For the information of Condoleezza Rice, who despite being Secretary of State of her country, continues to demonstrate an ignorance of world affairs at a shockingly consistent level, the notion that the Kremlin exerts a grip on the media is a fairy tale invented in the gardens of Washington. As correspondent of the English version of Pravda.Ru, director and chief editor of the Portuguese version and collaborator for three other Russian publications, two of these being official media organs, I have frequently asked for guidelines from the Kremlin on what line to follow.
The answer: “We are afraid we cannot give you any guidelines as you request. You will have to write the truth, after checking your sources, obviously”, or words to this effect every time the question is posed.
So in order to disprove that Pravda is controlled by the Kremlin, the author writes about how he continually asks the Kremlin for guidance? The fact of asking alone confirms Rice’s point.
Whoever Britons choose in their general election on May 5, they will get an economy that might surprise outsiders.
Never mind Margaret Thatcher’s tax and spending squeezes and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s pledge, at least in the short term, to emulate her fiscal orthodoxies.
Since the beginning of the decade, public spending in Britain as a share of gross domestic product has experienced one of its most rapid accelerations in recent history, outpacing Germany, France, the United States and even traditionally high-spending Canada.
The tax burden is now nearly the heaviest in two decades, and the worsening of the fiscal balance has exceeded every other major industrial country except the United States.
The key fact here is that the UK’s fiscal balance has deteriorated right in step with an increasing tax burden. So much for the “raise taxes to reduce the deficit” theory.