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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bedroom tax demo at the Cross in Chester

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

Why we must all bow down to "The Market"

Sometime ago I posted on here about the people of the remote Lambayeque Valley in Peru who were threatened by a series of environmental crises, and who sacrificed some of their number and destroyed pyramids they had built to appease the gods in an attempt to save themselves. You see, they believed that the gods were angry and must be appeased if they were to be saved from catastrophe. Needless to say they were wrong and after lasting for 450 years their civilisation was destroyed.

I was reminded of this when I watched Question Time last week. In fact I am reminded of it almost every time I open a newspaper or switch on a radio or television these days. On Question Time the redoubtable Melanie Phillips was one of the pundits telling anyone who could be bothered to listen that there was only one answer to the economic crisis we are in - we must appease "The Market". Like so many others she believes that "The Market" can only be appeased by a few selected actions, the favourite of which appears to be "tax cuts". Cut taxes and all will be well. The crisis will come to an end. There are of course other things which appease "The Market"; they include "privatisation", "flexibility of labour" and another important cut known as "cutting red tape". In fact there are lots of cuts which appease the market. Cutting benefits and cutting public expenditure also keep "The Market" happy.

Of course there is never any acknowledgement by supporters of "The Market" that the great economic crisis we are in might have been caused by "The Market", or even that it is in fact just the latest and greatest in a series of crises caused by "The Market", because "The Market" can never be blamed for anything. We can though, blame everything else, the government, trade unions, public sector, regulators, benefit scroungers, or even the weather. If anything goes wrong the inevitable answer that we get is that we need more of "The Market", not less. Because "The Market" is there to be admired and worshipped by the devout. Its not difficult to imagine Melanie as a Lambayeque priestess administering cuts to the unfortunate sacrificial victims on a Peruvian pyramid. But have no doubt; faith in "The Market" is just that; faith. Its not economics or policy or even ideology, it is a belief system as strong and irrational as the beliefs of the high priests of the Lambayeque Valley. On the day that a new Pope was elected let us not forget that the believers in the true faith are people who believe in "The Market".

Antibiotics - another failure of "The Market"

At the moment, millions of people are being sacrificed on the altar of austerity because that is what "The Market" wants. Not only that but the planet and the people that depend upon it are in danger of being destroyed like the Lambayeque people to suit the needs of "The Market". Yesterday we heard of another failure of "The Market". We are facing a crisis in healthcare due to a lack of effective new antibiotics. This is because "The Market" deems it is not profitable to produce them so they aren't going to be made. Could this be the same "Market" which is feeding antibiotics to farmed animals to make them fatter, rendering the antibiotics we need less effective in the process? Or is it the same "Market" that can't provide us with houses to live in, or vaguely ethical financial services or fairly priced utilities, or was responsible for BSE, or can't provide two billion people with an income of more than $2 a day? The list goes on and on, and so does the madness of  "The Market" and its disciples. But let's make no mistake, if we don't end the tyranny of this mad belief system the fate that befell the people of Lambayeque awaits all of us too.

There is a real alternative plan for the economy and RBS

Today I came across two news items which struck me as absurd. In the first David Cameron was making a speech in which he defended the government's economic 'policy of deficit reduction', which is better known as austerity. In his speech he came out with all the usual stuff, including the fact that reducing government spending was the only way to cut the deficit, and that there was no alternative. But clearly he is wrong. As others, including even Vince Cable have stated, there are very real alternatives. In a shrinking or stagnant economy its more difficult to reduce a deficit, and that, after three years of austerity is where we are now. 

