|
|
Peoples Press Printing Society Ltd trading as The Morning
Star newspaper
Income and Expenditure Account for the year ended 31 December
2006
|
|
Profit and Loss |
notes |
2006 |
2005 |
|
Turnover |
|
693,611 |
715,562 |
|
Cost of Sales |
|
(303,908) |
(274,350) |
|
Gross Surplus |
|
389,703 |
438,212 |
|
Net Operating Expenses |
|
|
|
|
Distribution costs |
|
(68,412) |
(64,232) |
|
Admin. |
|
(613,555) |
(587,460) |
|
Operating Loss |
|
(292,264) |
(213,487) |
|
Advertising income not stated |
. |
|
|
|
Other Operating Income |
5 |
|
|
|
Legacy & bequest |
|
4,600 |
11,800 |
|
Appeal |
|
74,368 |
46,992 |
|
Peoples Press
Fighting Fund |
|
171,704 |
168,595 |
|
Other operating
income |
|
30,183 |
7,645 |
|
. |
|
(11,309) |
21,545 |
|
after interest |
3 |
" |
" |
|
after tax |
4 |
" |
" |
Gov.uk/running-a-limited-company/company-and-accounting-records
Morning
Star supports Chinese Invasion of Tibet
and takes money from trades union members who need lawyers:
this is a quote from their paper.
|
 Tibet
isn't a colony
(Friday 04 April 2008)
VARIOUS politicians and commentators have suggested that Gordon Brown
ought to call for a boycott of the Olympic Games or, at the very
least, emulate Angela Merkel by boycotting the opening ceremony.
The justifications for these actions are that China is a colonial
power holding Tibet against its will or that, even if Tibet is
part of China, Tibet's intrinsic culture is being eroded by a
mass influx of Han Chinese.
The idea that China is or could be a colonial or imperialist
power is nonsense.
Where are its colonial possessions and when did it carry out
a global offensive to conquer or dominate weaker countries militarily
or economically to bring them into Beijing's thrall?
Until just 60 years ago, China was a poverty-stricken land,
laid waste by decades of civil war, occupied and sacked by Japanese
militarism and subject to the machinations of the imperialist
powers.
Warlords, feudal despots and religious tyranny exercised untrammelled
power in their fiefdoms. This applied to Tibet as much as the
rest of China.
It was the People's Liberation Army, under the leadership
of the Communist Party of China, that began to unify the country
and put an end to these brutal and corrupt fiefdoms.
For the first time, when the People's Republic of China was
proclaimed in 1949, the peoples of China were able to stand up
and to chart their own way in the world.
Not every decision that the country's leaders have made has
been wise.
But, for all the mistakes, the successes have been tangible,
with huge improvements in living standards.
Nowhere is this more true than in Tibet, where the abolition
of slavery and serfdom liberated the mass of the people, prompting
the landowners and feudal lords to resort to force of arms in
the 1950s to halt social progress and revert to the old pre-revolutionary
regime.
Their comprehensive defeat in 1959 was a prelude to raising
Tibetan educational, health and living standards.
Last year's opening of the Qinghai-Lhasa railway on the roof
of the world was a major step forward for Tibet's economic and
cultural development, enhancing links with the rest of China
and assisting some migration to and from Tibet.
However, the reality that no more than 5 per cent of Tibet's
population is either Han Chinese or from any other of China's
56 national minorities gives the lie to claims of ethnic swamping
or dilution of Tibet's cultural essence.
What kind of culture can only be sustained by being hermetically
sealed off from the modern world? Only one based on superstition,
ignorance and feudalism.
China is modernising, casting off such chains. It is also
reuniting colonial enclaves such as Macao and Hong Kong, although
Taiwan remains divided from the homeland.
The most sacred human right is the right to life and China's
economic progress has ended the mass starvation that so recently
engulfed the country on a regular basis.
