Planet Clegg

I am not sure where Planet Clegg is located in the Universe. It is certainly light years away from Earth. They say the laws of physics are the same anywhere in the Universe; from a little town in Gloucester, to the edge of a black hole. Well, Planet Clegg seems to have physical properties that differ somewhat from the rest of the Universe, because whilst we can choose to talk shit, Clegg seems compelled by nature itself, as if it is a natural instinct, to talk shit. It really is amazing.

His speech at Conference is available everywhere, so I thought i’d take what I consider to be the most significant parts of the speech, and try to dissect them. To sift through the bullshit, and look at the substance:

“Our first big decision was to clear the structural deficit this parliament. To wipe the slate clean by 2015. This has meant painful cuts. Agonisingly difficult decisions. Not easy, but right.”

- As the £12bn black hole in the public finances was revealed earlier this week, it became clear that the “painful cuts” (less painful if you’re as rich as the Cabinet, and not painful enough to consider cancelling the five day boring yet incredibly expensive tax payer funded Conference) have achieved the opposite of what they were intended to do. Borrowing has stayed higher this year, because growth has stalled at 0.2%. According to the Financial Times:

The Financial Times has replicated the model of government borrowing used by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, which suggests the structural deficit in 2011-12 is now £12bn higher than thought, a rise of 25 per cent.

- To fill this black hole, VAT would have to rise again to 22.5% and further, deeper cuts (if we stick to the path of extreme austerity). For Clegg to claim it is “right” to do what he has been doing, to cut the structural deficit by 2015, he is simply deluded and vastly ignorant. A Lib Dem turned Tory.

A new economy where the lowest-paid get to keep the money they earn. That’s why a Liberal Democrat chief secretary to the Treasury has put two hundred pounds into the pocket of every basic rate taxpayer and taken almost a million workers – most of them women – out of income tax altogether.

- The Bank of England warned that inflation was set to rise to over 5% by the end of the year. Average wages rose 2.8% in 2010. So actually, average wages, when taking inflation into account, fell. People are not better off now. Inflation, caused by strangling demand out of the economy is what keeps investment out of poor areas, and a few small changes to the tax system, regardless of how Clegg sugarcoats it, means nothing.
Do the lowest paid get to keep the money they earn? Or is it going to be spent on extortionately high energy bills?

And within one city, two nations: In Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, more than half the children leaving state schools head to a good university. Just thirty minutes east – down the district line to Tower Hamlets – and just 4 percent do. Odds stacked against too many of our children. A deep injustice, when birth is destiny. That’s why I’ve been leading the charge for social mobility – for fairer chances, for real freedom.

- One City, two Nations is a nice little tag line. The suggestion that the Lib Dems are dedicated to improving the lives of the poorest kids through education, is overwhelmingly delusional. According the Institute for Fiscal Studies, for each year up until the end of the report (2014), child poverty is set to rise. 90% of children on free school meals then go on to receive EMA to the tune of around £1,170. This is what I received, otherwise I certainly would not have been able to afford to go to college, and then onto University. Due to the cut in EMA and the replacement with the new bursary scheme, those who would have received the full £1,170 EMA, now stand to receive just £370.
The IFS stated of EMA:

“The EMA significantly increased participation rates in post-16 education among young adults who were eligible to receive it. In particular, it increased the proportion of eligible 16-year-olds staying in education from 65% to 69%, and increased the proportion of eligible 17-year-olds in education from 54% to 61%. The simple cost-benefit analysis mentioned above suggests that even taking into account the level of deadweight that was found, the costs of EMA are completely offset.”

- Getting rid of EMA is an ideological attack on social mobility. As stated above, overwhemingly delusional for the Lib Dem leader to suggest he has been ‘leading the charge’ on social mobility. Education is the key to social mobility. Taking away EMA, whilst at the same time back tracking entirely on Tuition Fees to the point where he agreed to triple the debt of the Nation’s 18 year olds, does not represent ‘leading the charge’ on social mobility. Does he really believe cutting EMA for the poorest, offering them a piss poor replacement bursary, whilst inflation continues to spiral out of control effectively cancelling out any perceived benefit, whilst benefits are slashed, and whilst wages stagnate and poverty rates rise – is a good thing for the cause of social mobility?

After being hit hard, we picked ourselves up and we came out fighting. Fighting to keep the NHS safe. Fighting to protect human rights. Fighting to create jobs. Fighting for every family. Not doing the easy thing, but doing the right thing. Not easy, but right.

- I think by ‘right’ he means right winged. How can one of the men responsible for the destruction of over 100,000 jobs in less than a year, a man partly responsible for a working NHS considered to be one of the best in the World succumbing to the terror of the private sector; a private sector that certainly did not provide improvements to the railways or the utilities, a man partly responsible as shown above, for poverty rates set to rise and families set to lose more and more due to high inflation and stagnating wages; how can this man claim he is fighting to create jobs and fighting for every family?
From April 2011, to July 2011, those three months alone saw unemployment rise a further 80,000 to 2.51 million. A huge amount of job losses in just three months. It was the largest increase in unemployment since 2009 – the midst of a recession. What about disability? Lib Dem Steve Webb said that the £12.3bn for DLA at the beginning of this Parliament, would be exactly the same by the end of the Parliament with the Personal Indepedent Payment. Clearly Webb doesn’t understand inflation over a five year period. Wheelchairs, travel, care will cost over 20% more in 2015 due to inflation. So, that £12.3bn is worth far less than Webb would have you believe. 20% of those claiming DLA will lose it, not because it is better targeted, but because it has been cut by 22%. Clegg started the house fire, the fire is still raging, and he claims he’s brilliantly putting it out, as more of the house burns.

Labour says: the Government is going too far, too fast. I say, Labour would have offered too little, too late. Imagine if Ed Miliband and Ed Balls had still been in power. Gordon Brown’s backroom boys when Labour was failing to balance the books, failing to regulate the financial markets, and failing to take on the banks. The two Eds, behind the scenes, lurking in the shadows, always plotting, always scheming, never taking responsibility. At this time of crisis what Britain needs is real leadership. This is no time for the back room boys

- What a waste of a paragraph. The charge of plotting and scheming from a man who signed a pledge, and gained much support and votes from the student movement in 2010, only to piss all over that pledge when he came to power and use “Well, you have to compromise in Coalition” as an excuse, is unbelievably hypocritical. In their 2010 manifesto, in bold font, on the first page, the letter from the leader, we see:

Don’t settle for low politics and broken promises; be more demanding.

- I voted Lib Dem in 2010. I want my vote back. That is me being more demanding. I want a vote on a joint Lib/Tory manifesto that includes a VAT rise, the dismantling of the NHS, closures to youth centres, and libraries and the loss of 100,000 jobs VS a Labour manifesto. If he is going to use “have to compromise in coalition government” I want to vote on that coalition compromise, rather than having to deal with the outcome of behind the scenes, lurking in the shadows, always plotting, always scheming Lib Dem politicians trying to worm their way out of their commitments that allowed them this taste of power in the first place.

On the first point, that Labour say the government is cutting too far, too fast; The IMF this week pointed out that with growth having to be downgraded for (i’ve lost count) yet another time, the government may have to slow down its austerity measures. At the beginning of 2011, the IMF, fully supportive of austerity joyfully claimed the UK economy would grow by 2% this year. That was downgraded to 1.7%. That was downgraded to 1.5%. That was downgraded to just 1.1%. We’ll be lucky to hit that mark. So, the IMF’s support for austerity, and the fact that they may be coming to the conclusion that deep, fast cuts do not work appears to echo not only Labour’s stance, but also pre-election Clegg’s stance. Clegg in 2010 of the Tory plans for fast and far cuts:

“Self evidently I think, we think, that merrily slashing now is an act of economic masochism.”

- It isn’t just Labour who say the Coalition is cutting too far, too fast. It was also pre-2010 Clegg.

I don’t think the unions should be able to buy themselves a political party. Ed Miliband says he wants to loosen the ties between Labour and the union barons who helped him beat his brother. Let’s see him put his money where his mouth is. Let’s see if he’ll support radical reform of party funding. Every previous attempt has been blocked by the vested interests in the other two parties.

- Perhaps he should convey the same message to his master in Downing Street. Islington Council severed their links with John Nash’s Care UK because the private health provider has an awful track record, and racks up mountains of complaints. John Nash of Care UK donated £21,000 to the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley’s private office. Unsurprisingly, at the beginning of the year, a £53,000,000 contract to provide health services to prisons went to Care UK, even though the NHS was deemed to be:

better than the successful bidder on quality, delivery and risk.

- I ask, being the pockets of unions – that represent thousands, if not millions of year, is now considered worse for ‘centre-left’ Clegg, than being the pockets of one businessman and his desire for profit at the behest of patient care. The policies that he will ensure his backbenchers vote for, are drawn up by a Party in the pockets of big business. He is therefore complicit. Brilliant.

Probably the most important lesson I have learned is this: No matter how hard you work on the details of a policy, it’s no good if the perception is wrong. We can say until we’re blue in the face that no one will have to pay any fees as a student, but still people don’t believe it. That once you’ve left university you’ll pay less, week in week out, than under the current system, but still people don’t believe it. That the support given to students from poorer families will increase dramatically, but still people don’t believe it.

- It isn’t that we don’t understand. Or that we don’t believe it. It is simply that we don’t believe education should be open to market forces. Education is the right of everyone. For families who are struggling to pay increasingly inflated gas and electricity bills, whose benefits are slashed, the prospect of their 18 year old being charged £9000 a year is a step too far. With this policy also came the policy of pay-nothing-back until you earn over £21,000 a year, compared to the £15,000 limit in place now. Most Universities will rise tuition fees to above £6000, and many to the £9000 limit. The £21,000 is meaningless. I don’t care if i’m paying back £1 a year, the fact that I would leave university with well over £40,000 of debt, when you include living costs, before i’d even reached my 21st birthday, is ludicrous. If I have three children, and they want to go to University, that is going to amount £110,000+ worth of debt that my children end up with. Couple this, with the fact that England’s University budget has been cut by £449m, the teaching budget cut by £215mn, and Educational Maintenence Allowance (which I relied on to get me through college) scrapped, this does not represent a progressive plan for students. If the unique selling point is pay nothing back until you earn over £21,000, why have a top £9000 limit at all? Why not £50,000 a year? Or more? The universities can speculate that they will be richer than ever, and the debt, which Clegg seems to think is not a deterrent at all, will be irrelevant. Their policy is a disaster.

