The Green Party must not repeat the mistakes of the Irish Greens

It is clear some people in the Green Party of England and Wales haven't learned any lessons from the blunders of the Irish Green Party. If you don't know the story you must read "A Deal with the Devil - the Green party in government" by Mary Minihan. In brief, the Irish Green Party, lured by the prospect of power, and a chance to implement green policies, entered into a coalition with Fianna Fail, and ended up imposing savage neoliberal cuts on the Irish People, which are causing huge damage to Irish society. As a result, activists left the party in droves and the Irish electorate, quite rightly, destroyed the party at a general election in 2011.

What did the Irish Greens gain from all of this? Er.... not much more than a watered down stag hunting bill. What is really scary about Minihan's account is that it describes the staggering capacity for self-deception in the Irish Green MPs, the ability to think you are doing good when you are actually doing the opposite, and gaining nothing useful in the process. The Greens even stayed in a rotten and reviled government long enough to push through an immensely damaging finance bill out of some kind of loyalty to Brian Cowen! Clearly the Green MPs, including the new party leader Eamon Ryan, were hopelessly naive, both economically and politically. Whilst Rome burned around them they kept on fiddling around with their hopes for a climate change bill.

All of which brings me to Brighton and Hove Council and the Green Party (GP) conference. I have been planning to write a full conference report but that will have to wait, this is too important. This weekend the GP spring conference has been dominated by the decisions made by Green councillors in Brighton. The council is run by a Green minority administration, the first Green council in the UK, and something of which the party has been rightly proud. Just before conference, on Thursday 23rd February, B&H council had its budget setting meeting. At that meeting an unholy alliance of Labour and the Tories cynically destroyed the Green budget by amending and removing a crucial part of it - a 3.5%  council tax rise. To their credit, Green councillors were the first in the country to propose such a rise in order to help alleviate the savage cuts of £17 million in Brighton demanded by the Coalition government.

Having had a key part of their budget removed, Green councillors, could have voted against the amended budget and left it to the Tories and Labour to administer that amended budget by stepping down. Instead they chose to vote for the amended budget and to carry on in 'power'. Only one Green councillor, Alex Phillips, voted against the budget. Clearly Green councillors were in a difficult position but they chose the easy way out, to remain in power, and that, as the Irish Greens learned to their cost, could have significant implications for the party nationally. And make no mistake, stepping down is a lot harder than staying on. Cuts are cuts are cuts, and arguing that green cuts are better won't wash. Even if they had voted against the budget and remained in power that would have been a better option than the one they chose.

Why is it that the Green councillors decision could be so damaging for the party? Its because we claim that we are a party of principle, that we are different to the other parties and that we oppose the cuts. If we had stood down as the council the Tories would have had to administer their cuts, supported by Labour, and this would have been hugely damaging to Labour, who are out to destroy us in Brighton. As it is we are left with implementing a cuts budget which is no longer our own and we can be picked off at a time of our opponents choosing. Now Labour can cynically claim that we are the party of cuts and use that to try and destroy us at the next election. As a party, we are at a crucial stage where thousands of people around the country are considering voting for us and joining us. Now, many of those people are going to look at us and think that we are no different to the other parties. We have already lost members over this issue. In addition, the actions of Green councillors in Brighton could rob us of our only MP, and greatest asset, Caroline Lucas.

I have no doubt that our councillors in Brighton are doing a great job in really difficult circumstances and that Greens can govern far better than Tories or Labour could ever do. I support them, but I don't agree with their decision. This is about politics, not a loyalty test. Some people in the Green Party seem to have become blinded by electoralism, as the Irish Greens were. They think that is 'grown up' politics and they are right - but only if you have the tactical nouse to make the right political decisions when you are in power. Some of the comments I heard from supporters of the Green councillors at conference sounded depressingly like the Liberal Democrats - our party right or wrong - and I've no doubt that exactly the same arguments were used by the Liberal Democrat leaders to keep party members in line to support the Coalition government.