Those who lecture China on human rights, especially from the
US and Britain, should perhaps, in light of the illegal invasion
of Iraq, which has brought about more than a million dead, ponder
the relationship between stones and glass houses. |
|
Balance Sheet |
notes |
2006 |
2006 |
2005 |
2005 |
|
Fixed Assets |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tangible assets |
6 |
|
19,071 |
|
21,506 |
|
Investments |
7 |
|
12 |
|
12 |
|
|
|
|
19,083 |
|
21,518 |
|
Current Assets |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Debtors |
8 |
92,725 |
|
84,527 |
|
|
Cash at bank and in hand |
|
68,014 |
|
78,857 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Creditors due this year |
9 |
(74,393) |
|
(61,741) |
|
|
Net current assets |
|
|
86,346 |
|
106,643 |
|
|
|
|
105,429 |
|
128,161 |
|
Creditors due after this year |
10 |
. |
(60,625) |
. |
(62,292) |
|
Capital and Reserves |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Share capital |
|
|
613,563 |
|
518,219 |
|
Reserves |
11 |
|
(568,759) |
|
(557,350) |
|
Total members' funds |
|
|
44,804 |
|
60,869 |
|
1: Accounting policies:
Basis: the financial statements have been prepared in accordance
with applicable accounting standards and under the historical
cost accounting rules.
Consolidation: the results of the wholly owned subsidiary, The
Morning Star Publishing Company Ltd has not been consolidated,
as in the opinion of the committee the inclusion of such would
be of no practical value. [Checked: true - EO]
Tangible fixed assets: depreciation of fixed assets are calculated
to write off their costs or valuation less any residual value
over their estimated useful lives as follows:
20% Computers
20% Motor Vehicles
20% Fixtures & Equipment |
|
2: Turnover: The turnover of the year was derived from the society's
principal activity |
|
3: Interest payable: loans from members and donors to the society
attract no interest |
|
4: Corporation Tax: No corporation tax payable due to deficits
brought forward from previous years |
|
5: Other operating income 2006 - nil; Other operating income
2005 (17,768) Loans and creditors written off. Last year's write-offs
are mainly sales invoices entered twice on the system. The management
has put in place controls to ensure that this does not occur
in future. |
|
6: Tangible fixed assets |
|
motor vehicle |
fixtures and fittings |
computers |
total |
|
cost as at 1 /1/ 2006 |
|
16,999 |
68,176 |
88,150 |
173,325 |
|
disposals |
|
|
. |
|
. |
|
additions |
|
|
247 |
13,786 |
14,033 |
|
|
|
16,999 |
68,423 |
1101,936 |
187,358 |
|
. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
depreciation as at 1/1/6 |
|
13,600 |
36,349 |
101,936 |
187,358 |
|
elimination on disposal |
|
- |
- |
- |
- |
|
charge for the year |
|
3,398 |
3,986 |
9,084 |
16,468 |
|
depreciation as at 31/12/6 |
. |
16,998 |
67,335 |
83,954 |
168,287 |
|
. |
|
|
. |
|
. |
|
net book amount 31/12/6 |
|
1 |
1,088 |
17,982 |
19,071 |
|
net book amount 31/12/5 |
|
3,399 |
4,448 |
13,280 |
21,127 |
7,8,9,10 This account audited by Appleby
and Wood, Stratford, London
The principal activity of the society is publishing the Morning
Star newspaper, "Britains only socialist newspaper"
Hosted by Employees.org.uk -a proposed scheme to fill part of the
gap left by trades unions who do not represent their members
Employees.org.uk wishes the Morning Star staff well, but wishes
that activists would help the paper by giving
away free sample copies at stations, or volunteering to help
with advertising tele-sales. Removing £246,072 from sources
like trades union accounts should not be an option. This figure
does not include advertising by unions and union-funded organisations.
Of the expensive adverts that get a week's mention on the web
site as well as in the paper, all of them seem to be for trades
unions or trades union-funded organisations. - EO |
|
This press release seems to be about
entry-ism and applies to the accounts of 2006. Entry-ist confusion
is
echoed in other organisations.