The problem in our economy is lack of demand caused by high levels of unemployment, and falling living standards for the 99%. In those conditions people can't afford to buy, and tax revenues fall, especially when commodity prices are rising. If governments increase spending on much needed infrastructure projects such as social housing that stimulus creates jobs, raises tax revenues and revives the economy. You don't have to be a Keynesian to subscribe to this view. The key point though, is that it has never been cheaper to borrow money, so this is the time for governments to spend. Furthermore, there is really no need for our government to borrow, it can create money through quantitative easing (QE). The Bank of England (BoE) has created £375 billion of dosh through QE without any beneficial outcome because it has been wasted on buying bonds. In effect all this has done is benefit the very banks which caused the crisis in the first place by increasing their profits! What we really need is green QE, which means spending money created by the BoE on building environmentally friendly homes, investing in renewables and creating a million green jobs. This will revive our economy, help end the misery of unemployment, create the renewable energy we so desperately need, and move us towards  a green economy for the future.

The second bit of news was as priceless as Cameron's failed analysis of the 'need' for austerity; Mervyn King who is still governor of the BoE today put forward a cunning plan to sell off the infamous Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). This consisted of splitting RBS into a 'good bank', with all the profitable bits, and a 'bad bank' containing loads of nasty debt. There is a huge problem with this plan because the private sector gets the good bits and we, i.e. muggins the taxpayer, gets to pick up the bill for all the nasty stuff, which we will no doubt be paying off for the next generation or so. But there is a much better plan. Split RBS and give the 'good' parts to the taxpayer to create a green national investment bank, and give the 'bad' bits back to the people who created the problem in the first place -  the bankers and their shareholders.

These two news items speak volumes about the people who run our country. They live in the past. They have no idea of what is good for the UK and the people who live here. They serve the interests of a narrow and privileged elite. These are the real benefit scroungers - to use their own terminology. They leach off the state to the tune of £billions whilst seeking to deny the poorest and most disadvantaged people in our country the tiny amounts of money needed to keep them going. They also haven't a clue about the restructuring our economy needs to undergo if we are going to create a green economy to deal with climate change. We deserve much better than his, and the only way to achieve real change is to campaign, agitate, and ultimately vote for a positive alternative. That alternative is the Green Party. Join us and help make that change happen. There is no time to lose.

Are there Green red lines? - You bet, its time to fight the bedroom tax!

Since the general election in 2010 the Coalition government has been waging class war against the people of the UK. In his 'emergency' budget in 2010 Chancellor George Osborne inflicted £81 billion of austerity cuts on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country, including the low paid, the unemployed and disabled people. Women have been disproportionately hit by these cuts and 700,000 public sector workers have lost or will lose their jobs as a result. And all this after those very people helped to bail out the banks and financial capitalism with their hard earned taxes.

We are told that the purpose of the austerity cuts is to 'reduce the deficit' and save the economy. But that is a lie, and austerity hasn't reduced the deficit. The real aim of austerity is to use the economic crisis to destroy the welfare state, and privatize the NHS and public services for the benefit of capitalists and their corporations. Austerity is working, and working very well for the richest, who are gaining wealth whilst living standards for the rest of us have fallen. Austerity is class war. Those who have read the book 'The Shock Doctrine', by Naomi Klein, will know that, in times of crisis, capitalists and their tame politicians use the crisis to roll back the social and economic gains made by the 99% by imposing 'free' market 'policies' such as welfare cuts, privatisation and deregulation.

In the UK, the Coalition government has tried to deflect blame for the cuts by making councils impose them at a local level. Councils have already had to impose cuts but we are now at a stage where some of the most savage cuts in benefits are being introduced, including changes to council tax and the so-called 'bedroom tax', affecting the disabled, unemployed and low paid. I have always opposed all of the government's austerity cuts but now, as more and more people are becoming aware of the brutal nature of the cuts, we have reached a stage where it is possible to launch a real fightback and make the 'bedroom tax' into this government's poll tax. 

As far as the Green Party is concerned we have opposed the cuts from day one, and we showed in our 2010 manifesto how the crisis could be resolved without privatization or cutting public services. Our Green council in Brighton and Hove has worked hard to do its best for the local people in very difficult circumstances and has been supported by the Party. The question is - are there any red lines for our councillors? When do we reach a point where we can no longer impose austerity cuts on the poorest? The answer to that has to be now, with the advent of the 'bedroom tax' in a months time.

