Don't let London Burn Support the Fire-Fighters!"

Everyday, particularly here in London our fire-fighters will clock-on at work not knowing what a sift will bring forth, their job is beyond a shadow of a doubt a very dangerous occupation. It’s not just a job, "it's the literal truth" they save lives, and on many occasions they lose there's. Can you imagine an occupation where you really don’t know if this is to be your last day, that when you walk out of the door having said you're goodbye’s to the young family and all the time knowing it is possible, you wont see them again. What sort of young men and women are these, we may ask, but the answer is not blowing in the wind. Our fire-fighters like there colleagues in the medical profession do an essential service for the whole community, and I think that they are not thanked or valued enough for there absolute dedicated commitment to us all.

The FBU recently released a report warning of an "unprecedented" rise in fire-fighter deaths, and revealed that nine service members had been killed in the line of duty in adding to the toll of 122 deaths of fire and rescue workers in the last 30 years. Fire-fighters' union leader Matt Wrack once said that losing a colleague is something that touches everyone and is something that fire-fighters never get over."

If I may just say a few things about Matt Wrack before I move on to the real thread of this post, it may or may not be of interest, but I remember Matt when he was a young fire-fighter and a member of the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency Labour Party, he use to attend meetings wearing proudly his fireman’s work-clothing or fatigues. I never had the opportunity unlike his brother (Nick whom I met in Respect), to get to know him personally, but heard him speck back then with a real socialist passion which with his own hard work and commitment has led him to become the leader of today’s fire-fighters, can’t help thinking that we will be hearing a lot more from this outstanding general secretary, and I don’t say things like that often.

Now as we all know the London fire-fighters staged a solid one-day strike yesterday (Saturday) and throughout the capital in regard to an ongoing and now turning nasty dispute with their management and the London Fire Brigade after it sent them all letters of dismissal on 11 August.

London Fire Brigade is proposing to change the start and finish times of duty for its front-line fire-fighters.

By reducing the current 15 hour night shift to 12 hours, and increasing the current 9 hour day shift to 12 hours, therefore providing a longer day shift. So that’s the issues of this dispute in a nutshell. However there is the hidden side to this dust-up which to the public this may not for the time being at least be as obvious at a passing glance, and that’s the hidden agenda and push towards privatisation of the whole service in London. I have to say that this is also about another attempt by the agents of the ruling class to further damage and break trade unions in the UK. One very obnoxious figure that looms large is Conservative member of the London assembly and chairman of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority Brian Coleman: He recently is on record as saying: "I have to say, fire-fighters who don't sign the new contract won't be re-employed." Coleman told London radio station LBC: "If it means 'doing a Ronald Reagan' – where he got rid of the air traffic controllers – I've got 948 fire-fighters who voted not to go on strike, together with the non-union members and the officers, I reckon 2,000 will sign their new contract."

Asked if his words were a pledge to sack fire-fighters, Coleman said: "It's as good as – and I'm quite relaxed about that ... We are at the end of our tether now."

So there it is as plain and as clearly revealed as the nose on my face a declaration of class war, and against the most professional and dedicated public servants of them all, who risk their own lives everyday of the year saving others.

So the capital's 5,600 fire-fighters walkout on 23 October, and will do it again on the1 November following a strike ballot in which 79% of FBU members voted in favour of the move.

The London Fire Brigade in response arranged for 27 fire engines to be stationed at strategic locations across the capital. They will be manned by staff trained by private contractor AssetCo which was hired on a five-year contract last summer to provide emergency cover in the event that regular fire crews are unavailable. Now the worrying thing about this is that here is a private company with its foot well and truly through the door, they have evolved from the leasing and asset management subsidiary of British Gas, which as you will know was a publicly owned utility until the Tories got their dirty hands on it last time and sold it off.  And of course, who needs a reminder of that when the extortionate bills that drops through our letter boxes, dose it every time.

I was told by a fire-fighter on the Poplar Fire Station picket line, that AssetCo, lease all the Fire Engines, uniforms and equipment used by the Brigade, that Coleman has been wined and dinned by AssetCo executives’, he has even, and so it is alleged accepted a Christmas hamper worth £500.

This dispute is now being orchestrated and rubbed along by the Tories as a part of their ideological agenda, which I am convinced, includes, finishing the job that Thatcher and the Tories started the last time they were in office, the total liquidation of trade unionism.

We simply cannot allow this to happen, support your fire-fighters, don’t let London burn!”  

My Take on Wednesdays Downing Street Demonstration

I'm rather late in writing this post about Wednesdays Downing Street demonstration, due to ongoing problems with my Broadband provider and British Telecom. Frustrating as it seemed, it nevertheless has given me time to walk over in examination, the significance of this event. The demonstrations called and organised, and let’s name these organisations, and very important that we do so too: Camden NUT, Camden Unison, Camden Trades Council and Holborn a St Pancras Constituency Labour Party. They must all be congratulated and thanked for having the bottle of real fortitude and determination to help draw that very fine line now in the sand. The march organised by a local network and not a national body is very telling of the sate of the Labour and Trade Union Movement. But beside that, the demonstration and build up to it, marks a mood change amongst some sections of our movement at rank and file level. Ordinary members of the trade’s council and other sponsors did for opposition what has been lacking for a very long time, they called on the movement to assemble the resistance; this was reinforced by calls from speakers to form a National Resistance of all groups and traditions. This call it must be noted, did not come from the official leadership of the TUC but rather from activists on the front line. It came from those of us who are under no illusory blight of withering and rotting acceptance that austerity is the only game in town.

There is no misunderstanding; world global capital is in meltdown, the seed of self destruction as only Marx could describe the ending of this rotting system is in a deep crisis globally, this is evident for everyone to see and taste its discernment very soon.

These are times, that in our wildest nightmare its complete horror must now awaken our class. Our movement in the much broader sense of general consciousness and awareness must stand-up and be counted; we can look and take inspiration from the sandy beaches of Dunkirk that my own late grandfather escaped from in 1940, just one of thousands of working class solders that went to defend the then King and country and the British capitalist way. Yes, this is a Dunkirk moment for the British working class and make no mistake about that. After years of un-provoked attacks first by Thatcher, then by New Labours unwillingness to repeal the legal shackles on workers organisation and defence, which have taken there toll, is not in doubt. But this is not the end story or can we ever allow it to be. When the going gets tough, the tough must get going, and that spirit of resistance bequeathed from our history must kick-in now, gentleness or sentimentality is not what I speck of, but barricade and defence of our very own or in a word our communities.

It was important that demonstration on Wednesday, and I was so pleased that so many attended and answered the call and made the event such a colourful, vociferation of protest, and I estimated that there was between four to 6,000 attendees, on a cold but luckily dry autumn evening in Westminster.

