Category: frontline services

Why the Western Poor must pay for the Super-Rich

Posted by – 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 – 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.

Here we go, here we go….

Posted by – 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.

The Conservative Right

Posted by – May 28, 2010

Everyone knows David Cameron’s a posho: Eton, Oxford, Bullingdon, worth c. £40 million. His wife’s an even more spectacular blue-blood: papa owns a chunk of Yorkshire and sports an hereditary title: Sir Reginald Adrian Berkeley Sheffield, 8th Baronet, three times a descendant of King Charles II. So SamCam’s genuine posh totty, perfectly mated to Dave.

Everyone knows too about the low level, periodically vicious, civil war in the Tory party going back to Thatcher and beyond, between the ‘blue bloods’ and the ‘chaps who had to buy their own furniture.’

Norman Tebbit still finely represents the latter: lower middle class, suburban, unsentimental, keen on market forces, no time for scroungers whether they’re proles or Bertie Wooster.

In Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer the anti-hero, Leslie Titmuss, says the following when seeking adoption as a Conservative parliamentary candidate

I grew up to understand the value of money because it took my father five years to save up for our first second-hand Ford Prefect. Every night he finishes his tea and says to my mother, ‘Very tasty dear, that was very tasty.’ He always says the same thing. He falls asleep in front of the fire at exactly half past nine and at ten-thirty he wakes up with a start and says, ‘I’ll lock up, dear. Time for Bedfordshire!’ Always the same. Every night… You can forget the county families and the city gents and the riverside communities. They’ll vote for you anyway. What you need to win is my people. The people who know the value of money because they’ve never had it. The people who say the same thing every night because it makes them feel safe. The people who’ve worked hard and don’t want to see scroungers rewarded or laziness paying off. Put it this way, ladies and gentlemen. You need the voters I can bring you.

The LibCon coalition is dominated by poshos and their underlings. Clegg and Cameron are perfectly matched and even the Orange Book Liberals are managing to keep their mouths shut about Adam Smith. True, there’s some moaning from the Tory lower-middles – Norman Tebbit’s blog is worth watching – but the honeymoon’s set to continue for a while. Leslie Titmuss is there, on the back benches, deciding which battle to fight, watching approvingly as John Redwood provides some initial leadership, but he’s still finding his feet.

Leslie Titmuss won’t be quiet forever. He’s naturally an authoritarian bully who wants to do something nasty to someone: strikers, scroungers, blacks, foreigners, single mothers, gays. Cameron will need to throw him a bone. Iain Duncan Smith may be the chap (who had to buy his own furniture) to do it.

Iain Duncan Smith - work makes you free

George Orwell and frontline services

Posted by – May 18, 2010

Something odd happened at George Osborne’s first press conference yesterday. Throughout the general election campaign we were told “frontline services” would be safe under the Tories. David Cameron even promised Andrew Marr on the Sunday before the election:

“What I can tell you is any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: “Here are my plans,” and they involved frontline reductions, they will be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again.”

Yet adjectives, suddenly, are appearing. David Laws, the Liberal member for Yeovil (Paddy Ashdown’s old seat) and George Osborne’s number two in the coalition, said yesterday:

“I will reject any proposals that would affect key frontline services.”

“Key” frontline services? Four legs good, two legs better?

The Treasury press notice discovered another adjective. Cuts, apparently, will not affect “priority frontline services.” No animal shall sleep in a bed, with sheets?