'The UK was locked in to the £5.2bn aircraft carrier contract by an agreement signed by Gordon Brown in the final months of the Labour government, The Times has reported.Now why would the BBC not want to report this story?
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According to The Times, Brown entered a 15-year terms-of-business agreement with BAE Systems in 2007 which guaranteed work for the shipyards on the Clyde and in Portsmouth. The deal was said to have been officially signed in 2009.
Coalition cabinet members have been publicly complaining about the terms of the agreement for several weeks.
The agreement was designed to maintain UK shipbuilding skills by preserving jobs.
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A 'senior industry figure' quoted in the newspaper said: "Politics was central to this agreement, because if the carriers ever got cancelled it would have led to the closure of either the Clyde yards or Portsmouth.
"If Gordon Brown had not been Prime Minister or Chancellor the carriers would have been cancelled a long time ago."
Ian Davidson, Labour MP for Glasgow South West, said: "The unions at the Govan yard were relaxed about the carriers because they knew the company had the government over a barrel and the cancellation costs would have been so enormous. If the agreement had been broken, BAE could have sued the government."'
Let's not beat around the bush, I described the last days of the last Labour government as revolving around a scorched earth policy. It seems I misjudged them; there was more going on. Inescapable binding contracts designed to prop up jobs in Labour heartlands and dman the cost, last minute legislation to embed 'equality' legislation into all policy areas and massive spending promises designed to increase the amount of 'Tory Cuts'. is scum too strong a word?
Who needs carriers, this is going to be a knife fight
ReplyDeleteLabour: London borough becomes 'Islamic republic'
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100060304/labour-london-borough-becomes-islamic-republic/
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) - which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) - which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.
Outside the Wellington Way polling station in Tower Hamlets yesterday, as at many other polling stations in the borough, people had to run a gauntlet of Lutfur Rahman supporters to reach the ballot box. As one Bengali woman voter went past them, we heard one of the Rahman army scolding her for her “immodest dress.”
That incident is perhaps a tiny taste of the future for Britain’s poorest borough now it has elected Mr Rahman as its first executive mayor, with almost total power over its £1 billion budget. At the count last night, one very senior figure in the Tower Hamlets Labour Party said: “It really is Britain’s Islamic republic now.”
For the last eight months – without complaint or challenge from Mr Rahman – this blog and newspaper have laid out his close links with a group of powerful local businessmen and with a Muslim supremacist body, the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) - which believes, in its own words, in transforming the “very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed… from ignorance to Islam.” Mr Rahman has refused to deny these claims.