Budget 2014 Takes Doublespeak to New Depths

Casual readers of the budget might wonder whether it had been written by chancellor George Osborne or George Orwell. A garden city built in a quarry and growth built on a reinflated housing bubble are hardly reassuring evidence of the economy based on "more economic security and economic resilience" that Osborne claims to be his objective.

Most shockingly, the freezing of the carbon tax and the reduction in the rate of air passenger duty for long-haul flights makes it plain that the chancellor has no understanding of what resilience means, and how our failure to tackle climate change threatens it.

Resilience has followed hard on the heels of that much-abused concept 'sustainability' in helping to define the key characteristics of a sustainable society. Unlike the financial system, which cracked when it came under pressure, a resilient system would be able to bounce back even in the face of unexpected challenges; unlike the railway line at Dawlish, resilient infrastructure is based on built-in redundancy that means there is always an alternative when a system comes under pressure from an unpredictable event. It is exactly this sort of resilience that has been designed out of our economy and society by years of lean management and just-in-time production systems. From computer systems to food supply chains, the globalised market-place has left us less resilient than we have ever been.

So what would a budget for resilience and security actually look like? Let's start with finance. A resilient model for banking would insist on the breaking up of the consolidated megabanks so that banks were no longer 'too big to fail', and no one bank would be large enough to bring down the whole system. Mr Osborne could pop across to the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS) and have a word with his colleague Vince Cable who operates RBS on behalf of its owners, us, the citizens of the UK. He might subtly suggest that he break it up into a system of local community banks, which could be required to actually act like banks, building supportive relationships with the local businesses that a resilient economy requires, rather than acting like casinos.

While on the issue of finance, we should also tell George that his desperate attempt to reinflate the housing bubble through extending the life of Help to Buy is storing up exactly the sort of catastrophic financial collapse that put us in this economic mess. It also does nothing for those who are most in need of reasonably priced housing, since it will only support mortgages they cannot afford and encourage house prices to rise even further beyond their reach.

The most fundamental cause of social insecurity in modern Britain is the failure of the housing market to provide affordable, comfortable homes to those who need them. Here the chancellor could act swiftly to bring in rent controls which would simultaneously reduce the massive amount of public money being wasted on housing benefit. He could also raise the borrowing limits on local authorities to enable them to build houses for those on their lengthy and growing waiting lists.

The greatest source of insecurity we all face is the unpredictable consequences of climate change, and it is here that Osborne's words ring most hollow. Here we see clearly the government's back-tracking on this most vital issue, building on the earlier folly of reducing green levies on energy companies, now further decreasing incentives to business to reduce their carbon emissions by freezing the carbon price floor. He has learned nothing about resilience from the winter's devastating storms and floods, but the urgent need for a consistent policy on climate change is now more evident than ever.

Real energy security comes from demand reduction as a result of improved energy installation in homes, combined with local generation from renewable energy sources. This government's mixed messages on renewable tariffs and taxes has undermined several proposed investments in wind generation, destroying jobs in my own home region of the South West. A higher rate of feed-in tariff limited to small-scale and community-owned electricity generation projects would be the best policy in the budget to ensure real energy security.

With a budget that achieves the exact opposite of the objectives the chancellor has set himself we are all wondering what will come out of the Ministry of Truth next. A Localism Act that centralises planning perhaps; or a Big Society that cuts benefits for the poor and vulnerable?

Written by  Molly Scott Cato Professor of Green Economics at Roehampton University and Green candidate in the European Elections

First published at The Huffington Post

Follow Molly Scott Cato on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MollyScottCato

Council of Europe recommends more powers for English local authorities

Councils in England should have more powers devolved to them, according to a new review into the state of local government.

The Council of Europe regularly reports on the state of local and regional democracy in the EU's member states. A delegation visited twice last year in only the second-ever review of the UK, the first taking place in 1998.

Published today, its report ‘Local and regional democracy in the United Kingdom' recommends greater devolution of powers to local government, increased tax-raising powers for councils and a fairer funding settlement for English local authorities.

The report concludes:

·         The ability of councils to provide "essential public services, quality health and social care and effective and adequate community services and facilities, especially to the growing number of older people" is under huge pressure following austerity measures.

·         It recommends devolution of powers to councils as "the ability of local authorities to discharge their responsibilities sometimes appears to be highly restricted by central government".

·         Despite significant funding reductions themselves, councils in Wales and Scotland are "better off financially than their English counterparts". The complex formula for distribution of central government funding produces "considerable uncertainty and effects of unequal treatment".

·         A diversified base of local revenue is an "urgent necessity" with council tax "limited by central or devolved governments, due to the referendum obligation" while "all rates are decided by government and funding is still dominated by central government grants".

Sir Merrick Cockell, LGA Chairman, said:

"This report recognises the huge challenge facing public services with councils having to find £20 billion worth of savings by the end of this current Parliament. The LGA has highlighted the impact this will have on essential services and the Government has listened by not making an additional reduction to local government funding in 2014/15.

"We feel this review is a fair reflection on the current pressures facing local government. The current model for financing and running local government needs to change and adapt to today's circumstances and it is important that local and central government works together to address these issues and takes these recommendations forward.

"Devolution of decision-making and tax-raising powers to local areas is needed to help save money and improve services and English communities need to be given the same significant say over everything from health services to public transport as they do across the border in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

"Our European counterparts also identified the urgent need for a fair and equitable distribution of public money across the United Kingdom. The 34-year-old Barnett Formula is short-changing English communities by as much as £4.1 billion a year and a needs-based model is needed for a fairer deal.

"When the delegation returns to the UK in five years, I hope these vital reforms will be in full force and local government will be looking ahead to the future with renewed hope."

This is a press release from the Local Government Association, which is a cross party grouping of local authorities, Chaired by a Tory. It shows the depth of feeling in local government about lack of funding under the ConDem government.

Lib Dems beaten by Bus Pass Elvis Party in council by-election

This is the result of the Clifton North, Nottingham council by-election held yesterday.

