Banker's bonuses: why we are being screwed

In September 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Bros bank it became obvious to economists and senior government officials that the world financial system was in danger of collapse, and that banks would be wiped out in the process. In the UK Gordon Brown's Labour government took action and bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Halifax Bank of Scotland and pushed through a merger between HBoS and Lloyds TSB. In the process the taxpayer acquired 84% of RBS and 47% of Lloyds TSB. The full cost of the UK bailout taking into account Northern Rock and other banks was a whopping £1.2 trillion. The bailout was repeated in other countries, with the TARP, for example, in the USA, and lead to the stabilisation of the global banking system.

What is critical about this is that if the bailout hadn't happened all the banks would have gone bust - not just those who were directly bailed out by the taxpayer. Since 2008 'free' market apologists have tried to claim that banks such as Barclays and HSBC were always OK, as if they would not have crashed, but this is not the case, the fact is that the global banking system was saved by taxpayers.

Lehman Bros HQ

Up to the collapse of Lehmans a culture of huge bonus payouts had become the norm in banking, and in fact when Lehman's collapsed they were still trying to pay out $6 billion in bonuses. After the bailout the culture of huge bonuses continued even at taxpayer 'owned' banks, much to the dismay of the taxpayers themselves. The banking collapse lead directly to an economic collapse which in turn has lead to a sovereign debt crisis.In the process, the UK economy has contracted by 7%. Having paid for the bailout we are now paying for the crisis with the Coalition government's austerity programme. The cost is increasing unemployment, pay freezes, pension cuts  and an attack on the living standards of all but the wealthiest. Bad as things are in the UK, they are far worse in countries like Greece and Ireland, and the Eurozone is itself in danger of collapse.

What does all this tell us? It shows the power of financial capitalism and that our democracies are dominated not just by financial capitalism but also the other big corporations. In the West, which has been hardest hit, politicians have put the interests of financial capitalism above the rights and interests of their own people. The aim has been to preserve the capitalist system and to continue 'business as usual' at all costs, even though it is obvious that the austerity programme in the UK and elsewhere isn't working, at that it will probably make things worse rather than better.

The latest manifestation of the row about bankers bonuses centres around Stephen Hester who is the CEO of taxpayer 'owned' RBS. He was awarded £963,000 in shares as a bonus this year, despite the fact that RBS is still struggling and 33,000 employees have lost their jobs. David Cameron claims there is nothing the government can do about this but that is clearly not true. The Independent revealed that there is nothing in Hester's contract that would prevent the government denying him a bonus. There have been claims that the RBS board would have resigned but so what? They are not the only people who can run a bank. The fact is that the government is taking sides and its not our side, its the bankers side. They are putting the interests of capitalists above our interests. RBS is clearly not being run in the national interest. The bank should be fully nationalised and turned into a green national investment bank to make the loans that  businesses need to help create jobs. That is something that RBS and the other private sector banks are failing to do.

The most dangerous man in Britain?

Who could this man be? David Cameron? Bob Crow? No. For me, Cameron is certainly number two but the most dangerous man in Britain is a man who was once very well known, and even now he still makes the odd appearance on Newsnight and Radio 4. This man is Nigel Lawson and he is the mouthpiece, or more formally Chair and founder, of something called the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF). The GWPF - very grand title that - sounds like a bunch of concerned academics and citizens who want to spread the word about the dangers of climate change, but its exactly the opposite. It is a cover for heavyweight climate change deniers.

Before I say more about the GWPF lets have a look at Nigel Lawson's track record. His claim to public prominence comes from being Margaret Thatcher's Chancellor of the Exchequer for the period 1983-89, and a former Secretary of State for Energy. He was responsible for the notorious 'Lawson Boom' in the 1980s, substantial tax cuts for the better off, and massive deregulation of the financial sector . Although unemployment fell from a peak of 3 million, the boom lead to crippling interest rates of 15%. So, as deregulator-in-chief of the financial sector in the UK he already has much to answer for in terms of the current economic crisis we face.

The most dangerous man in Britain

But it was his tenure as Secretary of State for Energy which gives us a clue as to his new role as climate change denier-in-chief. The GWPF refuses to admit who its financial backers are but its not hard to imagine that some of them might have interests in energy generation. The GWPFs biggest coup was its involvement in 'climategate', when emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research unit were hacked, and Lawson called for an independent inquiry.

Despite the fact that he has been widely critised and his comments have been described as demonstrably inaccurate, Lawson shows no sign of giving up. In fact I heard him as I was driving to work only the other morning extolling the virtues of fracking, pooh-poohing renewables as uneconomic - though this suggests otherwise -  and once again denying climate change saying "that there has been no global warming whatever so far this century". You can listen to it here.

