We're all in this together

March 26th: a political turning point?

It seems that today saw one of the five biggest demonstrations ever in British history. While most of those protests were against Labour administrations, who didn't take a blind bit of notice, this one makes a nice change in that it is against the Liberal Democrats and their coalition partners, and has the backing of the official opposition (pic tweeted by Richard Mallender).

It seems there could be up to half a million people marching through the streets of London with another substantial demo in the north of Ireland. There was a significant mobilisation on the part of the trade unions but also non-coalition political parties and protest groups.

Ed Miliband addressed the crowd from the end platform despite having written Labour's cuts Manifesto for the last election and Labour councillors up and down the country voting, en masse, for cuts budgets.

In a move designed to annoy the Daily Telegraph UKUncut occupied Fortnum and Masons and there were a number of other peaceful direct actions, mainly against banks, and Anne Summers' windows were smash in a targeted strike against, um... shops? This led some wags to comment that police were looking for "hardened protesters" and that this was the "climax of the demonstration".

However, while the smashed windows seem pointless and, frankly, unrepresentative of the feelings of most of those turning out, the continuing direct action, which led to a number of protesters being arrested despite being completely peaceful, are a real benefit. Unlike the Iraq War march where the focus was simply on size it is very good to see that this protest was not just big, but lively and edgy too, with many people reporting a carnival atmosphere.

The TUC had come in for criticism for taking so long to organise this demo, but part of me feels this turnout is a vindication of that decision. There have been very well attended protests all over the country which have helped build this march and it seems unlikely that had this been called in January, for example, we'd have had anything like this turnout.

It does call into question where we go from here. I've seen various people talking about the next monster demo (and "let's make it bigger", etc.) but this feels slightly unimaginative and disregards the fact  that these protests lend moral weight and confidence to the movement against austerity but cannot, of themselves, change government policy.

Right now, according to YouGov, the majority support the aims of the march (52% to 31%) but in order to get the government to change direct we need a viable strategy that goes beyond moral force. The next step is public sector strike action.

The prospects for industrial action that is coordinated across the public sector seem far closer now than at  any other point in my lifetime. While Thatcher took on unions one at a time this government has taken on the entire country all in one go, banking on the weakness of the trade union movement. For the trade unions this is now life or death, if they let this moment pass without real action they are in danger of being snuffed out of any meaningful existence what so ever.


Of course, if they allow their links to the Labour Party to hold them back once again they will find their members out of work and/or demoralised by the end of this government. Thankfully unions like the PCS are not linked to Labour and are far more free to act effectively. Whether other unions can take the lead with them is another matter - but this march today shows that there is an enormous public mood against the cuts, let's not piss it away.

A disturbing vision of our free market future

Let no one tell you that the Lib Dems are the cuddly part of the Coalition. Some would have you think they are the grizzled fur rather than the yellowed teeth of this rabid dog, but when it comes to the number one issue of the day, public services, the parties are of one mind.

Take a look at Vince Cable's recent Trade and Industry speech at Mansion House. Once he was the darling of the liberal establishment, what's he got to say about his achievements so far?

Well, he begins with the things he's really proud of " We have succeeded where our predecessors failed with a clear programme to stabilise and privatize the Royal Mail. We have put in place unprecedented higher education reforms. I could go on." But we hope you don't Vince.

He chillingly then outlines what his plans for government are; "We know business wants action, not words. That is why... we embarked on a Growth Review, an exercise every bit as rigorous and challenging as its spending equivalent. It has challenged every department to get behind the growth agenda, critically examining every policy that might get in the way or hold back our vision for private sector recovery."

So every government department has been challenged to harness itself to the needs of the private sector rather than, say, delivering a good service to disabled people or teaching kids to read and write. So the Department for Health has to get behind the 'growth agenda' ensuring it doesn't hold back 'our' vision for private sector recovery... glad no one is getting sick these days then.

He wants to "encourag[e] what Keynes called the “animal spirits” of entrepreneurs." That's quite interesting as I had a vague feeling I remember something about this, so I quickly dug up the Keynes quote...

"Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits - a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities."

In other words Cable explicitly endorses something Keynes thought helped cause instability and was a product of 'optimism' rather than analysis. I wont dwell on this, he wont be the first, nor last politician to find a natty phrase regardless of its actual original meaning.

So let's move on to regulation. Most thinking people agree that the financial sector needs to have firmer regulation to prevent another financial sector crisis, or at least ameliorate it when it comes. They also happen to see that Barclays pay just 1% in Corporation Tax and think "Bloody hell, literally the richest are paying the least." So, what does this progressive have to say about regulating these loose dogs?

"Successive governments have made ritual commitments to reducing red tape but have added to it, inconveniencing businesses large and small." and then...

"Within my own department I have already taken action, to remove regulations which impede the ability of businesses to expand and take on people. This includes a review of labour market regulation specifically to stop cases reaching employment tribunals without a prior attempt at reconciliation and restricting access for unfair dismissal cases to the employed for two years rather than one."

So restricting workers access to employment tribunals and reducing their rights at work. How progressive of that cuddlesome Mr Cable! He goes on " Another useful step forward has been the steps we have taken to stop “gold plating” EU regulations and fight damaging regulatory impositions from the EU like the Working Time Directive."

He then talks about planning regulations being a barrier to growth, and how in the finance sector "My first priority was to ensure that the rapid deleveraging should not choke off, or make prohibitively expensive, the supply of credit to good British companies, especially SMEs."

This Growth Review he's outlining sounds more like the driver of a runaway train putting his foot on the gas. At the very time when the public have started to demand better regulation, and for business to pay its way Cable's emphasis is to advocate liassez faire capitalism without addressing why the crash happened in the first place. In fact he himself summarises his approach as "robust and unsentimental withdrawal of Government from unnecessary interference."

Jeezo.

So Cameron must be saying something even worse. Nope. He's singing from exactly the same hymn sheet.

At the Conservative spring forum he launched an attack on public sector workers in Whitehall and town halls who were the "enemies of enterprise". He denounced the "the bureaucrats in government departments who concoct those ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible".

When it comes to commissioning goods and services Cameron says we'll be "throwing open the bidding process to every single business in our country – a massive boost for small businesses, because we want them to win at least a quarter of these deals".

Competition in the NHS is just the tip of the ice burg it seems.

Meanwhile the CBI and the City are lobbying to pull down regulation and end high taxes for the richest. the head of the CBI "urged Vince Cable's Department for Business and Skills to scrap unnecessary regulations and make good its plans to boost exports with the offer of credit guarantees and loans."

I'll end with the Cameron's speech on his arms sales to dictators trip;

"Here's another thing I've personally been doing. Selling Britain to the world.

"You know some people are disdainful about that. They see me loading up a plane with businesspeople and say - that's not statesmanship, that's salesmanship.

