Tories offer DUP £1bn bribe for Northern Ireland

Theresa May has caved in to demands from the DUP for yet more English money to subsidise their spending in return for supporting the Tories at Westminster.

Labour politicians up in arms about the £1bn bribe have short memories since it was a Labour government that introduced the Barnett Formula which guarantees extra spending per head of population in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compared to England and successive Labour governments have used the Barnett Formula to buy Scottish and Welsh votes.

The Barnett Formula currently gives a subsidy of £1,623 per head to Scotland, £1,180 per head to Wales and £2,347 per head to Northern Ireland. This comes to £4.25bn for Northern Ireland with the Tories now promising to add another £1bn on top to secure the DUP's 10 votes.

A Labour government introduced the Barnett Formula in 1979 which was conceived by Labour MP Joel Barnett (who now campaigns against the use of his own formula). Successive Labour governments have abused the Barnett Formula to buy votes in their former Scottish and Welsh strongholds. The Labour government led by Tony Blair introduced devolution for Scotland and Wales, deliberately leaving out England and successive Labour (and Tory) governments have blocked access to the minutes of the Cabinet meetings where that decision was made. Labour courted the DUP in both 2010 and 2015 with the offer of more money for Northern Ireland. Whilst still a Labour MP, Jack Straw said "the English as a race are not worth saving". Former (Scottish) Labour Lord Chancellor for England, Charlie Falconer, said that there would never be an English Parliament. Labour have consistently fought any attempts to give financial or political equality to England.

The Labour Party never has and never will be the party that represents English interests. The same goes for the British nationalist Conservative Party. UKIP is the only mainstream party that is calling for an English Parliament, the abolition of the Barnett Formula and an end to the institutional discrimination against England. We are the only party that represents English interests and the hypocrites in the Labour Party complaining that the Tories are copying their ideas should hang their heads in shame for their past and present actions.

Hypocritical Labour complain about UKIP's mock leaflet in Oldham

Labour have launched a hypocritical attack on UKIP for distributing a mock Labour leaflet pointing out Jeremy Corbyn's policies.

In this year's general election Labour distributed leaflets all over the country claiming UKIP wants to privatise the NHS, even distributing them to students at a Keele University election event and in Northumberland they distributed a letter claiming that UKIP was calling for mothers to lose state benefits. In the 2013 local elections the Conservatives distributed a fake UKIP leaflet in Lancashire and Labour were doing it in the South Shields by-election.

Trade union sockpuppets, Hope not Hate, have put a considerable amount of effort into publishing fake social media content and defamatory and inflammatory material about UKIP candidates to try and prop up the Labour Party.

The Labour MP for Denton & Reddish, Andrew Gwynne, has accused UKIP of "trying to take Oldham backwards to the days of division" and says that the leaflet would only heighten fears of racial tension. Oldham saw a series of race riots in 2001 after white communities retaliated to a growing number of racist attacks from asian gangs and the violence escalated. Gwynne is claiming that highlighting Jeremy Corbyn's policies of uncontrolled immigration, abolishing the armed forces, abolishing the monarchy and ceding the Falklands to Argentina - all of which are his policies - will result in a return of race riots and suggests the timing is inappropriate because of the terrorist attacks in Paris last week.

Its hard to decide what's most pathetic - the breathtaking hypocrisy, the suggestion that exposing the Labour leader's policies will lead to race riots or using the Paris terrorist attacks for political point scoring.

With three weeks until voters in Oldham West & Royton go to the polls, Labour are 1/6 favourites to win with UKIP a fairly close second with odds of 7/2 and the vote splitting Conservatives a distant third place with odds of 100/1. Opinion polls in the run-up to the by-election in the neighbouring Heywood & Middleton constituency last October predicted an almost 6,000 vote majority for Labour when in reality UKIP's John Bickley fell just 617 votes short of taking what was once a Labour safe seat.

