Alistair Darling has a difficult summer ahead
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Alistair Darling’s appeals for responsibility “from boardroom to shop floor” in the current wage round are being met with a loud, collective raspberry. Earlier this month, Shell tanker drivers held a four-day stoppage which caused a little inconvenience – and they were rewarded with an inflation-busting 14 per cent, two-year pay deal. Yesterday, the Unison trade union announced that its 850,000 members working in local authorities have voted for strike action after rejecting a 2.75 per cent pay offer. The union says there will be a two-day strike next month, followed by as yet unspecified stoppages, depending on the employers’ response. Unison’s head of local government, Heather Wakefield, said her members “deserve to be paid at least in line with inflation”.
It promises to be a difficult summer for Mr Darling. He says, rightly, that pay settlements should match the Government’s inflation target of 2 per cent. Yet union negotiators are not looking at a 2 per cent rise in inflation. They see instead a Consumer Prices Index which hit 3.3 per cent in May and a Retail Prices Index – the benchmark used by many negotiators – at 4.3 per cent while, as we reported yesterday, the real increase in living costs for the average middle-class family is actually 6.7 per cent. In these circumstances, unions are not going to submit meekly to the Chancellor’s blandishments. Mr Darling is finding out that, while it is comparatively straightforward being the Chancellor when times are good, it can be devilishly difficult when times are bad. Always seen as a safe pair of hands (he is just one of three Cabinet members who has been there since 1997), he fails to inspire confidence, either in the country or the City – and it is confidence that is in shortest supply. He may feel his lugubrious style matches the mood of the times; we suspect that people want something a little more upbeat from their finance minister just now – the sense, perhaps, that here is a man with a plan. So it is little surprise that a whispering campaign has started. Replace the Chancellor, they say, and Labour’s political recovery can begin. The names of Jack Straw, David Miliband and even the arch-Blairite Alan Milburn are being mooted. It is arguable that any one of this trio would make a better fist of the job than Mr Darling. Yet it is not quite that easy. The reality is that the Chancellor has inherited his economic strategy from his predecessor, who continues to take the closest of interest in Treasury matters. Until the First Lord of the Treasury allows his successor some of the freedom of action he enjoyed when he was Chancellor, any change of personnel is going to make precious little difference. “Telegraph view” is written by our team of leader writers and commentators. This team includes David Hughes, Philip Johnston, Simon Heffer, Janet Daley, Con Coughlin, Robert Colvile, Iain Martin and Alex Singleton. |
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/06/24/dl2401.xml
This website and sisters royaldutchshellplc.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, and shellnews.net, are owned by John Donovan. There is also a Wikipedia segment.
Royal Dutch Shell conspired directly with Hitler, financed the Nazi Party, was anti-Semitic and sold out its own Dutch Jewish employees to the Nazis. Shell had a close relationship with the Nazis during and after the reign of Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi, and the founder and decades long leader of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. His burial ceremony, which had all the trappings of a state funeral, was held at his private estate in Mecklenburg, Germany. The spectacle (photographs below) included a funeral procession led by a horse drawn funeral hearse with senior Nazis officials and senior Royal Dutch Shell directors in attendance, Nazi salutes at the graveside, swastika banners on display and wreaths and personal tributes from Adolf Hitler and Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goring. Deterding was an honored associate and supporter of Hitler and a personal friend of Goring.
Deterding was the guest of Hitler during a four day summit meeting at Berchtesgaden. Sir Henri and Hitler both had ambitions on Russian oil fields. Only an honored personal guest would be rewarded with a private four day meeting at Hitler’s mountain top retreat.
IN JULY 2007, MR BILL CAMPBELL (ABOVE, A RETIRED GROUP AUDITOR OF SHELL INTERNATIONAL SENT AN EMAIL TO EVERY UK MP AND MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS: 
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A head-cut image of Alfred Donovan (now deceased) appears courtesy of The Wall Street Journal.
