Category: recession

Why the Western Poor must pay for the Super-Rich

Posted by Tank team – September 27, 2012

Greek cops…. defending the super-rich

SOOOOOO obvious what’s happening in Greece and Spain. Until Soviet Communism collapsed Western rulers thought it prudent to operate big welfare states and soak-the-rich tax regimes to discourage Western workers from leaping into the arms of the Big Red Bear.

Now the USSR’s gone what’s the point? Let them eat cake! Let the rich stuff their pockets and serve the bill on the poor. Let the West enforce a slave labour system like China. It’s taken a generation for this political seismic shift to work through the system.

The same applies to Western civil liberties. When the USSR ran Gulags in Siberia and shot dissidents in the back of the neck at Lubyanka, NO WAY would Western governments bang up Western dissidents without trial.

They wanted strict, loudly proclaimed “Western Freedoms” with which to beat the Soviets in the propaganda war. Again, that’s no longer necessary now the Big Red Bear is dead. Hence control orders, secret trials, rendition, Guantanamo, British cops strutting about with guns in the name of “security” and the rest of the New Authoritarian box of tricks.

Funny how dependent the West was on the policies of the Soviet Communist Party. Funny how Western workers, when they enjoyed generous welfare provision and embedded civil rights, relied on the suffering of the Soviet peoples.

George Osborne: make the poor pay

Posted by Tank team – October 21, 2010

George Osborne & Pals

So there you have it. Three multimillionaires at the top of British politics – Cameron, Osborne and Clegg – have made the poor pay for the bankers venality.

Imagine a junior public servant. He’s not a fat cat. He works hard each day providing a public service, perhaps in a dole office, helping the disabled back to work. He spends most of his income on a little rented flat.

He’s made redundant in 2012. Under new housing benefit rules, announced by George Osborne yesterday, if he’s age 25-35 he must move to shared accommodation. When he puts his milk in the fridge he must write his name on it.

George Osborne has never had a proper job. Unless you count data entry duties for the NHS, folding towels for Selfridges, or policy-wonking at Tory Party HQ. He benefits from a £4 million trust fund, given him by his papa, held offshore to avoid tax.

Nick Clegg, a millionaire banker’s son, is so out of touch he thought the state pension was £30 a week.

David Cameron, worth c. £30 million, mostly from his father, considers his wife “very unconventional” because she went to a day school.

Let’s see if the Brits put up with this. We’re slow to anger but class hatred is never far below the surface.

The Scots, in particular, do not like posh English Tories with their hands in Jock pockets. In fact they like them so little that in May 2010 they elected just one, yes one, Tory MP north of the border.

Britain’s Tories – the most unpatriotic ruling class in the world

Posted by Tank team – August 13, 2010

Germany posted record growth figures today, the economy experiencing the fastest quarterly growth since reunification in 1991. In annualised terms the German economy expanded by about 9 percent.

But Germany still has a large manufacturing base with good management and strong trade unions. The Tories eviscerated British manufacturing in the 1980s, leaving us at the mercy of a service sector infested by greedy bankers led by the likes of Fred Goodwin.

Leading the German recovery is steelmaker ThyssenKrupp. They manufacture high quality carbon steel, machine tools, automotive parts – everything British workers used to make before the Tories branded them ‘the enemy within’ and destroyed their industries, communities, and their pride.

Generational unemployment followed – for those who failed to find work in a call centre – and the Tories now blame them for their unemployment, describe their children as ‘feral’, and attack their daughters’ sexual morality.

Britain’s Tories – the most unpatriotic ruling class in the world.

Here we go, here we go….

Posted by Tank team – August 11, 2010

The Guardian reports today that we are teetering on the brink of another recession, thanks to the brutal cuts to be made by the Conservative-LibDem coalition (see http://bit.ly/bbIDny). It hasn’t taken long for the dire warnings of economists to become a reality.

During the economic crisis of 2008-09, the Conservatives tried repeatedly to pin the blame for a global situation on the Labour government. It was an astonishing display of gall in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

The Conservatives indulged in the worst sort of politicking, not just lying but bellowing their lies over and over in the hope that if they lied loud enough and long enough, some of it might stick. Perhaps it did, though not enough to secure the widely mistrusted David Cameron an overall majority.

No sane person could truthfully argue that the global economic crisis was the fault of Britain’s Labour goverment. By contrast, the recession we now face in the UK is entirely the fault of the Conservative-LibDem coalition, which has trampled the green shoots of recovery in a desperate bid to punish the British people for having had 15 years of comfort and prosperity.

David Cameron does not believe you deserved to have 15 years of decent wages and working standards, greater financial security and better healthcare. He not only wants to take it away from you, he wants to punish you for ever having had it in the first place.

This time it’s nothing to do with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac – or even Fred Goodwin. This time the blame lies entirely with David Cameron and Nick Clegg.

FOOTNOTE
Rather than sitting at home, frothing in a helpless rage, we’ll be joining the Coalition of Resistance alongside Tony Benn, Caroline Lucas, Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka and many other fine people. We hope you will too. See http://coalitionofresistance.wordpress.com/2010/08/03/call-for-a-coalition-of-resistance-against-cuts-and-privatisation for details.