Bishop - Bus Pass Elvis  67
Clarke - UKIP             536
Ferguson - Labour      1179
Marshall - Lib Dem        56
Rule - Tory                 1025

It would be remiss to let today pass without noting the highlight from last night's council by-elections. In Clifton North, Lib Dem candidate Tony Marshall was beaten into last place by David Laurence Bishop of the Bus Pass Elvis Party (Marshall received 56 votes to Bishop's 67). The party's policies include the legalisation of brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs.

Bishop told the Nottingham Post that he was now "confident" of beating the Lib Dems in the general election. He said: "I will either stand in Broxtowe or Skegness and I'm more confident of beating the Liberal Democrats than I was two days ago. It's not the best news for the Liberal Democrats. But perhaps people actually liked my policies of legalising brothels with a 30 per cent reduction for OAPs and holding an enquiry into the cost of vets fees."

The Lib Dems, who have lost their deposit eight times in parliamentary by-elections since 2010, have previously been beaten by Professor Pongoo, a climate change activist who visits schools dressed as a penguin.

Written by George Eaton and first published at The New Statesman

Haringey Lib Dems in Meltdown

As reported by the local newspaper the Ham and High almost two thirds (12 out of 21) of the Lib Dem councillors on Haringey Council are stepping down at the London council elections in May.

The departing councillors rather skirt around the reasons for taking this decision now, and the Lib Dem Group Leader cllr Richard Wilson even suggests that this is all part of natural process. Come off it mate, I’ve never known so many serving councillors quitting at the same time, and the reason is plainly obvious.

The Lib Dems in Haringey and much of London (and the north of England) are a toxic brand. People in these areas voted Lib Dem because they were unhappy with Labour in 2010, but are horrified by the subsequent ConDem government’s attack on the welfare state. These councillors know full well that they are highly unlikely to retain their seats and have no doubt been making alternative plans for some time. Rats leaving a sinking ship, you might reasonably conclude, rather than some natural turn over of personnel.

A brief look at the results of the GLA elections in 2012 paints the picture perfectly if you are in any doubt about the Lib Dems prospects at this year’s local elections. Labour won comfortably in every ward in Haringey, and in 18 of the 19 wards in the borough, the Green party beat the Lib Dems. I said at the time, that the writing was on the wall for Lib Dem councillors and sure enough they have just been marking time for the last two years. Some of them have no doubt tried to do their best, but such is the impossibility of providing good quality local public services, whilst central government funding for local authorities is slashed, have decided to jump rather than wait to be pushed.   

But what of our MP and junior Coalition Government Minister, Lynne Featherstone? Well she’s got another year to think about it, since she is not up for re election until 2015, but she is showing no sign of throwing in the towel like fellow north London MP Lib Dem Sarah Teather (Brent central). No, Featherstone seems to think she can win, because she is ‘personally popular’ unlike her party.

There is a great myth spread around by Featherstone and her supporters that she is a ‘good constituency MP’. We are bombarded in Hornsey and Wood Green (Featherstone’s Parliamentary seat) with leaflets telling us what a good constituency MP she is, a case of if you say something often enough, people will eventually believe it.

Well, I’m not buying it. I admit she is very good at self publicity, but that is all. She recently tried to take credit for the halting of plans to build a huge waste plant at Pinkham Way, for instance, but this was all the work of the residents in the Pinkham Way Alliance. This is only one example of Featherstone shamelessly claiming the credit for some achievement, when she’s done nothing but write the odd letter about it.

What’s more, she is an embarrassment in Parliament where she is commonly referred to as ‘Featherhead’ by other MPs (including some in her own party). But the main thing is, as the dozen departing Lib Dem councillors realise, personal reputation, whether real or otherwise, is not enough to save Lib Dem politicians. Featherstone will be unceremoniously booted out in 2015, for the part her party has played in propping up this deeply unpopular Tory led government.   

Close the door on the way out please Lynne, but make sure it doesn’t hit you in the face.        

Statement on Local Authority Cuts

The Green party of England and Wales fought the 2010 general election in opposition to the savage public service cuts supported by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. The Green party offered a different approach to reducing the country’s debts, which included making the wealthy (people and corporations) pay their fair share of tax, investing in the economy to produce sustainable growth through the Green New Deal, some cuts for example to Trident and pledging to protect public services particularly for the most vulnerable in our society.

Unfortunately, we did not win the general election and so are unable to put these policies into practice, although Caroline Lucas has almost single handedly taken the opposition to the Coalition government cuts agenda. The ideologically driven shrink the state policies of the Coalition government aim to reduce public spending and turn most of the public services over to private corporations. 

Our elected representatives in local government are on the front line in the assault on public spending, with local authorities having their funding from central government cut by around a third since 2010. Councils of all political stripes are hurting and they worry about whether they will even be able to fund their statutory duties in the future. Local government is under serious threat and everyone involved in it knows this to be true, despite the blithe statements about local authorities making efficiency savings and encouraging local business growth to pay for services, trumpeted by the Coalition central government. All the easy savings and many not so easy have been made now, and a future of even more of the same is daunting.

Haringey Green Party would continue to look for better and more effective ways of doing things in Council budgets especially on energy, transport, supplies, consultancy, and agency fees, whilst avoiding cuts in services, jobs, or wages and whilst recognising the importance of all sub-contractors’ staff (as well as Council employees) being paid a London living wage.  We would oppose any salaries in new appointments being over ten times the lowest full time wage.

Haringey Green party supports Green councillors who refuse to participate in or support an administration that implements any further cuts; and recognises that Green councillors may better represent the interests of their constituents by remaining in opposition at this time.

Haringey Green Party supports popular mobilisation against the cuts through demonstrations and where necessary direct action, in coordination with local, regional and national anti-cuts movements such as the People’s Assembly. HGP would welcome coordinated actions between Green and left councillors in different areas to resist cuts in services. 