Nigel Lawson is lucky enough to be nearly 80 years old. He won't be around when global temperatures have risen by 2 degrees to witness the harm that it will cause to people and the planet. He's all right jack, but we won't be, if his antics succeed in delaying the mitigation of climate change. In my view he is probably the most dangerous man in Britain.

The benefits cap is an attack on the victims of austerity

You have to hand it to the political right. They are the real masters of the politics of divide and rule. Recently they have been busy dividing public sector workers and private sector workers over pay and pensions. Now they are dividing those in work against the unemployed over the benefits cap. Cleverly, they have come up with, as they always do, a simple ruse to get the support of those in work, for their attack on the victims of austerity - the so-called benefit scroungers. This is typically simplistic right-wing distortion of the truth and is very effective.

In case you want to jump to any conclusions about my views - I think that people should find work if they can. But the whole issue of work is far more complicated than the media would have you believe.The problem for people in the UK is that they live in a capitalist economic system which creates unemployment, which increases in time of inevitable periodic crises, thus preventing the unemployed  from getting meaningful work. There are three important issues which those who support a benefits cap don't want to discuss, they are;

1. If benefits exceed the average wage, that clearly means the average wage is too low. Low pay has been a chronic problem in the UK for many years. The introduction of a minimum wage under the Labour government helped to redress this problem, but the minimum wage is still not a living wage. If workers were realistically rewarded for the work they do this wouldn't be a problem.

2. Unemployment; the real issue which underlies this whole debate about benefit caps is the unemployment caused by the Coalition's austerity programme. The capitalist economic system has always produced unemployment. It was Marx who identified this problem as the 'reserve army of labour'. We need a government which has the guts and gumption to create jobs, rather than destroying them through austerity. In the Green Party, we explained how this could be done in our manifesto with a call for a Green New Deal to create one million jobs.

3. Housing benefits payments at £20 billion wouldn't be so great if we had enough social housing with controlled rents instead of reliance on the rip-off private sector. Over the past 30 years successive governments have failed to provide social housing on anywhere near the scale needed. The UK has a chronic shortage of homes with many of the poor living in substandard housing because of the market ideology pursued by New Labour and the Tories. Promises to build new homes simply haven't been met.

New Labour and the Tories have sought to hide their neoliberal economic failures by blaming the victims, and dividing the nation, through bashing the unemployed, and now, a benefit cap. What we need is real economic and social change to create a society where jobs are the priority, and hard working families receive the real benefits of the wealth they create. The only political party in the UK which has a costed and coherent programme to bring about that change within the context of the growing threat of climate change is the Green Party. Come and join us in making that change happen.

'Free' market myths no.2: low taxes are good for you

The saying that 'only two things in life are certain, death and taxes' has been attributed to Benjamin Franklin, and taxes are certainly something which has vexed the political right for a very long time. The Republicans in America have set their face against taxes even if it makes economic recovery harder, and for the Tea Party low taxes is an article of faith. Surely they are right? Isn't it a no brainer? Low taxes have to be good for you, don't they? That is what we have been told almost day-in and day-out for the past 30 years, and, in that time, right wing governments have lowered Taxes all over the world. Are we better off because of this? If you take a hard look at what is happening - clearly the answer is no.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, 'Paying the Tax (The Tax Collector)'

The simple fact is that low taxes only benefit the rich, or the 1% if you prefer, and the politicians who have been telling us that low taxes are good for us are well aware of that fact. In the USA we have seen an ever widening gap between the 1% and the rest of society, as they take a larger slice of the economic cake and pay less in tax. To be fair, some of the richest Americans, like Warren Buffet, have called for the 1% to be taxed more heavily. I'm not that bothered about the super-rich being taxed more heavily. What I want, in a democratic society, is for everyone to be taxed equally, and for workers to get a real share of the wealth they create. I don't want redistribution. Redistribution is only necessary in a capitalist society because the capitalists expropriate wealth from workers through the mechanism of surplus value, as Marx showed us. Everyone should be taxed equally. Full stop. If I earn £10,000 and pay £3,000 tax, you should pay £300,000 tax, to the penny, if you happen to earn £1,000,000. But in capitalist democracies tax regimes don't allow for this. The rich pay less tax on their earnings than the poor. 

We need taxes to pay for the infrastructure and services that we all depend upon. The 99% rely on those taxes to fund education, healthcare and public services that they all need. And it makes perfect sense for all for those services to be paid for collectively for the benefit of everyone. Only the rich can afford to pay for these services themselves, so they have a vested interest in low taxes. Don't be fooled. Low taxes mean diminished public services that most of us can ill afford to live with. Our politicians have betrayed us by promising low taxes and great public services. That can't happen because you only get what you pay for. Taxes, as long as they are fair, are a good thing for the overwhelming majority of citizens in society.