The protest lifted spirits and disbursed any apathy lurking; coming together in unity of purpose is the only way to build, galvanise and stimulate to action a roaring campaign.

The march assembled in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and set off to Downing Street, with local and London trade union banners held proudly. But what was really up-lifting for me in any case was the number of young people prepared and making their voices heard through the London Streets, there was a gravitating sense that we were firing the first shot in the defence of welfare, jobs and services. I met many long time friends and comrades of many years standing. It was like the family re-union coming back together for the first time in decades. And for someone who is a sceptic about marching around streets as part of this or that campaign and it has to be said: that on this day it had relevance, the combustion from well greased pistons, plunging and thrusting in motion. It was after all the very day that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s autumn spending review introduced the most savage package of public spending cuts ever seen in Britain. Half a million public-sector jobs will go, and another half million related in the private- sector as a result.  

Spending for welfare benefits will be slashed by a total of £18 billion between the cuts contained in the spending review and those already made in the emergency budget earlier this year. The poor, the old, the unemployed and our children will be punished for the greed of the Bankers, who almost brought about the collapse of their own rotting system.

There was something special I felt about this demonstration, you could see it in the faces of the demonstrators young and in old hands like me, it was so refreshing and up-beat that I wished it went a few more miles further. When we got into Whitehall the police had shut one half to traffic on the opposite side to Downing Street, but at the Cenotaph the barriers were broken and the police were taken by surprise as demonstrators took over that side of the road. The authorities had allowed a stage to be erected for speakers to address the demonstration, the only speech that I listened to was that of Matt Wrack the leader of our fire-fighters on strike this Saturday, Matt called on supporters to join local picket-lines, and I will be joining the Bow Fire Station picket

London buses or walking to the nearest tube station looked totally at a loss or apathetic to say the least, no cars were hooting horns; this says to me that the press have done a good job on the newspaper reading public.

Circumstances, events and public opinion may well change when the cuts start to bite, but we need to get out and educate the many in our communities of what these cuts will mean in reality, we have to hold meetings and generally be seen as we lift the profile of our campaign by telling people that the most savage of spending cuts since the 1930s, will wreck lives of millions by devastating jobs, pay, pensions, NHS, education, transport, postal and other services, it’s that simple!”

A follower on Twitter of The Socialist Way was a little disappointed that the demonstration did not descend into something more along the lines of say France or even Greece when workers were in confrontation with police and even the military. He tweeted the following: but consider how the French do things. Think about how violence is a hallmark of revolution, for good or ill.

Well what can I say in answer to this eager to bring about a swift end to all our entire problems comrade?

Well what I’ve thought about for over thirty years is the hallmark that is capitalism, its exploitation, its destruction and its many wars. I think of revolution as a solution, but that dose not mean violence, against who would the violence be directed, other workers perhaps, like the police in the first instance, the ruling class are clever in using one set of workers against another. The first port of call must be to win the arguments with and amongst our fellow workers, and we must win it with the majority. That is the only way forward, but that’s not to say that civil disobedience or direct action don’t have there place in our armoury!”                       

The Cuts and them morally reprehensible Tories?”

Just who, I was wounding today, elects these vile, foul and morally reprehensible Tories?”

There is only one piece of comfort or relief with this current affliction, and that’s in the knowledge that they were unable at the general election to win an outright majority and govern on their own accord, and then that’s countenanced by the joining at the hips of the orange Lib Dems and the formation of what they call a coalition.

Are there really parts of the UK who are at home and happy with electing representatives of the first and second parties of capitalism? Middle England, or rather middle class Britain such slavering and drivel from the mouths of Westminster bound politicians must sure enough start to fall somewhat short now?

That great illusion of being led to believe you are somehow middle class and better off than others must now be falling apart for thousands; you're post code will not help if you lost your job and are falling behind with the house and credit card repayment, and now it’s about to get worse, just how are you going to stump-up the cash for the kids education, and the absolute nightmare that if they (your children) were to even borrow the money to get through university, they may be in debt for years to the banks or even before securing any suitable employment.

The Prime Minister David Cameron may like to tell us that we are all init together, but this really takes on a whole new meaning!”

Today being Sunday at the time of writing has seen the Chancellor George Osborne on the Andrew Marr Show. Osborne resisted discussing the details of the review, but said he was determined to cut government waste and the ballooning benefit budget to safeguard spending on schools and hospitals. What a load of bollocks, school new builds have been cancelled all over the country, and cuts and savings are being sought in many areas of the NHS.

In the interview, Osborne revealed that those caught making repeated bogus benefit claims would have their welfare payments halted for up to three years. Comparing benefit cheats to muggers robbing taxpayers.

The crackdown, to be formally launched tomorrow, will include mobile hit squads of inspectors sent to problem areas and a "three strikes and you're out" rule will strip repeat offenders of benefits. Osborne told the Marr show the new rules were "perfectly reasonable". He said: "It [benefit] has to go to the people who need it, because the people who pay for it demand no less."

So as we can see, yet again the poorest most venerable sections of our society are being singled-out and attacked.

Here are some Newham facts that we were given at the anti-cuts meeting that I attended the other night:

• Whilst Child Benefits have been cut for any family where one parent earns more than £44,000 a year, in June 2010, they were frozen for three years for everyone – a cut in real terms.
• Because Newham has one of the youngest populations in the country, 1,035 families receive Child Benefit (a total of 79,320 children).
• There are 10,196 people who are claiming Job Seeker Allowance (JSA) in Newham.
• Nine JSA claimants are competing for each unfilled job vacancy in Newham. Compared with a national average of 5:1.
• A total of 1,910 people (18.8% of those on JSA) who have been claiming JSA for longer than 12 months in Newham risk the withdrawal of their Housing Benefit.
• In Newham there are 46 jobs for every 100 people of working age, compared to 94 for London and 83 nationally. People either don’t work or have to travel outside the borough for work.
• The types of work available to people in Newham are in the service sector (representing 89.9% of all jobs in the borough). Often insecure and temporary (32% are part time), low paid (21% get paid less than £7 an hour) and low skilled (24.2% fail to reach level 4 at key stage 2 – average of English and Maths).
• 36% of jobs in Newham are in the public sector (this is in the top 10% in the country).
• Newham Council has already cut £30 million (around 7%0 from this year’s budget. How many more jobs will go if there are further departmental cuts of 25% up to 2015 and a council tax freeze?

Heavens above the 'French Working Class' putting ideas into our heads!”

There is one thing we can certainly say about the French, ‘they know how to do a strike’ and no mucking with them comrades!”

Strikes continued today and after the October 12 national day of action against French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s pension cuts, with high school students joining striking port, shipyard, oil and transport workers. Police attacked striking high school students in several cities. There were reports of gasoline shortages throughout France.

This is the way to do it!”