HGP would welcome a national campaign for reform of local taxation and/or Council or GLA charges to make them more progressive and to capture more of the profits of developers to support local services, and would encourage and support any Green councillors elected here to pursue these aims as well as to campaign for local eco-taxes like levies on commercial packaging.

Haringey Green Party believes that Green Councillors, whenever faced with a need to make instant decisions about budgets in the Council chamber and whenever consultation with supporters and allies is not possible within the permitted time frame, should do whatever they judge to be in the best interests of the local population and consistent with Green Party policy.

Boris, the super rich and pay inequality

Jenny Jones AM is leader of the Green Party on the London Assembly and Green Party Mayoral candidate for 2012

Nobody could be surprised by Boris Jonson's latest column defending bankers and the rest of London's super-rich elite.

He’s an expert in baiting the left on subjects like bankers’ pay, then switching his ground to promote the living wage. But he isn’t just a newspaper troll. He is also the Mayor of London, and he is using this position of considerable power and influence to help the elite reshape London, with real world consequences.

Did you know, for example, that the only time the Mayor has travelled to Brussels in person was to lobby for the hedge funds?

His advocacy of the wider financial services sector is incredibly one sided, without any consideration of their role in the wider London economy.

He has talked about their tax contributions, but not their tax avoidance and subsidies. He calls them the engine of our economy, but doesn’t seem too concerned that (so the New Economics Foundation tell me) only 6p of every pound deposited with RBS/Natwest goes into British businesses. He has lobbied against the bankers’ bonus cap, the Financial Transaction Tax and a number of other modest reforms of the banking industry.

His advisors, his research, the evidence he draws on are all aligned with the needs of the elite he defends.

Where does the Mayor imagine the 1 per cent make all of their money, and hold all of their wealth? What about the mis-selling scandals, the continued exploitation of workers in shakily built factories, the naked profiteering of the big six energy companies? He doesn’t want to look at the damage done by an unequal society to London’s economy and Londoner’s living standards.

The 1 per cent lobby against a mandatory living wage, saying it would mean job losses, while their pay rose 14 per cent in a year. Yes, some of that extra pay will go towards their sizeable tax returns. But one result of 700,000 Londoners earning less than a living wage is a £700 million annual subsidy from taxpayers to employers. Why not cut out the taxman and share the profits more fairly in the first place?

The Mayor champions a voluntary living wage, but in the same breath defends the right of employers to pay their employees poverty wages.

The 1 per cent are driving up property prices in the capital, exacerbating a housing crisis that has no end in sight. London is already the most unequal city in the developed world, with the wealthiest tenth of the population amassing 273 times the wealth owned by the bottom tenth. Most wealth at the top lies in pension funds, investments and property.

This is bolstered by taxpayer subsidies like Help to Buy and housing benefit, policies the Mayor supports that avoid the root causes of our housing crisis and instead help ordinary people scrape by to the benefit of the 1 per cent.

The Mayor is their champion, supporting the construction of incredibly expensive tower blocks that are often build on the site of demolished council housing.

What’s really infuriating is that the Mayor actually has a good news story on pay, but he doesn’t give it any attention.

I’ve tracked the difference in pay between the highest and lowest paid staff in the different bodies the Mayor oversees – City Hall (the GLA), Transport for London, the Metropolitan Police Service and the London Fire Brigade. Since he became Mayor, pay has actually become slightly more equal across all bodies except TfL. This is both because top pay has slightly dropped and bottom pay has risen.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say everything has been rosy in these organisations over the past five years. But I doubt the Mayor would say it has been a disaster. He just doesn’t want to look at whether he can replicate this move towards equality across London at large.

Why can’t he get on and make London more equal, a place where getting a job really does pay enough to build a life on, rather than a city where more and more of us feel like we are just sweated by a global elite?

First published at Left Foot Forward

The Lib Dems - Yellow by Name, Yellow by Nature

Confirmation that the Lib Dems are the political equivalent of something you'd rather not get on your shoes came with their opposition to Labour's parliamentary motion against the Bedroom Tax earlier this week. Apart from Tim Farron and Andrew George, Lib Dem MPs swung behind the Tories and have thus condemned the hundreds of thousands impacted by this callous, cruel, and contemptuous Tory tax throughout the country to at least two more years of misery and despair up to the next general election in 2015.

The 31 Lib Dems who voted with the government were joined by a further 21 who avoided the issue by failing to vote. Making this latest betrayal even more staggering is that it came in defiance of their own party, which condemned the Bedroom Tax at their party conference in Glasgow in September.

What motivates a person to go into politics fuelled not by principle but rank opportunism? What is that gets such a person out of bed in the morning? Hopefully sometime in the future psychologists will explore the mindset of your average Lib Dem MP in an attempt to understand the minds of those who embrace betrayal as a virtue rather than, as with normal people, rejecting it as a vice.

Since joining with the Tories in a coalition government of the bad and mad, the Lib Dems have done politics a huge disservice, responsible for deepening people's cynicism and disdain for the political process. Russell Brand's recent interview with Jeremy Paxman, during which he articulated this disdain as the reason why he's never voted, spoke to the huge gulf that exists between a growing constituency of people and those meant to represent them.

Step forward the Liberal Democrats.

At least with the Tories you know you are dealing with a party of unreconstructed class warriors. At least they make little effort to conceal their feral hatred of the poor and working people. In contradistinction, however, the Lib Dems fought the last general election on a manifesto that was broadly progressive.

Recall for a moment the excitement surrounding Nick Clegg as the coming man of British politics, a breath of fresh air who in the televised debates against David Cameron and Gordon Brown emerged as a young leader with fresh ideas, 'integrity', 'honesty', and a strong sense of social justice. Indeed Clegg succeeded in inspiring thousands of people, especially young people, to campaign and vote for him. Remember his pledge on tuition fees?