Forced free labour is pure Fascism

What do you call it when someone forces you to work for nothing, and who really benefits? Most people would call it slave labour, and rightly so, although I prefer to call it unwaged-slavery to distinguish it from wage-slavery. The latter occurs when people have to take low paid jobs, and I don't mean minimum wage jobs, because they have no choice. There is plenty of wage-slavery in the world and the beneficiaries are large corporations, many of which are household names. Wage-slavery is the basis of the Chinese 'economic miracle', how else do we get some many value-for-money commodities here in the West?

In the UK, as part of the latest project to humiliate and denigrate the 'benefit scroungers' - i.e. the unemployed - the Tory-led government has instituted a system where the unemployed are forced to work for corporations for no money, otherwise they lose their benefits. This is something I've blogged about in previous posts.  But now one of the victims of unwaged-slavery, Cait Reilly, who was forced to work in Poundland in order to get the princely sum of £54 benefit, has decided to fight back. She has instituted a judicial review of forced free labour and I wish her every success in her attempt to get back some dignity for the unemployed.

Of course, Cait's attempt to get justice for the unemployed in the face of the government's onslaught on the victims of capitalism has aroused to ire of pundits like the highly-paid Jan Moir, right-wing populist and uber-reactionary of this parish. According to Moir:

"........her stance is deeply insulting to those whose jobs actually do entail sweeping floors and stacking shelves. And who do so without complaint to feed their own families and to help to pay Cait Reilly’s benefits allowances. For nobody owes this girl a living. Least of all those who work for a living".

Wrong! Your stance, Ms Moir, is the real insult to all shopworkers, most of whom have to struggle on the minimum wage, which is little better than the £1.33 Cait was being 'paid' for her work. The truth is that unwaged-slavery of this sort can only undermine the conditions and pay for the paid shopworkers you profess to support still further, and the real beneficiaries are the corporations who make profits from this naked exploitation. "work for a living" is a nice way of putting it. Working to survive would be a more accurate description. Forced labour, which was used to such great effect by the Nazis, when an estimated12 million people were forced to work, and trade unionists were crushed, has no place in a civilsed society, it is pure fascism.

"Work sets you free" - the sign used at Nazi forced labour camps, most notoriously at Auschwitz 1

When the Scots leave the UK, we in the North should join them

There's been an awful lot of hoo-ha about Scottish independence in the last couple of weeks. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond's plan to hold a referendum on independence sometime in 2014 - allegedly at the 700 year anniversary of Bannockburn - has caused a row between UK and Scottish ministers. Prime Minister David Cameron has claimed that it's the UK government's prerogative to decide when the referendum should be held and is insisting it should be in eighteen months time. Many people think that Cameron's intervention will make a vote for Scottish independence more likely, because it is well known that the Scots don't like the Tories and Tory governments. So unpopular are the Tories in Scotland that they now have only one MP out of a possible 59.

The monument at the site of the battle of Bannockburn, Scotland's greatest victory over the English

But here lies a problem for us the rest of the UK, if Scotland were to leave the UK, the biggest political beneficiaries by far would be the Tories. Labour currently have 41 MPs in Scotland. They would lose 41 MPs to the Tories' one. That is 41 MPs out of their current number of 256. Add to this the fact that the highly populated south of England is a Tory stronghold and its not difficult to see that if Scotland left the Union it would be very hard to dislodge the Tories from power in what was left of the UK. For many of the English this is an extremely unpalatable scenario, leaving us with a potential prospect of unending Tory government. So what are the options? If the English had adopted regional government, which was part of the Labour government's devolution plan, things might not be so bad, but they didn't. The no vote in North East in 2004 killed off that idea.

In my view the rejection of regionalism in 2004 was a big mistake, as was the rejection of AV by UK voters in 2011. People were swayed by arguments about the cost and failed to see the bigger picture and take an historic opportunity. Regional government would have been good for the North. For many years those in the North of England have felt that they are losing out to a concentration of power and wealth in the South. The very fact that government is based in London is bound to mean that companies will gravitate to that part of the UK.

If regionalism isn't an option, though some still think it is, maybe those of us who live in the North of England should consider joining the Scots, after all, we have more in common with them and the Welsh than we do with the southern English. Like the Welsh and Scots we have always favoured social democracy over conservatism. Should we remain in an England blighted by privatisation, the destruction of public services, growing inequality, and the dominance of the City? 

