken-barbies stay ken-barbies, or goths stay goth, not turn into corporate types then switch again etc.
baldies stay bald, hairstyle types stay consistent (even if unsuitable which in itself can be an identifier and consistency)
0 average people do no stand out or perhaps have no chance to
-1 inconsistent character depictions/style type
+1 represents largest class of society
+1 ethnic appropriate / ethnic accurate or neutral modern
+1 regular job very high ranked (spouse is high ranked)
extra-dramatic
(not necessarily useful or helpful – robbers who got away without killing anyone)/popular or helpful-useful-luxury day job
(religious figures not part of scandlised faiths, military)
recreation related jobs, sports related (recreation) jobs
0 regular job
-1 unpopular, unpleasant or unhelpful day job (menial work, scavenging small business types, corporate raiders, robbers who were caught – those who don’t become ‘cool’)
malaysiandemocracy 
I do not even understand how I finished up right here, but I believed this submit used to be good. I do not recognize who you’re but certainly you are going to a famous blogger when you are not already. Cheers!