"I say: attack all you want. But do you think the Germans and the French and the Americans are all sitting at home waiting for business to fall into their lap? ...

"So let met tell you: while there are contracts to be won, jobs to be created, markets to be defended - I will be there ...

"I'll be there not just because it's my job, not just because it's my duty, more than that - because I passionately believe - no, I know that this country can out-compete, out-perform, out-hustle the best in the world."

He boasts about "loading up a plane with business people"? I thought he was spreading democracy, no? At the very least I assumed he'd say it was a coincidence but he's right out there implying they maybe didn't even want to come and he's there "loading" them onto the plane, he's forcing them to sell their guns and bombs to people who really, really may need them very soon.

He passionate believes that we can "out-hustle" the best in the world. I agree, but think we must be stopped. This vision for UK PLC where every public body is chained to the needs of business is utterly horrifying to me and frankly I think would be an historic crime if allowed to happen.

Green Party councillors and the cuts

To follow on from the previous economic perspectives motion that was passed I thought I'd post up the organisational guidance the Cardiff conference has passed on how councillors should respond to the cuts. This is an organisational rather than policy motion which explains the slightly different style;

Conference reaffirms our manifesto commitment to "protect basic public services, which are the foundation of an equitable society".

The Green Party of England and Wales is opposed to cuts in essential local government services.

Conference calls on GPEX [the national executive], within existing resources, to offer support (e.g. policy and external communications support) to Green Party councillors and other publicly elected Green Party representatives not to vote for such cuts, support them in refusing to do so.

GPEW deplores the Coalition Government's huge reductions in government grant to each local authority but recognises that each local authority has a legal duty to set a balanced budget.

Green councillors will be supported in putting forward imaginative alternatives that will protect jobs and services. Such alternatives could include the following:

- cutting senior pay for top council executives
- reducing the millions spent on expensive private sector consultants
- cutting down on glossy PR and council spin
- reducing council fuel bills by making schools, libraries and other buildings more energy efficient
- introducing workplace parking levies

Such a stand will facilitate the effective participation of such representatives and members in the local campaigns against cuts which are required, and will provide a lead for other councillors, trade unionists and community activists.

Conference asks the Chair of the Association of Green Councillors to inform all Green Councillors of this motion.

Green Party comes out against global capitalism

Today in Cardiff we passed this motion (which is as passed with an amendment from Darren Johnson, section four). I thought you'd all like to know.

1) We recognise that global capitalism has set its sights on the public sector as part of the solution to its crisis. Recognising that simple privatisation of local services is unpopular, successive governments have introduced more subtle forms of 'creeping privatisation' - taking services out of public hands and handing them over to new bodies which are vulnerable to being taken over by the private sector at a later stage; and surrounding public services with private sector consultants and advisers.

2) We oppose all these moves and insist that local public services should be provided overwhelmingly by public service providers and be accountable directly to local people, not to private sector shareholders. Claims that only the quality of local public services matters, and not who provides them, are inaccurate, because private sector providers are ultimately accountable to their shareholders and their financial bottom line. The public sector is different: it is wholly dedicated towards delivering services for those in need, and the dedication, skill, and innovation of public sector workers should be unleashed to improve services. Defending the public service ethos is therefore a top priority for the Green Party.

3) We believe that all local public service providers should therefore be under a duty to promote the environmental, economic and social well-being of the local community; and to optimise efficiency, and avoid waste, in public service provision.

4) The total cost of public service provision in an area, through all providers, should be published and made available for public scrutiny. The remit of local councils should be expanded so that locally-delivered services are commissioned by democratically-elected local authorities. Primary Care Trusts should be supervised by, and accountable to, elected local government, for example. Separate elections for police and health will splinter accountability and threaten partnership working.

5) We need a revolution in participation - freedom of information and transparency is not enough. We support the approach of local people playing a major role in planning, commissioning, managing and assessing local priorities, services and budgets, using appropriate local forums and techniques such as participatory budgeting. Such deliberative discussion is preferable to the blunt instrument of local referenda for complex decisions on services and budgets.

6) In the current economic climate, we also commit ourselves to support national and local campaigns against cuts in public services and to use everything in our power when in opposition or in office to oppose them.

No Cell Off

I think it was Not The nine O'Clock News that did a joke about Thatcher giving prisoners the opportunity to "buy their own cells", well hurrah for the current trend of eighties nostalgia because it's actually happening. Sort of.

Two police forces in Scotland are, according to the Scotsman, farming out their cells into the private sector. The lucky winners in this game are Group Four (renamed G4S so that people forget that kept letting prisoners escape) who's comments in the press appear to have provoked the normally supine Unison into threatening strike action. Or at least not ruling it out, which is pretty scary stuff I'm sure.

Group Four's managing director John Shaw diplomatically said that "Police forces in Scotland have a great track record of being very forward-thinking, compared to England and Wales" who presumably have not had meetings with him about this exciting business opportunity which includes constructing and staffing detention units and "portable cells, something I said would never happen in February 2009.

As Unison's Peter Velden says "Privatising custody suite officers would concern us greatly. They are valuable public servants and they should be kept in public service. If this saves money, it will be through cutting the guys' wages and cutting their allowances."

I think, given the record of privatised public services, it could also mean a severe degrading of the service - which in this case may mean more injuries, deaths and legal mishaps. In fact it's fair to say that organisations like Group Four (G4S) that make their money profiteering from formerly publicly owned utilities are nothing better than a bunch of criminals.

However, while I've heard of people having to dig their own graves I've not yet heard of criminals building their own cells. We live in hope.

Kate Belgrave: Women and the cuts

Continuing my series on the ABC of feminism guest posts we have this fantastic piece from Kate Belgrave who has been interviewing women up and down the country about the impact of the cuts in their area.

There are times when I wonder if being an old woman without money will be as funny as all that. It seems likely that I'll find out first-hand in the near-ish future.

Right now, I get to watch.

I'm in a room in Gateshead with about 15 older women at a Personal Growth - Take Individual Steps session (known as PG Tips here at the Tyneside women's health centre). I wouldn't describe the group, or the session, as a touchy-feely waste of public money and focus, although I
imagine George Osborne would without looking round the door. Older and sick people aren't above criticism or suspicion in these censorious times, and hell – what would I know? Perhaps George is some kind of life-science genius. Perhaps it's unfair to give a group of unwell old girls like this a free pass for sharing a pot of tea together when they could be out on all fours in the snow cleaning something. It's not like anybody else gets to enjoy life.

These women are getting on in years, though. Two or three of them are about 40. The rest are in their 50s and 60s. Faces are lined, bodies are soft, and hair is thinning and grey.

