London Conversation

No More Change to FOI

The BBC rarely responds to Freedom of Information Requests.

But it sends them.

Newsnight Presenter Chris Cook uses FOI but hides when quizzed himself.

BBC refuse to reveal Chris Cook’s Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form.

Civil Service Chief Heywood gets a grilling over EU Bias

#Brexit #NoTTIP

#noTTIP

#noTTIP

Trichet says “Ireland saved herself” and that there was no pressure from Frankfurt!

Not sure if anyone believes him.

#megabackdoorbailout

Sir Jeremy Heywood, aka Sir Cover-Up is being grilled by the Public Administration Select Committee over the decision to prevent Brexit ministers from accessing EU papers.

Jenkin is a Eurosceptic. Should be fun.

#brexit #nottip

What makes a successful work environment?

a. Furniture

b. Wallpaper

c. Acoustics

What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team

Linda Kaucher of Stop TTIP joined us this evening to discuss CETA, TTIP, TISA and what is currently missing from the UK BREXIT debate.

Linda uses and explains several trade terms, concepts and rulings.

Discussions also centred around the left’s unwillingness to campaign for BREXIT, despite the cheap labour implications implicit within the international trade agenda.

US trade negotiator: We don’t want ‘TTIP lite’

Tom Barlow, Political Editor of Real Media, discusses prospects for a Leftist BREXIT.

Tony Blair : un Brexit serait "extrêmement grave" by Europe1fr

Sir Roger Carr is the Deputy Chair of the BBC Trust and Chair of BAE Systems

Bill Gates talks with WSJ’s Rebecca Blumenstein at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, about digital technology and how genetically modified organisms are the key to ending hunger in Africa.

#GMfood #TTIP #Gates #nosuchthingasafreegift

Malmstrom does her best to sell TTIP to a hostile crowd in Amsterdam.

#TTIP #BREXIT

#BREXIT

Tensions in Labour and Tory camps could lead to UK electorate voting to leave EU.

we’re concerned that buried in the small print of this there’s some quite sinister stuff going on that could fatally undermine our ability to act collectively to do things like protect the environment, protect our rights as workers as consumers in the safety of our food clean air clean water if doing that is likely to hit the profits of big corporations the real winners from that corporate lobbyists are big international corporations and they’re the ones that have really been pushing this agenda toughen teacher for really two sides of the same coin and people in Brussels are increasingly starting to realize that this is very much bound up with the things that are being pushed through spot trade deals to stop us as democracy and I think because the issues around immigration her so controversial and frankly because there has been so much cum scaremongering around immigration in the debate on the EU a lot of other aspects of the renegotiation of EU membership havereally passed under the radar I don’t think this is what the British people on for the simple reason that 99% of them don’t know anything about it.

#BREXIT

#NoTTIP

#BREXIT #TTIP

This year’s International Petroleum Conference took place last week.

Russia Today were there:

As the oil industry’s annual conference takes place in London predicting the price of oil remains a difficult task. Crude prices hit a twelve year low they stabilized on Wednesday but the market is still very much volatile — prices strengthened after Iran said that it was ready to cooperate with Saudi Arabia in the global oil markets.

Let’s use similar language but change the context:

1. As the movie industry’s annual awards show takes place in Hollywood tonight, predicting movie attendance remains a difficult task.

There are three ‘doing’ words in this sentence:

1. takes place in Hollywood

2. predicting movie attendance

3. remains a difficult task

As W takes place in X predicting Y remains a Z.

2. After share prices remained unchanged for a third month running, they did start to move on Thursday but the outlook remains very stable.

3. Prices fell after Iran made it clear it won’t co-operate with Saudi Arabia in the global oil markets.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne was recently asked to defend Google’s tax deal at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

How much tax does Google pay in the UK?

Transcript:

This is a real vindication of this goverment’s approach.

When I became chancellor there were some companies that paid little or no tax.

That rightly caused a lot of public anger.

We said we’d take action now we have companies like google paying tax, I want the message to go out that in Britain taxes are low but they have to be paid and I expect more companies to follow suit.

Well let’s be clear, decisions about indivodual taxes are for our independent HMRC but we’re talking about taxes that google paid on profits in the years 2005 till 2011, by the way those were years that this government wasn’t even in office.

Now we’ve got the tax being paid and HMRC says that’s the right amount of tax for the profits made by Google back then.