My main issue with the tuition fee debacle, is the principle. Saddling the Nation’s 18 year olds with the burden of the National debt, whilst not one banker has been prosecuted, and big businesses receiving Corporate tax cuts, and whilst the Government has allowed Vodaphone to get away with not paying the £4.8bn they allegedly avoided paying in tax, is shameful. It is certainly not progressive.

The Clegg speech at the end of the Lib Dem Conference had eroded any last glimpse of hope I had in a Liberal Democrat Party. They are, and will forever be, in the eyes of we on the Progressive Left; Tory-lite. Even Clegg’s tie, is slowly turning blue.

If you look through a particularly powerful telescope, you may be able to see Planet Clegg. I hear it was formed by the coming together of the concepts of dishonesty, u-turns, and delusion.

The Liberal Democrat Delusion

The Liberal Democrat annual conference in Birmingham this year appears to be nothing more than a showcase of the deluded. The streaks of yellow in the crowd, drowned by the sea of blue on stage. “In Government, on your side” is the tagline. One wonders whose side? The student movement that pre-election Liberals managed to win over? The 80,000 who have lost their public sector job since the Coalition came to power? The pensioners who lost their winter fuel allowance? The kids from low socio-economic areas whose youth club is now closed? Whose side are they on exactly?

A lovely big Corporate tax cut, from 28% to 25% by 2013, suggests the ‘side‘ the Liberals are on, is not ‘our side‘ at all. If Corporate Tax cuts ever led to high growth, growing wages, a happy and fulfilled population, we’d all fully support it. But it never does. It leads to higher CEO pay, dodgy stock market gambles, stagnating wages, and Corporate politicians. A report by accoutant Richard Murphy, of Corporate tax rates and job creation, of OECD countries between 1997 and 2010, found that:

Analysis of the correlation between tax rates and growth in OECD countries (excluding the top and bottom outliers) finds that, at best, the relationship between the two variables is weak.

- This contradicts the Government, who said:

“The reductions in the rate of corporation tax and healthy financial position of UK companies in aggregate should help support further investment growth.”

- My own opinion, for what it is worth, is that we need to get away from this odd idea that companies and the rich are “job creators“. It is a concept imported from the US. Demand creates jobs, not the rich. Investors do not look at that extra 5% and decide to keep their money in their pocket. If the demand is there for a product, then the potential profit far outweighs that extra 5%.

This obsession with cutting the deficit fast, which is clearly causing my damage than good, places the Liberal Democrats firmly in the category of deluded Neoliberal dogma adherents. The downgrading of growth this year, by the IMF, from 1.7% to 1.1% along with rising inflation, high unemployment, and the failure of the private sector to take up the jobs the Government promised it was more than capable of doing, would force right minded people to rethink their policy, to be a little bit humble, admit you might have got it wrong, and try another way. But no. They insist there will be no Plan B. This is the Liberal Democrats greatest failure.

One particular Liberal Democrat delegate to the conference suggested that Internet Access was now a human right. As far as I was aware, ‘human right‘ is an absolute term. There are no shades of human right. Something cannot be a ‘bit of‘ a human right. So, that being said, certain Liberal Democrats now consider providing internet access, just as important as providing water to famine stricken third World countries. But clearly more important than education, health and housing, if recent policy decisions are anything to go by. Interesting.

I’d suggest first sorting out the Coalition’s policies that actually do have human rights implications, before trying to introduce new human rights concepts. Firstly, health care is a human right. I believe the entire World (other than right winged America, who appear to be under the impression that State funded life saving is wrong, but State funded execution is perfectly acceptable) considers healthcare to be a human right. And yet the Coalition’s policy of dismantling the NHS for, what I can only see to be the sake of Care UK, whilst not a new concept, seems to put that particular human right at risk. I blogged earlier last week on the gulf between the god-awful state of the American private system compared to our Nationalised system, and one has to wonder why we’d import any of the US model into our own. It is absolutely not about consulting with the experts on how to improve the NHS. If we look back to the previous Tory Government, Thatcher’s ‘NHS Community Care Act‘ was the first time in history that the BMA were excluded from policy discussions, the end result being a purchaser-provider split – an NHS market. Similarly, whilst Cameron is walking a very thin line between twisted logic, and outright lying to Parliament, the very Health professional groups he insists support his plans for the NHS, actually do not support him at all.
On September 7th, Cameron said:

“He may not like the truth but that is the truth and I have to say to him that is why you now see the Royal College of GPs, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Nurses all supporting our health reforms.”

- The Royal College of GPs then issued a statement, saying:

“As a College we are extremely worried that these reforms, if implemented in their current format, will lead to an increase in damaging competition, an increase in health inequalities, and to massively increased costs in implementing this new system.

“As independent research demonstrates, the NHS is one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world and we must keep it that way. “‬

Similarly, the Royal College of Nurses, which Cameron insisted supported his reform proposals issued this statement:

“The Bill being placed before parliament next week has enormous ramifications for patients and for our members. While we acknowledge that the Government have listened to our members in a number of areas, we still have very serious concerns about where these reforms leave a health service already facing an unprecedented financial challenge.”

- When does propaganda, evolve to ‘misleading Parliament’?

Disease should not have a market value. Healthcare is a necessity, not a commodity. It isn’t simply Socialist reasoning that brings me to that conclusion, it is simple Market logic. A Market is based on demand. If demand falls, prices will fall, businesses that fail to adjust will go bust. Demand is based on an individual’s informed choice. An individual has no choice if he or she suddenly gets cancer. He or she is not in control all of a sudden. He or she may have a choice which provider to go to, but they don’t have a choice on the ‘commodity’ for sale. Buy or die. So, a healthcare company has no reason to drop their prices, because demand will absolutely never fall. This gives a great advantage to private health companies and insurers. There will always be profit to be made. Markets respond best to peoples desires rather than their life needs. So, the commodity might be a drug to treat cancer, it will never be the cure, because the cure is worthless to shareholders. This is evident with the privatising of the utilities sector in the UK.

Privatising that particular sector, a necessary part of life (heat, electricity, gas) will always result in demand that will never die. And so unsurprisingly, we’re now in a situation where there are six energy providers, charging extortionate rates and an energy secretary who continuously blames the consumer for not switching provider. Huhne (the energy secretary) took to the Lib Dem conference stage today and blasted energy companies for offering cheap deals to new customers whilst pushing the prices up for existing customers. In June he said:

“Consumers don’t have to take price increases lying down. If an energy company hits you with a price increase, you can hit them back where it hurts – by shopping around and voting with your feet.”

And yet today, he says:

“It’s not fair that big energy companies can push their prices up for the vast majority of their consumers, who do not switch, while introducing cut-throat offers for new customers that stop small firms entering the market.

- Isn’t this simply asking the consumer to perpetuate a system where new customers will be offered lower prices and then face huge hikes after a period of time? The first quote, seems to say “switch, you’ll find better cut throat deals, if you switch!” whilst the second quote seems to say “It’s not fair that you’ll get a better deal if you switch“.
- The question has to be, who do you switch too? None of the big six like to undercut each other by much at all. It is not the consumer’s fault that 18% of all households in 2009 were classed as ‘in fuel poverty’. These are households in which 10% of annual income HAS to be spent on fuel bills. From 2007-2009 35% of single pensioners were living in fuel poverty. The biggest pensioner group, the National Pensioners Convention warned in 2009 that due to the cost of heating their homes, in a cold snap during the winter; 12 pensioners could potentially die every hour. As people struggle even more to pay their energy bills due to this latest round of price hikes, we must assume the ‘big 6′ are having trouble staying in business? Well….no.

Centrica, which owns British Gas, posted pre-tax profits from Dec 2009 – Dec 2010, of £1.92bn. Its highest ever. 18% higher than the previous year. What Centrica tends to do, is rise prices very quickly when wholesale prices rise, but then refuse to lower prices, as wholesale prices drop. Profits from all six big energy companies far exceed £2bn, whilst prices for consumers have risen from an average of £572 p/a in 2003 to over £1000 in 2010. There is no excuse. Privatisation failed. Energy companies have proven that they find it impossible work in the interests of both investors and consumers. I cannot imagine anyone is deluded enough to argue that privatisation has benefited consumers.

British Gas, whose tag line is:

British Gas is the nation’s favourite Cheap Gas and Electricity Supplier

- Put up its price at the end of 2010, by 7%. In July this year, it then shocked everyone by putting up its price gas price by 18% and its electricity price by 16%. The other 5 followed suit, and now the average household will have to fork out around £200 extra for the annual fuel bill. Huhne, has done nothing. Whilst his party is partly responsible for kicking thousands out of work, stalling growth, stagnating wages, and rising inflation, the ‘energy minister’ has done nothing, but complain about consumers, and say ‘naughty gas companies’. And worst of all, he is part of a government that, in March, cut the Winter Fuel Allowance for households in fuel poverty. It isn’t like he was unaware that further rises in the fuel market might be on the cards. Even back in March, there were warnings. Helen Knapman writing for Money Saving Experts back on March 11th, wrote:

Energy prices are predicted to rise this year, prompting some experts to suggest you consider fixing gas and electricity costs.

- The Coalition Budget was made public on March 23rd. The Government had at least twelve days to reconsider cutting the Winter Fuel Allowance. They chose to cut it anyway. Unsurprisingly characteristic of the cowards in the Coalition, they kept the cut to Winter Fuel Allowance out of the Budget document. If Huhne wants to gain some sort of respectability back, for his beleaguered and battered Party, he should be arguing for a Nationalised Utility option.

