Category Archives: Tories

Cait Reilly’s High Court Victory over Workfare is a Victory for Human Decency

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Con-Dem cuts, social justice, Tories, welfare reform

Today’s High Court decision to uphold Cait Reilly’s appeal over her being forced to participate in the government’s workfare scheme on pain of having her JSA stopped, is a rare victory for human decency.

Currently thousands of people up and down the country, who through no fault of their own are struggling to find employment, are suffering the indignity and coercion of workfare. It is reflective of the callous disregard for the human rights of the poor and most vulnerable in society by this government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

In conjunction with the social injustice of the controversial and ongoing Atos re-assessments of people on disability, the upcoming bedroom tax designed to punish people on housing benefit, workfare will be remembered as a low point in the nation’s social history in years to come. The criminalisation of poverty and the demonisation of the unemployed and people on benefits is in itself a crime.

Cait Reilly’s victory today gives millions who are currently suffering as a direct result of the government’s attacks on benefit claimants hope, reminding them that they are not scum and that they do not have to accept being bullied, harassed, intimidated, and coerced – that they can fight back and they can win.

Bertolt Brecht once wrote that ‘Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes.’

Britain in 2013 is just such an unhappy land and Cait Reilly is indeed a hero.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tory Economic Policy is More Akin to a Mass Experiment in Human Despair

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Category
Economics, economy, George Osborne, Tories

We are living in the midst of an economic meltdown, which as the latest economic figures reveal is being made worse not better by a chancellor whose incompetence and mendacity is now beyond doubt.

The damning revelation that the UK economy shrunk by 0.3 percent in the last quarter of 2012 now sees the country headed for a triple dip recession, an economic calamity which calls for an immediate moratorium by the government on its present course and a reversal of its addiction to austerity. If not for the brief and mini economic boom provided by the Olympics, the UK economy would have likely registered negative growth for the whole of last year, and thus have made history for all the wrong reasons.

It really does not take a genius to understand that the nation’s overall debt is being made worse as a consequence of low consumption, increasing unemployment and underemployment, and a concomitant decrease in tax revenues. As a result, and by any objective reckoning, the government’s economic policy has been a disaster.

The difficulty is that a change in the policy being followed and failing so abjectly will by definition involve a step-change in ideology. Why? Because the economic strategy that is being implemented by this government is the product of ideological blinkers and not sound economic theory.

Since the economic crisis first hit these shores at the beginning of 2008 the glaring weakness in the economy has been a collapse in demand. The deficit grew in the wake of the crisis as the previous Labour government increased borrowing to fill the gap of plunging tax income on the back of rising unemployment, businesses going bust, and an increase in people claiming benefit, not to mention the need to bail out the banks to tune of £500 billion. Without this intervention the UK economy would have collapsed completely.

Now, five years on, and after two and a half years of a Tory-led coalition government, the official number of unemployed in the UK, according to the most recent figures released by the Office for National Statistics, is 2.49 million, a decrease of 37,000 compared to the previous quarter. However these figures are for the third and last quarter of 2012. The number of people in full time employment fell by 341,000 between September and November 2012, while the number of people in part time employment increased by 660,00.

But rather than takes steps to tackle the causal factors responsible, the present government has focused almost entirely on the symptoms – i.e. getting the deficit down by slashing spending, including benefits, even though this can only deepen the recession rather than produce a recovery.

As the US economist and nobel laureate Paul Krugman asserts: “Economics is not a morality play.”

Yet this has been precisely the approach to the crisis by Osborne, Cameron, Clegg et al. In this morality play it has been overspending, a jamboree of consumption, which has led us to the mess we’re in. And, now, in order to clear it up, a national exercise in economic self flagellation is required.

Clearly, given the lack of comparable measures introduced to dole out some of the resulting pain to the rich, this national exercise is to be restricted to the poor and ordinary working people – the undeserving poor as opposed to the deserving rich, you might say – making this a Victorian morality play.

Strip away the government’s rhetoric over the need to cut spending, the solution to this ongoing economic depression is really very simple. Bringing down the deficit requires growth; growth requires a resurgence in spending; and a resurgence in spending requires the reintroduction of demand into the economy.

This is where the locus of government intervention must be, as the investor and lender of last resort to stimulate economic activity. Investing in infrastructure projects such as housing, roads, transport, the emerging green economy, schools, hospitals, etc will create jobs, which in turn would get people off benefits and back to paying tax and spending in the real economy, thus producing a multiplier effect. Businesses do not create jobs – this is one of the great myths of modern political and economic discourse – consumers create jobs.