My view is that we would be better off without all that and we should leave what's left of the UK. I think it's unlikely the Scots will vote for independence and that 'devo max' is the most likely outcome. Whatever happens the debate about how the UK is structured has now re-opened. For me, the best possible option would be independence from the South, particularly the City of London, and leaving the rest of the UK, to get on with building a better society for Northeners.

Liam Byrne's approach to 'welfare' is reactionary nonsense

Let me start by telling you a story - once upon a time there was a party in the UK called The Labour Party. It arose from the trade unions and working class struggle. Its focus was social justice, and its agenda was about decent healthcare, jobs, housing, worker's rights, and education. After World War II, in 1945, The Labour Party won a spectacular election victory, and came into power with a mandate which produced what became known as the 'Welfare State', the NHS, better (council) housing and educational opportunities for all. It aimed to protect people from the vagaries of the market, and it succeeded. Millions of ordinary UK citizens, like me, were lucky enough to benefit from those changes.

Now, The Labour Party is a hollowed out shell, filled with middle class career politicians and MPs who have been parachuted onto the green benches of parliament, because they are Ed and Tony's cronies, replacing most of the working class antecedents who once filled many of those places. It is a party in thrall to the market, a centre-right party promoting the most reactionary kind of right-wing populism. The last Labour government, which preferred to be called  'New Labour', eagerly adopted the 'benefit scrounger' stance promoted by right-wing propaganda sheets such as the Daily Mail, and Minister James Purnell introduced measures to bash benefit claimants and the unemployed.

Step forward in 2012, Liam Byrne, the Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to give us Labour's latest welfare vision. Byrne talks about William Beveridge whose report, published in 1942, paved the way for the Welfare State. Beveridge proposed measures, which I outlined above, to fight the five - "Giant Evils' of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness". This was to be achieved by the concept of 'Social Security', in which ordinary people paid National Insurance so that when they became ill or unemployed they could rightly claim benefits from the state.  Those 'benefits' were not 'something for nothing', they were entitlements which people paid for. It was a great system and it worked, especially in the context of governments which aimed to create full employment, as Byrne concedes in his article.

But what Byrne goes on to say is pure 'free' market orthodoxy and a continuation of New Labour's 'benefit scroungers' stance, which is all about blaming the victims of the market for their pitiful situation. It is reactionary nonsense. Those unfortunate enough to be unemployed in an economy where the 'free' market has failed to create anything like full employment are to continue to be battered and forced into some kind of workfare programme, which is simply unwaged-slavery, where people are forced to work for corporations for nothing. I have no doubt that a decent bloke like Beveridge would be horrified by the way in which the concept of Social Security has been deliberately twisted and undermined by neoliberal parties like Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories, and the shameful way in which the unemployed, disabled and poor are now treated. But what is most shameful is the fact that the Labour Party has helped to destroy what it created, kicking people when they are down, so that the corporations and the rich can benefit from unwaged-slavery and tax cuts.

Kim Il-dave is Dear Thatcher's worthy successor

At New Year it is the time to reflect on the successes of the People's Free Market of the United Kingdom (PFMUK) and to celebrate the achievements of the Dear Leader Thatcher's chosen successor Kim Il-dave. When our new Leader came to power many members of the ruling elite - caricatured cruelly as "the 1%" by student terrorists and other enemies of the state - were fearful that he would fail in his historic mission to further enrich the ruling class. They need not have worried, Kim Il-dave has made great progress during his short rule.

The Worthy Successor

He has successfully humiliated our despised minority partners in the Great Coalition, Clegg, Alexander, Huhne and Cable, known as The Gang of Four, rendering them harmless as future opponents. He has defeated those in Europe who seek to neutralise the excesses of our dear friends in the City, making himself a hero with the people, and greatly increasing his popularity in the process. But his greatest achievement has been to complete the People's Free Market Party's historic mission to destroy the hated welfare state and to privaitise the NHS. We now look forward with confidence to the completion of the Party's five year government plan, to greater increases in inequality and reductions in living standards for the workers, paving the way for much needed tax cuts for deserving corporations and the Capitalist Class. As we anticipate the state funeral of the Great Leader Dear Thatcher, long live our glorious Leader, worthy successor to Dear Thatcher!

Are we conditioned to capitalism?

On the day of the funeral of the 'Dear Leader' of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, I've been musing about how it is that there has been such an outpouring of grief in that country. North Korea is a 'communist' state, which still has all the trappings of Soviet-style government, and there has been a huge outpouring of grief amongst the population. The grief has caused some some comment and bemusement in the western media, and while its obvious that some of that grief is genuine, the suspicion is held that the grief is largely stage-managed and that many people, living in such a totalitarian state, have little choice but to be seen to display grief publicly. Because its not difficult to imagine how it is possible, through a system of education, rigid control of the media, and a cult of personality, to foster belief in a system of leadership and government, even if that  leadership and government is ultimately corrupt and despotic.