We need to resist the bedroom tax with all the peaceful democratic means at our disposal. We need to learn from the successes of UKUncut, by using protest action and direct action, including supporting victims of these benefit changes whom councils try to evict. We also need to look at all the measures that councils can use to mitigate the effects of the bedroom tax, including the re-classification of rooms in social housing. Its heartening to see that a recent meeting of B&H Green Party passed a motion on the bedroom tax, supported by our MP Caroline Lucas, which stated:

"The Green Party of Brighton and Hove therefore resolves to:

   1. Publicly condemn the 'Bedroom Tax' as an ideologically-driven attack
   on the least well-off in our society.
   2. Request that the Convenor of the Green Group makes a clear public
   statement that no household will be evicted from a Brighton and Hove   City Council owned home as a result of rent arrears accrued solely as a result of this cut to Housing Benefit
   3. Request that the Chair of the council's Housing Committee instructs
   officers accordingly.
   4. Publicise this position, externally and in our own publications and
   websites."

Its time for our councillors to grasp the nettle and lead the fight against this pernicious bedroom tax. If they fail to do so we will lose credibility as a Party nationally. Parties which support austerity get rightly punished by the electorate as recent elections in Europe have shown. As a Party, we have to make a breakthrough to make a real difference in UK politics. We can only do this by leading the resistance to further cuts and providing people in England and Wales with hope for the future with our positive alternatives to austerity.

The good news is that the Tories are making themselves unelectable

Have you been following the Eastleigh byelection? No, neither have I. Its hard to get exited about a straight fight between the Tories and their Coalition partners, the Lib Dems, even though it could have implications for the future of the current government. What eventually brought the contest to my attention was the antics of the Tory candidate Maria Hutchings. I live in the North of England but you can hear her knuckles scraping from up here.

Hutchings is a typical Tory candidate, someone who sounds and looks like she was buried in the 1950's and has just been dug up for the occasion. Like most Tories, fifty years and more of social progress has passed her by. She's anti-abortion, doesn't like gay marriage and thinks her son is too intelligent to go to a mere state school. She says that her son wants to be a surgeon, and if he succeeds, after the high-powered private education she has planned for him, he would be well advised to operate on his mother and remove the small particle of brain lodged in her skull.

I'm not a psephologist, and I don't look at opinion polls, but what I do know is that the Tories last won a general election in 1992. Cameron failed to win a majority in 2010, much to the ire of his backbenchers, but Cameron himself is far more popular than the Tory Party. Cameron didn't fail. What he did do was to give the Tories a chance of power by de-toxifying the brand of the nasty party sufficiently to enable them to win more seats than any other party. As I've said before, Cameron is a complete charlatan, a deeply reactionary Thatcherite toff, who manages somehow to con people that he is the bloke next door, rather than a fully paid-up member of the ruling class. 

But every cloud has a silver lining, and despite the fact that Cameron,  Osborne and co. are screwing our economy and waging class war against all but their own kind, what they are doing in the process is making the Tories even more unelectable than they were in 2010. They are in a very similar predicament to the Republicans in the USA. Making predictions in politics is a dangerous game but here we go; I predict that the Tories already have no chance of winning outright in 2015, and will not be the largest party; furthermore, they will never win another election in their own right unless they stop serving their own narrow class interests and wise-up to that fact that they are completely out of touch with the majority of the British people. The former being impossible of course. Nothing could be better for Britain than the demise of the Tory Party, a Party which has caused immense damage to this island and its people. 

Bevan was right - it is essential we maintain universal benefits

Why on earth should we pay a winter fuel allowance of £250 to wealthy pensioners? At a time when we can barely afford to pay for benefits, if you believe the Coalition government, it just doesn't make any sense. Well the Coalition has got it wrong because it really does make perfect sense for the following reasons; if we want to maintain a decent system of social security, it must apply to all; furthermore the fact that universal benefits apply to all strengthens social solidarity, something which it is essential to maintain; then there is the cost of means testing, which is not only an expensive waste of money, but also deters people, particularly elderly people, from claiming the benefits they are entitled to.