Sarkozy has made it clear that he will not back down on the reform that increases the retirement age for a full pension from 65 to 67, and the minimum retirement age from 60 to 62. This will allow the state to assess substantial financial penalties on the many workers forced to retire before the pension age because of health or layoff. According to some estimates, this will produce at least a 15 percent cut in pension spending by the state.

On the down side, Sarkozy expects the unions to keep workers’ protests under control, and allow the cuts to pass, as they did in the 2007-8 pension cut demonstrations and the 2009 strikes against the bank bailout. However, workers demanding industrial action against the cuts are growing increasingly frustrated with the trade unions’ inaction.

In a concession to popular demands for strike action against the cuts, a joint meeting of France’s trade union federations called a further day of action on Tuesday, October 19. The militancy of ordinary trade unionists has begun to push their leaders and this was clearly evident when CFDT leader François Chérèque explained, “People are asking us to continue”.   

However, increasingly large numbers of workers realize that such one-day actions have not halted Sarkozy’s cuts.

It will be interesting to see how the situation develops, and I bet David Cameron peevishly whinges about the images of French workers taking to the streets that are spread across our newspapers and beamed into living rooms; and heavens above, putting ideas into our heads!”     

Building the Anti-Cuts Campaign in Newham Some Thoughts

Had some time to think over the embryonic stage of our campaign in Newham against the proposed government austerity cuts, and I do love using that word ‘austerity,’ although it is nasty.

Now things are beginning to happen around the country, meetings are happening and in some cases hundreds attending. This is all good stuff and a very encouraging start to what I think will be an unprecedented ground swell that will change public opinion and political sentiment. I also hope that it will be driven without leadership secret or hidden but of overt expression.

People power is just that; and the leadership that needs development is the co-operative ability for all to come together in accord and harmony. This is really possible, and I do believe that today’s generation that hugs all ages, grasps the nettle and builds the chain around the mountain can start to win.

There is room for everyone in the campaign against the cuts, it will not take off unless we realise that it must involve everyone, from the pensioner, the young, and the unemployed to the worried student. They all have a cut or two confronting them in the time to come, and if we are able to bring all their combined experience together, then we will have the leadership so lacking in recent times, and it will be people led.

We face a moment in history when leadership or personal triumph of power politics must be rejected for the common good.

The meeting that I attended the other night, started off on the right footing in as much that all planning meetings would be open to all comers, that no one was made this that or the other, this foundation so refreshing and imparting vitality and energy, and if we mean to stay this way, well what will hold us back.

These campaigns, needs its meetings, but let’s not have meetings for the shake of having meetings, they need to have purpose and direction. If it’s a public meeting, fine, there will always be the need to win over others and strengthen our position; but just to many times over the years I’ve attended a public meeting with a big name speechmaking and then nothing more, as if this was the great moment and that was it, and we all went home congratulating ourselves on the great turnout and a triumph in the class struggle, but was it?

We can all be on cloud nine; I’ve been there many times but didn’t change a ruby-red thing. And one other thing I know, although it’s taken me years to learn this one; I don’t hold all the answers or have the best ideas!”

Our community, every community has a reservoir of talent and we need to be able to tap into it.

The reason I write this blog more than anything, is because it gives me the opportunity to workout my own thoughts, and if people read it then that’s a bonus, and bigger still is if they send me a comment or put me right on a thing or two.

Sharing unselfishly, is the key to success and the only way forward.

Building our campaign will be no walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon; it will take commitment, good-natured steady patience and real perseverance. We will need to go where no campaign has gone before; we will have to do some real legwork in our community, talking of which I understand that in Waltham Forest which is a neighbouring East London Borough anti-cuts campaigners are to hold a “walk of shame” today. The walk will be across the borough to protest against cuts to local services. This activity is being organised by the Waltham Forest Anti-Cuts Union and they will hold protests at Leyton Green NHS Clinic, Waltham Forest Magistrates Court, the former St James Street Library building in Walthamstow and the Beaumont estate in Leyton as part of a day of action and we wish them well.

Talking about cuts is the easy part, especially for the veteran campaigner, but the hardest part is educating and raising the issues with the larger community, and lets face it most people at the moment don’t really comprehended the servility and severity or pain that is about to be inflicted, yes we have our work cut-out but its not imposable.

I think I will go and join the Waltham Forest day of action, see you latter!”             

No to the Cuts in Newham

Next June I think, will be my tenth year as a resident in the great London Borough of Newham, and it really is a great and wonderful place to live, so diverse, rich and cosmopolitan in benevolence and impartiality; that is extended to all races and to all creeds by its citizens as if by habit.

Last night I attended a meeting called to consider the distressful and disgraceful cuts being planed by the Con Dem coalition; cuts that we have read and heard so much about since the general election, and next week, if you didn’t already know, the Chancellor George Osborn will announce through the guise of inter-departmental spending review, were their swinging axe will fall.

We already have a pretty good idea what they plan, or at least those of us who take an interest in the political butcherly of these servants of the ruling class.

In this post it isn’t my intension to go into the finer details of the impending cuts, but to briefly report on last nights meeting which took place in a really lovely Community Centre in Forest Gate, which is just down the road from where I live in Canning Town.

As has always been my own practice over the years; I tend to arrive for a meeting early and sometimes up to an hour early; this helps me get a feel for a particular place and I can spend some quite time in mental meditation; considering what is to be deliberated and turned over, in this case the cuts and how they will impact on the people of Newham and what can we do about them.

The meeting was held at Durning Hall Community Centre in Forest Gate, and I have to say what a lovely facility is the Community Centre, when I arrived having never been there before, I was taken back by the warmth and the ambiance of atmosphere. It was buzzing with activity, a real hub of the community if ever I saw one. It has a community café, a second hand book-stall and children were happily participating in versus activates, I met one young lady and her dad who were attending tap-dancing classes, just a wonderful place and the most impressive Community Centre I had ever had the absolute joy to visit!”

Anyhow, the meeting was attended by about 40 or so people, the majority I would say were old hands and community activists, professional and voluntary. There was a sprinkling of committed trade unionists able to see the full picture, and of course the usual types that one anticipates to encounter at such an event, of start a revolution, that’s members of the SWP and the Socialist Party, the latter being what was better known as the Militant Tendency back in the day.

It really is not my intension to be sectarian because the cuts affect them as much as anyone else, and besides some of them made good contributions providing clarity at times. However having been involved in many campaigns over the years, from the Anti-Nazi-League, Poll Tax and so on. I like many have good and bad experiences of the way some so-called revolutionary organisations operate, and for my part will endeavour to make sure that every voice is heard and listened to, that the fight is not about paper sales or recruiting members to their respective organisations, having said that Sarah Ruiz and Kevin Blowe should be congratulated on organising the meeting, they are not associated or at least to my knowledge to any of the above organisations. Kevin runs the excellent blog Random Blowe and has posted his own report which you can read here.