Talk of ‘human rights’ is laughable, when you look at the record of the Coalition government. The right to education – which I’d consider a Human Right, has been tirelessly dismantled with the appalling Free Schools idea, and the cuts to EMA along with the trebling of Tuition Fees. To suggest, in a key note speech, cutting the benefits of the parents of kids who misbehave is a hideous indictment on the thought processes of Tories. Immediately, Cameron linked bad behaviour with low socio-economic regions. What ‘punishment’ do we give to rich parents of misbehaving kids? How do we punish the Bullingdon Club? Is it REALLY ethical, to make life even more difficult for struggling families, if their kids misbehave? Kids from towns where funding to youth clubs is drastically cut, where their jobs are never secure and where schools teach about five subjects, badly. If you take money away from the poorest and most underdeveloped areas, you force unemployment up, and you struggle to control inflation, whilst offering massive Corporate Tax cuts; expecting low-socio economic areas to respectfully suffer in silence, is economic warfare, and will always be matched with social unrest; be it in the classroom, or on the streets.

On Tuition Fees, Grant-Thornton (an international Tax and Advisory service) reported that contrary to the Coalition’s claims that the highest earners would be hardest hit by the hike in tuition fees, actually the richest kids will pay back the least given that they will be able to pay back the quickest, thus avoiding large interest rates. The middle earners, will pay back the most. A lawyer, in a scenario set out by the report, with a £40,000 debt, will pay back £68,00 overall. The middle earner, with a debt also of £40,000 will pay back £98,00 altogether, despite earning 34% less than the lawyer. The report points out that if rich parents pay the debt immediately, the rich kids pay no interest. So the middle earner is effectively subsidising the education of the rich. The Lib Dems tend to keep this quiet during Conference season.

It also contradicts the government, who claimed that Universities charging above £6000 tuition would be the exception rather than the rule. Grant-Thornton say:

Most universities have declared that they will be charging the £9,000 maximum or an amount close to it.

These levels have been struck as there seems to be a consensus of opinion that to charge less than the maximum would send the wrong signals about quality, and that the easier decision (or the decision that is likely to be ‘less wrong’) would be to charge the full amount.

If the Lib Dems unique selling point for 2015, is simply “You think this is bad, it’d be worse if the Tories were in power alone” is not going to endear mountains of voters to their cause. Voters look at results. We know that anything the Lib Dems claim they are doing to financially support the poorest, is offset almost entirely by rising inflation; which they helped cause with their dogmatic obsession with cutting everything, including the one thing that pulls Nations out of stagnating growth; demand.

Whatever they say, there were not just two options; Coalition, or Tories. The Conservatives in a minority government could not be doing what they are now doing. The divisive nature of Free Schools, the dismantling of the NHS, and the horrific speed of deficit reduction, that even the IMF is now a little bit worried (downgrading our growth forecast…..yet again) about the speed of deficit reduction, despite referring to fast deficit reduction as “essential” in 2010, the weak position on the banks, and cuts to winter fuel allowance would not have happened, had Lib Dems been allowed to vote freely as opposed to cowardly abstaining in order to preserve ‘strong government‘. More voters voted for centre-left parties, more voters voted for slower deficit reduction, than voted Tory and fast deficit reduction. There were other choices for government. Both Liberals and Tories put their money on fast deficit reduction and public sector cuts leading to growth and the resilience of the private sector in taking up lost jobs. Both have failed to materialise and that will be the legacy of Tory/Liberal Neoliberal economics. For me, the Liberal Democrats will always be associated with right winged economic vandalism.

There is absolutely no substance to anything the Liberals say, that rhetorically keeps them on the centre-left.

To finish, I am sick of hearing Liberal Democrats defend their ditching of the Student Tuition Fee abolition pledge, with “Well, you have to compromise in Government.“. If that’s the case, if it is the case that you can’t stick to your pledges due to hung Parliaments, then the Coalition should have presented a new, joint manifesto, which included NHS reforms, which included the Lib Dems u-turn on the speed of deficit reduction, which included cuts to Winter Fuel Allowances, which included disability cuts, which included VAT rise, and put it to the electorate in a second general election against Labour. What they shouldn’t have done, is presumed they now have a mandate to do whatever they like.

The demise of the Liberal Democrats

Whilst the World waits to find out who the new leader of Al Qaeda is (my money is on either the other bloke from Wham, or the Dragon’s Den presenter with the gammy eye. Failing that, a coalition with Hamas and the Lib Dems might be workable), our friends over at the Parliamentary Liberal Democrat party are having a bit of a tantrum.

Vince Cable, the Lib Dem number two, is apparently annoyed that the Tories allowed the No to AV campaign to attack Clegg. He said:

“Some of us never had many illusions about the Conservatives, but they have emerged [during the AV referendum campaign] as ruthless, calculating and thoroughly tribal.”

- He’s taking a moral high ground. One wonders if hypocrisy is something the Lib Dems understand, because in October last year, Vince Cable told a publicised meeting of the CBI that the Tories were wrong for thinking there was no crises prior to 2007, and that only people like himself had seen all of this coming. This attack on the Tories, came days after George Osborne announced his new plan for growth. Brilliant timing to attack your coalition partners.
During the AV campaign, Cable told us all we should vote yes to AV to keep the Tories out. He said:

“We need to make sure the progressive majority wins elections in this century and not the Conservatives as they did, by the back door, for two-thirds of the last century.”

- A pretty ironic statement in itself, given that the Lib Dems agreed to prop up a Tory regime in 2010. A hypocritical remark, in a catalogue of similarly hypocritical remarks by the Business Secretary in recent months.

David Cameron is not responsible for the No campaign. Nor is he responsible for who finances the No campaign, in the same way that the Yes campaign (which by the way, made more money than the No campaign) was not controlled or run by Clegg or Milliband, and to the point where the Yes supporters made the effort to make sure we all knew this wasn’t about Clegg. Yet again, their hypocrisy in telling us that the Yes campaign is not in anyway about Clegg, but the No campaign is all David Cameron’s fault, was overwhelming. I am glad Cameron has not apologised. If he does feel the need to apologise, then Clegg and Milliband should really apologise for the manipulative emotive language used by the Yes campaign.

Cable is like a kicking and screaming child in the supermarket who refuses to get up off the floor and blames his mum for everything. “I hate you!!!” he screams at his mum. I suspect the tantrum comes from the fact that the local election results epitomised the displeasure felt around the Country toward the Liberal Democrats.

Yesterday’s local council election results were as follows:
Percentage of the vote:
2010 General election – Conservatives 35%, Labour 27%, Lib Dems 26%
2011 Council election – Conservatives 35%, Labour 37%, Lib Dem 15%
Councils gained/lost:
Conservatives +4, Labour +27, Lib Dems -9
Councillors gained/lost:
Conservatives +81, Labour +800, Lib Dems -695
AV Referendum:
Yes to AV: 32.1%
No to AV: 67.9%

It was a terrible result for the (Neo)Liberal Democrats, though not surprising. For a party that has betrayed its base for a taste of power and moved economically as far to the right as is possible, it is unsurprising that the vast majority of those who voted Lib Dem in 2010, have gone back to Labour. The Tories rejoiced that they had managed to retain their share of the vote. It is a funny thing, to rejoice in retaining a share of a vote that didn’t give you a mandate last time. Essentially what it demonstrates is, if another general election was called, they still wouldn’t be able to achieve a Parliamentary majority, despite spending the past twelve months blaming every problem in the history of the Universe, on Labour.

The choice for my local council seat, was between three Tories, and three Lib Dems. I had a choice between the government. So I didn’t vote.

Labour picked up a fair few councils, though less than I think they would have liked. Leicester is now painted red. With a newly elected Labour mayor, a Labour victory in the Leicester South by-election and Labour holding onto the council seat in Leicester. Nick Cleggs home in Sheffield became a Labour council. Blackpool’s Conservatives lost their council to Labour. The Tories gained a number of councils (Northampton and Lewes for example) from the Lib Dems, as did Labour. As far as I can tell, the Tories only managed to take one council away from Labour, in North Lincolnshire, whilst Labour managed to take four councils from the Tories and three from the Lib Dems. So Labour affectively have taken seven councils out of the hands of the Government.

A Tory MP on Sky News at midday yesterday, insisted that the Liberal Democrats should now not be as involved in governmental decisions, and that we should view the Council results as the nation voting in favour of a Tory government. I am not entirely sure what planet he is on. The general election was 12 months ago, and despite a financial crises and the most disliked Prime Minister in a generation, the Tories still couldn’t gain a majority. They didn’t improve nor diminish in the council elections. They achieved nothing. They stayed the same. And the same is, not having a majority. On average, it was a pretty awful night for the Government overall. They still don’t have a mandate to do what they’re doing, in fact, less so now.

Very well done to the SNP. They now have an overall majority in Holyrood and will no doubt rightfully push for full independence.

As noted above, Vince Cable, the Business Secretary is a little bit pissed, that the No to AV campaign used Clegg as a punch bag, told lies, and was funded almost exclusively by the Tory donors. It is true that the No campaign played dirty, very dirty in fact. But it stinks a little bit of hypocrisy because the Yes to AV campaign hardly acted like the Virgin Mary. It endorsed lies (the end of tactical voting? 50%+1 of the vote guaranteed? the end of safe seats? A chance to “choose hope over fear”? – as if AV means all our political woes are fixed under an AV rainbow). My favourite of which was the ridiculous idea that if we don’t vote in favour of AV now, we will never get a chance at PR, we will be stuck with FPTP until the sun explodes. Why is that the case? Do we really believe that had AV returned a Yes, the Tories would have put PR on the table? Here is what David Cameron told the Guardian in 2009:

If we want parliament to be a real engine of accountability, we need to show it’s not just the creature of the executive. That’s why a Conservative government will seriously consider the option of fixed-term parliaments when there’s a majority government.

But it’s also why a Conservative government will not consider introducing proportional representation, as many participants in A New Politics have demanded. The principle underlying all the political reforms a Conservative government would make is the progressive principle of redistributing power and control from the powerful to the powerless. PR would actually move us in the opposite direction, which is why I’m so surprised it’s still on the wish-list of progressive reformers. Proportional representation takes power away from the man and woman in the street and hands it to the political elites. Instead of voters choosing their government on the basis of the manifestos put before them in an election, party managers would choose a government on the basis of secret backroom deals. How is that going to deliver transparency and trust?