I'm sitting with them, because I wanted to talk to Newcastle women who were likely to be affected by the coalition government's cuts. I've done well on that front, if I can put it that way. A lot of the women in this room collect incapacity benefit – a means of drawing income which the Murdoch stable would have us believe is leapfrogging politics, pimping and web paedophilia to top the list of pestilent ways to source a buck. Not that these women will be sourcing income
through incapacity for long. Their days of drawing incapacity (and perhaps any) benefit are numbered. Incapacity is being phased out, along with any notion of genuine need. Everyone who collects incapacity is being assessed for fitness for work. They're being moved to the smaller job seekers' allowance, or to the employment support allowance if they're deemed to need support to work. Some will be found ineligible for support altogether.

Nobody I've spoken to likes their chances. I've even met rightwingers who are worried about assessment. Only ten days ago, I interviewed a physically disabled woman called Mel Richards who felt that the coalition (which she generally supported) was wilfully failing to recognise people she referred to as “deserving poor.” She insisted that her good work record and national insurance contributions entitled her to support when illness struck (and was technically correct – incapacity benefit recipients must generally have paid national insurance).

She'd run a campaign called “I'm Right – but cuts are wrong.” “I still believe there is such a thing as entitlement. I paid, so I was entitled. The government is not acknowledging that.”

Most of the women in this Gateshead room worked, and paid tax and national insurance, for years – 30 years at the HMRC in one case, 20 and more years at BHS in another – before age and ill-health queered the pitch, as they do. Some say they were eased, or bullied, out of jobs and/or better places in the work hierarchy and that their problems with depression set in around then. Depression sets in for me just talking about it. I've been in the workplace long enough to know how women are rated once they've past the age of sexual attractiveness
and use. Miriam O'Reilly is, alas, not the only one. She's one of the better looking.

I wonder, too, about the likelihood of employers giving these already-discarded older women a chance.

Let's take Diana Shearer, who is 51. Her last job was in IT. She was there for about 14 years. She is incontinent and suffers from severe depression: the two problems aren't unrelated. She is furious about the pressure she's under as she waits for reassessment. “Every time there's something comes through the post, I'm wondering is it going to be that letter? It's every day for me [at the moment]. How dare these people stop my benefit? Who going to decide?”

Chris Swales is probably in her 50s, but her seamed face and thick glasses make her look elderly. She worked for 30 years the public sector before she was retired for ill health. “I got a letter and a medical assessment [when I was retired] so I rang Incapacity (the DWP) and told them that I had been ill-health retired. I still had to go for a medical (she had her assessment last week, although she struggles to recall it - the other women in the room have to remind her when I ask). I'm just concerned that I'll get a letter saying that I'm not entitled to it.”

It seems highly unlikely that employers will pick these two from Newcastle's large crop of jobless. Newcastle council is due to jettison 2000 people. There will be long queues for jobs, and old, shaky women will be at the back of them. I've worked all my life, but have never made the kind of money you need for complete security today. I look at these women and see me.

NB Names of women at the Gateshead Centre have been changed – they were concerned that publicity might affect their benefit assessments. I'll upload the audio from these interviews to my site when I get back to London next week.

ABC of Feminism: women and economics

The next in my short series on the ABC of Feminism focuses on gender and economic inequality by chair of Green Party Women Natalie Bennett. She's taken the ABC thing a bit more literally than the first two pieces - but it's all good!

The A (introduction) of "women and economics" is simple and stark: men own nearly everything, women can be certainly of very little, or to put it in statistical terms, only about 1% of the world's assets are held by women. And only about 1% of the world's women have access to land - the basic foundation of survival, while 70% of the world's people living in abject poverty, on less than $1 a day, are female.

And it's not because women are lolling around, choosing the easy life. To quote The World's Women: 2010 (PDF) (a great statistical source): "In all regions, women spend at least twice as much time as men on unpaid domestic work" and "when unpaid work is taken into account, women’s total work hours are longer than men’s in all regions".

So what of the B, before? Well it's not the sort of thing that was being recorded in many parts of the world until very recently, but where there are records, we know that the situation today has dramatically improved compared to the past. In Britain, it was the Married Women's Property Act of 1882 that allowed married women to own anything much more than the clothes they stood up in. It's a right (at least with regard to land) that women in, to take just one example, Swaziland, are still struggling towards.

Why? Well that's the $24,000 question I'd be answering definitively if only I could lay my hands on some cash. Many theorists posit some past golden age - a Paleolithic heaven of equality (yet modern studies suggest current such societies show a wide range of models for the sexual division of labour and status), shading into darker shadows of Neolithic child-rearing and farm work. Yet others see a worship of "Mother Earth" and mother goddess in the Neolithic, with repression arising only with more complex, and hierarchical societies.

A common everyday answer is that men are simply stronger than women, so in a world "naked in tooth and claw", they naturally come out with most of the goodies. As an answer to that read The Frailty Myth by Colette Dowling - the difference in at least potential power between men and women's bodies is minuscule.

Political and social power, however, are clearly a different issue. overwhelmingly in most of history they have been in the hands of men. why? Well the socialist/Marxist feminists will blame economic base, the radical feminists will blame patriarchy: I'm not going there today.
So what about C, change?

Clearly in the past century, women have made considerable advances in economic sphere. I was recently re-reading The Female Eunuch, and I was amazed to learn that up to the 1970s single women were regarded as a bad bet as rental tenants, their income simply was not seen as reliable. But as capitalism came to need the labour of educated middle-class women in particular, a space, and real economic opportunities became available for some.

But I'm reminded of the words of Sheila Rowbotham on her recent book tour, that in the 1970s she thought that victories once won were history, but now she understood this was only the start, and battles needed to be fought again and again.

To come close to home, just look at what's happening in the UK now with the government's savage cuts. Women, particularly poorer women, are going to suffer hugely disproportionately. As the Women's Budget Group's excellent report (PDF) outlines, lone parents are the single group worst hit in the budget and they’re overwhelmingly women (1,326,000 women to 130,000 men). The next worst-hit group are single pensioners – of whom 73% are women, who tend to be older and already poorer than male single pensioners.

But poverty, of course doesn't just relate to money. Remember those working-hour figures? The other side of the coalition's plans is the "Big Society". The state is going to step away from many services that it's now providing, and leave the community to pick up the slack. Already time-poor women are going to be asked to do more, a lot more.

Support for services such as childcare is being withdrawn. So remember Sheila Rowbotham: you don't just have to fight to win something, you have to fight to keep it too. Even if you personally have been lucky enough to have economic opportunities, there's no guarantee they're available in the future, for you, or future generations of women.

A time of cuts: what should councillors do?

The sad fact is that over the last thirty years the power of councils has been steadily diminished. Year on year councils have become more and more the local administrator of national government than the governmental arm of local communities. We've seen a fundamental centralisation of political power in this country at the expense of local democracy.