But no one should be in any doubt that the obsession with deficit reduction on the part of the government is really an obsession with keeping the markets happy, which brings into sharp focus the issue of sovereignty. However even here it doesn’t take a leap of logic to understand that of more importance to the ever-mystical bond markets is the introduction of measures designed to lift the economy out of depression and thus make the prospect of a decent return on UK bonds better over the short to medium term than it is at present. With interests rates at zero and unable to be reduced any further, this requires the implementation of a fiscal stimulus to create the demand already mentioned.

The billions in taxpayers’s money handed to the banks via Quantitative Easing has barely touched the real economy. Banks are refusing to lend at the same time as there are no consumers creating the demand that businesses need in order to expand. When it comes to the thousands of small to medium businesses that need to borrow to cover the gap between normal operating costs and income, by this point increasing numbers of those have either gone to the wall or been forced to contract as a direct consequence of an ongoing cycle of deepening recession.

Which brings us back to the question of ideology.

The financial and banking meltdown which hit the global economy just over five years ago was an economic 9/11. And just as that terrible event gave the Bush administration its pretext for going to war in Iraq, its economic equivalent was the pretext needed by the Tories to set about rolling back the state in Britain. The attack unleashed on the public sector, the attacks on benefits, pay and conditions across the board, has been accompanied by the demonisation of each of the aforementioned demographics. In other words, the economic crisis has seen class war declared in order to push through the structural readjustment of the economy and with it society in general. The public sector, a necessary ballast of demand through good times and bad, has effectively been declared the enemy within as part of this process.

This is the context in which these latest economic figures should be considered.

These Ceaseless Tory Attacks on the Poor

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Category
inequality, social justice, Tories

The chancellor’s autumn statement saw him take yet another opportunity to articulate his disdain for the poor, as he outlined the government’s intention to deepen its attacks on the unemployed and benefit claimants. It also confirmed the abiding economic illiteracy that underpins austerity.

When Gideon Osborne drew his comparison between those who get out of bed to go to work and those who remain in bed and don’t, he confirmed not only the deep ignorance of someone who is the product of inherited wealth and privilege, but also the cynical ploy of the government in fomenting division between the working poor and the unemployed as it sets about continuing its objective of transferring wealth from the poorest to the richest in society, having succeeded in turning an economic crisis that was caused by private greed into a crisis of public spending.

The below-inflation rise in and out of work benefits of 1 percent over the next three years was compounded by Osborne’s announcement of a cut in corporation tax to 21 percent, the chancellor boasting that this will reduce corporation tax in the UK to the lowest of any major western economy. Taken together these measures reveal a level of inequality that can only be described as brutal, one which moreover places the UK on a par with the United States when it comes to the lack of social and economic justice built into the foundations of the economy. The chancellor’s confidence in outlining these blatant attacks on the poor in the midst of the worst economic recession since the 1930s points to the extent to which the right has won the battle of ideas, given the favourable ideological environment necessary for the logic underpinning them to gain traction.

The idea that the unemployed have chosen to be and enjoy being unemployed is the product of a skewed moral compass. It amounts to a criminalisation of poverty and those whose lives have been impacted most by the recession.

The creation of the welfare state by the postwar Labour government was predicated on the need to erect a firewall between the vicissitudes of a capitalist economic system subject to periodic shocks and downturns and those impacted most – the poor and the working class. The unemployed were held to be victims of and not responsible for the economic factors that informed their plight, and as such it was deemed morally just for the state to provide a safety net in order to prevent their destitution.

But with the nostrums of Thatcherism sweeping away the philosophy that underpinned the postwar consensus three decades ago, nostrums that continue to fuel the dominant narrative politically, economically and culturally, the moral foundations of the welfare state and the social justice it represents have been subjected to an ideological assault – one that has reached its nadir under the present government.

Poverty is the worst form of violence. Those in poverty have one thing in common with the rich in that all they think about is money – about how much heating, food, and other bare essentials they can do without as they struggle to make ends meet. The idea that cutting benefits and attacking the poor could ever eradicate unemployment is beyond perverse. On the contrary, instead of eradicating unemployment it will eradicate the unemployed – and quite literally too as the suicide rate goes up.

Indeed, this is what is so easy to forget when we listen to the benign and easy establishment-speak of the political class in its depiction of the unemployed as work-shy scroungers. More austerity for those at the sharp end equates to more despair, more domestic violence, more crime, more homelessness, more mental illness, more alcoholism and drug abuse, and more hopelessness; the fate of the increasing millions who’ve been selected by this government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich to be purified with pain.