- Whilst he is wrong, that PR takes power away from the man and woman in the street (I always find it comical when Tories speak so positively about giving power to the average person, whilst continuing to sell off public property to the hands of unelected, faceless, unaccountable businessmen), he is correct that PR would mean an end to manifesto pledges, though that’s hardly a bad thing. Time and time again we vote on the basis of manifesto pledges, only to see those pledges rust away. Blair promised a referendum on the EU Constitution in the 2001 manifesto. We never got a referendum. Clegg promised to vote against a rise in tuition fees in the Lib Dem referendum. He subsequently voted for a rise in tuition fees. Proportional Representation is exactly what this country needs. Cameron and the Tories will never offer it, even if the AV vote came back Yes.

Hell, here is what the director of the AV campaign, Neal Lawson (I like Lawson, by the way) said about AV in December 2009:

“I’m sorry but I’m not a big fan of AV. It can lead to even less fair outcomes than FPTP and that to me is the critical point.”

The only party who can put PR back on the table, is the Labour Party. It will take a manifesto pledge and considering the Labour leadership was in favour of AV and not in favour or PR, I don’t know why a Yes to AV vote would have pushed them to offer PR. (Though we can always count on the Labour Party to throw away their principles and ride the tide of public opinion). They would have been happy with AV, they wouldn’t have offered anything else. This is what Ed Milliband said in 2010:

I’m in favour of the AV voting system for the House of Commons and will campaign in favour of AV in the referendum. I believe that changing our electoral system so that every MP has the support of more than half of their constituents is one way in which we can begin to restore trust in politics. I am, however, concerned that the Coalition have bundled the AV vote with sweeping reforms to our constituencies that risk changing the size of constituencies when too many people are still excluded from the electoral register. I hope that we will be able to change these plans in Parliament. I’m not in favour of proportional representation for the House of Commons.

- He makes a mistake here. The AV we were offered, does not guarantee over half of the vote for one candidate. That is a Yes to AV lie. We would not have been required to rank all candidates. People could just put a “1″ and nothing else. This means that a lot of MPs (especially in safe seats) would have won with less than 50% of the vote. Secondly, he doesn’t want PR. He wants AV. If the AV referendum produced a Yes vote, David Cameron (also No to PR) would have been annoyed, Ed Milliband would have been happy and wouldn’t push for anything further, and Nick Clegg…….. well, he’s supremely irrelevant.

It is quite simply, the Parliamentary Liberal Democrats, and Vince Cable and Nick Clegg in particular are the reason that so many of their loyal and hardworking Progressive councillors are out of work this morning. It isn’t the fault of Cameron or Milliband or anyone else. It is their own fault. They had it coming. They are now just very sore losers. They should be apologising to the massive amount of Lib Dem councillors who now face the dole queue along with the millions of others that the Coalition has so far booted out of work, for the sake of chasing a Neoliberal dream.

The necessity of Marxism

As most of you are accutely aware by my interpretation of political events, I am a Marxist. I believe Marxism can and should be used to explain the financial crises we’ve just been through, as a matter of urgency rather than consigned to the history books of failed economic orders. Because if we ignore the warning cries from Marx, or even Keynes, that there is inherent danger and crises in capital accumulation, we are simply going to repeat those mistakes.

I am a Marxist, but I understand that there is currently no working class movement any more. I do not call for the abolition of all Private property and a vanguard party to destroy Capitalism from within like a new age Soviet State. I do however believe that when the contradictions of an economic order become so vast and dangerous that they keep descending into crises, the economic order becomes unsustainable and collapses, and that is a matter for history to sort out. I don’t think we’re ready for the collapse of the economic order of Capitalism. Marx expressed that this time would come at a moment when Capitalism was at its most advanced stage. To me, we are not at that advanced stage, but we are heading there. Using Marxist dialectics, we can see that Feudalism was absolutely always going to become Capitalist, because skilled work produced better “things” and was more respectable, but eventually society progressed to a stage where skilled workers were greater in number, and Capitalism rewards skilled workers where Feudalism does not. Marx argued that Capitalism also had a problem; those with property always pitted against those without property, and the eventually those without property would not stand for their plight any longer, and socialism would follow. The argument being that if I have a nine hour day, and I have made the money after six hours that will pay my wage, the extra three hours I have to work I am essentially working for free. But that extra money is used by the Capitalist to expand the business, or to (as recent history shows) gamble it on dodgy stock options. A tension becomes apparent between the economic order and the cultural order of the day….

In Capital, Marx says:

In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension an affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary.

When the economic order moved away from an industrial base in the UK, to a financial sector base, suddenly there became a new tension. Instead of expanding, or money “trickling down” as it was promised to do, excess profit was ploughed into unproductive financial gambles, like naked short selling. (Which has just been an accepted practice by the Tory government in the UK, despite being banned everywhere else). The tension grew between the limitlessness of the accumulation of money with the limited notions of production, exchange, labour power, and consumption.

Marx wrote very little on the order of a communist society, because he wasn’t exactly sure how it would look. He was an historian and a theorist. Way ahead of his time. George Osborne is not even in the same league as Karl Marx. Marx wrote extensively on the failures of Capitalism and its inherent crises prone nature. In fact, I would suggest Marx (much like myself) would accept that Capitalism is extraordinarily efficient, but is naturally self destructive.

The tension today I would suggest started at the moment of the industrial revolution, and has perpetuated ever since. After the second World War is was considered the fault of protectionist policies that led to a tension between Nation States and so the United States placed itself as a force for the promotion of free capital flows and pushed for decolonisation whilst opening up markets for as much surplus capital absorption as possible across the World. Though, they did all of this not for the good of humanity, but for their own benefit. In 1944 Keynes suggested the creation of a single global currency outside of the control of any nation state. Keynes saw the contradiction between Nation States and Capitalism and that it would lead only to further tension. The U.S rejected the idea, insisting that the Dollar, backed by a fixed exchange rate against the gold, take the role. Therefore, to all other currency, their “gold” was the U.S Dollar.

There is no viable left wing alternative to the prevailing and powerful neoliberal order perpetuated by key institutions like the IMF. There are little socialist groups that have failed to leave the early 1900s, there are student socialist groups who offer nothing of any substance. There has been a rather concerted effort to discredit any form of left wing alternative for a number of years. The charge that the fall of the Soviet Union represented the fall of the entire doctrine of Marxism is a nice little gimmick as a tool of propaganda, but it simply isn’t true because the Soviet Union was not in any way Marxist. Marx argued that the State needed to begin to whither away for a truly democratic Marxist revolution to take place. The Soviet State was notoriously inflated. A system of wages still existed. The Soviet Union was one big Corporation. Money filtered upwards, and the workers had no say over investment, it was left to “management”. The Soviet Union was State Capitalism. The Menshevik exile Fyodor Dan argued prolifically, that Stalin’s Russia was entirely State Capitalist. Surplus value was still sucked out of the worker, by means of separating him from the means of production.

Accumulation by dispossession has always been a mightily popular tool for Capitalism to exploit, much like its feudal predecessor. Today this economic violence first appears as stock market gambles, and then the crises that inevitably creates is imposed on the citizens of a country who are told that austerity is the “only way”. Privatisation is used as a tool to dispossess common property like water, and hand it to very few people, whilst an effort is made by the media (the Feudal system of old used Religion to try to legitimise why it had to take things from people, today the media plays that role) using words like “freedom” and “choice” and “giving power back to the people”. It is very transparent, and yet it is essentially allowed to happen. Asset losses today is simply a way of the unfortunate majority losing so that the wealthy few can buy the assets cheap at a view to selling them as the market picks up some time in the future. In short, the crises for the many equals financial christmas for the few. So whilst religion constantly focuses on the judgement day, when those who aren’t fortunate enough to believe in their horrendous myth will end up burning in hell whilst the believers are brought into Paradise, so to financial speculators often gamble on the system falling to its knees for the many, so they will be rewarded. This can be seen on a grand scale. Blackstone Group (private equity firm) take over companies at a low price when they are struggling (not failing), strip them of assets, lay off huge amounts of staff, broke union obligations, and then sell them off for a massive profit. Goldman Sachs is rather good at this.

Nobel Prize winning economist, Milton Freidman, the man responsible for the Thatcher and Reagan revolutions, the 20th Century’s version of Adam Smith, the biggest name in free market economic proposals that has perhaps ever existed, once wrote of the Soviet Union:

In the labour market individuals are seldom ordered to work at specific jobs; there is little actual direction of labor in this sense. Rather, wages are offered for various jobs and individuals apply for them – much as in Capitalist countries.

Two things to note here. Firstly, Freidman refers to other countries as Capitalist. Whilst pro-market fundamentalists who comment on my blog insist on telling me as often as possible that no country has been Capitalist, their hero says differently. Secondly, Freidman is implying, by his acceptance of their being a wage system within the Soviet Union, that it was not Communist. Communism requires the abolition of private property, not a perpetual wage system.

Over time, Freidman-ite followers within the Chicago School tradition have changed their tune in recent decades. They seem to be tacitly implying just how insanely wrong they were in their adherence to market fundamentalism. Rajan, Thaler, and Vishney, of the Chicago school tradition said recently:

“The Chicago School never said we wanted blind deregulation … We should really ask who were the people in 2000 who decided markets don’t need regulating. Those were not Chicago economists. Some of them were Clinton officials, and some of them are now advising Obama”

- They have seemingly moved to the Left apparently. The deregulatory obsession with free markets of the Freidman tradition is now worming its way out of its failures, and suggesting they were in favour of regulation afterall. The anti-state, regulation = impeding human freedom lobby, have now decided that government intervention is not ALWAYS a great evil afterall. In other words, they accept, they were massively wrong.

Freidman has been used by the Republican Right in America, Pinochet in Chile, Thatcher and Cameron in the UK to promote a Corporatocracy that actually is far departed from what he was arguing. Whilst I disagree entirely with Friedman’s premise, I note he was a great economist and his theories (much like Marx) have been wildly abused.