So when it comes to national spending local councils have a lot less lee way than they've had in the past. The national government has forbidden council tax rises to ensure that local councils are only able to meet their budgets through cuts in services. There's no clearer indicator that the Coalition's priority is to shrink the state and reduce services and jobs rather than address the deficit when it tries to prevent councils raising revenues as an alternative.

Even the ability of councils to set an 'illegal budget' has been curtailed and council officers are obliged under law to have the national government take over councils that are even considering setting such a budget. So even if it was an admirable policy (and I'm not sure about that) it's a fairly pointless rhetorical demand when no local council could even try it.

I have heard a couple of people advocating forcing the national government to implement the cuts in their council, but what sort of psycho actually wants the Coalition to come in and set an example to the nation with the services they and their neighbours use? I guess the sort that thinks proving a political point is more important than libraries and nurseries... there you go.

So what's the alternative? Bite the bullet and start butchering the first born? No, for a start that would be rude. However there is no quibbling with the fact that for councillors in this position it is very grim indeed.

As our starting point I think we need to both explain why the national economic policy is wrong headed both economically and morally. It's not enough to say that the cuts will hurt (and by hurt I mean immiserate, distress and kill) we have to make the case that the cuts wont work and are unnecessary.

However, having framed the debate in that way we're no closer to giving guidance to a local councillor who's wrestling with the decisions before them. The general election result was a disaster for Britain but it's a disaster we're in the middle of so we need to go further than outline an alternative national economic strategy, "Cllr Blogs" needs to know how to avoid closing down home help for the elderly.

Green councillors across the country have never felt prissy about voting against budgets before the crisis and I hope the pressure of the 'there is no alternative' Westminster consensus wont push them into thinking that they have no choice but to vote for savage cuts. But they'll need more than a stubborn attitude as ammunition - there need to be positive proposals on how to deal with the age of austerity.

I think Darren Johnson got the tone right in this release on why he'll voting against Lewisham Labour's cut package this Monday. Here's an edited version;

Cllr Johnson said, "I strongly oppose what the Conservative/Lib Dem Government are doing nationally. But I am also appalled with how Labour are going about this locally. Labour's plans amount to a massacre of local services."

He continued, "Rather than making cuts to frontline services I want to see Mayor Steve Bullock make savings by slashing senior executive pay, cutting the millions spent on expensive private sector consultants and cutting down on glossy PR and council spin."

The Mayor's cuts programme, which will be presented to councillors on Monday, includes closing the Early Years Centre in New Cross, cuts to nurseries, street cleansing, parks and schools improvement teams.

Rather than cutting vital services Greens want to see the Council make savings by:

• cutting senior pay for top council executives
• reducing the millions spent on expensive private sector consultants
• cutting down on glossy PR and council spin
• reducing council fuel bills by making our schools, libraries and other buildings more energy efficient
• working more closely with other public sector bodies to cut admin costs

Darren said, "The Government argue that these cuts will help clear the deficit. But experts have warned these cuts will harm the economy, not help it. Cuts this big will simply increase unemployment, meaning that the government raises less in taxes and will have to spend more on benefits. Green MP, Caroline Lucas, has set out an alternative plan to tackle the deficit. Instead of hitting public services she has shown how we can tackle the deficit by increasing taxes for the very wealthiest, introducing a Robin Hood Tax on financial transactions, clamping down on the billions lost through tax evasion and tax avoidance, and scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons programme."

It seems to me that this is a better position than a simple 'no cuts' position which doesn't discriminate between savings and attacks on services. I'd also say there is much to commend this letter from former Lewisham councillor Ian Page in the Evening Standard where he says that;

THE LABOUR councillor introducing last week's cuts package in Lewisham blamed an international crisis and the actions of the coalition government.

He didn't mention that the reductions were part of £60 million cuts agreed by a Labour council and mayor back in March under a Labour government. Aside from high-profile cuts such as library closures, there are many others that will be invisible to the general public but devastating for those concerned: such as the closure of Opening Doors, a service for the long-term unemployed providing them with access to facilities to move them towards employment; cuts to adult social care, and the cancellation of project work to raise aspirations in areas of intergenerational unemployment.

The most vulnerable, isolated people are in no position to organise and highlight their plight. Councillors could use council reserves and "prudential borrowing" to buy time and build a mass campaign in order to bolster their demand for more money from central government.

Through such methods Liverpool council successfully won £60 million back from the Thatcher government. When councillors refuse to do this, unions and the community should coordinate strike action and direct action to defend our services.

Leaving aside any Liverpudlian nostalgia, Mr Page is quite right to point out that even before the coalition government was formed Labour were planning massive cuts in services this year. The further into this government we go the easier it will be for Labour to distance themselves from these cuts but the fact is that, in Lewisham, these cuts were going to happen no matter who took control of the national government as long as Mayor Bullock remained in place.

More than that prudential borrowing, as a method to hold back the savagery of the cuts, is well worth exploring, but it seems to be entirely off the agenda. I think that lacks vision and I hope others can make this work even if it only plugs part of the short fall.

However the key point that Ian Page makes, which I think is worth repeating time and again, is that if the council and national government wont serve the interests of communities then those communities need to make their voices heard loud and clear. In the end it will be that democratic movement that has the best hope to defeat the cuts agenda and while councillors need to take their positions seriously in the chamber they should never become so focused on council rules that they forget who they're representing and why.

Micro-finance in the spotlight

For a few years now micro-finance has been held up as one of those ideal ways of combating poverty in the developing world. Essentially a system of small loans to people who wouldn't otherwise be able to get credit the idea is that it enables the poor to buy that shovel to help themselves dig themselves out of poverty.

But as Karl Marx once said "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you miss a golden business opportunity."

So the companies that have been managing the micro-financing operations make their money by charging interest well over the odds and because the system works by lending to small groups it allows the company to put pressure on entire communities with weekly meetings monitoring what they're doing to repay the mini-loans despite that fact that many workers are paid yearly. That's right, it turns out that micro-finance is another word for loan shark but, and here's a sweet spot, they aren't regulated in the same way as money lenders.

Because the ideology behind micro-finance says that you beat poverty through enterprise it was held up uncritically as a success even before the schemes were operational.

What started out as an idea to alleviate poverty has become a way of getting the poorest into the kind of debt they hadn't been able to get into before, and that has a very real price - including a wave of suicides, like that of 16 year old student Lalitha Mursilmula who was told by the company she would have to become a sex worker in order to pay off her families debts. She ran home, wrote a note to her family and then drank a lethal concoction of fertiliser. The unethical behaviour of the micro-finance has deepened an already existing problem.

In India politicians have ordered people *not* to pay back their loans because of the social harm the industry is doing which in turn is leading to India's own little sub-prime crisis. It seems to me that the way to solve the problems of capitalism is not to find new and more ingenious ways of tightening capitalism's grip on the world.

