Posts
The
slippery slope to fascism – soon to come to a village near you
Fracking
on private land to be permitted in Queen’s speech – leak
An infrastructure and competitiveness bill to be announced in the Queen’s speech on Wednesday will change trespassing laws, allowing shale gas exploration firms to drill on private land without requiring the permission of the owner, UK media report.
RT,
1
June, 2014
The
Queens speech marks the formal start of the parliamentary year and
sets the proposed government agenda for the session, which will run
from June 4.
On
Sunday, British media started leaking the contents of this year's
address, its topics varying from fracking to a “radical
shake-up of workplace pensions.”
Fracking
The
fracking bill will allow companies to drill on private property
without asking permission through reform of trespassing laws,
according to ITV.
Shale
gas extraction is not really popular with affected
communities. Manchester saw
hundreds rally in March demanding to ban the practice. Environmental
activists are strongly opposed to the technique, which has already
been proven to cause small earthquakes in the US. A number of studies
have alsorevealed water
pollution, and the practice has also been linked to health problems,
including birth defects in unborn infants in the US.
Green
Party leader Natalie Bennett stated that the Government was ‘focusing
on the fantasy of fracking.’
“We're
obviously opposed to that because we're opposed to the whole idea of
fracking. I think it's really a demonstration of how this Government
- which we might recall once claimed to be the greenest Government
ever, which is now a very sad, sick joke,” Bennett
Told Sky News' Murnaghan program after hearing the news.
A
leading fracking company has previously made statements saying that
the industry will be completely crushed in the UK if government
doesn’t allow it to drill under people’s private property without
their permission.
Cuadrilla chief executive Francis Egan
told The Times it would be ‘impractical’ to negotiate with every
individual landowner.
Alongside
fracking, other issues to be addressed include terror policies,
excessive pay of NHS executives and the implantation of controversial
Dutch-style ‘collective pensions’.
The pension scheme
is supposedly less vulnerable to fluctuations in the stock market.
Payment goes into a collective mega-fund.
Pensions
minister Steve Webb has told the Sunday Telegraph that such schemes
are “some of the best in the
world” and
that they give “people
greater certainty and probably better value.”
Administration
Costs are cited to be lower because of the collective nature –
therefore pension income will be higher, according to its proponents.ature – therefore pension income will be higher, according to its proponents.
However,
critics state that any returns won’t be guaranteed. If the
‘collective fund’ investments don’t generate the profits
anticipated by investors, then pensions could fall, Altmann
stated.
“If
markets don't perform or life expectancy rises by more than expected,
then it might be necessary to cut pension incomes,” she
said.
Under a process known as ‘smoothing’, this risk
may be alleviated by profits from good investment years being
distributed in years of negative return.
However, there is
a certain degree of loss of personal control for each personal
investor, which has proved controversial in the Netherlands.
'Revolving
door' public sector redundancies
Highly
paid civil servants and NHS management or executives and quango
bosses will not receive massive redundancy packages before they
resume similar employment before the end of the year.
If
they leave a job with a high redundancy payoff, they will not be able
to return to a similar level/position within a matter of months –
thereby stamping out costly ‘revolving door’ policies.
“We
must end the revolving door where highly paid public sector workers
can leave with redundancy, only to rejoin a short while later,” Nicky
Morgan, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury told the
Telegraph.
Some 17 percent of the 19,000 redundancies in
2010-2013 were rehired; 13 percent were reemployed with the NHS.
Terrorism
The
Queen will also be notifying the British public of a crackdown on
terror. Some 400 extremists who have traveled to Syria are thought to
have some terrorist links.
Only terror-activities plotted
for the UK can be prosecuted, which means that British nationals who
use a foreign base to plot attacks can escape prosecution.
“People
who prepare and train for terrorist activities should be in no doubt
of the action we are prepared to take to protect our national
security, including prosecuting those who break the law,” an
anonymous government source told the Daily Mail.
“Our
message is clear – the UK advises against all travel to Syria.
Anyone who does travel, for whatever reason, is putting themselves in
considerable danger,” the
source said.