The ideological committment to deregulation, and spending cuts is what Naomi Klein calls a shock doctine. Forcing austerity on a Country that has recently experienced crises (like Chile did after the coup) simply to wipe the slate clean and attempt a neoliberal experiment. Neoliberal experiments are absolutely always a cover for the accumulation of more and more capital concentrated in fewer hands. The one great evil in my view perpetrated by Government is its attempts to limit itself through neoliberal doctrine. Government never limits itself, it simply moves its power around.

In fact, businesses in general are authoritarian by nature. Every so often a member of the human race will have a bit of an authoritarian nature about him. He will want to tell people how they should speak, how they should dress, how they should act, what being “professional” means, when you can eat lunch, how little money you will get for your labour whilst he takes the majority of it, all for the sake of profit and power. We are told we should thank these people for giving us a job. For allowing us not to starve to death. How ridiculous. They should thank us for allowing them the opportunity to acquire surplus value from our work, to fund their new Mercedes fund. At the point of setting up a business, the initial capital needed is the most important aspect of that business. But after that, the cogs, the human labour is the most important aspect. They hold the keys to true power, not the Capitalist. If the boss walks out of his workplace, it will continue without any problems. If the workers collectively walk out, the business is doomed. To ignore this power situation is for the Capitalist to pretend it isn’t there and that a struggle between the two doesn’t exist. It is authoritarian by its very nature. Lots of little Soviet states known as businesses. It is not the height of human freedom, it is oppressive, it alienates people, and it uses class division, race division, and sexual division to perpetuate itself. Labour and capital are vastly opposed.

The more right winged people I discuss the economic crises with, the more I am affirmed in my belief in Marxism, because I am yet to meet a Conservative supporter who can argue his or her case, without resorting to simple cliches that he or she has heard in the press. Cliches like “if you are in debt, you have to pay off your debt, that is why we are paying our debt as a nation, that the Labour party forced upon us“. The fallacy here is the comparison between National sovereign debt and individual debt. It is a fallacy for a number of reasons. Firstly, if an individual is in work and cannot reach his or her repayments, he or she cannot just start to work more. A Nation in debt that is cutting away the public sector necessarily has a flood of unemployed. It is the equivalent of a credit card company saying “you have to pay off your debt, whilst working only two hours a week”. That would be a more accurate representation of National debt during economic hardship, and individual debt. Secondly, individual debt like National debt is not necessarily a bad thing. A mortgage is not a bad thing. Similarly, a government investing when aggregate demand is low in order to keep people in jobs and homes, whilst the private sector is in no position to take on the horrendously inflated unemployment market, is not a bad thing. It is an investment that will be paid back.

The comparison of the UK to Greece is laughable. We still have the ability to pay our debts. We’re triple A credit rated, which suggests our spending patterns under Labour were not out of control as the right wing would have us believe (if they were, we certainly wouldn’t have the highest credit rating you can possibly wish to attain). 80% of our debts mature in 14 years. Greece has three years to pay 80% of its debts. We are not like Greece. Don’t believe the bullshit.

Norway is the second richest country in the World. It ranks bottom in the Forbes Failed States Index. And yet it has a public health system, a high standard of living, and 32% of its work force are employed in the State sector, the highest in the OECD. Tories would try to reform this, and say it’s “broken”. Norways basic egalitarian values have resulted in the gap between the lowest paid worker and the CEO being far smaller than anywhere else in the World.

I am yet to understand why it is that when Labour spent money they “didn’t have” to keep people in jobs and homes, it was deemed bad, but when the Conservative government spend money they “don’t have” (the debt is set to rise higher), at the same time making people unemployed, and presiding over out of control inflation, it is acceptable? Why is cutting Corporation Tax and the 50p top rate of tax whilst cutting winter fuel allowances for pensioners during a time when fuel is at an all time high and VAT a huge burden, along with inflation in general, perfectly acceptable?

Let’s be honest, freezing police pay, at a time when inflation is high, fuel is out of control, and on top of both of those, VAT is up….. whilst you cut tax for the wealthiest few, is not about sorting out the debt (in fact, it is tacitly accepting that their is no debt problem), it is ideological.

When your Country has a triple A credit rating, and is the fifth biggest economy in the World it is a lie to suggest we’re about to go bankrupt, or anywhere near bankrupt. It is a lie to say we are like Greece. To suggest, the UK is anywhere near unsustainable debt levels, we must look at the evidence. Here is a graph of the UK’s net debt since 1900:

I’d say that’s quite conclusive. We are not in a debt crises. We never were.

As inflation rises, as more people become unemployed, there is inevitably less disposable income, and so less money being spent in the private sector, because the pound in your pocket is worth less and you now have less than a pound in your pocket anyway. The public sector should be investing in infrastructure, education, and health. This is the best and only way to aid the growth of the private sector. The private sector, which is being expected to take up all the jobs that are being thrown away. In the long run, it will cost us more. Because with 12 people chasing 1 job, only 1 person can get the job. Therefore 11 need supporting. They need retraining. They need protecting. Who pays for them? Who gives them the money that will be spent in the private sector, to boost revenue and growth? When purchasing power of the main bulk of consumers is destabilised by mass unemployment, what then? Allow the private sector to employ people without the need for worker protection because if the worker wishes to negotiate terms for the buying of his labour power he can just be told “We wont hire you then, we’ll hire someone who will be as close to a slave as possible“. Whenever a right winger tells you what they are doing is for your “freedom” or your “choice”, note that it is for the freedom of the wealth to dictate terms of employment. What an awful prospect. There is great merit in government investment in infrastructure projects during economic hardship. When a perceived “crises” is barely even a “problem”, cutting so drastically exits the realm of necessity and enters the realm of ideology. The UK is facing massive ideological attacks.

It is apparent to me that the public sector did not fail. It was fine. The crises of the financial sector eventually moved the crises to the public sphere. The issue is and always will be (from a Marxist perspective at least) the crises of capital accumulation.

Understanding Marx is not about condoning Stalin.

The Corporatocracy

In 2010 the U.S Supreme Court over turned limitations to Corporations financing political broadcasts in the U.S. They argued that to limit financing from Corporations would be an attack on their first Amendment rights. They didn’t however set how why they have defined Corporations as some kind of living organism that has political rights in the first place. It is a worrying precedent. It means all of a sudden that Corporations are like people. Only richer and more powerful, with very different interests. People tend to vote for safe jobs, better healthcare, safe products, and a decent level of funding for education. Corporations want weak labour laws, low Corporate taxes, and regulations (safe products?) as minimal as possible.

A lifeless, soulless, dead entity like a Corporation, having the rights assigned to people, is an awful step in the wrong direction. Should a Corporation like ITT have rights, in the US? ITT owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the manufacturer of the Luftewaffe Nazi aircraft that was used to shoot down American airplanes during the war. It then won $27,000,000 in compensation after the Allied’s bombed the Focke-Wulf factory during the war. ITT also made radar and radio equipment used by the Nazis. ITT were funding the killing of Allied troops. ITT also helped to fund Pinochet’s control over Chile. One of the most evil dictators in the World. Colonel Sosthenes Behn, the head of ITT during the war, was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery for his service to the Country.

Exxon, whose named used to be Standard Oil of New Jersey, are responsible for shipping oil to the Nazis, even after Pearl Harbour. They also contributed, through a bunch of subsidiary companies, to Himmler’s personal fund. They now have the same rights as US citizens.

Profit before people.

The 2010 ruling means that climate change takes a back seat because it isn’t in the interest of oil companies. That the 1% of scientists who dispute man made climate change will be the only ones who are listened to. American Petroleum Institute, whose members include Exxon, have began to finance mainly Republican candidates this year. Martin Durbin, API’s executive vice president for government affairs quite openly said:

“At the end of the day, our mission is trying to influence the policy debate.”

Koch Industries Inc, gave $1.79mn to candidates. 90% of those candidates were Republicans. This of course comes as President Obama proposed ending subsidies for Gas and Electric companies by 2012. Apparently those companies aren’t happy that their Welfare cheque is about to be scrapped. A Welfare cheque that adds up to over $45bn. Their Republican bitches will of course defend them. But no universal healthcare! Healthy citizens = bad. Rich oil companies = great.

Republicans in the US House of Reps voted to cut off all funding to the UN Climate Change panel, the IPCC, because according to Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri Republican:

“The IPCC is an entity that is fraught with waste and fraud, and engaged in dubious science, which is the last thing hard-working American taxpayers should be paying for”

The idea that it is “dubious science” is laughable. And the phrase “hard working Americans” is an empty one. Those same hard working Americans, I doubt want to see their money going to a mass of Corporate tax cuts either. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s claim of “dubious” apparently isn’t without irony, given that in 2004 he introduced a bill, based on Biblical principles, to the Missouri State Legislature, to define marriage as between a man and a woman. All for personal “freedom” as long as he gets to define what “freedom” means.

One the “dubious science” claim surrounding Climate Change, it always seems to come from Republicans. So I wondered why that could be? And then I found this. It shows Oil company contributions for 2010, and which Party – Republican or Democrat – those funds went primarily to. I think it’s pretty conclusive.

Roy Blunt, the United States Senator, from Missouri and whose campaign funds came mainly from big oil ($293,400 altogether) opposes cap and trade and supports drilling for oil on US coastlines. The League of Conservation Voters, who work to turn environmental issues into national priorities said that Blunt is:

“In his twelve years in office, Rep. Roy Blunt has taken good care of Big Oil by maintaining their costly tax breaks while continually voting against opportunities to create clean energy jobs, reduce pollution and improve fuel economy for Missourians,”

One wonders who runs the World? What a wretched democracy we all seem so proud of.

America is not the only country who laughably refer to their Corporatocracy as a Democracy. Britain is just as bad. Our Tory Government is funded heavily by the financial sector and very wealthy individuals. Apparently there is no money left to pay for the care of disabled people, or to keep arts centres open. But there is money, for a 83% tax payer owned bank to offer its CEO a £4.5mn bonus in shares, on top of his 3.2mn bonus for 2010. There is enough money to give one man, a bonus (on top of his salary) of £7.7mn. We are still an economy controlled by the Financial sector. It is not Capitalism.