The Dear Leader

Also it is true that In any society there will be those who choose to conform and support the system, often for personal gain, and those who oppose it, and those who oppose are likely to have a torrid time. Because the same is true in the UK as it is in North Korea, if you oppose the system you are likely to be subject to coercion and end up in some kind of trouble. The difference is that how much 'trouble' is likely to be a matter of degree, though the methods are pretty much the same; public ridicule, loss of employment opportunities, harassment, beatings and imprisonment. All those things happen here as well as in countries like North Korea. The difference is that the powers that be in Western capitalist societies stage manage the coercion particularly well by making dissent a criminal activity in order to avoid having 'political prisoners'. Thus active trade unionists find themselves labelled as 'trouble makers' and sacked and blacklisted, opposition politicians are ridiculed in the press, people who demonstrate peacefully are beaten by the police and risk imprisonment because protest has been criminalised. All these things have happened to dissenters in the UK since the election of a Coalition government determined to destroy the welfare state and privatise the NHS.

So how does 'freedom' really square up in the capitalist UK? How conditioned are we to capitalism? Surely we don't have a media propaganda machine and a cult of personality? Maybe its worse than you think. Only recently we've been reminded of the incredible power of the media through the Leveson inquiry, and witnessed the suppression of dissent by the police and the courts, and that is even before we consider the effect of advertising and consumerism in creating 'needs' in a capitalist society. Then there is the co-opting of people by making them, falsely, think they have a real stake in capitalism through things like home ownership, and the use of fear by exaggerating the threat of terrorism. This is a blog post not an essay, and I don't have the time or space to fully consider how conditioned we are to a capitalist society, though I recommend you follow the last two links and watch the excellent documentaries by Adam Curtis. Suffice to say that conditioning must be considerable given the way we tolerate capitalism's creation of poverty, inequality,  exploitation of workers and destruction of the biosphere.

And do we have a cult of personality? A cult of personality is usually based around a ruling dynasty. The media pay rigid obedience to the importance of this 'ruling clique' and show deference, particularly at times of stress. Step forward Prince Philip, who topped the headlines with his stay in Papworth Hospital recently due to a 'heart scare' at a time when millions suffer in silence due to government cuts. Of course I'm not suggesting that Prince Phillip is the 'Dear Leader' of the UK, after all he is only the Queen's consort, just that in the UK, he and his family have been willingly co-opted into the role of figureheads who help to maintain the system and keep all of us in our place.

David Cameron is a charlatan

I was intending to do a post about the climate conference in Durban but I have been sidetracked by the phenomenon which is David Cameron. He is a phenomenon because he has phenomenal brass neck - he has no sense of shame - he also has no real sense of what is right and what is wrong. The brass neck  isn't surprising because his background has given him something very precious - confidence - the sort of confidence which comes from having a privileged upbringing, without need or want of any kind. That is something which only money can buy.

I'm typing this because on Friday Cameron chose to play the religious card. He chose to do what he has no right to do - stand on the moral high ground. In his comments, on the 400th anniversary of the King James bible he said:

 ".... what I am saying is that the Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today."

He was saying that Christian morals, something which he supposedly subscribes to, could mend our broken society. He also said that Christianity is a guarantee of freedom for other religious faiths. History shows that this is nonsense. Its only because Christianity is so feeble in our society that other faiths can breathe. The best guarantee of religious freedom, David, is a secular society.

Of course, morality is something that right-wing politicians like to bang on about, and continue to bang on about even when they are found to have had their hands in the till, or are caught sleeping with other mens' wives, or things that are much, much worse, like causing the deaths of one million Iraqis in a war which was fought on a false prospectus. In this sense Cameron is no different. His is a moralising government which favours marriage over co-habitation, and faith schools over secular. The right love religion, not because it teaches people right from wrong, but because it teaches people to know their place in the grand scheme of things. Because free thought and secularism can pose a threat to the established order.

David Cameron has presided over a government which has done more real harm to the British people than any in living memory. Billions have been cut from health and welfare, cuts which have fallen mainly on the poorest and most disadvantaged people in this country. All in all, 700,000 jobs in the public sector are to go and working families are also being hit hard. And for what? To save the necks of his class and the bankers and bondholders. And not only were those cuts unfair and unnecessary, they were, as I said in my last post, also profoundly immoral.

