Irish Daily Star tells it like it is

ConDem solution to unemployment is to get them wombling

The latest proposal from the office of Iain Duncan Smith is to send the unemployed out to do tasks such as litter picking once they have been unemployed for 12 months.  Or as the Telegraph puts it 'Work-shy will be 'pushed' into working for free by welfare revolution'.  This headline sums up the ConDem approach, it is pandering to the right wing press by picking on people they see as welfare scroungers.

The problem is that this measure will not just target the long-term unemployed.  The ConDem cuts could make 1.5 million people unemployed bringing the unemployment figure to around 3 million, and there are not the jobs available for the unemployed to go to.  Many professional people and recent graduates are going to find themselves unemployed for over a year, is it the best use of their time to make them go litter picking.  Many people are going to have to spend time re-training for the few jobs which are available, the government should be aiming to help these people out of unemployment, rather than sending them on chain-gangs carrying out what can be seen as pointless tasks to please the Daily Mail reading public.  Clive Anderson also made a good point on the Marr show this morning that is this work does need doing the government should create jobs and pay people to do it.

There are admittedly some people who do not want to work, who are capable of work, and maybe if this limit was set at 3 years it may be more likely to focus on this group.  But as it is many professional people who are unemployed through no fault of their own will be made to do menial tasks due to ConDem cuts.

Stop the government snooping on every Email and Facebook message

From Open Rights Group

The government has announced that it will be spending up to £2 billion into new ways to snoop on email and web traffic.

This Kafka-esque “Intercept Modernisation Plan”, was stopped near the end of the last government, but was quietly revived in the 2010 Spending Review. While billions of pounds are being slashed from education, welfare and defence, the government plans to waste vast sums trying to snoop on our emails and Facebook communications.

We need to tell the government to stop this wasteful, intrusive plan for wholesale snooping on our daily lives.

Please sign the petition at http://action.openrightsgroup.org/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=1422&ea.campaign.id=8227

Paul O'Grady on Osborne and the cuts

York Stop The Cuts - Right To Work Demo

Around 200 protesters turned up for the first public demo called by York Stop The Cuts - Right To Work.  There were speeches from Hugh Bayley MP, Cllr Dave Taylor, Father Tim Jones and representatives from PCS, FBU and UCU.

It is unfortunate that many of the public still support the cuts, but I believe this is because they don't realise yet how badly it will target their public services.  It is not until swimming pools and libraries start closing, social services are cut, unemployment rockets and there are fewer police on the streets that the public at large will become motivated to oppose these cuts.

We must all work to build are local groups to oppose the cuts and build for the London demo next year.

We're all in this together?

As expected the comprehensive spending review has attacked the poorest in society and set the blue-print for decimating our public services.  As a result of the review we are expected to see:

• Up to half a million public sector jobs go by 2014-15
• £81bn cut from public spending in the next four years
• £7bn extra welfare cuts

Source BBC News

The Con Dems insist the private sector will create jobs to absorb those who have been made redundant, but there is little evidence to support this dangerous gamble, in the short term there is likely to as many if not more private sector job losses from companies reliant on public sector spending.  So the end result is that we are likely to see the highest UK unemployment figures this country has seen in decades.

What is most grating is George Osborne constantly telling us "We're all in this together".  The Con Dem cabinet loaded with millionaires will not feel the pain from the cuts they are inflicting on the low paid.  Neither will the bankers who caused this state of affairs feel the pain, as many will still rake in huge bonuses, while the dole queues get longer.

And I hope no one forgets that the Lib Dems are responsible for propping up the Tories and allowing these cuts go through, cuts which go far beyond what is needed and have far more to do with right wing ideology.

There will be demos across the country this Saturday against the cuts.  Find your local demo here.