It is a government that while claiming it wishes to help those who are willing to work hard, continues with an economic policy that has and will continue to create more unemployment. The inevitable consequence is that those of the unemployed who refuse to be crushed under the weight of the economic and social injustice they are being subjected to will enter the black economy, while others will drift into crime. The law of cause and effect cannot be denied.

So, yes, the new sport is kicking the unemployed, and it is noticeable and shameful that Labour refuses to stand up for this demographic as they’re being attacked so mercilessly, instead focusing its ire on the impact of the chancellor’s midterm budget on the in-work poor and those on middle incomes.

The shadow chancellor Ed Balls’s bumbling performance in parliament in response to the Osborne’s autumn statement was panned with good reason. At a time when the nation is crying out for a clear, positive, and bold alternative, Labour remains a prisoner of its own timidity and ideological weakness. It is why this government has been successful in deflecting its culpability over the state of the economy and why it will continue to do so.

The unemployed have been offered up as a sacrificial lamb to a neoliberal consensus that pits all against all and holds poverty as a symptom of moral decay on the part of those afflicted by it rather than a result of structural inequality and the policies of a government for whom society is divided between the undeserving poor at one end of the social spectrum and the deserving rich at the other.

Nye Bevan was right. The Tories really are lower than vermin.

Scottish Tory Party Conference

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Category
Tories, Trade Unions

The Scottish Tory Party Conference was held in Troon on the Ayrshire Coast this year. The small seaside town has been swarming with police all week, even to the extent of mounted officers patrolling the beach (no doubt looking for kids building sandcastles without planning permission). David Cameron gave a speech to the Tory faithful in Scotland on Friday. Today the STUC held a march and rally of around 1000-1200 protesters.

Here are a selection of pictures.

 

A Tale of Two Public Servants

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Category
Tories, Trade Unions

This is a cross-post of an article by Jon Rogers, following yet more attacks in the media on trade union reps.

This evening’s Standard carried what is, I would say by any reckoning, a disgraceful attack upon a dedicated public servant.

Some (not very) bright spark has asked Haringey Council to tally up the salary of an elected lay representative of the National Union of Teachers over a period of six and a half years and (lo and behold) it adds up to quite a lot of money.

This really is only “journalism” in the sense that the “Taxpayers Alliance” conduct “research”. It is clearly driven by the fact that the NUT (and others) in Haringey have got Gove on a back foot over trying to force an unwanted Academy – and is surely intended to act as a warning to every other trade union representative on full time release to carry out trade union duties.

But this blog aims to provide a balanced assessment of workplace issues, so let me try to see things from the other side…

I don’t know the elected NUT rep in question, Julie Davies, personally but (much like the “Taxpayers Alliance” and all those astroturf grassroots campaigners) I know “her type”.

Here is someone who has wilfully refused to advance her career for 12 years, wantonly choosing to represent her fellow teachers at disciplinary, grievance and sickness hearings (often to the mutual benefit of the individual and their employer) rather than progress to a management role.

Shamefully, she has accepted the repeated democratic decisions of her fellow teachers that she should continue to represent them rather than (as would be supported by this Government and their supporters in the press) sticking two fingers up to her colleagues and concentrating upon personal advancement.

Quite clearly, such selfless commitment to the best interests of those who choose to devote their lives to public service deserves every ounce of the criticism which it has today attracted.

How unlike this case is that of poor Stephen Hester, another public sector employee (running a nationalised bank), whose entitlement to a bonus is quite scurrilously being challenged.

How much more positive an example is set by a banker willing to double an already astronomic salary at the expense of an impoverished nation than by some public sector trade unionist scoundrel who persists in rejecting their own individual self-interest in order to represent workers’ collective interests!

You see, dear reader? Once you look at things in a balanced way like this, it really is so straightforward…

“we Don’t Want More People from Sheffield Having Cheap Holidays”

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Category
Boris Johnson, class, Tories

letwin_jpg_display.jpgSo says Oliver Letwin, Conservative MP for West Dorset, Cabinet Office Minister, Old Etonian and millionaire.

It must be bad when even fellow Old Etonian, Boris Johnson, is quoted as describing Letwin’s statement as “absolutely disgraceful: a bourgeois repression of people’s ability to take a holiday. It’s a matter of social justice.”

Couldn’t have put it better ourselves, Boris. Perhaps your recent appearance on Question Time with Mark Serwotka of the PCS had more of a profound impact than anybody realised. 