The Municipal Governing Body of Greater London is the City of London Corporation. It’s main control is over the City of London financial district. There are residents whom live there, but their vote is not very important, given that the majority of the votes for that region, are given to Corporations. They are called “non-residential voters”. Corporate voters. A Corporation may appoint a number of people to cast votes on its behalf based on how many employees it has. The employees don’t get a say, the CEO gets the vote. Those who are appointed voters can vote twice. Once for their Corporation and once for their own vote. Residents of the area can only vote once. It is one big Corporatocracy. The Republicans over in the States would be proud. They’d some how manage to refer to it as “freedom” and “giving power back to people“.

Corporate regulation is essential. Corporations have one legal requirement: profit. Humans, i’d argue are motivated not just by profit, but also by compassion, loyalty, doing the right thing, the advancement of the species and survival. Corporations, by law, must ignore all that stuff if it conflicts with their ability to make profit, and that is a dangerous thing.

Today we learnt that the Tory Government’s next line of attack against its much hated public sector (which, again, remember did no wrong, and caused no problems itself) is the attack on public sector pensions, because they are unfair in relation to private sector pensions. Well, instead of forcing equal misery across the public sector to match that of the private sector, why don’t you make the private sector pay up more?

Damn right i’m a Marxist, especially in this climate of horrendous shock right winged economics.

Let’s stop referring to Corporatocracy as Democratic.
Let’s stop referring to Corporatocracy as freedom.
Let’s stop blaming government for failings, when Government is pretty much owned by the Corporate World.

The point is, Corporations do not deserve rights. They are not people. Government is supposed to work for the people, not for the very wealthy, and at the moment there is no government in the Western World that is not wholly run for the benefit of the very wealthy. It is not democracy. It is not at all what the Founders envisaged.

Pig Society Part III

David
Cameron took a break today from trying to convince a very very
unconvinced public that the Big Society idea is such a wondrous
agenda, to work for a No vote for AV. So whilst he’s doing that, I
thought i’d continue my series of blogs on the Big Society, by
going one by one through the Tory/Lib Cabinet, and letting you all
know what it is each is doing for the Big Society; what they
volunteer for. Which ones run their public libraries, which ones
have found the time, like the rest of us must do, to run their
local school. I’m almost certain they practice what they preach. It
would be terribly pathetic if they didn’t.

Prime Minister David Cameron, Tory: No
voluntary work declared.

Deputy Prime
Minister Nick Clegg, Liberal Democrat: No voluntary
work declared.

Secretary of State for
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs William Hague,
Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne,
Tory: No voluntary work declared

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander,
Liberal Democrat: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for the Home
Department; and Minister for Women and Equalities Theresa May,
Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and
Skills, and President of the Board of Trade Vince Cable, Liberal
Democrat: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain Duncan
Smith, Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change
Chris Huhne, Liberal Democrat: No voluntary work
declared.

Secretary of State for Health
Andrew Lansley, Tory: No voluntary work declared.
Far too busy selling the NHS to American Private health firms.

Secretary of State for Education Michael
Gove, Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Communities and Local
Government Eric Pickles: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs, Caroline Spelman Tory: “I have
been chair of two local charities MABL and Welcome although in my
new role as a cabinet minister I have had to step back to be a
patron but the first of these has hit a very difficult patch
financially so I have had to spend a lot of time trying to help
secure sustainable funding for MABL which helps the victims of
domestic violence. We are not out of the woods yet and I have yet
more meetings planned this week to try and save it. I have to be in
the department in Whitehall even when parliament is not sitting so
it is not easy to schedule the time but I come home every Friday
and help also at the weekend.” – I fully salute Spelman for this.
Not so much for trying to privatise trees.

Secretary of State for Transport Phillip Hammond,
Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for International Development
Andrew Mitchell, Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics,
Media and Sport Jeremy C….Hunt, Tory: No voluntary
work declared.

Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland Owen Paterson, Tory: No voluntary
work declared

Secretary of State for
Scotland Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat: No
voluntary work declared.

Secretary of
State for Wales Cheryl Gillan, Tory: No voluntary
work declared.

Leader of the House of
Commons, Lord Privy Seal Francis Maude, Tory: No
voluntary work declared.

Attorney General
Dominic Grieve, Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Solicitor General Edward Garnier,
Tory: No voluntary work declared.

Chief Whip Patrick McLoughlin, Tory:
No voluntary work declared. So that’s one out of 23. I’m not too
good at maths, never have been, but I believe that’s about 4%. Just
saying…..

Student protest

I will hopefully be attending the Student march on London on November 10th, as a reaction the the news that the Coalition intends to increase tuition fees from a cap of £3,290, to £7,000. The Liberal Democrats, and Nick Clegg and Vince Cable specifically pledged to never support a tuition fee rise, and in fact wanted tuition fees scrapped entirely. They secured a mass of Student votes because of this one policy. Last week, both went back on that promise and decided to support the raising of tuition fees to a cap of £7,000 a year, whilst some courses could cost £12,000 a year.

Obviously, the Lib Dems pathetic excuse for absolutely pissing all over their votes, is that the situation left by Labour is worse than previously though. Except it isn’t. They had the same information back in May as they do now. In fact, the economy has improved over those past few months.

If tuition fees were as high as £7,000 when I started university last year, I would not have gone. I would have gotten a job I disliked, had a mediocre eduction, and whilst it would please Tories because employment numbers suit their cause, it actually would do absolutely nothing for me and my aspirations. But a few rich people would be fine with the cost rise, so it’s okay.

What strikes me as ridiculous, is that we have just come out of an horrendous economic crises, based entirely on debt. Wages of workers across the board have stagnated for years, whilst wages in the boardroom have increased beyond recognition. Which in turn, meant that ordinary workers were struggling, and were very insecure. So an easy credit market shot into life, offering the chance to borrow huge amounts quickly and easily. We soon racked up debts, the housing market collapsed, and banks suddenly struggled to pull back the huge amounts they’d wrecklessly loaned out. Debt caused it. Now, to get out of the problems, the Coalition is suggesting we get ourselves; the next generation – into a huge amount of debt if we want a half decent chance at life. The very same politicians, who went to university, when it was entirely free. How ironic.

Do know what is more annoying than the quite obvious elite-ism that runs through the veins of Tories and now Lib Dems? The fact that the man they have put in charge of finding instances of what a man worth £4bn and has never had to worry about struggling to pay for food, thinks is ‘wasteful spending’, actually owes billions in elaborate tax avoidance schemes whilst he himself told his employees they’d have to work longer if they want a decent pension pay off, than first thought. Oh and he’s often been criticised for using sweatshops abroad, in which workers are paid less than £4 a day, to work up to 22 hours six days a week, whilst he lazes his life on a beach in Monaco. What a lovely man. So students have to get ourselves into greater debt, because people like Sir Philip Green (Sir? Really?) need to save some money for a new yacht.

So I will be going on the march, not just in protest of the planned Student Tuition fee rise and the obvious lack of balls the Lib Dems have; but also because the appointment of Philip Green and the love affair with businessmen who actively tax avoid is one of the main issues I see in the UK at the moment. Plus, political cynicism and apathy is far too wide spread. I don’t want my entire life controlled by business, and its bitches in Westminster. It isn’t the height of human freedom. It is the opposite. That is why I will be marching.

I hope to see as many students there as possible.

The power of rhetoric

When I was a toddler, I decided normal human words were not good enough, and so I invented my own words, for reasons I am unable to provide an adequate reason for. The remote control for the TV, I referred to as an ‘Ah Ah Ah’. My dad still calls it that. A spider, was a buru. And Santa, was Ge-a. I do not understand what made me see a spider, and say “Oh, there’s a buru.” It isn’t even like I attempted to say spider, and got it wrong. Buru sounds nothing like spider. There is no species of spider called a Buru. In fact, Buru is a tiny island in the Maluku Province of Indonesia.

In my defence, I was creating my own language. I didn’t need your English bullshit language, in which the plural of house is houses but the plural of mouse isn’t mouses. I wonder, how far would I have gone, had I not been taught English as soon as I started school? Would I have came up with my own vocabulary? Would I have came up with my own words, for situations that even the English language doesn’t have words for? I would absolutely love a word for the fact that the only door in the history of the World that doesn’t have a top or a bottom, is a door to a public toilet cubicle; the one door you want a top and bottom to exist, through fear that a friend might appear over the top, with a Phone camera, and ending in you having to close your facebook account. Surely that situation is enough to warrant a word? I would have came up with a name for that situation, had I been able to develop my own language.

Instead, I would just make my dad sing ‘heartbeat’ from behind the door, whilst he held my baby sister above the door, so it looked like she was really tall and singing. I was 2. Apparently, I found it fucking hilarious.

I was awesome.

Anyway, the point of this blog is the power of the spoken word. The Greeks and the Romans knew exactly how important it was. It was a tool used by the political and religious classes, to manipulate the population into doing exactly what they wanted. Cicero perfected the art of rhetoric. The three main devices used by the Orator, are pathos, logos and ethos. They are all features of manipulation. Pathos is defined as an appeal to the emotion of the audience. Logos refers to reasoning and logic. Ethos means to appeal to an audience’s sense of National pride, or Religious beliefs, or a Political ideology…. in other words, appealing to an abstract sense of community.

We see it politically all the time. John McCain during the run up to the 2008 Presidential Election gave a speech against Universal Healthcare in which he claimed that the British NHS refuses to treat patients over 75. Gasps of shock from the audience resonated throughout the hall. Political rhetoric that is simply untrue. I know it was an horrendous lie, and a manipulation of the audiences naivety, because my 83 year old grandma was being treated by the NHS, on that very day. To get away with such a ridiculous lie, and not be booted out of politics for it, shows just how nonchalent we have become politically. We don’t bother to check our facts, we simply wait for a politician to tell us. And the politicians know how useful this tool has become.