In his recent Guardian article John Harris made the case for universal benefits, and he is absolutely right. As he said;

"Once again, we have to wearily go back to first principles. As the child benefit fiasco proves, means-testing and selectivity cost huge amounts of money and governmental effort. In stigmatising help and demanding engagement with a labyrinthine machine, selective benefits often fail to reach the people they are meant for (which is why over 25% of kids entitled to free school meals don't get them, and the means-testing of winter fuel payment would be dangerous)."

Some benefits, such as unemployment benefit - now stigmatised as 'Jobseekers Allowance' - which deliberately makes it sound like a hand out - will only ever apply to certain members of society for obvious reasons. But others such as child benefit must remain universal if they are going to be maintained at reasonable levels.

Of course conservatives would love to see the end of universal benefits. This is because they know that it would be so much easier then to further reduce the levels of benefits for the poorest in our society to pay for more tax cuts for the better off. Aneurin Bevan, the great Labour Party socialist, undertsood this very well and said;

"If benefits are restricted to the poor, they will end up being poor benefits."

Aneurin Bevan

Finally, one of the commenters on Jon Harris's article also summed it it up beautifully;

"The welfare state is a national insurance. You don't exclude some because they're too rich. It goes against the principle. Just as you don't exclude rich car drivers from claiming on their car insurance "because, Sir, you don't need it".'

Why conservatives are the real enemies of freedom

Have you noticed how conservatives, both with a big and a small 'c', are always on about freedom and the importance of living in a 'free society'. Not only that but they are always sounding off about the enemies of freedom, and its not difficult to guess who those enemies are - socialists and trade unionists usually come top of the list. So it was with interest that I read Charles Moore's latest diatribe in the Telegraph. Tory cheerleader Moore has identified another one of the great enemies of freedom - equality! Not only is the promotion of equality for all a threat to 'freedom' but apparently the desire for more equality is a form of madness as this revealing quote shows:

"The doctrine of Equality is mad. Like extreme post-Reformation Protestantism, it perverts a good inclination and turns it into a lunatic theocracy." 

I'm sure that even on a good day Moore would be deeply perturbed by the idea of equality but what seems to have particularly upset him is David Cameron's attempt to bring in gay marriage. Apparently if gay people can get married that is a threat to the 'institution of marriage', which as every good person knows is a union between a man and a woman - only. But why so much angst? I could quote more from Moore's article including some pretty tortuous, cringe-worthy stuff about marriage being about procreation - something gays can't do! - but I'll spare you that.

Moore suffers from the same problem that all conservatives have - a morbid psychology in which it is essential to feel superior to other people at the expense of their freedom. In this case the freedom of all people to get married. That is why so many conservatives are racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that is why they loathe political correctness so much. For example, you see that white working class conservatives, even though they are shat upon by the likes of Moore and his class, can still feel good because they can sleep soundly at night knowing that, downtrodden as they are, they are still superior to gays, women and blacks. That is why the more extreme of them support the likes of the BNP. Take that away from them and what have they got - nothing! And that is also why so many 'middle class' conservative Americans hate Obama.

Equality is a terrifying concept for conservatives because they will no longer be better than others. No wonder Moore thinks the desire for equality is a form of madness. But there is one more important form of equality I need to mention. The one, that along with equality for people of all races, women, and gays, that socialists and trade unionists are fighting for - economic equality. This is the equality that conservatives fear most. That is why socialist and trade unionists are the enemy. Cameron and Osborne may be able to accept gay marriage, but economic equality, with workers obtaining the real value of the wealth they create, will never be acceptable to them. Economic equality would undermine the most important inequality in our class-ridden capitalist economy. That is the final frontier without which the ruling class would have nothing. They would then merely be the same as the rest of us.