So how does Cameron get away with this? He was obviously chosen as leader to detoxify the Tory party after 13 years in the political wilderness. The party desperately needed a front-man to sell them and their 'free' market fanaticism to the public and he fitted the bill. He is now the acceptable face of the nasty party, but he is still very much in the mould of the nasty party. People seem to like him because they think he tells it straight - if only he did. He is a charlatan and a hypocrite for the reasons given above and one of the reasons why he has got away it so far, is because the British people don't like class war. You might wonder how that works because Cameron and co. are clearly waging class war on the British people. But oddly the British people, over centuries, seem to have been conditioned to accept that fighting back against class war is just not cricket. So its OK for them to dump on us but not OK for us to dump on them, because that would cause social conflict, which the British people don't like. That is one of the most depressing aspects of living in this country, not that I want social conflict myself, but I want people to understand what is happening, and to get up off their knees and fight back through trade unions and the ballot box.

So, for the time being, Cameron continues to lecture us on morality with impunity, but not everyone is fooled by any means.  Many hundred of thousands of people can see right through him. But not enough people, yet. Before Cameron was elected he lectured us about broken Britain. What is for sure is that Britain is going to be a good deal more broken by the time his Prime Ministership is over. I'd just like to finish with a quote from a blog by a disability campaigner Sue Marsh, called 'Diary of a Benefit Scrounger":

"I have severe Crohn's disease. Probably one of the most severe cases in the country. I have had 7 major life saving operations to remove over 30 obstructions (blockages) from my bowel.

I take chemo-shots every two weeks that suppress my immune system, ensuring that I regularly have to fight infections. Exhaustion, pain and nausea plague every single day of my life.I have osteoprosis and malnutrition. I have had major seizures and a stroke.

Nonetheless, I have just heard from my own Disability Living Allowance application, that it has been rejected. Completely. I will receive no support at all from DLA. Despite claiming successfully in the past, despite only getting weaker and more frail and less able to live independently, my reconsideration was rejected." [my italics]

David Cameron is directly responsible for the plight of this person, and he and George Osborne knew the consequences when they made the cuts that are causing harm to millions of British people.

Make no mistake about it, Cameron and Osborne are evil

Why would a left-wing blogger and a ecosocialist make such a statement? Socialists aren't really supposed to deal in such terminology. Whilst most people would accept that 'leaders' in the past such as Hitler, Stalin and Gaddafi were evil individuals, surely describing our Prime Minister and Chancellor in such terms is way over the top? In addition to this, many socialists are atheists who prefer to deal with the hard-headed facts of history, economics and politics, rather than deal with issues in terms of morality.

Firstly lets deal with definitions. According to my Mac 'evil' means:

• profoundly immoral and malevolent; and
• harmful or tending to harm

If we accept these definitions lets examine the case of Messrs Cameron and Osborne. There can be no doubt that they are the ruling minds of a government which claims that we 'are all in this together', and then proceeds to dump the staggering costs of unregulated failure by wealthy, greed driven bankers onto the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, and are behaving in a profoundly immoral way. Not only has the country had to deal with savage cuts of £81 billion in Osborne's first budget, but now, in the autumn statement we have further savage cuts and job losses which will hit the poorest people in this country hardest, and all that to save the necks of bankers and financial capitalism.

Both David Cameron and George Osborne are 'well educated" millionaires who are supposed to have been brought up in the best way this country can manage. They have had every advantage and opportunity, yet what they are doing is deeply reprehensible and dishonest. Its dishonest because they claim to be acting in the 'national interest' when they are clearly acting in the narrow interests of their class and against the interests of the vast majority of British people. Osborne claimed that savage cuts were necessary about two years before the 2010 election. He was swiftly slapped down by Cameron. Did either of them mention these 'savage cuts' in the election campaign? No, they kept silent because it was clear that this would damage their election hopes. Of course, its not just Cameron and Osborne who are to blame for the governments actions. There are 20 millionaires in the cabinet, and many MPs in Parliament who are playing the role of Auschwitz camp guards to Cameron's Hitler. You don't have to kill people to be evil, although it seems that at least 10 people have been killed by the cuts so far, you just need to cause them deliberate harm. That is what this government is doing with its class war cuts, knowing full well the consequences.

Morality matters. Morality is something that people on the left are profoundly concerned about. Not in the way the political right are, which is all about imposing your prejudices and beliefs on others, but in championing fairness and behaviour which treats all people equally. We have made great strides on that front over the past thirty years or so, everywhere in society but in the economy. Its essential that we champion the return of decent behaviour to our rotten democracy, which has become so scarred by the appalling behavior of government ministers.

