Monday, April 01, 2013

Rat-bags

Iain Duncan Smith is not the only "ratbag"
Soon to be ex-MP David Miliband MP will be giving up his t £65,738 a year salary. However since leaving government he earned 15 times that amount. He received £985,315 the London Speaker Bureau, St James's Wealth Management, the government of the United Arab Emirates, Sunderland FC, VantagePoint Capital Partners, Oxford Analytica and Indus Basin Holdings. Not that he had to work particularly hard for it. The £75,000 as vice-chairman of Sunderland FC only required 15 days a year. The £64,475 from the UAE was for attending a "forum". £14,000 (plus dinner at Claridge's) Miliband for one speech to the law firm Cameron McKenna. The chat at the annual meeting of St James's Place Wealth Management was worth £12,750. Senior Advisor to VantagePoint CleanTech Advisory Council, for 4 days work a year, £90,001-£95,000. Senior Global Advisor, Oxford Analytica, payment of £6,000 for 1 day and £12,000 for another 1 day.
The MP from a constituency ranked as one of the most deprived in England also did a lot of "advising" among the least deprived. Male unemployment in South Shields is running at 10.7%. Median wages, if you get a job, are £19,500 a year. Miliband has got a lot of catching up to do though if he is to match his former boss’s £12 million a year.

Details of the renumeration for Miliband’s new job for the International Rescue Committee are unavailable but his predecessor received $429,705 back in 2009. We daresay Miliband can expect a bit more than that in 2013. Nor will he be much of a benefit for those he is supposed to help. According to a Médecins Sans Frontières spokesperson his appointment of is another nail in the coffin to claims of humanitarian independence.
The IRC, the largest nonsectarian refugee relief agency in the world was founded in the 1930s by “socialists” and attracted the support of progressives such as Eleanor Roosevelt. But by the 1950s it had been absorbed into the American foreign policy establishment and evolved from a small organization of committed activists to a global operation functioning as one link in the CIA's covert network. A current trustee of the International Rescue Committee, is that well known humanitarian Henry Kissinger. In 1996 the IRC’s “Freedom Award” went to Madeleine Albright who declared the lives of half a million Iraqi children was a price worth paying. The International Rescue Committee is not a neutral or purely “humanitarian” organization.The IRC’s biggest funders are HSBC bank, General Electric, and Goldman Sachs .

For more details on the nefarious activities of IRC see here  

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