Thoughts on the Demo

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Category
anti-cuts, Tories

Well, the first thing to be said is that it was huge, much bigger it seemed to me than the official figure of 250,000 given by the organisers and most of the press. When I arrived at the Embankment at 11.30 it stretched as far back as the eye could see. I began walking towards the rear, but after half an hour stopped with the crowd still stretching back as far as I could see.

The other impressive aspect was its composition, an authentic representation of the working class in today’s Britain. The atmosphere was more celebratory than angry, I thought, with a spectacular array of union banners complemented by the noise of thousands of whistles and bubuzelas, made famous at the last World Cup in South Africa. So many different trade unions, however, means so many sectional interests, and unless the TUC is able to step forward and play not merely a rhetorical role in fighting the cuts but an organisational and active one in coordinating a concrete action plan, the fear must be that unity in action will prove a distant dream rather than the reality it has to be if this government is to be defeated.

In fact, as much as the demo was impressive, I experienced a horrible sense of deja vu as the section I was in marched past Downing Street. The chorus of boos and chants levelled at Number 10 may have been cathartic for those involved, but I wonder how many will be out marching six months or a year from now. For just as the antiwar movement and the great demo of February 15 2003 failed to move Blair, one huge demo isn’t going to move this Tory government one inch from its intent. In fact, given the way in which Blair was able to ride the storm during the peak of the antiwar movement, so Cameron and Clegg will feel confident that they can do the same. The task then is to ensure they can’t and that Saturday’s demo is the start rather than, as with February 15, the end.

Of course, the challenge of fighting an economic policy at home requires a different approach to that of mobilising against a war overseas. For one thing there is much more of a material imperative involved, with millions of people and their families personally impacted and therefore with much more at stake. The sweep and depth of the spending cuts that are planned should conceivably unite students, workers, communities, pensioners, indeed every sector of society, but only of there is a united and coherent leadership able to take the movement forward.

As yet that leadership remains lacking. The unions for me are still not in a position to lead, encumbered by their own leaning towards conservatism at a time when boldness and confidence is required. Understandably, a recent history of defeats allied to Thatcher’s anti-union laws, easily the most regressive in the developed world, has left the British trade union movement a shadow of its former self. It would be good if the various general secretaries were meeting regularly along with the TUC to plan and strategise a fight back, along with community groups, but as yet nothing like this is happening.

It might pain many on the far left to hear this, but realistically the main task over the next few years must be to push the Labour Party leftwards (in Scotland the SNP offers another alternative, but latest polls show Labour pulling ahead). The positive thing about Saturday was that it may well help to exert influence over Ed Milliband and the rest of the shadow cabinet by showing them that there exists a broad constituency in the country determined to resist the cuts, one comprised of far wider forces than the usual activist layer. Milliband’s speech was clearly carefully calibrated to reach the mainstream, but for all that it could have been bolder and more ideological in positioning Labour firmly to the left of the neoliberal arguments being employed by Cameron et al. in support of the cuts.

The spectre of the barren years of opposition of the 1980s, and especially Kinnock’s defeat in 1992, still hangs over the Labour Party. If the left and the trade union movement is to defeat the cuts this spectre must be shrugged off and the unions brought back to the table as a key political component of Labour’s future, not merely financial cannon fodder able to be taken for granted and treated like the proverbial embarrassing uncle at a wedding.

I thought the Morning Star did a terrific job in handing out a free copy of the paper, which was specially funded by some of the trade unions to their great credit. Of all the other literature that was handed out, I thought Counterfire’s newssheet well produced and effective, particularly their comparison table of figures revealing how the rich and the working class currently fare in Cameron’s Britain.

Marching past The Ritz Hotel, it struck me that this would be an obvious target for attack, especially as it was conspicuously unguarded by the police. Later on in the pub I watched the news footage of anarchists doing just that. Later on, while walking through Oxford Street, I noticed that many of the major High Street stores were shut with riot cops stationed outside. The anarchists had staked out the middle of the road at the Regent Street junction and had hung up a large banner which said, ‘Keep Warm. Burn Out The Rich.’ The police at that point seemed to be letting them do what they wanted, even standing back as they attempted to start a bonfire, instead content to remain stationed outside the various shops that had been hit earlier.

But in terms of direct action, the anarchists have got nothing on UK Uncut and their superbly effective non violent targeting of major businesses and retailers over tax evasion. This innovative campaign is especially effective in that it does not require thousands of people to have an impact. So far it is doing much to educate the public as to the sheer hypocrisy and mendacity of the government’s policies in attacking the poor in favour of the rich and as such can only get better and more popular as the cuts begin to bite.

All in all then a spectacular day in which hundreds of thousands marched through London in opposition to the Tories.