Its time to begin to embrace the post-growth economy

Capitalism has brought about a double crunch; a crunch which is both environmental and economic. The cause is capitalism's drive for endless growth which has depleted the key natural resources, oil and gas, that it needs to continue its relentless material accumulation. One of the waste products of growth, carbon dioxide, is threatening to make our planet uninhabitable through climate change, natural resources are becoming exhausted and the biodiversity upon which we ultimately depend is threatened with destruction. Now that economic growth has stalled due to the economic crisis brought about by financial capitalism, politicians and economists are struggling to overcome the problem of massive debt from the banking crisis and get economies back 'on course' by re-starting growth. But what if they can't? And even if they could, would that option be desirable?

Growth, in conventional neoliberal terms, is not the answer. Continued privatisation and deregulation will not bring about growth, nor will it increase prosperity for the many. It will simply increase poverty and inequality. Neoliberalism is an ideology that has failed the people. Its time is over. The problem is that politicians and the ruling capitalist class are unable and unwilling to see an alternative to what has been rightly described as 'business as usual'. It will take political change to bring about economic change and to implement the solutions we need to deal with the unemployment, falling pensions, poverty, homelessness and inequality brought about by 30 years of neoliberalism.

The Green Party and others have proposed means to get us out of the current economic crisis by means of a national investment bank and a Green New Deal which will stimulate the economy and create much needed employment whilst helping to combat climate change. Amory Lovins and others in Natural Capitalism have proposed ways in which we can stave off the problems of growth and resource depletion by means of a vastly increased resource efficiency. All these measures will help us to overcome our present economic and environmental difficulties, but in themselves, are not long term solutions because they still create growth.

In the longer term we will need to adjust to an economy which can create prosperity without growth, because growth will no longer be possible. We simply won't have the energy resources to grow our economies in the way we have in the past 200 years. The Transition movement offers us a compelling model of how we can adjust to a low energy society, and there is no doubt that we can have prosperity without growth just as our forbears did before the advent of capitalism. What we will need to do is adjust our ideas about what prosperity means, and this means weaning ourselves off consumerism. This isn't going to be easy but, in the end, it is going to give us healthier and happier lifestyles. We have much to learn from indigenous communities who have lived in harmony with the land as to how we can develop a more successful management of the commons.

There will be those who argue that all this talk is a kind of madness and by ending growth that we are taking ourselves back to the stone age. They believe that we can continue business as usual by building hundreds of nuclear power stations and finding technological fixes for climate change as Daniel Ben-Ami does here. This is really akin to a science fiction fantasy. It is an example of the denial which affects many people, the sort of stuff that is reflected in Comment is Free when environmentalists who post on prosperity without growth are denounced by commenters as eco-fascists. The reality is that if the arguments of the fantasists prevail we are likely to end up living in caves rather than if we have an orderly and planned transition to a new kind of economy.

Prosperity without growth can be achieved and it does not mean poverty. It means a slower pace of life. It may mean less gadgets, but not no gadgets. It means things that last longer. It means more localism and more community. It means more labour and more labour intensive industries and it means more jobs, more community, more time with family, and much more social justice. But best of all it means the end of divisive, destructive capitalism.

N30: the struggle for pensions justice

On 30 November 2011 twenty nine public sector unions took joint strike action over savage cuts to their pensions. Over 2 million workers went on strike, the largest number in the UK since the General Strike in 1926. In Cheshire West Against the Cuts we organised a march and rally in Chester that was attended by over 1000 striking workers and supporters. The march started on Castle drive at 12.30 and as it progressed through the city centre spontaneous applause broke out from many on the onlookers. It was a day of mutual support and solidarity against the attacks of a reactionary class war government, which is making the public sector pay for the crisis we are in. The 3% pensions levy is unnecessary to sustain public sector pensions, and is being used to pay down the deficit.

We had a great day out. There was a lot of happiness in solidarity which is what the bedrock of the trade union movement is about, but there was also some sadness that people were having to do this in the face of a class war attack from their own government. People in the UK have been lead to believe that unions are a thing of the past, irrelevant in a 'modern' age, they are now beginning to realise that they need the support of their fellow workers to survive the onslaught of the capitalist class as the crisis deepens.

There is hope for the future and we can change things but we need to get this government replaced by one which acts in the interest of the people rather than the capitalist elite. That means getting out and voting for alternatives at elections. If you are a public sector worker reading this, consider the fact that the Green Party has a policy for a Citizen's Pension for all at £300 p.w. for a couple and £170 p.w. for single people.

