Harry Potter money for British Labour Party

This is a video about child poverty in England.

From ITN in Britain:

Rowling donates £1m to Labour

Updated 07.37 Sat Sep 20 2008

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has given a £1 million donation to the Labour Party.

The donation comes as a major boost to the cash-strapped party and its leader Gordon Brown as the annual Labour conference starts in Manchester.

Rowling, whose fortune was estimated at £560 million in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, is known to be a personal friend of Mr Brown and his wife Sarah …

In a statement, JK Rowling, who wrote the first of her best-selling books about boy wizard Harry Potter while an impoverished single mother, indicated that her gift was motivated by Labour‘s record on child poverty and Tory leader David Cameron‘s offer of tax breaks to married couples.

She said: “I believe that poor and vulnerable families will fare much better under the Labour Party than they would under a Cameron-led Conservative Party.” …

“The Labour government has reversed the long-term trend in child poverty, and is one of the leading EU countries in combating child poverty.

“David Cameron’s promise of tax perks for the married, on the other hand, is reminiscent of the Conservative government I experienced as a lone parent. It sends the message that the Conservatives still believe a childless, dual-income, but married couple is more deserving of a financial pat on the head than those struggling, as I once was, to keep their families afloat in difficult times.”

Ms Rowling is extremely probably right in that a Conservative Cameron administration would be even worse for poor children and people in general, than the present New Labour administration.

However, she is dead wrong in singing the praises of the “new” Labour administrations of war criminal, liar, cash for honours corrupt politician, and BAE scandal corrupt politician, Tony Blair; and of his successor, Margaret Thatcher and Gertrude Himmelfarb admiring Gordon Brown.

Thatcherite economic policies of “new” Labour led to an increasing gap between rich and poor in Britain; with also more child poverty, not less as Ms Rowling wrongly claims.

At least, no one can accuse Ms Rowling of being a cowardly rat leaving a sinking ship. A rat boarding the sinking ship of Brownism seems closer to reality.

If only Ms Rowling would have made her donation conditional on withdrawing British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, stopping pro big business and anti poor people policies, and giving John McDonnell a fair chance to stand as Labour leader (which was denied him undemocratically earlier, when there was a coronation, not an election, of Brown as Blair’s successor) …

Britain: Forty percent of children live in poverty: here.

Sunderland and “new” Labour: here.