Well the thing is a line has now been drawn in the sand in Newham, and my feeling is this campaign will go from strength to strength if we all pull together, this is our time it is our communities that are being attacked; they want to destroy the welfare that our grandparents fought for, and the services that were hard-won now need to be defended and improved, and furthermore we need to do this above all else, for our children!”


More about the cuts and Newham tomorrow!"                            

Double-dipping

Optimism is that really the right word. No I think not, greed among chief financial officers in the Golden Mile of the-city has apparently descended to its lowest level in 18 months, with more than a third believing the economy will slide into a double-dip recession.

The latest CFO survey, carried out by the accountancy group Deloitte, found that optimism had declined for the third-successive quarter despite a "fairly robust" economic recovery – what recovery?”

Meanwhile the first phase of the Government's "radical" welfare reform programme starts today with benefit claimants in Aberdeen starting to be reassessed for their ability to work.

The move comes as new figures lay claim (allegedly) that almost £135 billion has been spent over the past 10 years keeping two million people "on the sick".

Long-term incapacity benefit claimants in Aberdeen and Burnley, Lancashire, will be the first across the country to undergo a new test - the Work Capability Assessment - to see if they are fit for work.

When we see these figures thrown about how much it has cost the country in sickness benefits, let’s just remember the 185 billion pounds it cost to bail-out the banks in less than two years, and the rest.

“People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.”

Well my last offering seems such a log time ago now; and so much has happened in the intervening time. 

Where on earth do I start?

The Tory conference, the elections to Ed Miliband’s first shadow cabinet, or the fast approaching government cuts. On the 20 October George Osborne will reveal his £82bn worth of public spending cuts. Think the Thatcher years were bad? You ain't seen anything yet, and that reminds me we in Newham we have a public meeting scheduled for this coming week, which I am really looking forward too, and will do my best to post a report.

Last week my gas boiler packed-up, and subsequently I had to have it replaced including the instillation of new radiators throughout the flat, so my flat now looks like it’s been in a battle. I have much more decorating to do now, because the new radiators are much smaller than the old ones, but they tell me, the work men that is; that the new boiler is much more efficient and not as much energy gets wasted, which I am informed used to disappear out through the flue or conduit on the outside wall. However I just can’t stop thinking how hard this winter will prove to be for those on low incomes or benefits and for pensioners in particular. Wherever I go there is an air of desperation that lingers around the east end these days. What with Christmas just around the corner; I really do think that this will be a tough one somehow for parents and children alike.

I was fortunate enough this week to have a peek into the daily struggle, nay, weekly and indeed yearly struggle of a mature single mum trying her hardest to bring up a 12 year old boy, who I must say really is a credit to his mother, always polite whenever I see and talk to him. They live on benefits in a one-up two bedroom maisonette, and she tells me that she hates this time of the year, because the cost of keeping the home warm is a nightmare, and then keeping her son clothed and fed adequately is like stretching a narrow rubber band that’s about to snap. School dinners cost £4 a day, because her son says that those who get free meals are bullied by other children, and the same goes for clothing; it seems today kids have to have the labelled outfits or they are in trouble – well all I can say that things have certainly changed since I was at school, and just look at the way that modern consumerism has a hold on the kids?

Well I intend to have a look a bit closer in the next few weeks, at just how people are managing to keep body and soul together in these very difficult times.

Just one other item that I wish to raise and that's today is National Homeless Day, and although it was my intension to wright a great deal more on this subject if it hadn’t been for the unforeseen topsy-turvydom and chaos of the last week. Oh well never mind let me leave you with this wonderful quotation from a friend and former Director of Shelter, the late Sheila McKechnie.  “People who are homeless are not social inadequates. They are people without homes.”

Enslavement; time to escape...

Today in Birmingham the Tories open their conference, which may  mark a turning point in the smooth-ride the Con Dem coalition has thus-far received. Now all the party conferences’ run very much along the same lines in the same fashion these days as stage managed events. They have very little to do with democracy, internal or otherwise. But that’s not what interests me about this particular gathering.

For quite a while now, I have been wondering about the organisation that has called itself ‘the right to work’. They tomorrow are staging a March and Demonstration around the general vicinity of the conference, and it is my understanding that many from cities and towns up and down the country will be participating. And we unfeignedly say, good luck and hope that the weather is kind to you all; there is nothing more uncomfortable and miserable than having travelled miles, got up at the crack-of-dawn and then to tramp around the streets in pouring rain, whilst the local constabulary do their level best to keep you away from conference. I know this, for I have been on many a demonstration staged at the governing political party’s conference, and in the pouring rain.

Well let’s not beat about the bush here, what I really want to groan on about is the name, slogan ‘the right to work’. Now no prizes, this is a SWP front it has all the hallmarks of confirmation; for me that’s not the problem, for if they can get people out on the streets and campaign against the government and the austerity program, then good on them.

But let’s get real; what short of a slogan is ‘the right to work’.

I mean did the slaves of Rome stage a demonstration when they were told that their services would no longer be needed? If anything Spartacus would have a thing or so to say about it. His struggle and that of the slaves, often seen as oppressed people fighting for their freedom against a slave-owning aristocracy, has found new meaning for modern writers since the 19th century. The rebellion of Spartacus has proven inspirational to many modern literary and political writers, making Spartacus a folk hero among cultures both ancient and modern.

So I am going to suggest that ‘the right to work’ slogan is really unreasonable and very inappropriate – it puts working people down as being wage slaves, and without an end!”

And please; I am not wishing to be sectarian, this is a political argument of great importance. No one works because (although some do) we really want this form a choice; we work because we have too. And look at what’s happing now; they the government and the boss class want us to work until we drop. Sounds and feels like we are a slave class?”

And don't forget soon we will be made to work for our benefits - that's slavery, the state of being under control!"    

battle cry!”

It’s a real filthy night in Canning Town this evening, rain (at time of writing) continues to bombard with uninterrupted delivery, and it’s been like this for most of the day. I have had the misfortune and been pretty well drenched more than once today. Oh well never mind at least the weekend has arrived; and I plan a calm, silent, quiet affair, just myself the ferret a few books, the computer and the dreaded housework – sounds good or what?”

I’ve just started to read ‘Silvertown’ By Melanie Mcgrath, this has the promise of a really good read; just read the first chapter. Silvertown, it pullulates with stories of life in the docks and pubs and dog tracks of the old East End; this passage is from the books Preface:

 “You could say that Jenny Fulcher led a very ordinary life. She grew up, worked, married and had children. Her life was subject to the usual disquiets and worries. She fretted over her debts. She worried for the future. Every so often, lying in bed in the flat dawn light, she would wonder what the point of all the struggle was. And then she would get up and make a pot of tea and get on with it.”   