The polling companies will have revisited their weighting after that result and the party's massive 3.9m votes in the general election this year but they're not going to lose their bias toward the status quo. The result is going to be a lot closer than any of the polling companies predict and John Bickley stands a very good chance of winning Oldham West & Royton for UKIP.

Tax dodging Guardian falsely implying Aaron Banks and Leave.EU are dodging tax

The Guardian has tried to smear Aaron Banks and the Leave.EU campaign by implying that they're involved in tax avoidance schemes.

Banks asked Gibraltar-based STM Fidecs - a company that he used to own share in - to set up the limited company behind the Leave.EU campaign. They set up the company in July and transferred it to Banks in August. Using an agent to set up a company for you is standard practice and using one that you are familiar with and trust is common sense.

Leave.EU is registered in the UK and registered to pay tax in the UK. Banks clearly chose STM Fidecs as an agent to set up the company for him because he knows and trusts them, not because of their speciality in "maximising tax efficiency for high wealth individuals"  and "structuring international groups". Leave.EU is neither a high wealth individual nor an international group and is registered in the UK so it's hard to see how the Guardian could infer any benefit for Leave.EU or Banks from having STM Fidecs set up the company.

The Guardian tried to paint Banks as a shady tax dodger last year, prompting him to publish a copy of the cheque he sent to HMRC for his £1,865,100 personal tax bill and threaten legal action.
Of course, the Guardian aren't stupid enough to actually come out with an accusation of Banks or Leave.EU being involve in tax avoidance. They've just taken the facts, embellished them with unrelated and irrelevant information and left it to the read to put 2 and 2 together and come up with 5. This is something of a speciality for the Guardian whose readership is mostly too lazy or too stupid to separate facts from propaganda.

Something else that's a speciality for the Guardian is tax avoidance. Their in-depth knowledge of how companies like Starbucks or Amazon legally avoid paying tax doesn't come from research, they have first hand experience of tax dodging themselves.

The Guardian's offices are owned by an offshore subsidiary based in the Cayman Islands, the world's most notorious tax haven. This tax dodging company owns many of Guardian Media Group's investments and is shrouded in secrecy thanks to Cayman privacy laws. Last year the Guardian sold its controlling share of Autotrader to Apax Partners for £600m. How much tax did the Guardian pay on this £600m cash windfall? Nothing. They used the Substantial Shareholding Exemption scheme to avoid paying the £126m corporation tax bill on the profits.

In 2007, the Guardian purchased Emap for £1bn but managed to find a way of avoiding paying about £120m in stamp duty on the purchase. Meanwhile, in 2009 the Guardian made a pre-tax profit of £306.4m and ended up getting a tax rebate of £800k, leaving them with a corporation tax bill of just £800k or a measly 0.26% of their profits.

The Guardian are the ultimate hypocrites on taxation, bleating about tax dodgers and calling for boycotts of companies that don't pay their "fair share" of tax whilst funnelling their profits through companies in tax havens and dodging hundreds of millions of pounds of tax. One of the tax dodges the Guardian uses is moving money to Luxembourg where it pays 0.125% corporation tax through a registered tax avoidance scheme run by PriceWaterhouseCooper instead of the 20% rate it would pay if it wasn't part of a tax avoidance scheme or paid the corporation tax in the UK. This tax dodge is only possible because of EU double taxation regulations. No wonder the tax dodging Guardian is so keen to keep us in the EU.

Labour zero hour hypocrisy

While Ed Miliband is bashing big business for using zero hour contracts, 36 of his MPs and a number Labour-run councils up and down the country are employing people on them.

The 36 Labour MPs who use the zero hour contracts include Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls and a total of 68 Labour MPs have used them in the last 2 years.

A number of Labour-run councils also employ staff on zero hour contracts including Derby, Gateshead and Bury councils who between them employed over 6k people on zero hour contracts at the end of 2013.

Labour Councillors' law firm paid employee less than minimum wage

A law firm owned by two Labour councillors in Coventry has been taken to a tribunal for paying an employee just £2.97 per hour.

