Suspended disbelief

- The Conservative party hid donations of £40,000 from Zac Goldsmith, his brother Ben and two billionaire brothers in an apparent breach of the law.

- BAE admits guilt over corrupt arms £43bn deal in a corruption investigation that found evidence of bribes, kickbacks, false accounting and making misleading statements

- Police is charging four MP’s and half of Members of Parliament have been asked to repay a total of more than £1m to the Commons authorities because some of their previous claims were deemed improper. Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, returned more that £13,000 over improper claims

• childcare vouchers provided by 35,000 employers saved Britain’s ‘squeezed middle’ £500m for 2008-09
• 105 board members of Network Rail don’t want to cut their numbers to only 30 as such a cut is seen by them as “at bit like turkeys voting for Christmas“
• officially and as of Q2 2009 the public sector employment totalled 6.039 million, actual number is 6.7 million
• 21.1% of labour market employed in the UK public sector
• £200 billion or 1/3 of all UK gilts hold by overseas investors

• deficit of £175 billion worth 12.4% of gross domestic product, the worst in the G20
• £6.8 billion deficit of BT’s pension fund
• £9.3 billion budget for the Olympics in London 2012

..Separatists marry within their community [...] sons and daughters grow up surrounded by the symbolism of ETA, of sacrifice, struggle, murder and martyrdom

Dominic Ridley, in “Bloody Bequest”,
The Guardian—Weekend,
21 April 2001

Roberto Saviano declared yesterday that ETA, the terrorist group, is a para-mafia organization. The meme is not new but I think that it can be safely attributed to him. Mr. Salviano is crossing a few bridges in understanding the marginal undercurrents of the Europe of today.

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