The reality is that equality represents a huge threat to conservatives. Its something they really fear. It not only threatens their superiority to gays, but more fundamentally their self-serving class superiority. Its the grouse moors and London clubs, the yachts and apartments in Manhattan that are under threat from economic equality. That is what really scares them, the freedom that they have to inherit wealth and to be kept in the style to which they are accustomed, by the labours' of others. That is why they really mean when they talk about freedom, because its their freedom that counts, and they must hang on to that freedom at all costs, at the expense of freedom for the rest of us.

One thing the 'free' market is brilliant at - generating bullshit

One of the cornerstones of 'free' market capitalism is 'confidence'. 'Confidence' is of course a code word. What is really means is that capitalists need to know the governments will ensure that everything is stitched up in their favour. Another way of putting this is - privatising the profits and nationalising the losses - that whatever happens, they can't lose. This is because capitalists, contrary to 'free' market mythology are not really risk-takers at all. That myth is a good example of 'free' market bullshit. What capitalists really want is no-risk-at-all guaranteed profits of the kind they can get from the privatisation of the public sector.

But its really another kind of confidence I want to focus on. This is the key confidence of 'entrepreneurship'. This is the bullshit that is really at the heart of neoliberal 'free' market capitalism, and comes straight out of the 'free' market fantasises of Ayn Rand. The mythology goes like this; all wealth is created by dynamic, risk-taking individuals we call entrepreneurs. Becuase of the dynamism and creativity of these special individuals the Earth continues to orbit the Sun, and we should all be eternally grateful to these people. And, because they are so magical they deserve special treatment - like not paying taxes - and must enjoy great wealth and, of course, power.

Poeple like Bill Gates and Richard Branson are cited as examples of these thrusting god-like individuals. The problem is that the idols have feet of clay. Gates's Microsoft empire was built on MS-DoS, a piece of software he bought off someone else, and grew through the ruthless destruction of rival companies by establishing a monopoly position for his key products; Windows and Microsoft Office. Branson has done extremely well out of government handouts as shown by his risk-free 'enterprise' Virgin Rail. No risk when you run a private monopoly, just guaranteed profits from the taxpayer. Much to Branson's chagrin this was ruthlessly exposed  by Aditya Chakrabortty in this Guardian article. But the myth of the entrepreneur continues to be crucial to the belief-system that is neoliberal 'free' market capitalism. That is not to say that there aren't dynamic and innovative individuals, it just that very few of those people are capitalists, or even want to be. For those few capitalists that are there is a fatal problem - the wealth that 'they generate' is actually created by workers, not by them.

Marie Antoinette said "Let them eat cake". But the entrepreneurs of Davos want us only to have the cake crumbs.

This week my 'free' market bullshit detector has been pointing in the direction of that heart of darkness known as the World Economic Forum in Davos. This is the home of the really confident ones, the capitalists with their luxury yachts who ride on the crest of the wave of 'free' market bullshit. These grossly overpaid, overrated and over-confident individuals, their sycophantic hangers on, and tame politicians who serve them, are beginning to look more and more like the Marie Antoinettes of the modern world. You can tell this by the fact that even Will Hutton, who likes capitalism, is getting very pissed off with the Davos crowd. and wants them sorted out. But, for the time being, while the entrepreneurs of Davos feast on the fruits of our labours we will have to be satisfied with the crumbs of cake that fall from their table.

Neoliberal Labour fail the social justice test - again!

Neoliberal Labour are at it again. This time pandering to the Coalition's class-war driven attack on the unemployed with their own version of Workfare. Labour's new plan - or should that be New Labour's plan? - announced by Ed Balls, is that people who are unemployed for more than two years would be forced to work in some sort of government backed scheme for at least 6 months. And Labour have repeated the Tory mantra that work must pay more than benefits.