Deputy leader of Coventry City Council, Cllr Phil Townshend and fellow councillor, Abdul Khan, paid a litigation assistant just £20 a day for two years through their law firm, The Law Partnership Solicitors LLP. They agreed to pay him £4,000 following a preliminary hearing last year but Aaron Matthews claims they owe him £9,995 in unpaid wages.

Cllr Townshend's previous law firm, Townshends LLP, went into liquidation two years ago owing £339k to the taxman so he joined Khan's firm as a partner. One of the key pledges of his Labour administration is to tackle poverty caused by low wages.

Labour want you to pay to go to hospital

The Labour Party wants to charge a £10 per month subscription fee for the NHS and £20 per day for hospital visits on top of the National Insurance we already pay for the NHS.

Former health adviser to Tony Blair, Lord Warner, outlined his proposals in a report for the Reform think tank in March this year. The Labour Party claims that it doesn't agree with Lord Warner but if suggesting that people could choose to pay to be seen sooner in A&E if they are assessed as non-urgent means UKIP wants to charge you to visit your GP as Labour keeps on telling people then a Labour peer saying that you should pay to use the NHS after you've already paid for it through your taxes surely makes it Labour party policy.

Hypocrites attack UKIP over poppy wreaths

A couple of UKIP branches have attracted criticism for laying wreaths at Remembrance Day events, with one in particular coming under sustained criticism for the size of the UKIP logo in the centre of their wreath.

Members of Plymouth & South West Devon branch laid a wreath at the war memorial in Plymstock which had a large UKIP logo in the centre. Labour and Tory councillors immediately went on the attack seeking to score political points despite being told that the design of the wreath is something that the Royal British Legion decide on and that members of the branch have no say in what it looks like. The Royal British Legion have also confirmed that they produce wreaths with the logos of all the mainstream political parties on so similar wreaths will have been laid across the country by the Tories and Labour.

A wreath with a small UKIP logo was also laid in Lincolnshire without the branch's knowledge which also brought out the political opportunists with the leader of the Tories there trying to make political capital out of it by attacking the local party.

Trade union funded anti-UKIP campaigners, Hope not Hate, have attacked UKIP's Thurrock branch for laying the same type of wreath - the design that the Royal British Legion choose and the branch has no say over - at the war memorial at Grays in Thurrock.

It's worth noting the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all lay wreaths at war memorials on Remembrance Day and have done for years yet there has been no criticism in the press of those parties for doing what some UKIP branches have done in exactly the same circumstances.

Three of these identical poppy wreaths are an acceptable way to remember our war dead and one of them is a disrespectful political statement that brings shame onto the people who bought it and belittles the contribution our armed forces to the nation. Can you spot the odd one out?

EU contributions to rise by 60%

The net contribution paid by the UK to the European Empire is rising by 60% in April to £6.4bn.

This figure isn't the actual cost of EU membership, it's merely the amount on the books with "EU contribution" next to it. The true cost, with the 60% increase in direct contributions, is closer to £900 per person, per year.

The Treasury said it is right that we "share the burden of membership with new accession countries" even though we weren't asked if we wanted them, weren't asked if we wanted to pay for them and certainly can't afford to pay for them.

The Treasury also said:

The prime minister has made clear our belief is that it is right for us to share the burden of membership of the European Union with the new accession countries so that every part of the European Union can look forward to prosperity in the future.

If only that were the case but of course it's not. This is soviet-style socialism we're talking about here, the objective is to bring everyone down to the same level of deprivation and misery. The European Empire is making prosperous countries poorer and destitute countries richer with the aim of getting to whole continent just above the poverty line, too poor to trade with countries outside of the EU and most citizens dependent on the state to feed and clothe them.

The hypocritical Tories have criticised the increased bill, saying that it's not a particularly good idea to be handing over more cash to the EU in the middle of a recession. But the Tories have no solution - they support continued membership of the European Empire and all the costs and harmful directives that are associated with it. David Camoron is committed to keeping the UK as a member of the European Empire in defiance of logic and public opinion.