Let’s hope it marks the birth of a struggle that leads to their defeat at the hands of a newly invigorated and confident working class.

It is no overstatement to say that not only the future of the current generation depends on winning this struggle, but that of succeeding generations as well .

“a Proportionate Use of Force”

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Category
Democracy, Middle East, Tories

“A three minute pre-meditated massacre” according to opposition leader Ibrahim Shariff:

Tory spokesman, David Mellor took an extraordinary position on the prestigious BBC Today programme yesterday. Mellor personifies the difficulty for Western commentators who ostensibly support democracy, but do not accept the legitimacy of Arab public opinion, when their views are contrary to Western interests.

In reply to the point that unarmed protesters were killed, Mellor said he couldn’t comment becasue he wasn’t there, and also said that the BBC shouldn’t comment on it either.

Mellor also said that Britain shoudl be understanding of the position of the Bahraini Royal familly, because they are sympathetic to Britain, and home of the US military sixth fleet.

Mellor also argues that a country with a majority shia population cannot be trusted with democracy, because of “key strategic interests that should be brought into play before we rush to judgment”

When asked whether he supported Bahrain becomming a democracy, mellor says: “with a 70% Shiite populatiopn, this is not an easy situation for Bahrain or the West. The last thing the West needs is a pro-Iranian government in Bahrain. That is the reality”

It couldn’t be clearer. The values of “Democracy” trumpeted by the West when it is conventient for them to de-legitimise governments that stand in their path to power and profit can be discrarded when the peoples are considered too brown and too poor to be trusted.

George Osborne Isn’t Working

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Category
Tories, UKuncut

 Help recreate the iconic image with a queue outside George Osborne’s Constituency office.

Facebook page here

WA16 0LT
http://www.georgeosborne4tatton.com/contact
transport details: http://www.ivisitorguide.com/site/getting-here

At the same time as making massive cuts to public services, this government is letting rich individuals and corporations avoid billions of pounds of tax. Join UK Uncut’s Big Society Revenue & Customs (BSRC) and become part of an army of citizen volunteers determined to make wealthy tax avoiders pay.

Come along and take part in some local anti-cuts action. We thought scene’s like that from the ‘Labour isn’t Working’ poster were a thing of the past but here we are again!

Come along and queue at George’s office, our Chancellor of the Exchequer, which is right across from the Rolls Royce dealership (I kid you not) on the 19th of February.

Hand deliver your own personal message to George and take part in the UK Uncut Campaign. http://www.ukuncut.org.uk/

Good Luck Nadine

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Category
blogging, Tories

I have little in common with the political views of Nadine Dorries MP, but she seems a sincere and likeable woman. I have always been uncomfortable with the slightly bullying way the press and some other bloggers (you know who you are) dismiss her.

I think it is a sad state of affairs when an MP feels the need to issue a press statement about their own romantic life. This is a result of the abusive and intrusive power of the tabloid press

 Good luck Nadine, and I hope that John and you find happiness together.

Tory Council Leader Suspended for Dressing As Hitler

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Category
Tories

FROM THE BBC

Mike Gardner in Hitler costume

The leader of Harrogate Borough Council has been suspended from the Conservative Party after being photographed dressed as Adolf Hitler.

Mike Gardner, who was pictured giving a Nazi salute at a fancy dress party, said he had done “nothing wrong”.

He has vowed to remain as leader of the Conservative-controlled council, serving as an independent.

Conservative Party headquarters said he had been suspended pending an investigation into his conduct.

Asked why he had chosen to wear the Nazi-style uniform, Mr Gardner said: “It’s one of those situations, you had to be there. Click to continue reading →

TORY MPs SNUB CONSTITUENTS

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Category
Con-Dem cuts, Tories, Trade Unions, UNISON

Many trade unionists turning up to the Palace of Westminster yesterday to discuss with their MPs the human impact of the proposed cuts found that their MPs failed to turn up for appointments. Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, today branded these Tory MPs as “cowards” for turning their backs on their constituents, to join a last-minute meeting convened by David Cameron. Mr Prentis said:

“It is a sad day for democracy in this country. I am outraged that Tory MPs have turned their backs on their constituents, when so many have travelled hundreds of miles, to see them. Many had made appointments months in advance and are armed with facts and figures about the damage that cuts will do to local people and services.

“MPs should not be running from the truth and hiding in a meeting with Cameron. They should have the guts to come face to face with the constituents that they were elected to represent. I am warning the Tories that they can run, but they can’t hide. UNSON members will track down their MPs and lobby them in their own constituency offices, until they get their message across.”