Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, December 9th, 2012 - 3 comments
Categories: business, climate change, interweb, tax - Tags: ,

My regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: Tax-shaming and the real shirkers, climate change, disability month and happiness.

So who are the real shirkers and scroungers? Shuvo Loha has it that it’s businesses that pay less than a living wage, forcing us to top up tax credits; and the private landlords who take extra earnings from housing benefit subsidised rents.

The retail sector is big on not paying living wages – even as many of them make far more profit than is required to cover the extra pay necessary.  Although they’re not afraid to give that extra pay to those at the top.  So this week saw the farce of Starbucks offering to pay $20million tax voluntarily as they feel the heat of Tax-Shaming. Jackie Ashley feels that governments need to act on the multi-nationals with their screwing of our tax-systems (good to see David Clark pressing on that locally).

After politicians expenses and media phone hacking the next big scandal in the UK should be corporate black-listing, with what Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King’s College London, calls the “worst human rights abuse in relation to workers” in Britain in half a century.

It’s now clear that workers across Britain have been systematically and illegally forced into unemployment for trade union activity – often on publicly funded projects and in collusion with the police and security services – by some of the country’s biggest companies, using secret lists drawn up by corporate spying agencies.

The climate isn’t getting any better in Doha, as carbon emissions continue to rise steeply. It is now looking nigh-impossible to keep temperature rise below 2C, even as many low-lying nations protest that their future depends on that. On the plus side the USA’s so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ may well result in them taking a world leading carbon-tax as a way Republicans can raise taxes without raising taxes – and as extreme weather events mean Americans slowly accept Climate Change is happening.

It’s Disability History Month in the UK, where they are looking at the many figures in history who we’ve forgotten they were disabled because they were so successful. From Tamerlane (from Timur the Lame) – perhaps the world’s greatest conquerer – to Admiral Nelson, the Blind Venetian Doge to Franklin Roosevelt, and many more.

Finally Happiness – and why are we happy in our childhood and youth and again in our old age but miserable in mid-life?

3 comments on “Sunday Reading ”

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  1. Jenny 1
    9 December 2012 at 12:15 pm

    A great contribution again BUNJI. I sincerely value your efforts to keep us up with current events, both global and local.

    Particularly relevant to current debates at this time, are two links, one the report on the corporate black list and the one on the disabled.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/04/blacklisting-scandal-corporate-spying

    In light of the Labour Party effort to out their members who comment on blogs like this. The Labour Party could do well to remember that many of their members are working people whose prospective or current employers may not be favourable to their political activities if they were made known. This could have real world consequences for the welfare of these individuals and their families. Shame on the Labour Party.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20415127

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20415127

    And in the light of the above links supplied by you which informed me that this was Disability History Month. I draw your readers attention to the treatment of this disabled man in a current news story commented on by Rosie Viper this morning.

    http://thestandard.org.nz/open-mike-09122012/comment-page-1/#comment-560485

    Bunji I also appreciate your keeping us up with latest on the perennial and recurring story of the developing climate crisis which our mainstream political leaders are actively trying to down play and ignore.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/8028716/Worldwide-air-pollution-rate-climbs-steeply

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20556703

    Good on you BUNJI, keep up the good work and keep those links flowing.

  2. kiwi_prometheus 2
    9 December 2012 at 2:37 pm

    Good article by Bernard Hickey again on the Reserve Bank’s continuing myopic obsession with inflation – low inflation being a central article of faith for neoliberals.

    http://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/62397/bernard-hickey-says-all-low-inflation-did-was-low-encourage-deregulation-spark-explosi

  3. Draco T Bastard 3
    9 December 2012 at 6:33 pm

    A whole new reason to hate our banks

    Let’s get this straight, the banks not only hand our information over to the bloody Police without so much as a timid defense of our privacy as their clients – not only do they nark for the cops, these banks then use that information to cripple your credit record?

    How outrageous is this? Not just their complicity to breach our privacy, but to then use the Police fishing expedition as a legitimate reason to bias you is a rotten corruption that has all the ethics of a rigged casino.

    Of course, they’re not actually our banks but Australia’s.

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