Not long after the last election a Newsnight poll of Lib Dem voters recorded that 40% felt betrayed by Clegg. This translates to some 2.7 million voters. You would think it would have made uncomfortable reading for any party, yet three years on it is clear that the collective mindset of the Lib Dems is one of 'nobody likes us and we don't care'.

But this is not a game. The Bedroom Tax exemplifies the worst excesses of a government intent of using an economic recession caused by the greed of the rich as a pretext for effecting the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich by slashing public spending regardless of the human or social cost. The lives of the poor and economically vulnerable matter not a whit in this process. On the contrary they have been demonised, dehumanised, and slandered under the rubric of austerity, which translates to a mass experiment in human despair.

According to the National Housing Federation just over half of all social housing tenants had been pushed into rent arrears just weeks after the Bedroom Tax was rolled out in April. In September an investigation by UN special rapporteur on housing, Raquel Rolnick, ended with her calling for the tax to axed on the basis that it "could be a violation of the human right to housing".

For her efforts she was dismissed and derided by the Tories as a crank.

The lack of affordable social housing in Britain has long been a badge of shame, reflective of the apathy of the entire political class when it comes to the needs of the poor. Here, as with too many issues, we see evidence of hardly a sliver of difference when it comes to the Tories, Lib Dems, and Labour. With thousands of families forced to rely on bed and breakfast accommodation, wherein they are crammed into one room, and with a private housing sector enjoying the fruits of exorbitant rents due to demand outstripping supply, the idea that those who happen to have an extra bedroom within the social housing sector should have their housing benefit cut or move into smaller accommodation is barbaric.

The size of the housing benefit bill is not the fault of tenants, it is the fault of greedy landlords charging extortionate rents. Rent control within the private rental sector in conjunction with a national housebuilding programme designed to meet the demand for social housing needs to be implemented as a matter of urgency. It is the only rational solution to the crisis. Sadly, the words rational and Tory do not belong in the same sentence. Putting it even more succinctly, men and women whose collective moral compass is stuck in the mid 19th century are about as rational as a box of frogs.

The Lib Dems were given the opportunity to go some way to salvaging some political credibility this week by voting for a Labour motion against one of the most vile policies ever visited on the poor and economically disadvantaged in many a year. They chose not to and hopefully now political oblivion awaits.

As the man said: "Treason doth never prosper".

 

Written by John Wight follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnwight1      

First published at The Huffington Post

The Great Royal Mail Robbery – But Will They Get Away With It?

I was pleased to see that the Green Party conference unanimously passed the motion to stop the privatisation of Royal Mail and support the campaign by the union the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to fight the sell-off.

I worked for BT for twenty years, joining just a few years after it was privatised in 1984 which was the first of the public utilities to be sold off by the Thatcher Tory government, but was followed by many more, some under the subsequent Labour government, in an ideological process of robbing the poor to the benefit of the wealthy.

In the time that I worked at BT it did change a lot, going from 250,000 employees down to something like 80,000 by the time that I left, and I think even lower now. When I started working there I did think that there was a plausible argument for privatising a business where thousands of people had to wait six months or more for a telephone connection in an industry that was obviously going to expand because of technology.

Of course the government at the time could have made that investment themselves, but that was the whole point, take ownership off everyone and concentrate the profits generated, which amounted to billions of pounds a year, into the hands of those who could afford to buy the shares. Despite share issues to staff and some allocations of shares to ‘small investors’, the ownership largely fell into the hands of the big investors. And the drive to increase share price superseded everything else, including service.

Asset stripping became the policy in BT, with over a hundred buildings and land sold for development in London alone and Royal Mail is well endowed in property, but selling it off is bound to have a more acute effect on customers in the mail trade, with longer distances to collect registered mail etc.

Customer service has actually gone down in the privatisation years. Who hasn’t despaired of the call centre customer service experience? Who can be bothered to examine the bewildering array of choice of providers and their myriad ever changing tariff deals?   

One cultural thing that did linger in BT up until the time I left, was a unionised one, with around 80% membership amongst sub management grades and even a decent proportion in the lower ranks of management. This cultural attachment to the union, is even stronger in Royal Mail than it is (was) in BT, and I fully expect a huge vote in favour of industrial action, and a really solid response from the rank and file.

I was a CWU rep in my time working at BT, so I mixed with activists from the postal side of the union and I know that they are not going down without a fight on this. But all may not be lost.

Big political beasts have tried to privatise Royal Mail like Michael Heseltine and Peter Mandleson, only to be thwarted by a campaign of resistance, not only from the CWU, but from Tory MP’s and now probably Lib Dem MP’s in rural constituencies, where inevitably the service will get worse and more expensive, despite assurances to the contrary. It could well cost some of these MP’s their seats, so I do not discount a U-Turn on this policy by the government.

Support the CWU Campaign Save Our Royal Mail     

What is the Gagging Law?

A very illiberal law is being proposed by the ConDem government, which will limit the amount of political campaigning that organisations such as trade unions, charities and pressure groups by allowing them to only spend a small amount of money. Big business of course will be unaffected.

Using the Financial Crisis To Force Down Lower and Middle Wages

We have featured on this blog the way the Coalition government is blaming the recession on welfare benefits recipients, and using the current economic crisis to make cuts in welfare payments, but they have also taken the opportunity to cut wages, for the lower and middle section also. A recent report by the TUC highlights this policy.

The report finds that almost 80% of the jobs created in the UK since June 2010 have been in low paid industries, i.e. paying less than £7.95 per hour. It goes onto say:

Retail has made the biggest contribution to rising employment levels, with the number of employee jobs in this sector increasing by 234,000. The average wage in retail is just £7.35 an hour. Residential care, where the average wage is £7.78 per hour, makes the second biggest contribution of 155,000 jobs.

Just over one in five (23 per cent) net new employee jobs created since June 2010 has been in the highly paid computer programming, consultancy and related services industry, where the average hourly wage is £18.40. The workforce in this sector has grown by 131,000.