In those few lines, came the message that I had desperately been looking for; just get on with it. But, I intend to apply this to the class struggle of today. And as we look towards next week and the conference of those Tories, we will begin to see the ferocity of their intended sledgehammer attack upon our living standards, and the services that make life bearable in our communities, and let’s be clear about this services, that were fought and won over generations, by people committed to breaking the squalid conditions of working people, they fought for the ending of the workhouse, for the provision of honest to good social housing, they insisted that knowledge and education should not be the preserve and property of those with money and the monopoly of all that is best in life. There commitment won and established in the face of real opposition, our National Health Service, a service that was intended to be free and the real envy of the world. So this, just skimming over the surface of welfare which is the Tories once in a lifetime opportunity to take-a-way everything that was won by genuine, sincere and a visionary Labour Movement of a long lost past.

This weekend, I will think personally of how in some small way I can best raise the battle cry!”

Britain the worst place to live...

Not in my wildest dreams’, oh, correction nightmares’, did I ever think that one day on this blog I would be using the Scum (Sun) Newspaper as a source of information; well the unimaginable has happened, may there be mercy on my sole, as well as my human embodiment!”

This is a newspaper which you will know is produced and owned by the anti-Christ and agent of world capitalism, the one and only Rupert Murdoch and his News International Corporation.

If I have to have a lasting memory of this peace of trash, then it will be of the time that an accomplice who joined with yours truly in carrying out a daring and audacious plan to steal from outside Mile End Tube Station bundles that had been dropped-off in the dead of the night during the Wapping dispute; things don’t always go as planed do they; needless to say we were caught by the police, who were waiting for us, oh, well that’s another story, and I promise that I will get around and undertake writing about it sometime soon!”

However, that as it maybe; News International Corporation is not the subject that I wish to shine the light upon, but rather a story that the Scum title carried today and proclaimed Britain as the worst place to live in the whole of Europe. Surprised, or taken unawares, suddenly feeling the wonder of astonishment?”

Well it’s hardily surprising is it, when you think of the last 30 years of government and in particular the 13 years of New Labour, attacking the poor and featherbedding the extremely rich.

Once the envoy and workshop of the world, we are now being beaten into the slave shop of modern capitalism, in what has become an aggressive competitive drive that has been intensified to meet the greedy needs of capitalism, irrespective of any considerations for the vast majority of us!”

That’s the way capitalism works!”

So is it any wonder, or did the Scum newspaper think they were informing there readers of something that hasn’t already dawned on and become clear to the many, that Britain is indeed the worst place to live in Europe, if not the world, the universe!”

Only today, I was informed by a friend who works for DWP at a local dole office, that workers have been told that management expect them to do much more and ensure that more people are thrown of benefits, which is all part of the cuts strategy, cut’s that will make Britain a very nasty, uncomfortable place to live in, be under no illusion about that!”

Well here is the link to the Scum article, and we take no responsibility for damage caused to your eyesight.

The Scum             

Organise ourselves...

This is a quick cut and paste job, oh and if life was only that easy. But a normal service will resume shortly. However it is my intention really to draw readers’ attention to a new addition to our Blog List, which as always can be found on the right hand side of this blog.  Liverpool Solidarity Federation is an Anarchist (great) blog run from Liverpool; anyone have a problem with that, we don’t!” My own experience, straggles and stretches way back to the poll tax days of the 90s, I’ve always found them the  Anarchists to be sincere and committed comrades, who are always prepared to make a massive contribution to the struggle of workers, in London they organise and help many with support from housing to welfare rights and much more besides. And with the impending cuts about to fall on all our heads, we have no choice but to now organise the fight back of our lives in the time that lies before us. That fight can not just be fought by holding rallies, lobbies of begging for political or economic favours from the political master class. Over the many years that I personally have been involved in political agitation, attending many a mach for this or that, wearing-out many a good pair of good boots in that process; I can honestly say that I’ve never achieved anything, that’s the truth. In short this time, we will have to do things differently and that may mean direct action and civil disobedience, that’s the refusal to obey a law because we believe the law, is immoral (as in protest against discrimination). But more about that in a future post to come; in the meantime here is a post and report that appeared on Liverpool Solidarity Federation blog last weekend in regard to the march and lobby of the Lib Dems conference which as comrades will know was held in that great city which is Liverpool. The Heading underneath is a link to their site.

The Radical Workers’ Bloc makes its mark

Today, over 4,000 people braved wind and rain to march and protest against the Lib Dems and the cuts agenda. It was a demonstration of the level of anger people feel – but also the willingness of their “leaders” to merely act as a safety valve, defusing that anger before it reaches the ruling class.

People assembled by the Anglican cathedral to march down to the docks where the protest was held. There were a number of trade union banners, as well as the banners of the Solidarity Federation and Anarchist Federation, whose membership made up the Radical Workers’ Bloc. Despite the rain, the huge turnout and musical accompaniments made it a lively atmosphere.

But whilst the spirit of the rank-and-file made the march vibrant, this was in spite the planning done by trade union leaders, not because of it.

The TUC simply accepted the police moving them away from the Echo Arena, though they later moaned about it to the Liverpool Echo. With the march. Rather than go through the main part of City Centre to the docks, the route may as well have been calculated to garner the smallest possible audience.

But we’ve seen this show before. Union leaders putting on the appearance of being oppositional to authority whilst following orders and acting as a conduit to get the working class to do the same.

It became farcical when the layout of the roads meant the march had to go past the point of protest and turn back upon itself to be able to feed into the rally. There was some laughter and cheering as the Radical Workers’ Bloc simply bypassed this by crossing the road and ending up at the front of the demonstration, beyond even the police.

However, there were cries of “no anarchists” [edit: we originally stated that these came from the Liverpool Socialist Singers, but they have stated that this was a misunderstanding] and the police rushed forward to overtake us. This protest against the government was going to do exactly as it was told by the state, every step of the way.

At the rally, where 4,000 trade unionists were all-but funnelled into a protest pen, various cosseted union big-wigs took to the stage to offer a bark which is never matched with bite.

Merseyside’s anarchists took this opportunity to hand out a pamphlet titled No War but Class War and make the argument for a self-organised workers’ movement that could not be demobilised from above. The response was largely receptive, and we were able to distribute several hundred leaflets.

We then took the lead from many others who left the bureaucrats to their speeches and went to warm up in the pub. One thing that we have seen, time and again, is that ordinary trade unionists share our assessment of their leaders. But anarchists often consigned themselves to shouting from the sidelines and alienating those who would perhaps be most sympathetic. We wanted to break that mould.

All-in-all, bar a brief and largely pointless appearance from English Defence League supporters later on, the day was a good one. But it will only be a success if people are motivated to organise themselves against capitalism, and rid themselves of the chains of union bureaucracy. 

Into each life a little rain must fall - and came the cuts!"