The Conservate-Lib Dem coalition defends every pointless cut it makes, by starting the answer with “as a result of the legacy of debt left by Labour”. Seriously, when you see a Tory or Lib Dem being interviewed, see how long you can count before they mention the “legacy of debt“. Simon Hughes of the Lib Dems got to 23 seconds today. Record! It is an attempt to justify, what they clearly are not comfortable justifying using the truth; their own ideology. BBC News asked a guy in a pub, what he thought so far of the Coalition. He said that they need to desperately get the debt reduced quickly. The journalist asked him why he thought that was. He couldn’t answer. Now, to me that suggests that he had simply heard time and time again the right winged rhetoric of the Tory Party, and thinks he sounds intelligent, if he simply repeats it. It shows that the Tories really did win the political discourse war, not with reasoned debate, but with easy terms, idiots can understand. He doesn’t bother checking facts for himself. Given that the Tory Party won the most seats at the election, it suggests that a large majority of people who will be badly hit by the cuts to public services over the next few years, voted Tory because they kept hearing the apocalypse-type rhetoric that public spending needed cutting immediately, or we’d all die. The Labour Party were useless at providing a differing opinion; a progressive narrative, and they paid for it. The current Labour leadership battle is nothing of any worth. The same centrist politicians who have been on the scene for at least the past five years, using the same rhetoric they use to win votes rather than challenge the centre-right monopoly on political and economic discourse that has become prevalent in recent years. None of them seem to be real progressives. On subjects like immigration for example, they pander to the Right and the media perception. It is a supremely complex issue, that deserves more than one view that only ever says there is a huge problem. They aren’t putting forward different, progressive views, or challenging the mainstream opinion. They are pandering.

On immigration, from both sides of the political scale, all we hear is that it is a problem. Immigrants are labelled illegal and dangerous. They apparently take our jobs and the only way to deal with it, is to ‘secure the borders’. That isn’t progressive. That is simply tying a weak bandage over a very deep wound. To truly deal with immigration, you have to work internationally to find out why mass migration occurs. Firstly, you have to accept that if your borders are open to capital and goods, closing your borders to labour is always going to cause huge Global inequality. Capitalism and Nation States are vastly incompatible. You need to truly be committed to eradicating poverty. You have to work internationally to force working standards across the World based on human rights. You have to allow smaller producers a better chance at survival against huge Western Corporations. You have to spread democracy that isn’t just about creating puppet governments who will open native markets to America business interests. There has to be a joint effect across the World, to fight global inequality. Then, migration will fall. Guaranteed.

What worries me, is that there has been an obvious systematic attempt to undermine all sections of the public sector, whilst keeping the failings of the private sector as quiet at possible. The vast majority of the British Public quite obviously felt uneasy at this, and didn’t buy into it at first, because during the most unpopular Labour government in generations, the Conservatives STILL didn’t manage to secure a majority. I would argue that they have no mandate to push through tough cuts now. The Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party both ran their election campaign on the idea of slower and less vicious cuts that the Tories proposed. The combined votes of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrat Party added up to just over 15,000,000. The Tories vote count, was just over 10,000,000. Therefore, 5,000,000 more people in the UK wanted slower and less vicious and less deep cuts than is now happening. We are hardly a beacon of democracy right now. So the idea that the British public felt that Labour had forced this horrendous debt that needed cutting deeply, immediately, was wrong.

The rhetoric works. The constant “We’re all in this together” from George Osbourne makes me squirm, and yet apparently people lap it up. I cannot understand why.

The reason people are so easily political manipulated, is because we simply don’t have time to understand and investigate for ourselves. We rely on what the politicians tell us around election time, and the Party with the loudest voice becomes the voice of truth, which is surely a logical fallacy. The loudest voices in the corridors of Whitehall, are those who represent money interests. Rich interests. Therefore those who tax avoid will always be less important to the political classes, than those who have no voice yet scrounge a few extra pound every month in benefits. And then the rhetoric starts. You’re an evil socialist if you think differently. You’re a communist if you suggest Big Businessmen should express some responsibility and not walk away with millions upon millions in bonuses whilst making thousands of workers redundant. It stinks of bullshit. Joined with our lack of time, and our indifference toward the continuously projected rhetoric (I believe it’s known as an appeal to ridicule), we are also……ya know……like……. totally……. like……….not bothered…….ya know………. because….. like we just…………want to……….get well drunk and stuff……..like……yeah? The poet Taylor Mali sums up what I am getting at beautifully, with:
<blockquote>
“And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!”
</blockquote>
An inarticulate mass, is a disinterested mesh of people whose lives consist of jobs they don’t like, long hours they wish they had more to themselves in their short lives, and one holiday for two weeks a year to look forward to and nothing else. It is no wonder we allow Politicians to presume to tell us that things will get better when they are in power. We will never be happy because our economy which is based almost entirely on consumerism (hence the easy credit bubble) ensures that we believe we will only be happy if we buy more shit we don’t need. Happiness can never depend on how much you own, only on how little you need.

I wonder if those poorer people who voted Tory know that the Tories wanted to ride the recession out with no stimulus or help for them. A large majority of them would have lost their jobs, and their homes had the Tories been in power. Not only that, but David Cameron voted against minimum wage legislation. He didn’t want minimum wage. I wonder if those poorer people knew that before they voted for him. The rhetoric worked, because it was the loudest and most coherently constructed. It didn’t matter that it was full of illogic and lies, because there was no opposite coherent message to counter it. And it has been that way for generations. Before elected politicians; we had Kings and Nobles; Cardinals and Popes who had supreme power, and they used Religious rhetoric (the Pope still does) to scare, and coerce, and manipulate at will. No one opposed it, because to do so would have meant certain death for heresy.

In 1517, Pope Leo X offered to sell pardons for sin, in exchange for a lot of money, in order to build St Peter’s. So poorer people, thought this was an easy way to heaven. It was actually just a way for the Catholic Church to build it’s power, and actually quite a novel way, given that it had spent the previous few centuries building it’s power, on violence and blood.

Skip a few centuries down the line, and the Pope has the nerve to refer to people like me as being a problem because I don’t believe in Organised Religion; whilst at the same time, telling people in AIDS ridden African Nations that hang on his every word, that condoms actually spread AIDS, and that God doesn’t accept condom use. Church rhetoric is far more dangerous than political rhetoric, because people do not do there own research, or think for themselves when it comes to politics or the Church, the difference is that the Church promotes ignorance, and unquestioning acquiescence.

World War II was the era of big, lasting, epic speeches filled with manipulative rhetoric. Hitler was arguably the king of propaganda through speech. He managed to turn an entire Nation against a minority, in much the same way as the American Right are doing with Islam right now, only better. Churchill was an excellent speaker. In a speech to the House of Commons in 1940 he said:
<blockquote>
You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
<blockquote>

What Churchill decided to ignore, was that he was correct in referring to the Nazi regime as a monstrous tyranny, the British were at that time an Empire ourselves. The lands we owned were won by enslaving populations, murder and rape of the land. The reason I, and the rest of the UK is in a strong economic position in relation to most of the World, is due to the fact that we had a solid grounding based on exploitation that was still going on quite horrifically in Churchill’s time, and of which he was a supporter. We carved up Africa into Nations, based not on the hopes of the population, but on what best suited our imperialist vision and that of France.

We are made to believe that one ruler in government, telling us how to run our lives, is bad. It is big bad intrusive government; tyranny. But, when big business does it, and when our workplace tells us what it means to look and act in an abstract concept of “professional”, how to talk, how our faces should look, what jewellery we can wear, it is perfectly fine. It is the height of human freedom. When we work hard and government taxes us, we consider it to be a great evil. When business takes the money we have earned in a shift, and the majority goes to the man at the very top whilst we receive the bare minimum; it is great, it is ‘free’. Business is in essence, pretty totalitarian. It is a dictatorship. It is lots of little Stalinist states run by megalomaniacs. It certainly isn’t freedom.

In Australia, all I heard from Tony Abbott, was “Omg Labor’s debt is awful ARGH! Vote for me, to save you all from economic ruin“. The problem was, within three minutes of research, one comes to the inevitable conclusion, that the right winged Mr Abbocare if the way we carved up the map of Africa would provoke countless tribal wars and ethnic cleansing over the decades, we cared only for what suited us economically. If Africans suddenly rose up and wanted out of British control, we suppressed them with violence. We favoured dictatorial ethnic minorities in African nations because they had vicious hierarchical systems and so could be brought on side to help the Colonialists; the Fulani in Nigeria is a good example of this at work. The entire Empire, even during Churchill’s time, was based on the idea of social darwinism; we believed we were superior to the Africans and so had every right to exploit them. Would Churchill not consider this a ‘monstrous tyranny’ also?

Cicero would not be proud of the American Right Wing. The Tea Party brigade. The Glenn Beck obsessed idiots. They are playing the rhetoric game all wrong. It is not subtle, or intelligible, or even well crafted manipulative bullshit. It is just utter bullshit. Almost laughable. The Tea Party brigade have referred to Obama as a Nazi, a racist, a Communist, a Socialist, an immigrant, and an anti-American terrorist sympathiser. It stinks of bitterness, because this level of anger was never thrown at the most evil and horrific President America has had, well, ever: Bush. They seemed to keep quiet then. It feels simply that big business has funded a campaign to suggest that any universal benefit to the entire population that inevitably bites into their immense profits, is only turn America into some new USSR. It isn’t. But the voice of the enraged Right Wing is the loudest, and so history is rewrote to the will of the loudest.

The American Right Wing has a thing about rewriting history, in their favour. Any fact that seems to contradict them, they suggest is just Marxist propaganda. In Texas, the school board voted in favour of a curriculum that teaches the superiority of American Capitalism. No economists or historians were asked for their opinion on the curriculum. It will also try to inject creationism into science teaching. This annoys me the most. Purely because evolution is not a Right vs Left issue. It is fact. It is like trying to suggest in a school text book that actually, gravity might not exist at all. The religious fundamentalists do not seem to be able to differentiate between the word ‘theory’ in every day use, and ‘theory’ in scientific use. ‘Theory’ in scientific use is the explanation to explain the fact. So, gravity is the fact – that everything falls to earth if you drop it. Einstein’s theory, is currently what we use to explain why that happens. Similarly, evolution – being the idea that we are all descended from a common ancestor, is the fact. The theory that we currently use to explain it, is Natural Selection. In fact, the entire field of modern biology and medicine, is based on this. So when those board of education members get sick, they should perhaps pray instead of being treated by evil leftie evolutionary heretic doctors. To implant their skewed understanding of the World into a text book, for future generations to be indoctrinated with, is surely wrong at best, and pretty damn abusive at worst.

