Week 13 2014

Tendring Topics……..on line

‘The paths of glory………’

          Last week in this blog I discussed the approaching referendum on the future of Scotland.  All residents in Scotland over the age of sixteen (now that is a revolutionary change in electoral law!) will be given the opportunity to declare whether they want their country to remain part of the United Kingdom or become an independent sovereign nation-state.  The UK government has stated that the majority decision will be accepted and acted upon, whatever it may be.

            Just over a week ago a rather similar referendum was taking place in the Crimea about the future of that peninsula.  Crimea is a federal state of the Ukraine and voters were invited to declare whether they wished to remain part of the Ukraine or to become part of the Russian Federation.  That was certainly not an option that they were given in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev’s Soviet Government had decided, presumably on the grounds of administrative convenience, that Crimea would no longer be part of Russia as it had been from the days of the Tsar, but of the Ukraine.  It had made little difference then, because both Russia and the Ukraine were constituent republics of the USSR.

             The referendum has been declared by Barak Obama to be ‘illegal’ (it may have been 'invalid', but how can establishing whether voters would prefer to be Russian or Ukrainian possibly be against any law?), William Hague, our verbally belligerent Foreign Minister described it as ‘a travesty of democracy’, and our Prime Minister has declared colourfully, but with no evidence whatsoever, that the result was obtained 'under the barrel of a Kalashnikov!'  I have seen no reports of ballot-rigging, multiple voting, or bullying of potential voters, as there have been after elections in Afghanistan and countries in the Middle East and Africa. We can be quite sure that any such reports would have been given full publicity by the Russo-sceptic press. The pro-Russian majority of 96 percent established what had already been made obvious  The way in which the Crimeans had welcomed Russian troops and had voluntarily displayed Russian flags; provided ample evidence that the population of Crimea preferred a future with Russia rather than Ukraine.    Since ethnic Russians are said to comprise only some 58 percent of the population of Crimea, that enormous majority suggests that quite a few ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars also voted for the Russian option.

            It would be that sort of majority we would expect to get if the inhabitants of Gibraltar were asked if they wanted to be citizens of the United Kingdom or of Spain  – and for much the same reason.

            Russia’s subsequent ‘annexation’ of the Ukraine has been described as an illegal ‘land-grab’. Perhaps it was, but it was surely unique in the fact that the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants of the land that was ‘grabbed’ had wanted it to happen. It has also been unique in the fact that so far (even, it seems, after the forceful Russian take-over of the Ukrainian naval base reported this, Monday 24th March morning)  has been achieved with remarkably little bloodshed – less bloodshed, in fact, than in the violent demonstrations in Kiev that had preceded the Russian action.

            I recall that when it was decided to support the separatists in Kosovo (where I doubt very much if a referendum would have revealed over 90 percent of inhabitants wanted to break away from Serbia) the campaign included the RAF's bombardment of Serbia’s capital, the City of Belgrade.  When the UK government, after deceiving parliament and the British public about Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’, decided to join the USA in enforcing a regime-change in Iraq, the campaign began by inducing ‘shock and awe’ with terror air-raids on Baghdad.  As a direct result of that illegal invasion thousands of innocent lives were lost. Iraq is still a divided country in which terrorism flourishes; the same terrorism that perpetrated 9/11 and had been unknown in Iraq prior to our invasion.  I really don’t think that Crimea faces a remotely similar future.   I have referred in earlier blogs to the USA’s illegal blockade of Cuban ports, the use of chemical weapons in the Vietnam War and the totally unprovoked invasion of Grenada in the West Indies (then part of the British Commonwealth!)

            No doubt Russia has broken international rules by recovering its lost Crimean province without having first attempted negotiation, but ‘Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone!’

            I was not impressed with Vladimir Putin’s triumphal announcement of Russia’s recovery of Crimea in the Russian Parliament. Painstakingly staged, it resembled too closely George Bush’s premature announcement of victory in Iraq from the bridge of a US aircraft carrier.  All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Successful leaders surround themselves with flatterers who feed their egos and lead them on into folly. To suggest that Putin is another Stalin is ridiculous, but I do think that he may see himself as ‘Vladimir the Great’, a worthy successor of the Romanov Tsars.