The Green Party must not fall at the first political hurdle. So far we have done extremely well, punching above our weight, and we have a great asset, in our politically astute leader, Caroline Lucas. Now its time for our Green councillors to show the same political astuteness. In order to help to repair the damage done at last Thursday's budget meeting, Green Councillors in Brighton now need to seriously consider doing at least four things:

1. show that we are still at the head of the anti-cuts movement by hosting a national anti-cuts conference, inviting as many councils and groups as possible. The aim of this conference must be to explore alternatives to austerity such as those outlined below

2. explore every avenue possible for a radical party to alleviate the damage done by the cuts and raise revenue to fund services. This could include issuing local bonds and setting up a local currency

3. set a shadow needs budget which reflects the true cost of services that the people of Brighton and Hove need, consult on this and publicize it, and make sure that people understand we are not responsible for the cuts being imposed

4. hold a referendum in the autumn for a greater than 3.5% council tax rise and explain to the people of Brighton that this is necessary because of the cynical actions of Labour and the Tories, and essential to help maintain services, and  resign if they lose it

Sometimes people on the left like me are accused of being oppositional, that we don't want to exercise power, we just want to sit on the sidelines carping, and complaining about those who have to make the 'difficult decisions'. Well make no mistake, I want power, and I want a Green Party government. But not power at any price like the Irish Greens. I'm happy to make the difficult decisions but they have to be the right decisions.

'Free market' capitalism is just a racket

As the 'free' market fundamentalists of the neoliberal right continue their class war mission to drag us all back to nineteenth century conditions its becoming clearer that the 'economic policy' they support is little more than a racket. Before I describe this, its worth considering one of the central problems of capitalism - the falling rate of profit. In the nineteenth century many economists accepted that there was a tendency of the rate of profit to fall over time and Marx explained how that worked in Capital. Of course, Marx's theory has since been disputed, but not disproved. Nevertheless, by the 1970's, after the post WW2 boom profits were beginning to fall. The solution? - neoliberalism. Neoliberalism works by screwing workers, including middle class workers, harder, and reducing their living standards. Quite simply capitalists take a bigger slice of the cake, leaving ever fewer crumbs for the rest of us.

That is why our pensions, wages, and working conditions have been under attack for the past 30 years. The politicians who have been doing this to us have invented a series of plausible 'excuses' for doing so. In the case of pensions the 'excuse' is demographics, people are living longer, and so they are, but decent pensions are still affordable, the real reason they are being removed from us is to increase profits for corporations.

This is also the reason why our current reactionary neoliberal coalition government are so keen on privatising the NHS and public services - guaranteed profits. The corporations know very well that public services are an easy risk-free way of making guaranteed profits and they have long wanted to take control of them. With austerity and the most reactionary government in half a century in power their chance has come. In the UK this privatisation drive began with Thatcherism in the 1980's well before the current government, with the 'excuse' that the private sector was more efficient and would deliver better services. We have seen what has happened with the railways and energy. Large corporations making vast profits out of the taxpayer and customers (who used to be stakeholders) with none of the promised improvements. The economic crisis we are in, created by neoliberal 'economic policy' has now enabled the whole project to be pushed further and harder than it ever has been in the past 30 years.

We have reached the stage whereby public services are being handed over by our politicians to profit makers without any regard for supposed efficiency. This is nothing more than the imposition of 'free' market ideology and has become a racket, with guaranteed profits for the corporate winners. Here are a couple of examples I have recently come across, but there are many more. In the USA corporations are 'offering' to take over publicly run prisons as long as there is a minimum of a 90% occupancy rate. Just think about that. That means that the public bodies are going to have to find more prisoners to fill those jails! I guess they will just have to search harder for lawbreakers, and find sympathetic judges.

Meanwhile, in the UK A4e, a company which is supposed to help people back into work, is now under investigation for fraud, for allegedly fiddling its figures to get taxpayers money. The founder, Emma Harrison, paid herself £8.6 million last year. But this person is the darling of government, held up as an example of entrepreneurship to us all. A4e is built entirely around government contracts, that is taxpayers money, at least £8.6 million of which has been wasted in my view. That money could have been used to create jobs.

As long as our politicians are hand in glove with the corporations, we can expect more corporate welfarism and cosy deals carving up public services to continue. No risk-taking and no efficiencies -  except for lower wages and worse conditions for the workers who are expected to deliver. Even Tory MP David Davis has condemned 'crony' capitalism, but In fact, this is barely capitalism, its more akin to a form of neo-feudalism where the political barons and capitalist kings conspire to keep the rest of us in perpetual wage serfdom.