Southern America during the Civil War managed to convince very poor people, to fight for the right of their rich counterparts to own slaves. They billed it as a war over States rights. Yes, States rights to own and exploit black people. It’s odd because the North wanted slaves to be free. For some reason, southerners believed this would flood them out of the jobs market, and black people would now take all the work. The irony of the situation is that the black slaves already had their jobs. If i’m a rich man in Southern America and I can get a black slave to work my land for free, or pay a poor white man to do it, i’m obviously going to pick option one. So i’m so far unaware of why poor white people were so up for fighting on the side of the rich white folk. I’d suggest it was purely racist reasons. A form of racism that was created specifically to stop the poor white folk from joining hands with the poor black folk and fighting these rich bastards who held them both down.

President Bush spent eight years telling Americans that if they didn’t support the horrific imperialist ideals of the Republican administration, the torture, the innocent deaths and the illegal expensive wars; they were un-American. And now, we have a generation of Americans who seem to think that keeping quiet and waving a flag chanting U.S.A whilst their President wastes billions of killing innocent people in multiple countries, is the American way; but trying to correct a healthcare system that benefits no one but insurance companies, is un-American and Marxist. The power of rhetoric.

I have a new policy, of assuming that all politicians are the pocket of business and so will never say or do anything to benefit the population. That all business men are bastards from the day they are born, and have some kind of deeply totalitarian needs. And that spiders should be renamed ‘buru’.

Hypocritical Britain

More and more, I find my head shaking, my eyes rolling, unable to comprehend the apparent level of hypocrisy shooting through the veins of Britain over the past few months.

First we had the Brand and Ross affair, Sachsgate. The general level of hypocrisy of The Daily Mail struck new highs. They spent about two weeks describing how disgusting it was for the BBC to exploit the private lives of Manuel and his Granddaughter in the way that they did. Let me rephrase that just incase you missed the hypocritical part.
The Daily Mail, a cog in the works of an exploitative media, who’s Entertainment Photographers spend their time laid out in pavement gutters, waiting for Britney Spears to emerge from her car, so they can get an upskirt shot, the Daily Mail, who willfully supported Oswald Moseley, and didn’t think Hitler was all that bad just after he became chancellor, The Daily Mail who are, in effect, the British Fox News, are now taking the moral high ground because of a prank phone call? The Daily Mail, who called “Fonejacker” (A program where prank calls are made for entertainment purposes) a “comedy gem”?

And then of course, more recently, the arrest of Conservative Front Bench MP Damien Green. His home and offices were raided, he was arrested by anti-terrorist agents. The same anti-terrorist agents who arrested a group of Greenpeace activists not too long back. Damien Green was arrested for leaking “sensitive” information. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she didn’t know Green was going to be arrested. My first response to that, is Why? Why didn’t she know? She’s the fucking Home Secretary and she has no idea that police are about to storm Parliament? Could she be any more useless if she tried?
Of course she could.
One of the leaks surrounded 5,000 illegal immigrants known by Jacqui Smith to have been on the Security Industry Authorities list of licensed security guards working sensitive posts, that she tried to keep concealed from he public. I applaud Green if he indeed leaked this.
She went on to explain that leaking “sensitive” information is wrong. Now my understanding of leaking information, is that it’s vital for democracy to shine? Especially if it holds the government to account for wrong doing? What the hell are Labour playing at, affectively telling us all that leaking information, is entirely wrong? No it fucking isn’t. Nick Clegg said it beautifully “It is about defending a simple principle: that anyone wanting to unearth information about the way we are governed should not live in fear that they are going to have the anti-terror police on their doorstep.”
And here comes the hypocrisy of Labour. During the 90s, Brown used to stand up in the Commons waving leaked documents at the then Tory chancellor, to embarrass the Tories into admitting faults. Under his own principles, Brown should now be held for nine hours under Anti Terror laws?

The very dealings of Primark. Now i’m in two minds about Primark. I refuse to shop there because they’re ethically disgusting. They know they exploit. They know children are used in very poor working conditions paid very little, and some reports suggest beatings occur, all so Brits can afford cheap shirts. It’s wrong. No matter what the economic benefits are, it’s wrong.
However, the economic benefits cannot be overlooked. The rate of pay for Primark employees abroad is competitive in their markets. If they were to be paid the same as workers in Western markets are paid, every surrounding business in their neighbourhoods wouldn’t be able to compete, they’d go out of business, meaning many many more unemployed people struggling to find money to feed their families. It’s a delicate balance. But that of course, doesn’t make it right. The people forced to work long hours for relatively no money in poor conditions are still human beings, and so deserve the right to dignity and respect.
I was stood waiting for the train at Marble Arch Tube Station not too long ago, and two women with Primark bags were stood next to me talking about how disgusted they were by Shannon Mathews mum, how she exploited her children for extra benefits, how she exploited her children for her own gain. I stood thinking “Ok, you’re complaining about a woman who exploited children, whilst shopping for clothes made by exploited children. Yeah, good one”. Hypocrisy at it’s best.

Double standards. The way of the Western World.

British “Democracy”

It’s difficult to deduce why exactly we in Britain can consider our system of governance to be “Democratic” by nature. There are many reasons, the will of the people just isn’t in place. It’s almost as if we’re told we’re in a democracy, given a relatively pointless vote as if we have some power, only to be shafted vigorously by whichever government happens to have manipulated us into believing they’re right for the Country.
Too many faults to name, but I shall put just a select few of my concerns down on here now.Everytime I hear that we’re ‘spreading democracy’, as if we’re the centre piece of a great democracy ourselves, I get frustrated for a couple of reasons 1) We’re not democratic ourselves and 2) It’s defeats the point of democracy, when you force it on people without the people voting if they actually want it or not. By definition, it isn’t democracy.

Here are my problems with British Democracy…

The Head of State, gains that priviledge through inheritance. We never elected the Queen. Fundamentally, that is totally the opposite of democracy, regardless of how powerful she actually is.

My family are working class, we’ve always supported Labour. But for Labour to gain power with only 36% of the vote, means that 64% of the votes were cast against Labour. 64% of people in the UK did not want Labour in power. The majority of people in this country voted for a party other than the one in charge. So, the minority are ruled as they’d like, the majority, ignored.

Some would argue we live in a multi-party system, which allows parties to pop up everywhere, from Labour to the BNP to the Monster Raving Looney Party. Others would argue that we live in a two party system, because realistically only Labour and the Tories gain control of Parliament. I would argue quite controversially that we live in a one party system. My reasoning for this is that the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives have spent the past ten years fighting for the Centre ground. There is no mainstream left wing or mainstream right wing party anymore. It’s two parties, fighting for the same voters on the centre ground, which means it’s one big party, split into two. This, although good for the majority of Middle England, is still in essence, undemocratic.

When Labour in their manifesto said “We will not introduce university top up fees” and then the moment we vote them in power, some would say, because of their stance on top up fees, they totally do the opposite of what they promise. We have been lied to on that one, and yet, we can’t do a thing about it. How democratic is that?

Labour also promised a referendum on the E.U Constitution, in their manifesto. Now they’re saying we don’t need a referendum. I’m guessing that’s because they know for certain the vote will come back a ‘No’ by quite a huge majority, which would be embarrasing for Labour. But what gets me is that they wont even ask Parliament to vote on if we should be given a referendum. Brown hinted a while back on a vote in Parliament, but not a free vote. It would have been a three line whipped vote, which is undemocratic in principle.

Speaking of the whip, what happens when the concerns of your constituents clash with the plans of your Party? You’re expected to go with what your party tells you to do, not the people who voted for you. Undemocratic.

Instead of covering it up, why doesn’t Labour tell us what really happened with the whole Dr David Kelly episode? We know they’re lying on this one. Rule by the people, for the people.

When two million people signed a petition on the Downing Street Website in early 2007 against Government plans to introduce a road mileage tax, the response from the Government was “A petition doesn’t change anything”………… when you totally ignore 2,000,000 people, not only is that so undemocratic, it’s bordering on a Dictatorship. When 80’000 police officers marched on downing street because the Government refused to pay them what they promised to pay them, the meeting in the house of commons totally ignored it. Not one MP brought up the subject at PMQs. Yet all MPs had their say when agreeing a pay increase for themselves.

When both main parties are funded by rich businessmen, they are then in the debt of the businessmen, and so the entire point of the Labour Party is distroyed. If one party is going to support the CBI, then for democracy to work, the other HAS to be supportive of the TUC, otherwise again, it’s just one big party, with the same principles fighting for the same rich tycoons.

Who voted Gordon Brown in as Prime Minister?

An entire wing of the British Government existing in the House of Lords, are unelected. I never voted on whether Thatcher should be in the Lords. She should be in prison, not dressing like a twat in a pointless chamber of government.

At the last election, the tories got almost as many votes as the Lib Dems, and yet the allocation of seats, due to the fact that Lib Dem supporters are not concentrated in particular areas and instead spread around the country, was so disproportionate to the actual votes, it couldn’t be any less democratic if it tried.

The point is, we are not democratic. We are under the impression that we’re democratic because we’re given a vote. There is something massively wrong with the system when less than 45% of people actually vote, and of that 45%, it only takes 36% of the vote to secure a majority. That amasses to such a small amount of people chosing who the next government should be.

I read a piece in the Daily Mail the other day (And I absolutely hate the right winged bullshit within the Daily Mail) that said “If we don’t act now, our privacy will be invaded further in the future”……… if we don’t act now? 2,000,000 of us signed a Downing Street petition and were ignored. How do we ‘act now’? Short of striking up a guerilla army and storming Westminster, there’s really fuck all any of us can do.

Britain is not a democracy. Infact, we’re only a Democracy, when you compare us to Zimbabwe. Other than that, we’re a failed democracy.