Years ago Friday night and the weekend were something to look-forward to with eager and impatient expectancy. Away from the drudgery of work and with shekels of hard "earned income" in ones pocket a night out on the Town was the then time turned ritual, and how I remember those days so well now. Thirty or so years down the line and I find myself sitting in front of this computer late on Friday night and early Saturday morning thinking about the composition of this post. It would indeed be an understatement if I was to say: how times change?”

Into each life a little rain must fall

I love the saying ‘that into each life a little rain must fall’. I use it often these days I find. But the truth is that as we wait for the Con/Dems to unveil their much talked about vile and morally reprehensible-package of cuts to frontline services and welfare, such a deterioration in vital services will have a knock-on effect and on the private sector; then we must brace ourselves altogether for a real drenching, and what I mean is prepare for two things; first they the government the agents of capitalism, and lets not beat about the bush here, for that is what they represent whether Labour or in this case the Con/Dems who are, and make no mistake about it, going to give us all a real good soaking as they start to dredge and remove material from the channel or riverbed of working peoples communities and real peoples lives. Oh sorry, am I being a little dramatic here? I forgot we have a deficit or rather the country has a deficit that needs to be addressed, and it falls to us all to make them much needed sacrifices to mend that broken play-thing the economy. But I am really sick to the back teeth of listening to politicians and economists mouth the oral vallecula, on and on about double dips and quantitative easing and so on. But let us just ponder the later, quantitative easing which if anything proves that if its broken, then its not only working and can’t be fixed ever. So what do these cuts mean to working people, well I think that what they will amount to will be like taking food away from the mouths of babies, making old people worry about the rip-off costs of heating this coming winter, and as the cost of food starts to rise in the shops we will see the poor become dependent on food-handouts, the streets fill up with the homeless. Then there are the almost daily attacks upon the unemployed and the poor amongst us and the blogger Harpymarx takes that up in a recent post when see writes: “The ConDems have upped the ante with their turbo-charged attacks on the poor aided and abetted by the right-wing press. “Benefit scroungers” is becoming a common feature in the lexicon of media language. It is pretty easy to scapegoat and blame the powerless in this society and point the finger at asylum seekers to welfare claimants as it is all a distraction from the real enemy. ConDems want to blame the poor. It is creating an oppressive climate that uses language to fan the flames of hate (‘benefit scroungers’, ‘workshy’). It is about vilification and scapegoating.”

So my first point is; expecting the worst!

Then secondly; prepare for class war!” Yes that’s what I said; prepare for the class war. I was discussing with Brian Hopper and as we often do, the hits received by this blog and which posts have been successful or popular with readers, I told him that a post that was posted back in June had received and still receives hundreds of hits each month remaining in poll position at the top.  ' A full English breakfast the Budget and when Labour think they can run Capitalism! to read that just click the title  – Now I must admit that I was surprised at the hits that this post had received, but then again it was one of our earliest posts about the coalition budget and their warning to the world that they intend to deliver an austerity program of steps to be carried out and of goals to be accomplished in order to put British capitalism back into a healthy exploitatory position, and whatever the cost. We think for some reason of which we are not really sure that this post has hit a cord with some readers.

Now when I say class war that is precisely what I mean, a war against austerity, a war against capital and a war not of our making, we the overwhelming majority did not bring the world to the brink of financial collapse, and the leaders of the TUC would do well to remember that single-shelled fact, instead what do they do when they invite  to address their congress of  TUC and accorded a warm welcome to Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, who has insisted that the cuts must be introduced as quickly as possible. Remember him talking after the election; King warned Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg that unless they announced immediate austerity measures there would be a run on the pound. So what do the higher-ranking priests of the TUC do by inviting Banker King to congress?  They lie down and crumple in the face of the class enemy. This man welcomed by the TUC is one of the chief architects of the government’s austerity programme. King told the delegates assembled at Manchester, “We at the Bank of England and you in the trade union movement should work together. That is why I am pleased to be with you today.”   

Following Kings un-believable appearance, the British media still continued to propagate as they only know how a cascading tissue of complete lies about this organisation that can best be described as a toothless pussycat. The Daily Mail for instance gave warning that the “Unions vow to halt UK with strikes”.

Rupert Murdoch’s the Sun claimed, “Union leaders are meeting to draw up plans for the biggest strike action the country has seen in decades, in protest at public spending cuts... Britain is teetering on the brink of an Autumn of Discontent”.

What utter bunkum!”

And just before I move on consider what John Monks, general secretary of the TUC from 1993-2003, said whilst speaking at the TUC congress for the last time in his capacity as leader of the European Trades Union Confederation. Shortly to become Lord Monks and take up a seat in the House of Lords, following in the footsteps of many previous trade union bureaucrats. When he was still leader of the TUC, in 1999, he told the Financial Times, “The days when trade unions provided an adversarial opposition force are past in industry”. However these were his last words on this occasion: “Let me say that I believe that influence on the boardroom will be better than influence on the picket line as a guide to trade union strategy in the future.”

Oh and I better not forget this, His successor, Brendan Barber, current general secretary of the TUC and a member of Court of the Bank of England since 2003. Makes it all to clear why King had come to address colleagues, and not adversaries.

“I want first to thank you for inviting me to address Congress.” King said, “Members of your General Council have made a huge contribution to the Bank of England by serving on our board.”

So there we have it, the TUC the Bosses friend cannot put up a fight even though they may call token demonstrations or lobbies of Parliament, which if we are honest posturing vain and conceited, and have never really achieved anything.

I have said many times before now, that the real fight and willingness to defend our communities; must be put up in our communities; we must build a movement of such opposition that makes the poll-tax of the 90s look like a small vicars parish tea party. It can be done and the imposable can be achieved – for a better world is possible!”

As we move into October we will be writing and reporting more about the new movement and the cuts!"

Turning his attention to the long-term unemployed to seek savings.

Just been taking in the news that Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said he intends to make further reductions to Britain’s welfare budget next month when he outlines and forges with his partners in the Con/Dem government some of the deepest spending cuts in living memory.

When I say forge, well what I mean is he will move by hammering on the Tory anvil, the unemployed, the sick, the old, poor and vulnerable who are dependent on the pittance that many have no alternative but to make do with; make no mistake these cuts particularly to those on low pay or benefits will illuminate and foster, as it seems, new social divisions of the have’s and the have not’s in our society.  

I spent nearly twenty years trying to dispel, and amongst my fellow workers, the lie that the class system has somehow miraculously disappeared. And yet today the media for reasons none other than of supporting a right wing agenda, have flagged up statistics released by Office of National Statistics that show how hard things have become for working people.

NEARLY one in five households in Britain has no one who works and is entirely dependent on benefits’. The number of work-less households rocketed by 148,000 last year to just under four million.

It means more than seven million people – including almost two million children – are now living in homes where no one is in paid employment. Of course these revelations by the media are part of a carefully planed strategy to prepare the country for the most vindictive attack on all our living standards.

