Wikileaks is about to blow away the secrecy that allows tax cheats world-wide to stash their cash in Swiss banks, no questions asked.

Governments have been threatening for years to act against tax havens but what has really changed?

In truth, not a lot.

The super-rich are still playing the system while the little people dutifully pay their taxes.

The gap between the mega rich and the rest of us grows ever wider but where is the sense of outrage at a system which allows this to happen?

In the United States we learn that the top 25 hedge-fund managers made an unbelievable $1 billion each in 2009.

A report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reveals that Canada’s best paid Chief Executives amassed an average of $6.6 million in 2009 when the average Canadian income was a more modest $42,988.

Those CEOs made as much by 2.30pm on 3 January – the first working day of the year – as the average worker makes all year long.

An exasperated Jim Stanford, an economist with the Canadian Auto Workers Union, wonders how long these excesses will be tolerated while the public bickers “over wage gaps between unionised garbage collectors and non-union fast-food workers”.

If Wikileaks makes the world sit up and take notice it will have done us all a public service.

Andrew Stephenson MP and the Education Maintenance Allowance

Tomorrow (19 January) the Commons debates the future of the Education Maintenance Allowance that the Coalition Government is pledged to abolish.

The future of the EMA is likely to be a big issue in East Lancashire. Lots of young people rely on it.

In November, Pendle’s Andrew Stephenson, told MPs: 

“As a Conservative, I am a great fan of EMA; 65% of students in my constituency going to Nelson and Colne College receive EMA. The Government are not scrapping EMA; they are simply replacing it with more targeted support.”

What splendid insouciance! 

I suppose the simple question is this: how many N&C students are going to lose their £30 per week EMA as a result of this targeting?

And what will the “great fan of EMA” have to say to them?

Attachments:

Recession Proof.pdf

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