Bedminster subvert

Cam­paign­ers in Bris­tol have altered a ‘benefit cheat­s’ bill­board so the orig­i­nal mes­sage tar­get­ing peo­ple work­ing ille­gal­ly while on ben­e­fit, now high­lights the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to halt an inquiry into a cor­rupt arms deal with Sau­di Ara­bia.

Blair arms deals subvertCam­paign­ers in Bris­tol have altered a ‘benefit cheat­s’ bill­board so the orig­i­nal mes­sage tar­get­ing peo­ple work­ing ille­gal­ly while on ben­e­fit, now high­lights the gov­ern­ments deci­sion to halt an inquiry into a cor­rupt arms deal with Sau­di Ara­bia.

The poster in West St, Bed­min­ster, now fea­tures the head of Tony Blair and state­ments such as “If I keep qui­et about mak­ing a few extra bribes it doesn’t make me a hyp­ocriteâ€?, “No ifs, no buts. No dodgy arms deal­sâ€? and “Corruption is a crimeâ€?. The changes expose the government’s con­tra­dic­tion of pur­su­ing the poor for work­ing extra hours while on ben­e­fit at the same time as cur­tail­ing an inquiry into bribery and cor­rup­tion.

Since 2003, the Seri­ous Fraud Office had been inves­ti­gat­ing claims that Sau­di offi­cials enjoyed pros­ti­tutes and lux­u­ry hol­i­days paid for by a £60m ‘slush fund’ admin­is­tered by BAE Sys­tems, which sup­plied Tor­na­do fight­ers under the Al-Yamamah arms deals of the 1980s and 1990s. How­ev­er in Decem­ber the gov­ern­ment cur­tailed the inves­ti­ga­tion after it was report­ed that the Sau­di author­i­ties had sus­pend­ed talks on a fur­ther multi­bil­lion pound deal to buy Eurofight­er jets from BAE Sys­tems.

The world’s lead­ing anti-bribery watch­dog, the Organ­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Coop­er­a­tion and Devel­op­ment has writ­ten to the gov­ern­ment demand­ing an expla­na­tion for its con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion. Lau­rence Cock­croft, direc­tor of the anti-cor­rup­tion watch­dog Trans­paren­cy Inter­na­tion­al, described the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to call off the SFO as ‘a tremen­dous step back­wards’.

Mean­while in Blair’s Britain inequal­i­ty between rich and poor con­tin­ues to grow. The Insti­tute for Fis­cal Stud­ies has found that income inequal­i­ty in Britain rose by 40% between 1979 and 2001, a larg­er increase than in any oth­er devel­oped coun­try, with a par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­nounced diver­gence between the super-rich and the abject poor.

This ben­e­fit “cheatsâ€? cam­paign has coin­cid­ed with the gov­ern­ment stop­ping a cor­rup­tion inquiry for no good rea­son and the first Prime Min­is­ter being inter­viewed by the police about cash for hon­ours. It there­fore seems hyp­o­crit­i­cal Blair to now crack down and scape­goat those work­ers whose hourly rate is so low that they must rely on ben­e­fit.