CSR special: the union responses

As you might expect a Comprehensive Spending Review that intends to cut almost half a million jobs and risks losing half a million more in the private sector has provoked some sturdy reactions from trade unions. We've already seen that UNISON are unimpressed - but what about other unions?

The TUC damns the CSR as a "political project". I certainly agree that "yesterday the government launched a radical programme to roll back public services and sack public sector staff, even if this makes it more likely that the economy goes into reverse" although I'm less clear that "Voters have always rejected policies to make huge cuts to public services at the ballot box" is actually true - people did vote for the Lib Dems and Conservatives, and frankly Labour's policy was always for cuts, just less sharp, less fast.

To be honest it comes across as a Labour press release rather than a union one with it's reference to the ballot box.

Public Sector union PCS (which is not affiliated to Labour) has a much clearer, and less sloppy, approach describing the cuts as cruel and immoral. They put welfare cuts to the front of their concerns saying "These £18 billion cuts are a fundamental attack on the welfare state, targeting families with children, the sick and disabled, those on low incomes, and pensioners."

Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, said "This government has no strategy for creating jobs, and is instead demonising those without them - these are the cruel actions of an immoral government with no mandate and no strategy."

Billy Hayes, leader of the CWU who represent postal workers and others, said that "The volume of cuts also threatens to leave parts of the country away from the south east struggling with mass unemployment as public and private sector jobs fall to Mr Osbourne's axe."

He also pointed out something that I'd noticed too; "At CWU we're confused why the Chancellor included a promise on post offices in his address as there is no detail about how this funding would be provided. The network currently relies on £150 million annually from the government to keep rural and urban branches open, but with no detail this is an empty promise from Mr Osbourne."

Education union UCU says that "It is hard to see the rationale behind slashing college and university budgets when they generate massive economic growth for the country and when the alternative is more people on the dole and the state losing out on millions in tax revenues.

"We are appalled to learn that education maintenance allowances are at risk and funding for people who do not speak English is being abolished. The simple message here seems to be 'don't be poor. It's no good the chancellor describing universities as the jewel in our economic crown and then following those warm words up with massive cuts. Every MP with a college or university in or near their constituency should be clear that the cuts will put those institutions at risk."

Firefighters' union FBU have identified "Ten thousand fire service jobs are under threat from government plans to slash 25 per cent from fire and rescue service budgets over the next four years"

Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, said: “These pernicious cuts must be fought to defend public safety. They are not inevitable, but politically driven. The FBU will oppose these draconian attacks on an essential frontline service and robustly defend the key role firefighters play in keeping communities safe.

“We cannot just meekly roll over and accept this. Neither should the employers. Firefighters are professionals – and we won’t stand by and see our service dismantled piecemeal.”

"In announcing the measures in Parliament, Chancellor George Osborne encouraged fire and rescue services to compete for the shrinking pot of public funds. He said that fire and rescue services could “limit budget reduction in return for substantial operational reform”. Measures mentioned include “flexible working arrangements” and “pay restraint and recruitment freezes”.

Matt Wrack commented: “This is pitting one fire and rescue service against another as resources dwindle, rewarding those who drive down pay and conditions and penalising the rest more. It is bullying and divisive.”

The RMT use their frontpage to highlight the various protests that are taking place up and down the country on Saturday (cut and pasted below). Another different tack they chose to take was to attack the rich rather than defend the poor. I like it.

"The “UK Transport Rich List” is topped by Keith Ludeman – boss of the Go-Ahead group – who saw his salary rise by an incredible 35% from £916,000 on the June 2009 figures to £1,240,000 in July this year. Ludeman is responsible for the Southern Trains franchise which recently announced it was axing toilets on the key inter-city route between Portsmouth and Brighton.

"Hot on his heels are Brian Souter from Stagecoach on £762,000 and David Martin from Arriva on £743,635. (A full list is attached.) Company profits show that the big five UK transport operators have posted combined dividends of more than £2 billion since privatisation."

Mr Crow, RMT leader, added "Under this ConDem government the public will be forced to pay through the nose to travel on crowded trains and buses on creaking and unsafe infrastructure while the profits, dividends and top bosses salaries of the private companies are ring-fenced. That is a scandal."

• London: Assemble 11am at RMT head office, 39 Chalton Street NW1 for march to SERTUC rally at Congress Huse from noon
• Edinburgh: assemble 11am: at East Market Street
• Cardiff: assemble City Hall at noon
• Belfast: assemble 1pm College of Art Gardens
• Bristol: assemble 11am Castle Park, march to Bristol City Council, College Green
• Cambridge: assemble noon Parkside Fire Station, rally 1.30pm, Guildhall
• Derby: 'Derby People's Day' , Market Place, noon to 3pm, Speakers, music and street stalls.
• Lincoln: assemble noon at Castle Square, march to rally at Cornhill at 1pm.
• Sheffield: assemble outside City Hall, 12.30

CSR special: Ring-fencing NHS, schools and aid

There are a number of departments that the government has protected from themselves (which is obviously very merciful). To much headlines the NHS, schools and DfID are all areas where the Comprehensive Spending Review has not bitten... or did it?

The NHS budget is protected with an extra ten billion over the next four years, the schools budget retained and to much trumpeting aid is, in fact, increasing. However, this is not the whole story.

Many health campaigners are understandably confused at the way the coalition say the NHS is safe in their hands but they still seem force to fight to retain services and fight privatisation. roughly one in five trusts admit that they have closed down a major service or department in the last few months. The privatisation is ongoing Tory/Labour policy but why should services be closing down if the money's protected?

The answer is three fold. First of all the overall budget is ring-fenced, not individual services and the rise (of 2.5%) is actually less than the increase needed to preserve services. That means if the money is moved into one area it inevitably has to move away from another. The government is very keen on an extraordinary overhaul of the structures of the health services which, in itself will cost money that would have been spent on other services, leaving aside whether that reorganisation would be a good idea.

Secondly the capital expenditure is being reduced by 17% and there are twenty billion pounds worth of 'efficiency savings' already in the pipeline.

Thirdly, the increasing cost of drugs in particular (as well as additional strain of obesity and an aging population) mean that certain areas of spending are eating up more than their fair share of the cake.

Public sector union UNISON was very clear on how the ring-fencing will still mean cuts when they said that; "Patients and staff will soon see through the facade that the NHS is being ring-fenced, when at the same time it has been told to make £20bn worth of savings.

“The NHS is not safe. Some hospitals are already cutting back on vital life-improving operations such as cataract, hip and knee replacements. The NHS needs extra funding just to stand still. It will not be able to keep up with the demands of a growing elderly population and the cost of increasingly expensive treatments and drugs.

“The Government’s latest NHS “reforms” will intensify the market and introduce more private sector provision. They will cost £3bn to implement and create havoc and instability just when the NHS can least afford it.