The fevered fantasies of the 'free' market fundamentalists

Yesterday the Greek people were betrayed by their political class, who put the bailing out of bond-holders and French and German banks above the needs of the Greek people. The madness of austerity continues and condemns the Greek people to years of pain and misery with a debt which can never be repaid. The Greek economy has contracted by 15% and unemployment has now reached 20%, homelessness is growing, and people are struggling to get access to healthcare. Undoubtedly, much of the pain which is being caused to delay the inevitable Greek default, is happening to enable the banks to get into a better state, and as we now know, banks are more important than people in neoliberal Europe.

But how did we get here? We have had 30 years of neoliberal economic failure. That is the real cause of this tragedy - a failed economic policy based on the triumphalism of the 'free' market, and a class war waged on the relatively  prosperous citizens of the west, as capitalism tries to maintain its failing profitability by taking away the healthcare, pensions, and livelihoods of western citizens. The origins of this neoliberal assault lie in the 1970's, in the Chicago School of economics and the Washington Consensus, implemented initially through Reaganomics in the USA and Thatcherism in the UK.

Despite the growing crisis caused by this ideology, and the recognition by many economists that neoliberalism doesn't work, the 'free' market right are telling the people of the west that the only cure is "more of the same". The prescription is killing the patient, but like mad scientists, the neoliberalists insist that yet harsher treatment is needed. Why is it that these 'free' market acolytes are so confident that their failed and discredited policies are the only way out of the crisis we are in? The answer is simple; these people are fanatics. Their 'economic' policy for rule by the market is not so much economic policy, nor even an ideology but much more a system of belief.

The supremacy of the 'free' market has become a fundamentalist cult, and its adherents represent a far greater threat to the safety and well-being of the global population than Al Qaeda or the Taliban. The origins of this fundamentalism were explained in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, a documentary by Adam Curtis originally shown on BBC. The 'guru' of the 'free' market cult, who occupies a similar position in relation to the 'free' market fundamentalists, as L Ron Hubbard does to the Scientologists, is Ayn Rand. Rand espoused a philosophy of extreme selfishness, and was responsible for writing a best selling book which is the 'free' market bible, Atlas Shrugged. In this novel, which bears about as much relation to reality as Lord of the Rings, the 'most productive' members of society, who are entrepreneurs, naturally, decide to go on strike (on strike??) because they are being oppressed by high taxes, and regulations. The message is clear: society depends upon a small group of wealth creators, and without them we would all still be living in caves. Because of their obvious superiority such people ought to be treated differently to the rest of us and afforded the special privilege of great wealth and low taxes - does that sound familiar? Of course this fantasy is manna from heaven for the rich, and the apparatchicks of the Tea Party, which is why Atlas Shrugged is still a bestseller in the USA. But don't laugh, because Rand has been, and still is, very influential. One of her followers was Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the US Federal Reserve in the lead up to the 2008 crash. So, the next time you see one of the peddlers of 'free' market fundamentalism on Question Time, you need to understand that they represent a very real threat to your well-being and prosperity.

The 'free' market right continue their attack on renewable energy

I've posted recently about how the 'free' market right have been at the forefront of the climate change denial movement through shadowy groups like the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and are actively undermining the fight against climate change. Now we hear from the Telegraph that more than 100 Tory MPs have written to the PM asking him to end subsidies for windfarms. Not only are these subsidies, which help the renewable energy sector to grow and compete, under attack, but there are also increasing objections to windfarms in the UK.

Lets deal with the subsidies first; because relatively cheap coal and gas are still available and the renewables energy sector is still developing, subsidies are needed to enable the widespread installation of energy derived from wind and solar. The solar industry recently created 25,000 much needed jobs in the UK, which are now under threat because the government has attempted to reduce subsidies. The irony is that none of those on the 'free' market right seem to have any objection to subsidies for nuclear power, which is not only uneconomic and produces a toxic waste problem, but has needed subsidies in the UK from day one. Research in the USA shows that all energy sources have received energy subsidies in the past hundred years with oil and gas receiving the highest subsidy of all. Wind power provides the cheapest form of renewable energy. Its critics claim it is intermittent and unreliable but these myths have been debunked according to this post by Damian Carrington in the Guardian. Furthermore, it has been calculated that;

"The best wind farms in the world already produce power as economically as coal, gas and nuclear generators; the average wind farm will be fully competitive by 2016".