So what is wrong with this you may ask? Well there is plenty wrong with it. For a start, unemployment is a failure of Labour's beloved 'free' market to provide meaningful jobs for people. But this can't be admitted, so the unemployed must be blamed for their own predicament, including the 660,000 public sector workers who have lost their jobs under the Coalition. In 'free' market la la land you must always blame the victims never the culprits - i.e. the banks, the tax dodging corporations and the tame politicians who support them, the very people who created the economic crisis we are now all paying for. Secondly, if people on benefits get more money than those in work that tells us the simple truth that those in work are not earning enough. Under the previous New Labour government, Gordon Brown's tax credits for working families simply subsidised cheap labour for the tax dodging corporations. It was a form of corporate welfarism. Thirdly, the unemployed and low paid are exactly the sort of people who ought to expect and allegedly 'progressive' party like Labour to give them some support in difficult times. Instead of this reactionary nonsense, Labour should be committed to full employment, as it used to be, and guarantee every unemployed person a meaningful job. But Labour doesn't have the 'Balls' to do that.

What is the answer? At the last general election in its 2010 manifesto, the Green Party came up with policies to halve the deficit and create one million new jobs in the green sector - in areas like home insulation - to tackle the crisis in the economy and fight climate change. This carefully costed programme, paid for by shelving wasteful and unnecessary projects like Trident, and taxes on environmental pollution and the rich, would have put the UK in a much stronger position than it is now. There would not have been swinging cuts in the public sector and no privatisation of the NHS. There is a real alternative of hope to the despair and destruction that neoliberal austerity is wreaking on the people of Europe and the UK. We can bring about positive change if people vote for us. Do you want to be part of a positive future? Then come and join us.

People who want change must not allow themselves to be co-opted by the system

We live in a 'democracy'. A flawed democracy for sure, one with an anachronistic first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system, and consequently a parliament which fails to reflect the will of the British people. And in the second decade of the 21st century we have an unelected 'second chamber', a thing that would be regarded as absurdly undemocratic in most other countries, and something which you won't find in nations which our politicians criticise - like Chavez's Venezuela. 

What's more, we don't have a written constitution which people can refer to, and rely upon. Our constitutional arrangements are shrouded in mystery, and the goalposts appear to be moved, almost at will, to suit the needs of those in power. There can be no doubt that this 'democratic' system continues to be maintained because it benefits the alliance of monarchy, politicians, media magnates, capitalists and other 'establishment' figures who make up the British 'ruling class'.

The electoral hurdles are there to make sure that radicals and small parties find it very hard to make a breakthrough and get a toe hold in local or national government, but the story doesn't end there, because once elected, councillors and MPs find there are 'rules' that they are supposed to follow, and naturally enough the 'rules' are intended to make sure that they conform. The idea is that if you manage to get yourself elected you must then be co-opted -  you must become part of the system.

But if Parties and individuals want to get elected and bring about radical change they must avoid being co-opted at all costs, and they must retain their radical edge. 'Rules' are there to be changed, and broken if necessary. Many of the 'rules' are about how people are expected to behave rather than actual written codes. Please note that I'm not suggesting that anyone should make a martyr of themselves and end up getting fined or thrown into gaol. What I mean is that the 'rules' should be actively resisted by any legal means possible, especially peaceful democratic protest and direct action involving party members, supporters and trade unionists. In other words 'kick up a stink' and ruthlessly expose the corruption and anti-democratic nature of the system and its supporters. Don't co-operate with it, challenge it!