“Staff are facing a two year pay freeze, many vacancies are being left unfilled, pensions are under review and the number of managers will be cut by 45%. Another Tory broken promise – the NHS is under siege – it is not being protected."

So what about schools?

Well, this is slightly different. Back to UNISON; “The coalition is being dishonest by saying that the schools budget will be boosted. Schools also get vital funding and support services from local authorities, which are being hit by drastic cuts. Many will struggle to afford to help schools support children with special needs, or run truancy units. Schools will have to dip into their own funds to pay for these essential services.

“Up and down the country schools support staff are facing losing their jobs. It all adds up to mean cuts will disproportionately hit on children with additional needs in schools.”

Essentially the 'schools budget' makes up only a portion of the total moneys that schools receive which is why specialist services, like one to one tuition are under threat. Local authorities, as we have already seen, are under a huge amount of financial pressure and it would unbelievable if their contribution to schools did not suffer.

Oh, and then there's the lost funding of the Building Schools for the Future programme which lost billions in investment for schools in dire need of refurbishment. In fact, after the fiasco of the handling of BSF scrapping (which turned out to be a hell of a lot more popular than Gove expected) it's arguable that it would have been impossible to take more out of schools than they already have.

Aid

Now, surely I should be overjoyed to hear the news that there will be a significant increase in the aid budget? 37% over four years looks pretty good, especially in the context of the cuts. Well, let's take a closer look first.

Tucked away in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office cuts it turns out that a number of their projects will now be delivered by DfID, how many and how much they will cost is left unanswered as yet. More importantly while the FCO is to "increase its focus on championing British companies to win export" they also account for a good portion of the increase in Official Development Assistance (ODA).

After all while other, much more useful, quangos went to the wall the Export Credit Guarantee Department who love the shady world of arms exports, etc, and all that entails.

I'm intrigued as to whether there will be any slippage between meeting the Millennium Development Goals and maintaining British financial interests. I should point out I'm not being artful here, it genuinely unclear so far - however - Section 2.97 in the Review states "British international development policy [to be] more focused on boosting economic growth and wealth creation".

Continuing my concern that the aid budget may be being used with an eye to British interests is that 2.97 continues that 30% of the ODA is to be used in conflict countries "with particular focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan". I'm really sorry to be cynical and I'm not down playing the fact that these two countries desperately need aid but for the British State to focus on areas where British troops are in conflict with the locals is not a coincidence.

Anyway, while an increase in the aid budget is always welcome we should ensure that aid should be used as aid not as an adjunct to business interests or the military effort.

While we're talking about DfID it's to be welcomed that a *new* quango overseeing how the money is to be spent has been set up however I'm concerned by the idea that DfID is to be a "leaner organisation with a focus on managing aid efficiently and effectively, by seriously reducing back office costs." Sorry to be picky but cutting admin costs does not automatically make you more efficient and effective.

Indeed DfId had already been streamlined under Labour and this had resulted in severe restrictions in the number of projects they could manage. The consequences of this is that aid will tend to be delivered either by the very biggest NGOs or consortiums of large NGOs.

Smaller international development organisations (of which there are many) already find it extremely difficult to work directly with DfID because they simply do not have the capacity to work with the small fry. The Coalition's proposals will simply deepen this trend driving small specialist NGOs out of business while heaping money on their super-sized cousins.

All in all what I'm trying to say is that it is not surprising that the Coalition have tried to win as many good headlines as they can amid the carnage - but ring-fencing services does not, in this case, mean that the future of those services are secure.

CSR special: Science

We've seen headline responses that science has been saved from the axeman, that over the next four years it's budget will be frozen in cash terms - which is a real term cut of 10% over the period at a time when similar nations are investing in vital new technologies. Cameron himself said that this was a "good outcome for science".

Well, compared to some other departments that is essentially true. Many leading scientists have had their first born returned to them unscathed and the testicle clamps have been put back into storage.

However, let's not get too excited (as if), government spending accounts for 30% of the total spend on scientific research in this country and helps support the other 70% which comes from NGOs, private companies and abroad. That 10% cut, was described by Science is Vital head honcho Imran Khan as "a 30% or 40% decrease in new PhDs that we'll have next year for instance".

It will be some months before we see what the specific outcomes are for university departments as it is in the purview of Master Thaumaturgist Vince Cable to decide how the funds are allocated but it is worth pointing out that specialist teaching in schools is in doubt and HE funding more generally is undergoing a massive 'overhaul' which could see radical changes over the next few years in the shape of HE education.

Kudos to the science campaigners for their effective campaigners in this field and I don't want to understate their achievement. I will say though that even where the budget has not hit hardest it still lacks vision for the future.

The idea that, right now, we should not be heavily investing in flood defenses, research in renewable technologies and technologies to help us save energy while revitalising our manufacturing industry for home and export just seems really short sighted.

CSR special: Environment

The Comprehensive Spending Review has a few cheap headlines in it for the environment - but sadly this amounts to a bit of window dressing amid some pretty hefty carnage. Before we start looking at the poor old Department of Energy and Climate Change let's look at transport first.

The Department of Transport is facing a 12.6% cut (an 1/8th of it's budget) and there will be a sharp rise in rail fares. That's right, in a country that already has massively overpriced rail tickets we're going to see above inflation rises.

Some infrastructure projects have been saved, like Crossrail and Thameslink, but Network Rail has promised savings by putting on hold plans for new carriages to ease overcrowding. So no new capacity, but even more expensive to travel. However High Speed Rail 2, a stonkingly expensive project that may not move anyone off the roads onto trains looks set to go ahead.

Fear not though because the road building continues with an extra lane of gridlock planned for the M25 and others. Don't worry if you're concerned about buses clogging up these precious new roads because the fuel tax subsidy to bus operators has been cut from 80% to 60% which will mean less services and higher fares - particularly for rural and less used routes.

I'm also told that even walking and cycling provision will be hit as this comes under the remit of local councils who are all facing their own massive funding crisis.

Department of Energy and Climate Change

The DECC budget will be reduced by 33% over the next four years which includes cuts in insulation subsidies, the renewable heat levy, subsidies to feed-in tarriffs and the Severn Barrage which is to go to the wall. Admittedly this was a controversial project that would have supplied a good deal of renewable energy at the cost of the local wildlife and habitats.

Between three and eight thousand jobs will be lost in the department out of a total of 30,000. Hundreds of nature reserves are likely to be sold off and grants to institutions like Kew Gardens and the Royal botanic Gardens are to be cut.

Half a billion is to be shaved off the explicit flood defences budget on top of the expectation that local councils will be cutting back on local flood prevention provision. There's also going to be cuts in animal disease prevention with the private sector being expected to take up much of the slack.