Lib Dem broken promises

Looking back at the 2010 Lib Dem manifesto, you immediately see that many of their election pledges have not been met:

• Saying no to the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear
  weapons system, which could cost £100 billion. We will hold a full
  defence review to establish the best alternative for Britain’s future
  security.
• Scrap unfair university tuition fees for all students taking their fi rst
  degree, including those studying part-time, saving them over £10,000
  each. We have a financially responsible plan to phase fees out over
  six years, so that the change is affordable even in these difficult
  economic times, and without cutting university income. We will
  immediately scrap fees for final year students.
• Reject a new generation of nuclear power stations; based on the
  evidence nuclear is a far more expensive way of reducing carbon
  emissions than promoting energy conservation and renewable energy.
• Rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons
  system. At a cost of £100 billion over a lifetime it is unaffordable, and
  Britain’s security would be better served by alternatives. We support
  multilateral nuclear disarmament and will ensure that the UK plays a
  proactive role in the arms reduction talks starting later this year

If you read the manifesto you will find plenty of other policy statements which will not come to pass.  They also made a U turn on delaying the cuts.  And who can forget this election poster:

Again, the Lib Dems are now supporting the rise in VAT.


The question is, what have the Lib Dems got out of this agreement?

From the looks of it very little.  They have got a referendum to allow some minor tinkering with the electoral system to bring us AV.  But there is no certainty they will get a yes vote with their Tory partners campaigning against it.

At the end of the day, all they've achieved is the chance to say they are in government and a few seats at the cabinet table.  They may well regret this at forthcoming elections, as who is going to believe them when they have committed a u-turn on so many of their election pledges?  And it is clear they can no longer pretend to be a party of the centre left, when the policies their cabinet are selling are clearly centre-right.

Is this the beginning of the end for a public higher education system?

Two stories about HE have made the press this week.  The first is the Browne report which proposes tuitions fees starting at £7000 but with no upper limit, it would therefore be no surprise if we see much higher fees, especially from the Russell Group universities.


Then today we see a leaked letter from Universities UK which has been sent to universities warning them to expect cuts of £4.2bn to teaching budgets and £1bn to research budgets a result of the comprehensive spending review.

The result of both these proposals could be an end to the higher education system as we know it.  It would not be a surprise if we see a drop in student applications from those who do not wish to saddle themselves with debts at more than double the current level.  We could also see some universities going bankrupt due to budget cuts and decreased public funding.

What is most worrying is that this clearly looks like the final step to a privatised university system.  If these changes are implemented universities will need to start funding some arts and humanities courses purely from student fees, as funding is to be withdrawn from all but science, engineering, medicine and modern language degrees and with variable fees we are already very close to seeing a private market in HE with only one more step needed to make the system completely funded by tuition fees and private research funding.

UCU and the NUS have organised a joint national demo called "Fund our future:Stop Education Cuts" on 10th November 2010.  Details at http://www.demo2010.org/

"Red" Ed has the Tories worried

Red Ed?

It didn't take long for the Conservative attack dogs and right wing media to lay into Ed Miliband once it was announced he was leader.  Labelling him "Red Ed" and claiming the unions now have a hold over him.

Headlines have appeared such as:

'Red' Ed Miliband says New Labour is dead but vows to stand up for the 'squeezed middle'  Daily Mail

RED Ed Miliband was elected Labour leader last night after snatching the crown from under his big brother's nose. & Left-winger Ed, 40, was catapulted into the job thanks to the backing of union barons who urged activists to vote for him. News of the World

The fact it that there is nothing "Red" about Ed Miliband.  He is a centre-left politician, admittedly to the left of his brother David and some of the Blairite old-guard, but this is not a bad thing.  The policies Ed has proposed are not leftist policies which will alienate the electorate.

A graduate tax will speak to many middle class as well as working class families in the UK who are worried about increasing student debt, debt which may well increase significant if tuition fees rise later this year.

Saying it was wrong to go to war with Iraq is not a leftist policy.  The majority of the country now believe it was wrong, and I believe one of the reasons why David lost was that he continued to defend it.

Ed wants the banking industry to make a bigger contribution to reducing the deficit.  This is hardly radical, and again the majority of the country will agree, especially once the cuts really kick in after the spending review.