In middle-paid industries, which account for nearly three-quarters of the UK workforce and where the average wage is between £7.95 and £17.40 per hour, there has been no net job creation since June 2010. While some industries, such as legal and accounting have created jobs (135,000), others such as public administration (-160,000) and social work (-68,000) have shed them.

High-paid industries were hardly affected by the recession, with the number of jobs falling by just 0.9 per cent. There are now a record 900,000 employee jobs in high-paid sectors.

On top of this, public sector workers, who are by and large low to middle earners, have had pay freezes and pension contribution increases over the last five years, with the increasing use of short term contract and agency staff at even lower wages. Private sector workers have also had pay freezes and reduced hours, as their employers piled huge amounts of cash reserves (over £300 billion at the last count, not including the banks).

Then as The Guardian reports we have one million workers employed on zero hours contracts across the country, meaning that they are paid when required like the casual hiring of dock workers in New York in the 1950’s, immortalised by Marlon Brando in the film On the Waterfront. No sick pay, no holidays, no pay when not required.

It should come as no surprise that most low paid workers are women, and are disproportionately affected by the forcing down of these wage rates, as this Coalition government is deeply misogynistic and so it is at best ambivalent to this outcome.

Wage rates have been falling though since 2003, under the previous Labour government, though not so sharply, but the gap then was taken up by increasing property prices, where people borrowed against their rising house value to fuel the economy in buying consumer goods. It appears that the current government is attempting to revive this approach with ‘help to buy’ guarantees on home loans, seemingly learning nothing from the debt ridden causes of the 2008 and continuing recession.

All of this while boardroom pay and bonuses rocket.

The future employment prospects for most UK workers will be of low pay, few benefits and generally insecure.  Further legal curbs on the trade unions, and a ‘loosening’ of employment law, with higher fees for employment tribunals thrown in.

A low waged economy where what can be outsourced to China or India cheaper will be and what by some necessity needs to be based in the UK, will be low paid and insecure for most workers, if they can find work at all.

A future where in the first generation since World War 2, the children will be poorer than their parents, rolling back all the social progress in living standards that was achieved in the last century.

Let’s not go down meekly; we can at least put up a fight.       

Migrant Political Activists Support Reverend Paul Nicolson's Anti-Benefit Cuts Stance in Haringey

 

On Thursday 1 August I operated as Secretary of the non-party-political Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group that benefits Brent & Camden & Beyond, as we say in the KUWG. On Friday I was in Haringey Green Party branding, supporting council tax protester Revd Paul Nicolson of Tottenham outside Tottenham Magistrates Court. Clarence was the face of the KUWG for the photo-shoot attended by a photographer from the Haringey Independent and others — including Tottenham's post thundery shower midges that left me with souvenirs of the occasion today!

The police objected to the idea of people being photographed against the backdrop of the Magistrates Court, and so we had to be photographed with our backs to the main road.

Among those who attended, there was a family from Derbyshire who read of Paul Nicolson's stand in Wednesday's Daily Mirror: “Reverend Paul Nicolson: Retired Anglican vicar ready to go to jail in his battle for poor”. Paul was also supported by Haringey Housing Action/Haringey Solidarity Group people, Claire Glasman and Petra Dando of Camden United for Benefit Justice. Clarence of KUWG was also one of those who went into the court with Paul and Paul's son and daughter. Paul's son joked with me that he had come along to disown his father when Paul gets sent down. (I had told Paul's son that it was great that he was there in support of his father, in contrast with the way that one of Mahatma Gandhi's sons was so disgusted with his own upbringing that he became a Muslim.)

Before going into the court, Paul gave a great speech that follows in the pattern of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech 50 years ago this 28 August, updating and relocating it to mention wiping out the meanness of sanctions, £71.60 a week JSA and low birth weight futures. (There is currently a low birth weight rate in parts of Tottenham that is higher than Turkey's.) Paul concluded by saying that he is prepared to go to prison or to only pay his Council Tax when Haringey Council start using it to genuinely help Haringey residents stay in Haringey. I summarised, "So you are keen to pay for Council services but not Council disservices.

"Absolutely!" he affirmed.

Epilogue: For information regarding what went on in the court, see Jaber Mohamed's report, “Reverend Paul Nicolson uses appearance at Enfield and Haringey Magistrates Court to appeal for leniency for victims of benefit cuts.” And more information regarding , what the Chairperson of Taxpayers Against Poverty's very public stance is about than Chairman of the bench Freddy Lawson could tolerate, go to the Taxpayers Against Poverty website.

 

By Alan Wheatley of Haringey Green Party and Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group

A Referendum on UK Membership of the European Union

Well, as UKIP surge in the opinion polls and the Tory party goes into one of its perennial spasms about the European Union, and gay marriage and the fact that we don’t live in the 1950’s anymore, foreign observers must think that the British have gone completely mad. And to an extent I’d be inclined to agree with them, because there is crazy feeling about our politics at moment, but it is largely limited to only a section of the people, whilst more are worried about their economic security and many other issues before the European Union.

One of the paradoxes of the rise in support for UKIP at the expense of all of the main parties (though particularly the Tories), is that opinion polls show increasing support for staying in the EU, though all the polls do have majorities in favour of having a referendum on the issue. UKIP are the voting receptacle of protest votes in by-elections and local elections, for all sorts of reasons as written about previously. This is not a deep insight, and surely must be obvious to all involved in politics, but a section of the Tory party have decided that this is the best chance they will get to quit the EU, and they are certainly not going to waste it.

For the record you can read the Green party’s policies on the European Union here and you will note that we have a vision of a very different Europe, one which prioritises the interests of the people of Europe, over that of multi-national corporations, which is how things stand at present. That sort of change would need referendums in all nations of the EU, but that kind of choice is definitely not what we in the UK or elsewhere will be getting.