For example, if you are elected on a platform to oppose the cuts - oppose them at every opportunity!  A cut is a cut is a cut. There are no 'good' cuts in the Coalition's austerity programme, so vote against them, and work with trade unions and local community groups to defend jobs and protect local services. Form alliances with your local community from which you will gain trust and future electoral support. Once you have been seen to conform with 'the system' you simply become 'like all the rest' and lose credibility, and support - you become just another politician closing libraries and hospitals. Here is a quote from Deborah Mattinson's illuminating New Statesman article, based on in-depth electoral research  - 'Tony, you're just like all the rest' - [link above and well worth reading]:

"A conventional wisdom has grown up around the electoral success of new Labour. It is that to win elections you have to stifle radicalism; that being in touch with those vital "Middle England" voters is at odds with the needs of the Labour core vote; and that anything that challenges top-down thinking is somehow old-fashioned, certainly old Labour. Yet floating voters, and women in particular, were voting for something radically different in 1997. They wanted to see real change - [my italics] "

Of course there are some that will argue that this isn't 'grown up politics', and that 'with power comes responsibility'. But that is just playing into the hands of the the very people whose interests are served by the system. The real responsibility of power is to be true to your ideals and the people who elected you. Change is possible, but only if you don't do as you are told. Change the system, don't let the system change you!

Fracking is a delusional scraping of the bottom of the fossil fuel energy barrel

The battle over fracking is the new front line in the battle against climate change and the madness of the 'free' market fundamentalists who are destroying our economy and wrecking our climate. The battle lines are clearly drawn, with 'free' market cheerleaders like Boris Johnson and George Osborne eulogising the 'benefits' of cheap energy from shale gas and the environmental movement warning about the potentially damaging consequences of the 'dash for gas' in the UK.

I've posted on here before about how 'free' market climate change deniers are determined to avoid the economic consequences of climate change - that we will have to move to a different kind of economy which is more local, greener and steady state - and want to protect their own selfish interests and preserve big 'business as usual' at all costs. That is because they recognise that the kind of green, 'low energy' economy that is essential to combat climate change will mean the end of capitalism as we know it. 

It has been claimed that fracking has produced a massive economic boost in the USA with cheap shale gas lowering energy prices and fueling growth in the economy. But the longer fracking continues in the USA, the more evidence accumulates that not only are there environmental risks with fracking, but also that it is uneconomic. Here is a quote from an article in Business Insider:

"The economics of fracking are horrid. All wells have decline rates where production drops over time. But instead of decades for traditional wells, decline rates in horizontal fracking are measured in weeks and months: production falls off a cliff from day one and continues for a year or so until it levels out at about 10% of initial production."

The Government's own advisers have shown that Osborne's dash for gas is likely to increase energy bills for UK consumers by £600 as opposed to £100 for renewable energy. As if all this wasn't bad enough there are serious concerns about the potential environmental impact of fracking including the pollution of groundwater by toxic chemicals. Like the exploitation of oil from tar sands, fracking is an act of desperation, a Canute like attempt to prevent the inevitable changes that will have to take place in the global economy if we are to survive the very real threat that climate change poses to the future of our species. Reject this neoliberal nonsense and join the Green Party's fight for a greener, cleaner and socially just economy. Our future depends upon it.

The European Union is becoming the enemy of the European people

The European Union is becoming the enemy of the European people - it gives me no pleasure to post this, but it is essential that I do so because it is the truth. Like many people of my generation I had high hopes for the EU. I voted for the UK to join in a referendum in 1974. I didn't buy the 'common market' guff I was being sold at the time by the corporate propaganda machine of the Tory press. I was voting for the 'ideal' and by that I mean a peaceful, war-avoiding Europe, united in a common and progressive purpose. 

In those days a progressive purpose was a realistic project, that a social Europe would be a prosperous, sharing society in which everyone would benefit from the kind of economic and social progress that still seemed inevitable at the time. How things have turned sour since then! Although most Europeans have held fast to that concept of progress, the politicians and capitalists had other ideas. By the 1970's profits were falling and as the EU expanded, so did the influence of the 'free' market neoliberals who were determined to ensure that the EU became a neoliberal corporate club, dedicated to the interests of the rich, at the expense of the rest of us.