Both of these moves look quite dangerous to me, and a repeat of the foot and mouth disease outbreak a few years ago and/or new flooding like last year would cost the economy and the government dear. Yet another false economy.

However, there will be one billion for the experimental technology Carbon Capture and Storage and another billion for a 'Green Investment Bank' to help deliver new projects. However, the department has been particularly badly hit by the 'bonfire of the quangos' that were already funding projects and groups like the Carbon Trust and Energy Saving Trust will suffer so whether the GIB is a move forwards or not seems a little doubtful to me.

However, in the context of green job losses and budget cuts the occasional piece of good news is hardly earth shattering. Certainly this is a million miles away from the million green jobs policy of investment that we need, although what on Earth the 'Green Deal' turns out to be is anyone's guess.

The report also contains the chilling phrase "the DECC will develop innovative ways of working with the private sector, acting as an enabler rather than a provider." Presumably because they'll no longer be in a position to provide anything.

Bizarrely the Lib Dem minister Chris Huhne said: “DECC is playing its part in tackling the deficit. Like the rest of the public sector we have taken some tough decisions, but we remain on course to deliver on our promise to be the greenest government ever. We will help create green jobs and green growth - and secure the low carbon investment we need to keep the lights on.”

CSR special: Housing

The Comprehensive Spending Review spelled some extremely bad news in the housing sector. It's a review that will cause hardship for many and homelessness for thousands. It's not simply that Osbourne scaled back the plans of building new affordable homes by 30%, there has been a general assault on rights and benefits that will lead to misery and homelessness.

The ending of Secure Tenancies for council house tenants is the end of an era. The post-war settlement that created affordable homes for working people was a massive attack upon one of the great divides in society - decent housing. As council houses have been gradually sold off the stock has more and more become a backstop to house the most vulnerable in society rather than ensuring the majority have somewhere decent to live.

Those secure tenancies were there to give the poor stability and reassurance, a firm base upon which to build a life. These moves entrench the shift towards using council housing as emergency, short term accommodation - a shift already well underway with the breakup of council housing stock a the growing use of 'Social Landlords'.

As the Telegraph reports there is also a new rise in rents; "new council house tenants face a steep hike in living costs, offering intermediate rents at around 80 per cent of the market rent."

Housing is the bedrock of any community, and as Eileen Short, chair of Defend Council Housing and sister of a well known former minister, said recently (doc) "Attacks on secure tenancies, cuts in housing benefit and forcing up rents will create more debt, evictions and homelessness."

The attacks on housing benefit have been signalled well in advance and we know they will lead to both a new wave of homelessness and an exodus from high housing areas, like London, which already suffer from a lack of essential workers unable to afford high rents and/or mortgages. Indeed this feeds into the benefit cap of £500 a week per household as a family living in a high rent area will find it very difficult to cope with rising rents.

The Citizens Advice Bureau, in a hard hitting press release condemned the CSR and pointed to the that;

"Housing benefit has already been cut back and the extraordinary decision to raise single room rate to 35 year-olds will lead to an explosion of homelessness, and will hit single working people on low incomes as well as the single unemployed. The measure to restrict contribution-based ESA to 12 months betrays people who have paid contributions all their working lives and become sick or disabled.

"We advise millions of people every year, who are often on very low incomes or rely on welfare benefits and public services. They told us that their top priorities for the spending review were simplification of welfare benefits, free to use government helplines and affordable housing. We welcome the announcement that the welfare benefits system will be simplified to make it easier to understand and navigate. In the meantime we urge the government to maintain and continue to improve service standards and ensure the new system is designed with the needs of service users in mind.“

The single room rate, which I'd not even been aware of until the CSR, will mean that under-35s will only be able to receive housing benefit if they are living in shared accommodation. So if you're currently working for the public sector and living in a small flat a redundancy notice will mean you're out on the street as well as out of work.

The news that the government was to spend less in housing did not just mean that the 30% less new build would mean that the more than a million on the waiting lists for social housing would have to wait that bit longer. We also saw an immediate hit on the shares of Barratt Developments (down 4.4 percent) and Taylor Wimpey (down 5.56 percent). The National Housing Federation warned that 1.7 percent of jobs in the construction industry could be lost.

Federation chief executive David Orr said: "The fact that the housing budget is being cut by 60% is deeply depressing – and shows that providing affordable housing is no longer a government priority. Cuts on this scale will come as a devastating blow to the millions of low income families currently stuck on housing waiting lists.

"The harsh reality is that because of these cuts, the new social homes this country so desperately needs, can now only be built by dramatically increasing rents for some of the most vulnerable and poorest in our society. Most tenants simply won’t be able to cover these extra costs, and as a consequence make it more difficult than ever for people to escape the poverty trap and benefits dependency that the Government has repeatedly said it wants to tackle."

All-in-all extremely bad news for anyone not rolling in money. Remember kids, Nick Clegg says the cuts are fair, and I quote "the review is one that promotes fairness, underpins growth, reduces carbon emissions and localises power."

CSR special: overview

The Comprehensive Spending Review yesterday was pretty much what we expected. Only the Kitten Torturing Budget and the Chinese Burn Department were left relatively unscathed - although under the KTB reforms civil servants will now have to supply their own waterboarding boards, as an efficiency saving.

In the words of Private Frasier: "We're all doomed". But there's a silver lining to the mushroom cloud... oh no there isn't that was the flash of a second nuclear explosion creating a second mushroom cloud, my mistake.

For me we have a budget that will end up costing us money, rather than saving it. The half million public sector workers who will lose their jobs, and the estimated half million more of private sector workers who'll follow as a result will lead to a social catastrophe.

It's worth remembering of course that the Thatcher government came in promising to tackle the welfare bill and despite putting her best demons on the job the welfare bill rose and rose year on year. That's because the Tories work under a false assumption - that the welfare bill is so high because of horrible, lazy people claiming stuff instead of having the good grace to go into the study with a pearl handled revolver.

The welfare bill rose because of mass unemployment, a lesson they could learn today. I'm wondering whether we're going to see the Liberals and their Tory friends going into the 2015 election having destroyed millions of lives AND having failed to cut the deficit because they'd spectacularly failed to reduce welfare payments despite behaving like utter shits to claimants and the disabled.

In this sense the CSR could well end up not just being a failure in terms of social justice and equality (which it certainly is) it may also be a failure in Osbourne's own terms. It's one thing to say that you'll cut the welfare bill by eight billion quid, it's quite another to see that happen at the same time as laying off hundreds of thousands of people who were doing productive jobs.

The household economy

There are a number of homely economy analogies doing the rounds at the moment. As Counterfire have pointed out one is that the government’s finances are like a household budget. But of course, the employment of millions of people to do socially productive work isn’t exactly the same as whether you buy a new telly or not. There are subtle differences.