It is rare for me to quote Norman Tebbit, but he was right in his Telegraph blog when he said:

The narrowness of David Miliband’s defeat and his brother Ed’s victory says more about the closeness of their views than any deep split in the Labour Party at the present time. Ed is the man most likely to get Labours five million lost voters back to the polls. He is unlikely to neglect the chance to feed off the discontented Lib Dem supporters, but he will not neglect to strengthen the party’s natural constituency.

I think this is why the Tories and right wing press are worried.  Ed really does have the potential to win back lost voters, particularly the many who stop supporting Labour after the Iraq invasion.


He is also helping to continue the rise in Labour party membership, as a recent @uklabour tweet said:

Since @Ed_Miliband was announced as our new Leader at 5pm yesterday 726 people have joined Labour. One new member every 1 min 48 secs #Lab10

The voting system


Some are questioning how fair the voting system is, as the union votes from the electoral college sealed Ed's win in the 5th round.  But union members are not mindless automatons who blindly follow their leadership.  If you look at the results many union members did not give Ed first preference.   


If the voting system is to be reviewed, it will be important to also look at the 1/3 of the electorate college which is given to MPs and MEPs.  Surely this is less democratic with a few hundred voters having a significant say on the outcome of the election.

We should never go back to Blairism

Recently I have seen numerous Labour activists defending Blair on the basis that he won us 3 general election.  A quick look at the polling figures show that this defence is not so black and white:

Labour Party results

Year    Popular Vote    Percentage of the vote
1997    13,518,167       43.2%
2001     10,724,953      40.7%
2005     9,552,436        35.2%

If Blair was so popular with the electorate why did Labour lose 4 million votes between 1997 and 2005?  The only reason Blair won the election in 2005, was that the alternative was Michael Howard.

The argument is that we should continue to use Blair's policies to attract back Tory voters.  In reality we did not lose that many votes to the Conservatives.  In 1997 the results for the other two parties were as follows:

1997
Cons: 9,600,943
Lib Dem: 5,242,947

And in 2010:

2010
Cons: 10,703,954
Lib Dem, 6.836.824

This shows that of the 4 million lost votes the Conservatives have only taken about a million votes and the Lib Dems about a million and a half.

This means that many who no longer vote Labour have either stopped voting or have opted for smaller parties.  It is these parties and the Lib Dems who we need to focus on.  Many of whom will have stopped voting Labour because of Iraq and attacks on civil liberties. 

Blarism may be good for targeting Tory voters, but that is not where we should be directing our efforts.

Further vandalism of the NHS as Con Dems axe NHS Direct

The Tories claimed in the general election:

"We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS"

This may be technically correct, as they have ring-fenced the budget.  But they are using some of the funding for a pointless and dangerous re-organization of the NHS and to pay for it they are cutting services.

The latest example of this is the announcement yesterday in the Guardian that the Con Dems plan to scrap NHS direct replacing it with a new budget service called NHS 111.

Currently forty percent of NHS Direct's staff are trained nurses.  NHS 111 will have one trained nurse to every 25 call centre staff, in other words only 4% of the staff will be professional nurses.  The other call operators will go on a 60 hour training course.

As soon as the public realise that the new call centre is not staffed by health professionals they will start putting extra demand on casualty and out of hour GP services, rather than risk receiving unprofessional advice from call centre operators.

I have used NHS Direct on more than one occasion in the past and was satisfied with the professional advice I received to save me having to put demand on other NHS services.  I would not use the proposed new service for health advice.

The biggest risk could come from a member of staff offering poor or incorrect advice to a caller which could result in them not seeking professional medical advice when they do require it.

The cost to the public of NHS Direct is £123 million a year.  This is money well spent, which reduces the demand on other areas of the NHS.  We must fight to defend this and you can start by signing the petition at http://www.savenhsdirect.co.uk/

There is no need for these cuts.  The government would not need to be looking for cuts if it was not for their expensive and dangerous re-structuring of the NHS which is going to cost the tax payer £1.8 billion a year.

We have to fight the cuts and the Con Dem vandalism of the NHS before it is too late and see all the improvements of the past 17 years thrown away.