Osborne has already pledged to slash 11 billion pounds  from the welfare budget by 2015, targeting tax credits to middle income families and housing benefits.  The extra cuts would amount to about 4 billion pounds.

Osborne said he would turn his attention to the long-term unemployed to seek savings.

“There are five million people living on permanent out-of- work benefits,” he said. “That is a tragedy for them and fiscally unsustainable for us as a country -- we can’t afford it anymore.”  

But George, how about this; we can’t afford capitalism anymore!”  

The Impact Of Cuts In Newham

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that occasionally we like to make out, and as we often do, that we know what we are talking about; especially when it comes to the world of economics and corporate finance –well yes we do. We know that may come across as being arrogant; it’s not meant to be!”

But quite simply the solutions to all our problems would be the complete abolition of money; it really is that simple when you stop to think about it. However persuading and winning approval from our fellow workers is not. It’s as if they have shutters placed upon their eyes, that somehow prevents them seeing that the world could be run not only differently but probably more efficiently.

For socialists such as us this has proven to be a problem of great frustration, but understandable when you consider the extent that the state, and all over the world at that, will go too, to stack the cards in favour of capital, profit and greed. It’s as if the workers are brainwashed; and of course they are by using educational, media and on occasion shamelessly religion, one example would be when the church instructs its followers to vote a certain way or for a particular candidate as was the case with the late and very recently departed Jimmy Reid when the Catholic Church in the 1974 general election discouraged and encouraged by Labour, instructed its members to vote against Reid, who was a Communist. Now this is going off subject a bit, but I found an interesting article about Jimmy Reid which you can read Here.

I should also say, and so there is no confusion, that this blog is not anti-religion.

Whilst the world is in the grip of slavering capitalism there will always be problems with money such as this present crisis of capitalism which is showing no signs or perceptible indications that things are getting any better. In the US reports are circulating that its economy is on the brink of a new major catastrophe or near to the point of no return. There are 7,932 banks in the U.S. -- and 433 of them are in immediate danger of failing.

President Obama has his work cut out, and his enemies are rallying right now, they are sizing up their opportunities especially as now that Government debt will reach 62 percent of GDP by Sept. 30, or so the Congressional Budget Office predicts.  We think that the ruling class in the US are looking for government that can do the same as what the Com/Dems are doing over here, they even might like the way the ruling class as thorough Cameron and Clegg are starting to kick the working classes. August is now galloping towards the autumn, and in October the government will be telling us where the axe heads of cuts will come down, and upon whom.

Around the country movement is taking place to organise the defence of our services and welfare provision. For this attack upon the poorer communities; will be a deifying moment for all working people, and we urge people to now join or start building in your communities!”

The only way to defeat and stop this government – is outside of parliament – by the people.

I'm great-full to Random Blow for the following information:

Public Meeting - The Impact Of Cuts In Newham

The meeting will take place at 6.30pm on Wednesday 13 October at Durning Hall Community Centre in Forest Gate. We aim to begin the discussion by asking a simple question:

What impact will massive cuts make on the lives of people in Newham?

"There will be millions of pounds worth of cuts to local services and to investment. The chickens from the election of the Tory-Liberal Government are coming home to roost for people everywhere. 

A full English breakfast the Budget and when Labour think they can run Capitalism!

“This emergency Budget deals decisively with our country's record debts. It pays for the past. And it plans for the future. It supports a strong enterprise-led recovery. It rewards work. And it protects the most vulnerable in our society. Yes it is tough; but it is also fair.”

And those of course were indeed, the opening, pinging words of our newly installed filthy rich kid, snobby and very aristocratic Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. But first let me just say, ever since that dreadful day when Conservative and Liberal fell into each others capitalist loving arms, a cloud of agitated depression has fallen over me, and I guess, that I’m not on my own as the true horror of a coalition made in hell unfolds in front of our eyes.

So for a time on Wednesday, numbed and gyrating still from the previous days Budget (mugging) which we were told was an emergency I decided to listen to the England/Slovenia World Cup Mach on the old radio, there was two reasons for this, not that suddenly I’ve been converted into an England fan or a national flag waver, no such transformation. I was intrigued after the first two games to discover and to learn if the team was able to perform any better after and following the media and fan lambasting of the team, and to check out the contribution of Jermain Defoe throughout the game. I was not disappointed, with Defoe that is. This sudden interest can only, and I do assure you, attributed in the fact that Jimmy Defoe who is father to the above mentioned now hero of England’s stumbling cheering, no longer barracking fans, happens to be my nearby neighbour here in Canning Town. I can tell you that Jimmy is one proud dad; he was elated, exultantly proud and joyful when I spoke to him yesterday, he told me that Jermain not only scored the first goal of the campaign, but was the first black player to score a goal for England in a World Cup tournament – So well done Jimmy and well done Jermain!

My only fear is that the coalition would take some course credit for the England performance, and up till now haven’t seen anything, just hope it stays that way?

What's especially significant about the emergency Budget has been the advanced and careful PR surrounding it? Clegg and David Cameron both have experience and training and PR backgrounds and its plain to see. Every day a minister or other stands up to tell everyone the problem is far worse than expected, and the public are then softened up for the bad news. Clegg then spouts progressive messages to keep the lefties in his party on side, even if they remain ill at ease with the general thrust of what is happening. This entire process has been rigidly mapped out, not just economically and politically, but also in terms of public relations.

Well three day’s on from the Budget delivery, we are still analyzing its possible impact on working people, and will dissect, break down and examine what is clearly an attack on the working classes in due course.

Meanwhile we think, that’s Brian Hopper and myself who is just back from his holidays (Cyprus) lucky bugger, that Clement Attlee’s last years in office may be of some interest because most of the welfare state (now under attack) as we still know it was put in place in the post war Labour government. The National Health Service (NHS) provided universal health care, State secondary education was free for all. The state was building social housing on council estates. There were new unemployment and sickness benefits (now under attack), free school dinners and milk (now under renewed attack). Yet the government that had done all this barely scraped back at the polls, its majority slashed from 146 to just five. The next year, it was gone.

Why did this happen?

The seemingly endless austerity measures were the main reason. Food rationing ended in West Germany on 6 January, 1950. However in victorious Britain, though, everything except preserves was still on ration. An adult had an ounce and a half of cheese a week, an ounce of cooking fat, and six ounces of butter, then there was the eight ounces of sugar, two pints of milk and the one egg. To the (and Brian will remember this) dismay of children everywhere, sweets, which had gone off-ration in April 1949, were restricted again in August. ‘Unexpected demand was blamed, a poor excuse in a nation that had not been able to indulge its notoriously sweet tooth for almost a decade.