The Crisis at the Morning Star
(and the use of the word "moreover")
Martin Sullivan
ON 25 FEBRUARY journalists at the Morning Star newspaper began
an indefinite strike, an unprecedented event which attracted
attention even from the capitalist press. Twelve of the paper’s
fifteen journalists voted in favour of industrial action, which
was called in response to the suspension (and subsequent sacking)
of the Star’s editor John Haylett.
The strikers had the official backing of the National
Union of Journalists, and received sympathetic coverage in
the Labour weekly Tribune,
while prominent figures such as Tony Benn and Dennis Skinner
supported the call for Haylett’s reinstatement. Among leading
left MPs only Ken Livingstone opposed the strike.
The strikers claimed that this was a straightforward management-worker
issue, involving a clear case of victimisation. Haylett’s
sacking by the management committee of the Peoples Press Printing
Society (PPPS), the body which controls the Star, was supposedly
a tit-for-tat reaction to the earlier removal of Mike Hicks as
general secretary of the Communist
Party of Britain (CPB), Hicks being the partner of PPPS chief
executive Mary Rosser.
Others of us, however, would claim that action should have
been against Haylett long ago – for example, when the Star
supported the invitation of a notorious anti-semite to speak
at an Anti-Racist Alliance demonstration. There are, moreover,
important political issues behind the present dispute, and it
is on these issues that the labour movement should take sides.
The sacking of Mike Hicks as CPB general secretary, and his
replacement by Rob Griffiths, in fact represented a sectarian
shift by the party leadership away from the traditional orientation
towards the Labour Party – a development, incidentally,
which has no basis in any decision at the last CPB congress.
Symptomatic of this shift was the CPB political committee’s
decision to open discussions with Arthur
Scargill, whose Socialist Labour Party (SLP)
is notorious for its sectarian attitude to Labour.
If a lash-up between the SLP
and the Griffiths-Haylett wing of the CPB were to take control
of the PPPS, this would signal the end of the Morning Star as
a paper of the broad labour movement.
Whatever their faults, the Rosser-Hicks element do favour
a broad labour movement orientation, and deserve critical support
against the sectarians. At the PPPS Annual General Meeting in
June, therefore, or at an earlier special meeting if one is called,
shareholders should cast their votes accordingly. |
Why the Morning Star is annoying
|
It's not often that anyone gets annoyed by
the Morning Star, but for those in any way involved it is a bit
like working in social work or any kind of unfair dismissal -
it engages you a lot. My main involvement is that my union branch
paid for the bloody thing instead of a lawyer for me in the employment
tribunal.
The problem with getting annoyed by the Morning Star is that
it diverts attention towards what is in the paper - such as a
defence of China's invasion of Tibet - rather than what funds
the paper. Funders include the volunteers who make-up a fictional
organisation called my T&G union branch, which is nothing
to do with paid staff (who are work at a separate regional office)
and nothing to do with any one employer. These people have enough
budget to patch-up the real union's crap legal service. They
proved this when one of the committee members had an unfair dismissal
of a nasty kind, and they hired Bindman and Partners to pursue
the case after realising just how bad the official union lawyers
were. But when an ordinary member asks for help the answer is
no: "we are not the fifth emergency service", "a
union is not about legal insurance but solidarity", "it
is true that the union leaflets say we offer legal help but that
is a mistake". Next item on the agenda: "purchase
of Morning Star shares ... won't pay a dividend till hell freezes
over ... carried .. publication of a £300 advertisement
wishing the Morning Star staff a happy christmas ... carried
... donation .... carried".
However, it is late, there is text below written on another
day and it looks as though it makes sense.
The Communist Party of Britain is a society of people who
want to get rid of every last shred of capitalism, or some such.
Those union activists who divert trades union money to worthless
Morning Star shares or their party's landlord are presumably
similar.
They are nothing to do with a radical reader's publishing society
that once nearly had its own printing presses and promotes a
broad range of interesting views absent from capitalist broad
sheets. No such thing exists and their articles of association
do not give votes to readers or writers but to buyers of endlessly
diluted one pound non-dividend shares, with one vote per share.