Why I won't give a preference to any Labour leadership candidate who sends out a negative message on immigration

After a few months of the leadership campaign I have come to the decision that there are two candidates in the leadership election I cannot give a preference to on the ballot paper due to their views on immigration.

The first is Ed Balls.  It is with a heavy heart I do this as I feel he as been very good calling the Con Dems to account, but I cannot support a candidate who has come out with the following statements:

"What I've said is we should look at that free movement of labour directive to see whether or not it needs to be changed either to allow transition arrangements to be longer or also to prevent the practice where people can come and work in our country and then send benefits back to their own countries". UKPA

To be honest, I think Gordon's answer to Mrs Duffy showed he'd not been having the conversation, because what she said was the kind of things being said by Labour supporters, and in some cases former Labour supporters over the last year and a half. [This] was: 'Look, we're not racist, and we support our EU membership and we know that immigration's important for the NHS, but look what it's doing to my community, to my child's job prospects, to our housing queues'. Guardian

Secondly we have Andy Burnham.  Once again he has been good tackling the Con Dems, particularly on NHS reform.  But I will not support him because of statements like the following:

"We were in denial. We were behind the issue all the time, and myths were allowed to develop. There's still an ambivalence among some in Labour about discussing immigration. I've been accused of dog-whistle politics for doing so.

"But it was the biggest doorstep issue in constituencies where Labour lost. People aren't racist, but they say it has increased tension, stopped them getting access to housing and lowered their wages." Telegraph

While he said he would "avoid disowning our past" on immigration, he said: "Their [the electorate's] strong feeling was that we had our fingers in our ears and our hands over our eyes. We just didn't want to talk about it.

"For me the big task is for Labour to reconnect with people who are feeling this. They need to feel that Labour understands what they are saying and then will take steps to address it." Guardian

These two candidates worry me about the direction Labour would take if they became leader.  I don't deny that immigration is a doorstep issue, but this is mainly due to right wing tabloids blaming migration for everything from lack of housing and jobs to terrorism.

We have to establish a two pronged approach to this problem.  Firstly we have to have policies to increase and improve housing stock and tackle the areas which have high unemployment and deprivation.  Secondly we have to challenge the myths around immigration.

The easy solution is to agree with the likes of Mrs Duffy and try to appeal to those who feel immigration is an issue by lurching to the right and trying to out do the Tories on immigration.  But this is surely wrong and against the fundamental values of the Labour Party.

We have to move away from the New Labour rhetoric which resulted in David Blunkett accusing asylum seekers of "swamping" some British Schools (BBC News) and Phil Woolas putting out this dreadful leaflet during the general election:

100 days

We have now reached 100 days of the Con Dems and we face a very bleak picture of what the country will be like for the next five years.  The country faces:

• Drastic cuts to public services of up to 40%, even though the private sector is in no position to absorb the thousands of public sector workers who will be made redundant.  Those who manage to keep there jobs face a two year pay freeze at a time when RPI is currently 4.8%.
• A rise in VAT to 20%.  A regressive tax which will hit the poorest in society the worst.
• A wrecking bill which will see an expensive re-organisation of the NHS and allow back door privatisation by scrapping primary care trusts.
• An unequal education system which will see Gove's free schools create a two-tier education system at the expense of 700 projects being scrapped from Labour's building schools for the future scheme.  At the same time we will see higher education facing a real funding crisis as cuts kick in.
• A shake up of benefits which will see many of the poorest in society facing even tougher times as benefits are slashed.
• A cut in the number of MPs tagged onto the AV bill. The money this will save is negligible and will mean MPs will be more thinly stretched to cover constituency work.
• Councils will see funding cuts of £1.165 billion, meaning drastic cuts to local services.
• The arts will see major cuts regardless of how successful some of the projects currently are.  This has been shown by the scrapping of the UK film council.
• 9 regional development agencies have been scrapped.
• More outsourcing of government duties to the private sector, most recently with the scrapping of the audit commission.

There is absolutely no need for such huge cuts to public services at such speed, and no need for root and branch re-organisation of our public services.  These moves have more to do with Tory ideology than reducing the deficit.

