Stop this war on the poor - fight back against the bedroom tax!

Yesterday thousands of people in a hundred UK towns and cities came together to protest against the bedroom tax. This pernicious piece of Coalition legislation will cause harm to the 660,000 poor, unemployed and disabled people who will be affected when it is introduced on April 1st. Families who have a 'spare' bedroom will be expected to move into accommodation with less bedrooms or face a financial penalty. There are a series of draconian rules which mean the children will be expected to share a room rather than having separate bedrooms. This is a quote from the National Housing Federation website:

"The size criteria in the social rented sector will restrict housing benefit to allow for one bedroom for each person or couple living as part of the household, with the following exceptions:

• Children under 16 of same gender expected to share
• Children under 10 expected to share regardless of gender
• Disabled tenant or partner who needs non resident overnight carer will be allowed an extra bedroom,

 "The cut will be a fixed percentage of the Housing Benefit eligible rent. The Government has said that this will be set at 14% for one extra bedroom and 25% for two or more extra bedrooms."

The Green Party believes we should tackle bankers bonuses and tax dodgers rather than attacking the poor and disabled

The government claims this will save £500 million pounds in housing benefit but this is nonsense. If people do move and downsize they are likely to have to move to the more expensive private rented sector thus increasing the amount of housing benefit they claim. That is assuming they can find suitable accommodation in their local area, and many cannot. The reality is that many of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the UK will take a further financial hit at a time when millionaires are getting a tax cut courtesy of George Osborne. 

Bedroom tax demo at the Cross in Chester

That sums up the Coalition government; benefit cuts for the poor and tax cuts for the rich. There will be many more protests about the bedroom tax, I hope you will get involved and join the fightback against this rotten government.

The government that nobody wanted is doing what nobody wants

We have just had two very grim days in succession. First, from this reactionary government, we get Black Tuesday, the dismantling of the NHS, something that the Tories have dreamed about for decades. Now, today, we have had yet another class war budget which benefits the rich and corporations at the expense of the rest of UK society. A budget which contains £20 billion of disguised cuts for corporations.

But this is a government that nobody voted for,and has no mandate to make these changes. Much has been said about the role of the Liberal Democrats in propping up a Tory government, and despite the fact that people should feel betrayed and angry about that, the real problem is Cameron and Osborne, they are the architects of destruction of the public sector, and the 'free' market fundamentalist approach which is damaging our economic, environmental and social fabric.

What we have witnessed is a crisis of capitalism, caused by the market, and now being used as a weapon to destroy all the democratic gains made by ordinary people in the past century. This is the 'shock doctrine' in action.These measures are taking us backwards in time to 19th Century capitalism, an age in which the most vulnerable people, the sick, the unemployed, the disabled, and the low paid, will, like then, be abandoned to the vagaries of the market. In the USA, there are  already shanty towns and tented villages, and make no mistake, that will happen here. We will see slums in the UK, where the poor and disadvantaged, live in abject Third World levels of poverty. Don't believe it? These things are already happening in Greece, which is the front line of  'free; market austerity. The British people need to wake up and smell the very bitter taste of Coalition coffee.

What's the solution? We have to make use of the democratic process and get out on the streets and protest peacefully to bring about change. The Egyptians have shown us the way. We need to turn Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square. We need to work and agitate in the trade unions to build this protest movement, and we need to make sure that the Liberal Democrats get wiped out in the next round of local government elections in May. There is hope, and protest groups like UK Uncut have shown the way forward. We need to work together use this pressure to crack open the Coalition, and force an election at which we can persuade people to vote for anti-austerity parties like the Green Party and TUSC. We are in the fight of our lives and we need to make this fight count.