Maybe some of them and their newspaper just want to be annoying.
The press and the party are private enterprise and can want
what they like, but a small party and its attempts at propaganda
draw attention to the big
- They take money out of trades union bank accounts (or Fidelity
Unit Trust for the Conservatives)
- They spend money on vanity projects and Nazi ceremonies instead
of dentists, pensions and old peoples' homes.
- They hobnob with torturers.
None criticises the massive waste of the Olympics at a time
when the UK government can't organise free dentists to be paid
out of taxes, runs more foreign wars than it can recruit troops
to fight-in, claims that taxes won't fund free old peoples' homes
(except in Scotland) and gets votes by arresting teenagers. School
class sizes are over thirty and there is money for the sodding
Olympics. Even if they involve hob-nobbing with torturers.
I don't know what sort of sponsored MP the Transport and General
had in mind when MPs were not paid and it made sense for unions
to sponsor MPs, but it would surely not be for the sort who spend
government money on Olympic ceremonies, take money they don't
even need from union bank accounts and preserve Nazi torch-bearing
ceremonies. I don't know what Fidelity Unit Trust is other than
a place that organises my money but it surely wasn't meant to
subsidise a political party.
What I do know is that when I need a lawyer I find these folk
instead: complaints to the T&G are simply not answered without
being forwarded by a branch, and branch 1/1148 happens to have
been allocated to the communists. I cannot easily sue a union
for ripping me off because they are exempt from every conceivable
law and the tribunal system seems to condone their behaviour.
Can I have my money back please? Or a vote in how my union
is run?
|
Morning Star
Wish List
|
Another page of this site has wish lists and there was
some stuff on it now here, viz:
This applies to unions who fund the Morning Star and will
some time have to make a decision whether to let it fold or plan
something more profitable. It also applies to all the activists,
staff and readers and supporters' groups.
- Volunteers to try advertising telesales
The accounts of the Morning
Star show a spirited paper struggling to act like a national
daily. They have hardly bought anything for the office for years
and will have trouble
hooking-up to the new computers at Newsfax printers. Circulation
is too small for a separate Scottish edition, now that high airmail
costs make it difficult to get papers there from the printers
in Kent. The paper's staff drive their own van. What they need
are tele-sales reps to sell advertising
space. What I understand from shops that sell alternative
products and services is that some of the magazines ring every
year or so with special advertising offers. The Morning Star
has never rung. It doesn't even have adverts on its web
site except trade union job adverts and doesn't list advertising
revenue on its accounts to members. Like many low-circulation
papers, it doesn't pay to have its circulation audited so Saachi
and Saachi probably don't ring very often. Meanwhile the
paper has an organised "fighting fund" and claims that
low add sales are caused by a buying boycott.
Advertising is the lifeblood of daily newspapers - and that lifeblood
is denied to this paper by business and by government alike -
for very understandable, if not forgivable reasons.
Cab Trade News, the paper for Transport and General
cab drivers, should try selling adverts too. The paper doesn't
even have a web site. If you want to subscribe or advertise to
cabbies, you would have to ring and ask for a sample copy.
Both papers might attract volunteers for a little tele sales.
It is a way of trying-out and proving yourself in a line of work,
and gives you the satisfaction of sending a sample copy to Trevor
in Sales and Giles at the agency.
- Give away newspapers
Metro and The London Paper charge lots
for adverts because they reach lots of commuters. They also
reach customers who never thought they would read celebrity gossip
or whatever is inside; this random reading is exactly what a
political activists seeks. One of the papers - Manchester
Evening News - has copies for sale in newsagents at the same
time that students are giving away copies to commuters at railway
stations, paid by video evidence of the number given.
- If profitable, make the paper a society of all subscribers
and staff as it was set-up to be and still claims to be.
It isn't. Society rules allow one vote per one pound share and
anyone can buy as many as they want. I have ten.
|
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|