None of this would have been possible without the support of the Lib Dems.  Many Lib Dem voters feel betrayed as they did not vote for this.  Many voters believed the promises of not bringing in immediate cuts or raising VAT and I sincerely hope they desert the Lib Dems at the next election, polls at the moment show a drastic drop in Lib Dem support and at the same time the highest polling for Labour in 3 years, not something you would expect so early in a new administration.

It was not an easy decision for me to leave the Green Party as I supported many of their ideals and policies, but the country now faces impending crisis and the wrecking of the public service improvements made by Labour in the past 13 years.   Only Labour can mount a serious challenge to the ConDem government and it is important that all of us who feel passionate about defending public services no longer sit on the sidelines and join the fightback to ensure the next election brings a clear Labour majority to roll back the mess this coalition will have made.

Action Alert – Panorama ‘Death on the Med’ - Contact the BBC

The following is a mailing from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

Action Alert – Panorama ‘Death on the Med’ - Contact the BBC

Last night, the BBC broadcast a Panorama programme entitled ‘Death on the Med’.

It claimed to reveal ‘what really happened’ when Israeli commandoes boarded the Mavi Marmara on 31 May 2010.

Watch the programme here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00thr24

The programme was extremely biased, portraying the activists on board as violent terrorists who set out to kill Israeli soldiers.

Please write to the BBC asking the following questions:

• Why was Israel’s ‘right’ to board the ship presumed throughout the programme?
• Why did the programme completely fail to mention that Israel’s siege of Gaza has been declared illegal by the UN? The assumption was made that Israel has the right to blockade Gaza, while the motives of those attempting to break an illegal blockade were questioned.
• Why did Jane Corbin not mention the bombs, rockets and white phosphorus dropped on Gaza by Israel during Operation Cast Lead over a three week period in 2008/9, killing 1,400 people? She did, however, mention the ‘thousands of rockets’ fired from Gaza into Israel, but did not say over what time period.
• Why was the Israeli evidence of how and when they killed the activists unquestioned? Activists who were on the top deck of the ship say the first person was killed – shot from a helicopter – before any Israeli had even landed on the deck. However, none of these activists were interviewed.
• Activists shot footage of the Israeli attack, but their cameras, laptops and other recording equipment was taken by the Israelis and has not been returned. Why was this point not raised during the programme, or put to the Israeli spokespeople?
• Why were the autopsy reports – which reveal that each victim was shot several times at close range, in a way that can’t constitute self-defence – not used, or even mentioned?
• Why was there no footage of the Israeli assaults on the activists – which led to nine deaths?
• Jane Corbin never questions the use of the word ‘terrorists’ to describe the activists, or their alleged willingness to attack the commandoes. Why does she then fail to examine why there were no fatalities or serious injuries among the Israeli commandoes, when these ‘terrorists’ were so willing to attack?
• Why were there no interviews with any of the British activists on board the ship, or with any of the journalists who were on board?
• Why was it not pointed out that the IDF has admitted doctoring the audio footage used in the programme, that the BBC claims was broadcast from the captain's deck?

  

You can find more points to make on the PSC website at www.palestinecampaign.org and http://t.co/wxcKyPH

Where to send your complaint:

Online: BBC complaints link: Follow the link and fill out the online form: https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/

Ring: BBC complaint line number: 03700 100 212

Email: panorama.reply@bbc.co.uk

Write: BBC Panorama, MC4A1, Media Centre, Media Village, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ.

=====================================

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) aims to raise public awareness about the occupation of Palestine and the struggle of the Palestinian people. PSC seek to bring pressure on both the British and Israeli government to bring their policies in line with international law. PSC is an independent, non-governmental and non-party political organisation with members from communities across the UK. Join PSC today!

Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Box BM PSA
London
WC1N 3XX

Tel:   020 7700 6192
Fax:  020 7609 7779

Email: info@palestinecampaign.org

Web: www.palestinecampaign.org

A short video explaining why the ConDem plans equal the privatisation of the NHS