Another is the idea that “We all have to tighten our belts”. It’s not quite true though. The economic crisis, also known as the ConDem government, will not hit everyone equally. There are some that are doing very well thank you very much. The champagne corks are still popping in many executive boardrooms.

But more than this the analogy makes it sound a relatively simple exercise involving a bit of grit and determination. You could do without a little luxury or work an extra hour couldn’t you? Tightening our belts sounds relatively harmless, in fact it might even be a little good for you.

But that’s not the plan.

It’s not just that the rich and the poor aren’t in it together, even those in work aren’t going to feel the full force of the government’s attacks equally.

We’re going to see possibly hundreds of thousands out of work while those that remain are forced to take up the slack. It's awful for everyone, but in different ways. Is that tightening our belts or having some their heads put in a noose?

And as for the services that are lost, well the closure of your local library does not hit everyone equally. If you can afford books and a daily paper it means something quite different to you than if you can’t. If they cut housing benefit it doesn’t mean everyone is slightly worse off, it means thousands struggle and others are thrown on the streets it effects some and not others.

That’s not tightening our belts, that letting the most vulnerable go to the wall. The point of the analogy is to minimise the significance of the cuts, and to brush over our common responsibility to each other. It also happens to be the line that people who aren't effected by the cuts use to pay less tax at the expense of the immiseration of their neighbours.

Different approaches to the cuts

I'm not sure which approach I prefer from our public bodies. You have the special pleading which generally runs along the lines of 'cut *their library* not ours', which is something you'll always come across when you're part of a movement to defend public services. However, often official bodies have to come up with their own unique relationship with the government.

Take education. Ofsted this week helpfully told the government that most of the special needs teaching going on is completely unnecessary. How convenient. How craven. They might as well have said if you're going to cut the education budget take out on the thickos and the poor first.

Of course, their actual line was that you wouldn't need as much special needs provision if the quality of the education system as a whole was better. Seeing as that isn't on the cards though the effect of their position will be that cuts are directed towards the most vulnerable, the most in need of specialist provision.

The police though have taken a different line. One of the country's top police officers, Derek Barnett, has told the government that, because their policies will cause massive unrest it would be foolhardy to cut the police budget just when they are about to need a wall of shields and truncheons to protect them.

He may have a point. When Thatcher came to power in '79 she was very careful to make sure the police were happy and well equipped. After all she knew she was going to be calling on them to fight her political battles for her. It's only after she'd finished with her little wars that she finally started to stop featherbedding the cops, much to their horror. Perhaps Clegg and Cameron need to think about how much they'll need the police in the coming years before they cut the budget.

Just to prove the point, a planned trade union demonstration outside the Lib Dem conference has been banned. See Clegg, the boys in blue have saved you from hearing any nasty people who disagree with you. How damn liberal of them - I wonder how many of the civil liberties Lib Dems will be kicking up a stink about this at conference?

At the end of the day we're being given a whole load of unacceptable choices, perhaps it might be all to the good if the thin blue line was a little bit thinner in the years ahead. It might make the fight for a saner economic policy a little bit less painful.

Some choice

You're walking home late at night. You nip down an alley, a short cut home you know.

Suddenly you realise that you're surrounded. Hoodies! Both behind and in front. Your way is blocked by these hugging ruffians forming a giggling wall.

One steps forwards, takes his monocle out and delicately places it in his pocket. You realise with horror he is holding a baseball bat. He grins.

"Face or balls?" You gape at him as he swings the bat. "Come on old boy, face or balls?"

Months later in court the prosecution are grilling the thug in the dock. Sadly he shakes his head.

"He told me to whack him in the balls. I didn't want to - that was his choice!"

Would it stand up in court? No. He'd be sent down. Sometimes there's no right answer because the it's the question that's the problem.

Building a coalition of resistance

I attended a friendly 'organising meeting' for the Coalition of Resistance this evening which was put on to help organise both for the conference in November and help bring together a network of anti-cuts activists. Although it started the latter there wasn't much movement on the former, but perhaps that was an impossible task with so many people at the first such meeting.

Roughly one hundred and fifty people squeezed into the basement of Birkbeck College all of one common purpose - to oppose the economic policy of the government and make a modest start at organising that resistance.

Contributions by the likes of Paul Mackney (former union leader), Lindsey German (Stop the War Coalition), Dot Gibson (National Pensioners Convention), Lee Jasper (all round live wire) and others gave proceedings the required seriousness and weight. However, while we heard some interesting thoughts on what the consequences of the cuts would be, I do tend to think this was time wasted in a room full of anti-cuts activists. I've never been to an organising meeting that spent an hour or more on why we're involved in the campaign.

However, there were contributions from people like Steve Sweeney (Cambridgeshire Against the Cuts) who talked about the trade union campaign he'd been part of organising which showed what was practically achievable and were very useful.

Hilary Wainwright of Red Pepper made easily the best contribution of the day bringing the discussion back onto what, practically, such a national umbrella group could usefully *do*. She described how we should be providing resources to the plethora of anti-cuts campaigns up and down the country. More than that we need to be listening to them (I think she used the phrase that we need "an enquiring element to our work") finding out what cuts are going on and where the resistance lies rather than preaching down to them from a centre that we have invented for our own benefit.

This theme was taken up by others, arguing that we need "policy orientated" resources to give people the arguments when their local campaign is accused of being "unrealistic". Anne Grey, from Haringey Greens, talked about how we have lived in age of TINA for too long and that project to provide alternatives, like the Green New Deal, is the area where a national group can provide the most help to local campaigns. Something Lindsey German had earlier described as addressing the "political deficit".

I'm a bit cynical sometimes and I have to say when people said things like we should "give a voice" to local campaigns I thought "Don't you mean your voice?" or that local campaigns "need to be pulled together" I think "For what purpose and do they need to be pulled together by you?" However there wasn't too much of that kind of discussion and some people even talked about non-hierarchical organising, which was nice.

Guy Taylor, who had the practical the idea to [censored in case it happens], gave people a dose of how practical could be fun and was one of a few people present who advocated "creative" protests - something I've previously described as "recreational activism", that's both an important part of our arsenal, keeping people motivated and they're good for media hits, although beware over-use as it can become an end in itself, substituting for more substantive work.

Other practical suggestions included John Rees' (Counterfire) proposal of a day of action and another person, whose name I didn't catch, immediately suggested that this should the 20th October - the date of the national budget review - to help get local and national media to take seriously that there is a whole political movement that thinks the cuts are not necessary.

I'm aware there's quite an interesting discussion going on about about what kind of anti-cuts coalition we need, and I'll be posting on that soon I hope, but for now it's good to see people from different traditions in a room with each other, listening with respect and agreeing on our common aims. Hopefully there will be a bit more focus on practical organising next time.

Apologies to anyone whose name I've spelt wrong.