The meat ration was at its lowest level. During the war, it had stood at 87 per cent of pre-war consumption. The government now cut it to 69 per cent. The reason was a breakdown in talks with Don’t Cry for me Argentina, which supplied much of the imported beef. The Tories seized the publicity opportunity and splashed the matchbox-sized meat ration across its election campaign posters. The bacon ration, too, was less than in the war, down on three ounces a week, or three medium-cut rashers, which was not going to make a government popular in a country that, loved the full English breakfast.

Well that’s something to think about, when Labour try to run capitalism, we can see the pitfalls.

We’re all in it together!

There’s definitely without question and beyond any doubt, something very manipulative about David Cameron, it’s not the seduction of Nick Clegg, or the skilful and showing knowledge that he has up to now employed successfully on his own backbenchers, remember that this is a Tory party with a history of turning on leaders. No it’s none of that which I’ve noticed about Cameron, but rather the public perception of the woven path that he has taken in the first month of his Premiership.

His clean-cut youthful and armour-plated good guy image, has thus far been able to fool a great many up till now into thinking, excuse me, he’s not such a bad chap after all, and the coalition government, why it’s not so bad.

He and his adherents, or rather claque and clack have skilfully used every given opportunity to featherbed the austerity road ahead. The Cumbria shootings, his recent trip, staying with our young enlisted men and woman in Afghanistan, increasing and backdating their Daly Allowance, is all part of the plan, the illusion, that he, that this government is fair, not excessive or extreme, free from favouritism or self-interest, bias or deception; conforming with established standards as a rule of thumb, is nothing more than a great deception.

They say that all new governments have a honeymoon period, and then the tide of public opinion suddenly turns. I wouldn’t venture to guess when this is likely to happen, only to anticipate its likelihood when the pressure is applied and very soon by the looks of things.

And how hollow, will those words sound, that we’re all in it together!

Well we'll soon see for sure, their first budget is bound to reveal the full extent to which the axmen will decapitate and destroy jobs and services.

The Sunday Mirror, carried a very good article by Danny Blanchflower, Professor of economics at Dartmouth and the University of Stirling, and just to give a summary, he says: Osborne is going to butcher jobs and people's livelihoods, that economic output has dropped by six per cent, twice as much as the United States. Yet America has seen a much bigger increase in unemployment than we have so far!

He thinks and I agree that Osborne is going to annihilate public spending and probably raise VAT - perhaps to as much as 25%.

And Blanchflower says: “It will do terrible and probably irreversible damage to the British economy. I am now 100 per cent certain these actions will push us into double-dip recession.”

“The chances we will enter a second great depression more than doubled on the day this government took power. Bad industrial production numbers on Friday confirmed how we are struggling to recover. And the Euro area looks like it is slowing and about to go back into recession. It is our major export market and if our friends on the Continent are not recovering it will make it even harder for us to do so.”

Blanchflower points out widespread tax evasion, by the very business fraternity who calmer and demand the cuts!

Tory-led coalition's agenda includes, scrapping free school meals to children in working but low paid poor families. Half a million of the poorest families will be denied free school meals by deep cuts in welfare spending. The decision will cost families earning less than £307 a week about £600 a year, equivalent to a penny rise in their income tax for each child. So the costs are going to fall on the poor.

The Government’s deficit reduction measures will raise unemployment close to three million and “stall” any recovery in the capitalist jobs market, and some are predicting unemployment hitting such heights with all the unsavoury social problems that degenerate life and divide communities. An employment expert said cuts in public spending made the outlook “bleak” for individuals and communities already suffering the greatest hardship.

Our government’s approach to deficit reduction and influenced by their LibDem partners in crime, is to emulate Canada’s Liberal government and its programme of cuts in the 1990s.

The resulted was the loss of 265,000 jobs from the then three million-strong Canadian public sector workforce and an eventual fall in the share of public sector employment in total employment from 26% to 19%.

On an equivalent scale, this translates into around 500,000 UK public sector job cuts!

We’re all in it together!

Their bootmarks are all over the place!

Populace empowerment may find its foothold in the approaching months; as the ComDem coalition hatches to swing the cutting axe, and one group or section of our society is going to be battered hard when the cutter starts to cut deep into the artery of support that keeps many pensioners, disabled and unemployed afloat, in these already hard times!

David Cameron yesterday heralded “painful” spending cuts affecting the lifestyles of everyone in Britain over the coming years.

And in his speech in Milton Keynes he said:

“Our economy has become more and more unbalanced, with our fortunes hitched to a few industries in one corner of the country, while we let other sectors like manufacturing slide.


It has become over-reliant on welfare, with mass worklessness accepted as a fact of life and around five million people now on out-of-work benefits. It has become increasingly hostile to enterprise, with business investment in the past decade growing at around one per cent each year – only a quarter of what it was the decade before. It has become far too dependent on the public sector, with over half of all jobs created in the last ten years associated in some way with public spending.”

These were the opening sentences of a speech that clearly blamed working people in their communities for the crisis of capitalism, and what incomprehensible gobbledegook to suggest that manufacturing industry was allowed to slide; when in fact in 1979 Thatcher claimed that the economy was overmanned and inefficient. Her aim was to let the competitive pressures of the free market regenerate British capitalism. So let’s look at one example of her legacy then: In the 1980s Thatcher took on the steel unions blaming them for upsetting business. Excessive wages for insufficient output make British products uncompetitive on the international market, she said.

She brought in the Employment Act of 1982 to constrict the privileges and freedoms the unions once had in protecting their members.

Once one of the great successes of the industrial revolution, Sheffield has now become a prime example of British economic decline. A tourist visiting Sheffield some 250 years after the development of steel making in the city would wonder why it is called steel city.

So when the likes of Cameron and the ruling class talk of decline and slide, let's just remember that their bootmarks are all over the place!

Con-Demolition!

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

One thing is clear about this sprouting coalition government, even though the vast majority in this country may not as of ‘yet’ share the view that all of us will be made, one way or the other to pay for the crisis of greed that has brought the capitalist world to the cliff edge of collapse. And the signs are, it’s about to get much worse, the US economy is already rotten to the core, the big apple as it is sometimes referred too, has a maggot sucking out what’s left of its juicy fruit, entire states are facing bankruptcy, and renewed banking failures and sovereign debt defaults are threatening to rip apart the European Union (as the “liberal Observer economist turned public sector cuts advisor for the Con-Dem coalition, Will Hutton, has recently warned) and force the global economy back towards the downward trajectory.

On Sunday DAVID CAMERON warned that the economy is in a far worse state than previously thought and signalled that Britain now faces years of “pain” as the impending spending axe falls. He indicated a sharp downgrade in official growth forecasts and revealed that welfare and public sector pay would bear the brunt of budget cuts.

Oh, the deficit is far worse than they thought is it, what a surprise!

So we had a recovery and now we're going to get taken down by this Con-Demolition!

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