Let’s take the Prime Minister’s plan for a referendum, ‘in or out’ in 2017, after he (if he’s still Prime Minister, which looks doubtful) has renegotiated our terms of membership of the EU as our starting point. On the face of it, this looks to be a reasonable position. It is likely that there will be changes in the EU, given the problems with the Euro. And there are problems a plenty with the how the EU works. The Common Agricultural Policy is one obvious example, and unfair tariff and trading rules with developing countries, is another.

But these things are not what David Cameron wants to renegotiate. He will try and get some deal on limiting immigration from eastern Europe, though I don’t think he will be very successful. He also wants to protect the City of London financial services industry from possible EU regulation, which he might get some concessions on. Where he probably will get somewhere, is over employment regulations, like the working time directive and agency workers regulations. So, less control over the industry that precipitated our current economic crisis and fewer rights at work, as the new settlement. 

That will be the choice, ‘in’ the newly the negotiated EU without the same worker protection as the rest and a free-wheeling finance sector, or ‘out’. We probably won’t even get the option of staying in on our current terms, let alone anything better, if the Tories get away with it.

Luckily, enough Tory MP’s seem hell bent on pursuing this issue until they get their referendum, splitting the Conservative party and the Coalition with the Lib Dems in the process, which makes it much more likely that they will not get the opportunity to determine the terms of any referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU, any time soon.                  

Green Party - Austerity Isn't Working

No local elections in London this year, but there are elections in other areas. A timely message from Caroline Lucas, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavillion, the ConDem austerity policies are not working, instead, they making the economic situation much worse. Even the IMF, well known lefties they are not, have told George Osborne the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he should change course.  

2012: How the NHS Became Privatised

2012 will go down as a cataclysmic date in the history of the English health service. It was the year when the virus of privatisation finally gained control of the cell nucleus of the NHS and began its destruction in earnest.

If you listen to the politicians you wouldn’t know it. According to David Cameron, “we will not be selling off the NHS.” If you believe Nick Clegg, “there will be no privatisation.” They have been able to get away with this deception because the transformation they unleashed is messy. It is happening everywhere, but not uniformly. It is hidden by its very scale and spread.

But take a step back and the patterns are unmistakable. The controversial Health and Social Care Act passed in March 2012 ended the English National Health Service in all but name by abolishing the 60-year duty on the government to provide comprehensive healthcare for all. In its place is not so much a new structure as a process with its own dynamic-that of a snowball tumbling down a hillside.

All across the country treatments that patients used to receive are no longer available to them. Hip and knee replacements, tonsillectomies and cataract operations are among the procedures being restricted, forcing patients to wait longer, suffer in pain, or go private. Surgeries, wards, units and community services have been closed and clinical staff shed as the NHS desperately seeks to make “savings” of £20 billion.

Private GP surgeries near you

With perfect symmetry, the private sector expects to win £20 billion of business from the NHS, according to the corporate finance adviser Catalyst. Huge slices of the health service are being awarded to the highest bidder. With remarkable speed a few gluttonous companies: Virgin Care, Serco, Care UK – have secured dominant positions in the market, gobbling up services from Cornwall to Cumbria. The defenders of the reforms talk about competition driving improvements, but already it is consolidation, not competition, that we are seeing.

There may be a GP surgery near you that is now run by Virgin. Until March 2012 Virgin Care did not exist, although it had been operating under another name since 2010. It now runs at least 358 GP practices. Behind the friendly PR façade of the bearded entrepreneur, patients see a different face, cold and sinister. Take the Kings Heath Practice in Northampton. Since Virgin took it over from the NHS, patients have had to wait up to three weeks for an appointment instead of three days, three GPs have been reduced to one, and three nurses cut to one part-time nurse. And while the company boasts about the surgery’s opening hours, often there are no clinicians present, just an open empty building. Locals complain that Virgin has “brought Third World medical standards to Kings Heath.”

Consolidation is also happening in out-of-hours GP cover. In November Care UK took over out-of-hours services for up to fifteen million people across England by simply buying Harmoni, a company that started as a GP co-operative. The only competition patients see is between their health needs and the profit margin. People in Cornwall know which wins out: an official report in July found the Serco-run out-of-hours service in the county was under-staffed and falsified data to meet targets.

The biggest privatisations are taking place in community health services. The government’s “any qualified provider” policy means whole services must be subject to competition, leading to the demise of NHS-run options. Local NHS bodies have already been instructed to outsource 39 types of service. Dubbed the “39 steps to privatisation,” this covers everything from autism care to wheelchair provision. Even publicly provided vasectomies are for the chop.

The ‘logic’ of privatisation

The logic of privatisation favours a few big winners over the co-ops, charities and social enterprises that act as window dressing for the policy. A prime example came on April Fools’ Day, 2012, when Virgin Care took over a £500 million contract to deliver community services in parts of Surrey. The joke was on Central Surrey Health, a “social enterprise” formed by former NHS staff that was praised by David Cameron and hailed as a model for the Big Society. Central Surrey Health scored the most points in the bidding process, but the contract was given to Virgin because of its financial backing.

Not even hospitals offer shelter from the destructive gale blowing through the NHS. Many Hospital Trusts are being pushed to the financial brink by the disastrous legacy of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), under which new hospital building was financed by a deal that is akin to paying by credit card, leaving Trusts with crippling debts to the banks.

This has led to some Trusts literally going bankrupt, such as the South London Healthcare Trust which serves over a million people in three hospitals. Its PFI debts, like a black hole, have sucked in surrounding hospitals and units, like Lewisham’s A&E department which is now facing closure. Patients are left high and dry. As for the Trust, it is to be carved up and offered piece by piece for privatisation, with the familiar vultures-Virgin, Serco, Care UK and Circle-picking at the remains.

In a first for the private sector, in February 2012 Circle took over an entire general hospital at Hinchingbrooke in Cambridgeshire. The hospital has since fallen 19 places in the patient satisfaction rankings and its finances have worsened, forcing Circle to ask for a bailout after just six months.