And in the UK the costs of switching to low carbon energy will be no greater than continuing with business as usual.

I accept that people have a perfect right to object to wind farms being built in their locality, and there are some legitimate concerns about windfarms being built too close to dwellings, and the possible health risks form being subjected to noise. But we need to embrace this new cleaner technology for the sake of the future. I wonder how many people objected when the railways were being built in Britain?

Finally, you have to ask - why is it that climate change has become a left vs right issue over the past decade or so? Why do right-wingers like Nigel Lawson, of the GWPF, Tory MPs, and Ruth Lea seem to think that all environmentalists are lefties and climate change is a left-wing plot to bring about an eco-socialist world? Why do they object so strongly? The answer is simple - capitalism and corporate profits. The 'free' market right have recognised that climate change is a potential threat to established big businesses and capitalist accumulation, which relies on compound growth. They fear that adaptation to climate change and a low carbon, lower energy, lower consumption future will kill capitalist expansion, and they are probably right. If you want to find out more read Naomi Klein's excellent article on Capitalism vs the Climate. I'll just finish with this quote which sums up why this battle is being fought so fiercely:

"The bottom line is that an ecological crisis that has its roots in the overconsumption of natural resources must be addressed not just by improving the efficiency of our economies but by reducing the amount of material stuff we produce and consume. Yet that idea is anathema to the large corporations that dominate the global economy, which are controlled by footloose investors who demand ever greater profits year after year. We are therefore caught in the untenable bind of, as Jackson puts it, "trash the system or crash the planet."

We cannot rely on the BBC to allow us to hear the truth

Good article in the New Statesman this week about the BBC pandering to the Israeli government's illegal occupation on Palestine. The Israelis have done a great job of bullying the Western media in the past few years. The article showed that the BBC had censored the lyric "free Palestine" from a freestyle by rapper Mic Righteous on 1xtra in February last year. This is an outrageous censorship of free speech by an organisation which is supposed to be there to defend it, a position which was itself defended by the BBC Trust.

Over the years I've become increasingly disillusioned by the coverage of major issues by the BBC. Although it has been subjected to intimidation by the Coalition government, and is under threat from the likes of the Murdochs, who want to destroy public sector competition, the BBC would be supported by the public if it stood up for freedom of expression.

The final nail in the coffin for me has been the coverage of the economic crisis we have been in for the past four years. Coverage and analysis has been very poor with the exception of Paul Mason on BBC's Newsnight. I regularly listen to radio programmes like Today and have been appalled by the superficial analysis and the selection of 'business as usual' spokespeople, who have supported the government's austerity programme. Hardly an alternative voice has been heard and the I've never heard the word 'neoliberal' mentioned on flagship programmes like Today and PM, even though that is the economic and political paradigm we live and is responsible for the economic mess we are in.

BBC's Bush House

The BBC has always had a bias towards the government of the day, giving much more time to them than the opposition to get their case across. In some ways this is defensible, because the government ought to be given time to explain what it is doing, but the bias is far too great as it was when Andrew Lansley was given five evenings on PM to speak about his health 'reforms' - without an alternative case being put or ever being given a decent amount of airtime.

If you don't allow the truth to be broadcast, people stop listening. I get most of my news from the net now and I can recommend Twitter if you want to find out about breaking news from around the world. It is also good if you want to follow what is happening with Occupy - something which is virtually ignored by the UK media. I found the censorship article because of a Twitter post - otherwise I would have never have known about it. I hardly ever ever watch BBC tv news these days and I only listen to the Today programme in the car to find out what the latest London luvvie spin on the news is. We need a strong BBC to be public sector counterweight to the propaganda of the so called free press and media outlets like Fox News. We need a government which can reform the private sector media and allow the BBC to tell us the truth.

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.