'Free' market myths no.1: the public sector doesn't create wealth

This is the first in a series of posts which aim to explode the common myths of neoliberal 'free' market propaganda. Something you can read in the Daily Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun, and Daily Express any day of the week. If you want to find out more about the mythology of the 'free' market right I recommend the excellent '23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism' by the economist Ha-Joon Chang. Its essential reading to understand how modern capitalism portrays itself as dynamic and risk-taking, when it is more often conservative and protectionist:

In the UK, in the past decade or so, and particularly since the big crash of 2008, there have been increasing attacks on the public sector. Neoliberal 'free' market fanatics have been working hard to paint the public sector as a drain on our national resources, something which is an unaffordable luxury populated by workers on fat cat salaries and pensions. We are routinely told that only the private sector can create wealth. This is nonsense, and is demonstrably false. But why is it happening?

The reason is that corporations want to get their hands on public sector assets at knockdown prices, and see providing public services as very easy money. This is because public services are monopolies.  For example, your local council has a waste collection (and disposal) contract with one company. You don't see refuse wagons tearing down your street competing to pick up your bins, do you? Its a monopoly and therefore very easy money compared to the supposed cut-throat world of capitalism, where businesses are supposed to be competing for survival. So, the public sector represents rich and easy pickings for 'free' market 'entrepreneurs'.

Rubbishing the public sector is all about getting the public onside to accept the asset stripping of privatisation, which is based on sacking workers, reducing the conditions for those who remain, and dumping the costs of unemployment and hardship onto wider society. This is the time-honoured 'free' market trick of privatising the profits and nationalising the losses, in other words - a racket.

The reality is that the public sector creates jobs, infrastructure and wealth and a vibrant public sector is essential to a healthy economy. A public sector that is efficient and well run offers much better value for money than the private sector ever could. Why? Its simple, the public sector doesn't have to make a profit and therefore will always provide better value for money than a private sector alternative. That is why the 'free' market fanatics are so desperate to convince you the opposite is true.

Neoliberal 'free' market fanatics don't really understand the concept of wealth anyway. They think in terms of profit, cash and personal gain. But real wealth is not about money, its about much more than that, it's about human need and well-being. The public sector creates wealth in many ways, through health, education and welfare, through infrastructure and creating jobs both in the public and private sector. Without it we would all be at lot worse off. The NHS is the greatest engine of wealth creation in the UK and plays a crucial role in our economy.

 If we allow our public sector to be privatised it will become hollowed out. Do you really want the education of your children to be reduced to the level of a transaction at Tesco or Barclays?  If you privatise these crucial services, you reduce them to the level of a mere commodity, a financial transaction, and you become merely a customer, rather than a stakeholder, an owner. But you can never expect the 'free' market fanatics to understand that level of subtlety, for them humanity is reduced to mere units of consumption. That is your function, to provide them with profits. Their  ideology is ultimately anti-human, like George Orwell's Room 101, and the boot stamping on the human face -  forever.

A Tory driven ideological class war attack on British workers won't promote growth

It was bound to happen here, as it did in Wisconsin and other American states. First the capitalist class, or 1% if you prefer,  creates a crisis, a crisis of financial capitalism which nearly brings down the world economy. It does so through its ideology, neoliberalism; which means destruction of public services by privatisation; letting the banks and corporations run riot through deregulation; and the looting of natural assets by corporations through globalisation. Then, using their tame politicians in the UK, USA and Europe, it makes the middle and working classes and unemployed, the 99%, pay to bailout the banks and save the skins of the bankers. This is privatising the gains and nationalising the losses. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the rest of us.

So the banks get saved but there is still a big problem because much of that debt incurred by the banks has now been transferred to governments and taxpayers leading inevitably to a sovereign debt crisis, which is where we are now. The Eurozone crisis has been triggered by the sovereign debt crisis brought about by the banking crisis. Still with me? We are nearly there.

In response to the sovereign debt crisis governments in the UK and Europe implement austerity programmes, ostensibly to bailout government debt, particularly in Greece and Ireland. But its not the poor old Irish and Greek taxpayers who are being bailed out, the money is being used, once again, to bailout French, German, Spanish and Greek banks. So taxpayers have been shafted twice, first in the bank bailout and secondly by austerity - which is just another bank bailout.

To top all this the right wing politicians who are the friends of the bankers and the 1%, are now using the crisis to try and smash workers rights. In the USA, in Wisconsin, the Tea Party backed Governor Scott Walker has used the deficit to not only slash services but to try to deny unions their collective bargaining rights. Now in the UK today we hear that the government is contemplating undermining workers rights by making them easier to sack and limiting further their already limited rights to an Employment Tribunal. This crude, class war attack on workers is being carried out in the pretence that it will encourage growth.

The real irony is that the rising unemployment, increasing poverty and lack of growth in the UK are a direct result of this government's austerity programme. Economically, this government is already a complete failure and its only to be expected that it should dishonestly try to pin the blame for that failure on working people and the unemployed, that, after all, is what class war is all about.