Private income at NHS Hospitals

Combine this with another controversial aspect of the Health and Social Care Act-the ability for NHS hospitals to earn half their income from private patients-and the implications are scary. A chilling investigation by ITV’s Exposure program secretly filmed doctors assuring a private patient that her money would buy priority over NHS patients within the same hospital. It revealed a tragic case where a consultant left half way through a dangerous birth to carry out a private caesarean section. The baby later died. A two-tier health system is not on the way; it is already here.

The drive for profit is insatiable, not least because many of the dominant players in the new market are owned by ruthless private equity firms. Similar funding models to that which led to the collapse of the Southern Cross care-home company are now in the NHS. For example, Hospital Corporation of America, which is entering into joint ventures with NHS hospitals, is majority owned by three private equity firms including Mitt Romney’s notorious Bain Capital.

All of this comes before the most high-profile part of the Health and Social Care Act has even been fully implemented-the replacement of PCTs with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Sold to the public as “giving power to GPs,” this transfers responsibility for spending £60 billion of public money to largely unaccountable new groups, who will in turn outsource the work to privatised “commissioning support units”-allowing the private sector to decide how taxpayers’ money is spent. If that sounds complicated, it is. David Nicholson, the head of the health service, fears it could end in “misery and failure.”

The Labour party, after its record in government of opening the way for privatisation, has changed tack in opposition, repeatedly pledging to repeal the Act and scrap the market if elected. These are important commitments that it must be held to.

But the quantity of contracts currently being signed may take the NHS over a tipping point, where the “facts on the ground” cannot be reversed. That is why it is crucial to monitor, expose, slow and disrupt the destruction of the NHS now, while there may still be time to save it.
—
Alex Nunns is an NHS campaigner, writer and editor whose blog about a job offer from Care UK went viral in July 2011. This article was sponsored by the NHS Support Federation

This post was first published at Liberal Conspiracy

Haringey at the end of the welfare state

You may have seen the Guardian’s two-pager on poverty and homelessness on 19 Nov. The New Economics Foundation’s (NEF) report ; Everyday Austerity; life at the end of the welfare state looks at the impact of the ConDems’ myriad benefit cuts in Haringey – and Birmingham. It details the local effects of cuts in tax credits, housing benefits, benefits for disabled people – and the horrendous prospect of more to come, with £28 billion to be stripped out of the national welfare budget by 2017. Haringey Citizen’sAdvice Bureau has estimated that the ‘benefits cap’ of £500 per week being introduced by the ConDems in April 2013 will hit around 1100 families in the borough, with 600 of them losing over £100 a week.

There are now at least four food banks in Haringey, serving those hit by cuts and increasingly by the new sanctions regime which, since October, allows job centres to deny people benefits for up to three years if they offend against the very rigid jobseeker rules.

The NEF report reveals:-

-         

      Drastic effects of the limits on housing benefit/local housing allowance which were introduced in January this year, placing 6900 Haringey homes that were affordable for people claiming these benefits now out of their reach. Up to 1100 families are expected to become homeless as a result –plus over 800 single people who are ineligible for local authority rehousing and are already cramming into church-run night shelters.

-          

      A mounting personal debt crisis, with three and a half times as many applications for ‘crisis loans’ in 2009/10 compared to 2005/6. (The Social Fund which provided “crisis loans” will close and the responsibility for making them devolved to local councils in April 2013 – it’s not yet clear what Haringey will do about this).

-          

      A huge overload for the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, which now sees queues from dawn onwards of people needing debt advice, help with appeals against benefit cuts and withdrawal of benefits due to sanctions and the much-criticised ATOS medical tests. (These tests have re-classified many disabled people – often inappropriately- as ‘fit for work’ in the worst job market for decades).

All this comes as Paul Nicholson, of Taxpayers against Poverty (TAP), has begun a campaign against cuts in Council Tax Benefit (see earlier post on this blog and the Haringey Independent). From April 2013, central government money for this benefit will be reduced, and councils will have to either source more of its cost themselves, or devise their own local schemes at lower rates. Haringey’s consultation about this ended on November 19th, with TAP and many others arguing that it is both unjust and unrealistic to expect people already facing benefit cuts, to pay 20% of their council tax when previously all of it had been paid for them.  Whilst rich councils like Westminster can afford to fill the gap and maintain CTB levels, Haringey cannot. Its main solution must be to lobby central government against the change with other similarly affected councils.

Likewise London-wide is needed to secure more affordable housing and challenge Tory policies. Mayor Johnson recently announced that he would no longer fund any new social-rented housing. He said the 50,000 target for new ‘affordable’ homes over the next four years would mean rents at between 60 and 80% of the market rate – well above the levels that housing benefit will now pay.  Unless Haringey acts with other councils to demand the reinstatement and increase of genuine ‘affordable homes’ targets, and to demand the reintroduction of rent control, low waged and disabled people will basically be driven out of London.

The failure of other boroughs to provide sufficient low cost housing also impacts on Haringey. Families hit by the housing benefits cuts are moving to Haringey to escape high rents closer to the centre. Other boroughs are also renting private landlords' here for 'their' homeless - between June and September 2012, 258 homeless households were housed by other boroughs in Haringey, amongst them 27 'vulnerable' needing social work support, whilst Haringey council had to place 105 of its own homeless applicants out of the borough. With other London boroughs, by last month it was looking for homeless accommodation outside of London.     

But on affordable homes, Haringey’s own policies need a re-think.  The new “Plan for Tottenham” with its promise to increase the proportion of owner-occupied housing in Tottenham and restrict conversion of existing buildings to bedsits (“HMOs” or “houses in multiple occupation”) makes one wonder where more badly needed low-cost housing is going to come from.

We need some Green Councillors to stand up for the low-paid, disabled and unemployed people of Tottenham, to secure adequate housing for them, more jobs and a London living wage level.

Written by Anne Gray

Opinion Polls – Under the Radar

When polling organisations conduct political party voting intention opinion polls, usually commissioned by a newspaper, the story is always of how the three main (perhaps that should be two now) parties are faring, and which leader has the best approval ratings.