And so now we find ourselves at the end of the European dream, living in a union dedicated to destroying the living standards of workers down to third world levels. The exemplar for this is the treatment of the Greeks, by the so-called Troika, who have been beggared  because of a crisis not of their own making. That the hypocrites who lead the EU such as Merkel (and of late Sarkozy) have claimed that this is "solidarity" only serves to emphasise the hypocrisy and mendacity of the Eurocracy . The Greeks have been betrayed and crushed by their own ruling class, with the co-operation of the Eurocratic/capitalist alliance which is a the heart of darkness of the EU.The bailout was only ever intended to protect European banks at the expense of the Greek people.

Munch's The Scream sums up the fate of the Greeks at the hands of the EU

The primary instrument of our betrayal is the the Lisbon Treaty, a neoliberal charter, which enshrines the supremacy of the 'free' market above the needs and democratic rights of the European people. Until this charter is consigned to the dustbin of history where it belongs, there can be no solidarity, freedom or progress within the EU. We need to fight to overcome not only the democratic deficit in the EU but to free Europeans from the economic slavery of neoliberalism. 

Having said all that, its essential that we reject the anti-EU rhetoric churned out by the likes of UKIP, and the right of the Tory party. The only reason for their euroscepticism is because they want to destroy what remains of EU environmental and employment legislation so that they can can screw UK workers even harder than they are being screwed at the moment. Of course, its ironic that this kind of euroscepticism is popular, and that people's discontent in the UK with the EU has been manipulated by the capitalist media to benefit  the likes of UKIP who think that the neoliberalism of the EU doesn't go far enough. Don't be fooled! We don't need to leave the EU but we do need to change it for the benefit of the European people.

Osborne's cuts have nothing to do with the deficit

In my last post I blogged about how the 'free' market was working - for the banks, corporations and the capitalist media (if that seems contradictory to the title of the that post - you 'll have to read the post).  Now I have to follow that up with the simple fact that austerity is working. Its working for the 1%, for the George Osbornes of this world, that is why it is being imposed on the people of Europe and the USA. The real aim of austerity is not to solve the 'problem' of the deficit, or to revive our economy. The real aim is to destroy the welfare state, and to reduce the unemployed, and the working poor to third world levels of destitution, and to destroy collective provision.

The poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, the disabled, the unemployed, and the working poor, are the first targets of austerity, The middle classes come next. The aim of austerity is to return the UK to the nineteenth century, and to roll back all the gains in pensions, conditions of employment, living standards, and healthcare, which we have obtained through the trade unions and our democratic process in the past 100 years.

George Osborne - destroying the welfare state in the UK

Osborne is a bare-faced liar. He knows very well that his description of the UK economy as some sort of household budget is a complete fiction. Either that or he is stupid. National economies are not like household economies. National economies can live with high levels of debt for long periods. Governments can borrow far more cheaply than companies or families. They can also create money. Not one penny of Osborne's original £81 billion of cuts was necessary. The structural deficit is convenient cover for an ideologically driven Tory class war on the British people. Its something that they have dreamed of for years - destroy the welfare state and privatise the NHS and the public sector. Now, under the cover of an economic crisis their friends in the banks created they have the opportunity to inflict their 'free' market ideology on the UK. Don't believe me? The read this quote from Michael Burke in the Guardian today:

"The stated aim of "austerity" is not growth but fiscal balance. According to its supporters it is self-evident that, like any household, if you cut your spending you will have more money left at the end of each month. For governments, this is reflected in current spending not capital spending – any fool can cut needed investment on school buildings, rail and roads and claim that things are improving. In official projections, the deficit on the current budget was expected to be falling to £80bn in the current financial year, down £34bn in two years. Is this current deficit falling? [no]. If not, austerity is failing in its stated objective, and persisting with it implies there is actually a different policy objective of lowering wages and benefits, which is what has happened.

Don't be fooled by this Coalition government. Austerity is working very well indeed because the Chancellor's cuts programme is a direct attack on the living standards of you and your family. It is designed to make the rich richer and the rest of us poorer. If it succeeds your children will be poorer than you are and your grandchildren will be poorer than your children. You only have one option and that is to join together with people who are fighting the cuts and stop the greatest heist in history in its tracks.