            He has promised ‘to put the glory back into Russia’. I can only hope and pray that the eight million Russian dead of World War II remind him that the paths of glory lead but to the grave.  The rest of the world's leaders, every one of whom is too young to have personal memories of World War II, also need to remember it.

The Budget

          I once would have described myself as a ‘democratic socialist’. I was for a short while a member of the Labour Party and was, in fact, accepted as a Labour candidate for a county council election.  How glad I am now that I withdrew my candidature, believing that I could do more for the causes that I support in my weekly Tendring Topics column in a local newspaper, than in the Council Chamber at Chelmsford, where I’d have been expected to toe the party line.

            One of those causes (regular blog readers will probably be all too familiar with some of the others!) arises from my conviction that many, perhaps most, of Britain’s problems arise from the enormous and ever-widening gap between the richest and the poorest in our society.  To the New Labour Party’s shame that gap widened during their ten years in office and has continued to widen ever since.   I think that I am well qualified to comment on this subject because my own income and possessions are sufficient for my life style. At 92 the opportunities for extravagant living become somewhat limited! I have no desire for more than I already possess – and I certainly wouldn’t be happy with much less.  I now describe myself, not as a socialist but as an egalitarian and I don’t much concern myself with how greater equality could best be achieved. In some fields public ownership (either national or local) would probably be the best way forward, but co-operative ownership and employer/employee partnerships may also have a valuable part to play.  I support – very modestly – the Equality Trust www.equalitytrust.org.uk  that works toward that end.

 My idea of a ‘good Budget’ is one that narrows the gap between rich and poor and a ‘bad Budget’ is one that widens it.  It follows that it is many years since I have seen a ‘good Budget’ and I despair of ever seeing one produced either by our present government or any currently conceivable successor.

Both parties in the coalition government are eager to claim the credit for taking ‘millions of low paid workers out of the tax system altogether’ by raising the personal allowance (the level at which income tax becomes payable) from £10,000 to £10,500 a year.  It does, of course, help low earners but it also helps everyone who pays income tax (including me!) right up to those on £100,000 or more a year.  What’s more it perpetuates the false idea that there’s a hard-working group of ‘tax payers’ whose labours subsidise an underclass of non-taxpayers.  It’s not true.   The non income-tax payer pays tax (VAT) every time he has his car, or his bike or his house repaired.  He pays tax every time he buys himself a pint, fills up the petrol tank of his car or motor bike, or is foolish enough to buy a lottery ticket or scratch card, to put a few bob on a horse, or to play commercial bingo!   He probably pays a higher proportion of his income in tax than bankers or stock brokers with their inflated salaries and bonuses! 

Regular blog readers will know that I believe that every adult citizen, from the poorest to the wealthiest, should pay the same percentage of his or her gross income in income tax as their annual membership fee as a citizen of the UK – and that those who go abroad to escape that responsibility should automatically forfeit that citizenship.

A somewhat controversial feature of the budget would permit those who are saving for a pension on retirement to withdraw all or part of that ‘pension pot’ without financial penalty, at any time.  Fears have been expressed that ‘live-for-the-day’ fifty-year olds might draw out the lot and spend it all on a cruise to the Caribbean or a glorious boozy party, rather than leave it to  mature for a meagre pension that they may never live to enjoy!  I think there’s a much greater danger that responsible middle-aged people faced with a domestic crisis, might draw out a smallish sum from the ‘pension pot’ to deal with it, rather than go to a payday loan firm – or a loan shark.  No-one would criticise them for doing so -  but it wouldn’t take many such crises to empty that ‘pot’! 

I don’t think Mr Osborne and his colleagues realize how their policies have brought so many families to the edge of a financial precipice – and how little it could take to render them jobless,  homeless and relying on the local food bank for their survival.  But then I don’t suppose that the members of a government of millionaires who spend much of their time with fellow-millionaires can be expected to know much about the struggles and the anxieties of the less well off.