The polls have been pretty consistent over recent months, showing Labour with a double digit lead over the Conservatives, and the poor old Lib Dems flat lining at around 10%, sometimes as low as 8%. But if you look more closely, the ‘others’ are doing surprisingly well. The ‘story’ will only mention this in passing, but if you look at the full results, as political anoraks like me do, there is something happening, which is much more of a ‘story’ than that put out by the commissioning media outfits.

What you see is an impressive (around 10%) showing for UKIP, sometimes beating the Lib Dems into fourth place, and an improvement in the Green party share, which is around 3 or 4%. An example is this recent Opinium poll commission by The Observer newspaper. 

Now, that may not sound all that notable, but from my observations over the years, the Green party normally polls about 1 to 2% in national polls, except when there is an election (proportional) coming up like the European Parliament elections, when I’ve seen us poll as high as 6 or 7%.

This is a trend which I reported on this blog here back in May, and recent opinion polls do seem to confirm this view. But why is this happening?

I think the reasons are varied to some extent. Labour, Tory and Lib Dems all offer very similar policies these days, for one thing. The MP’s expenses scandal still resonates amongst the public too, and it is the main parties MP’s that were involved in this fraudulent raid on the public purse.  But I think the main reason is a desire amongst the voters to ‘protest’ vote, “sod the lot of you” type of thing.

What has changed on the party political landscape in recent years is that the Lib Dems are no longer the beneficiaries of this desire to stick it up the political establishment. They are of course in government now, though you would hardly know it with the Tories dominating the coalition government’s policies.

Another opinion poll from Opinum sheds some light on this particular theory. Take a look at this graphic (right hand side). Of those who voted Lib Dem in the 2010 general election, only a third are intending to vote Lib Dem again, with Labour gaining the most (39%) of those who have changed their allegiance but 8% have switched to UKIP and 10% to the Green party. I find the idea that voters can switch from the most pro-European of the British political parties (Lib Dems) to UKIP whose whole raison d’etre is being anti-Europe, somewhat bemusing, but there you go.

The 10% planning to vote Green is what has doubled our opinion poll score, which is a significant advance for us Greens, if not signalling some kind of major breakthrough. But it also means that we have much work to do, if we are to translate this into seats at Westminster and elsewhere. These voters are on the left politically, and so are our natural supporters.

Put simply, we have to get more of those 39% of former Lib Dem voters that are intending to vote Labour next time, to vote Green. Which is why we need to go on the attack, and expose Labour for what it is, a ‘Tory light’ party, sometimes not even so light.

Disabled workers strike over closure of Haringey Remploy factory

Disabled workers in Haringey joined a 24-hour nationwide strike last week to protest against government plans to close a string of factories and throw thousands out of work.

Workers from the Remploy factory in Hermitage Road, South Tottenham brandished protest banners outside the premises during industrial action last Thursday.

Strikes took place at all 54 Remploy factories in the UK after employees voted for industrial action in ballots carried out by the GMB and Unite unions.

Strike action was called following the government’s decision earlier this month to close 27 Remploy factories, including the Haringey site, by the end of the year, leading to the loss of 1,700 jobs in total.

Phil Davies, GMB national secretary, said: “Work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith is systematically destroying lives by his hard-hearted actions. We will continue our campaign by all means at our disposal.”

Under the plans, a further nine factories face an uncertain future and the remaining 18 sites across the country are due to close or be sold off next year.

Another 24-hour strike by Remploy workers in protest at the closures is due today.

Remploy was set up in 1945 to employ wounded soldiers. The business still provides jobs for disabled workers today.

A version of this article was first published at The Hornsey Journal.

House of Lords Reform – Overdue but Hardly a Priority

MP’s will vote on Tuesday (10 July) on the House of Lords Reform Bill, which rather modestly seeks to have 80% of peers elected by 2025, with the remaining 20% appointed by a statutory appointments commission, and reducing the total number of representatives in the upper chamber from 826 to 450. Elections would take place on the same day as the general election on an open-list system from eight different regions. The open list system is designed to give voters a choice between voting for a party and individuals.

Up to 100 Tory MP’s have said that they will vote with Labour to defeat the ‘programme motion’ which would put a limit on debate in the House of Commons to a maximum of 14 days, therefore throwing  into doubt  whether the bill will pass through the Commons at all. Opposition can also be expected in the House of Lords itself, where there are considerable numbers of Tory peers unhappy with the proposals.

The last Labour government began Lords reform, in a piecemeal, incremental way, first abolishing most of the hereditary peers, and then finally moving to a fully appointed chamber after a few more years. Clearly, in a democratic system, the hereditary principle had to go, and appointing peers is not much better, and so further reform is necessary. In my opinion all members of the upper house should be elected, and by a fairer, proportional system which reflects the diverse support for each of the political parties, including us Greens.

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader is desperate for some kind of enduring ‘legacy’ for his deputy premiership and as some kind of justification for his party’s participation in the coalition government with the Tories. It is hard to see what progressive gains they have achieved thus far, so it is easy to understand Clegg’s determination to push this through and claim credit for the policy. Indeed, he has gone so far as to suggest that if the Bill does not pass, he will withdraw his MP’s support for the parliamentary boundary changes that the Tories want to improve their prospects at the next general election.

A recent Yougov poll for The Sun newspaper indicates that 76% of the British public support a fully or mostly elected House of Lords, but goes onto to say that only 18% regard Lords reform as an urgent matter. This seems about right to me, it is impossible to defend an unelected House, but it is pretty low on my list of political priorities at the moment. So many other issues, the state of the economy, jobs, welfare reform, privatisation of the NHS, climate change, public service cuts and education policy all dwarf constitutional reform at the moment in terms of importance.

If the price of losing Lords reform is the blocking of the parliamentary boundary changes in the Tories favour, then bring it on. And if this puts further pressure on the ConDem coalition government, perhaps even bringing about its early demise, as some have suggested, so much the better.