POSTSCRIPT (2)

POSTSCRIPT (2)

Post-Election Politics

          I have long believed that what we had come to think of as the three main political parties – Conservative, Labour and Liberal/Democrat, all had the same basic policy;  to win the next election by any means possible and, having done so, to hang on to power for as long as they could.  The Lib.Dems knew that they wouldn’t win outright but hoped they’d have sufficient parliamentary seats to hold the balance between the Labour and Conservative  MPs at Westminster.  They wanted to form a coalition with one or other of the two parties (they really didn’t care which one) and they expected to get a few cabinet posts and the title (and appropriate salary and perks) of Deputy Prime Minister for their leader.

          But in the General Election it didn’t happen like that.   The Conservatives (who secured only 35 percent of the votes cast) obtained a small first-past-the-post overall majority and, as I had forecast, the Lib.Dems. were all but destroyed.  The third party in today’s House of Commons is not the Lib.Dems. but the Scottish National Party!  That's something that I hadn't foreseen!

            After the General Election the leaders of the Lib.Dems, the Labour Party and of UKIP all resigned.   Nick Clegg, Lib.Dem. leader brought his downfall upon himself by acquiescing to and defending measures he had, only a week or so earlier, promised to oppose.  The opening words of Robert Browning’s ‘Lost Leader’ come to my mind ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick on his coat’.  Ed Miliband, Labour Leader, lost the election not because of anything he had done or failed to do but because of the daily dose of quite unjustified vilification and denigration  launched about him by the right-wing press.  If something appears before your eyes day after day you begin to feel there must be something in it – even when there clearly isn’t.  What about Nigel Farage of UKIP?  He did resign, but was back and leading his odd army of Europhobes and crypto-fascists before you could say ‘Brussels Bureaucrat!’

            The Lib-Dems have chosen their new leader who has, as might have been expected, been denigrated by the right-wing press.  Apparently he is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian and believes in a literal Heaven and Hell.  Well, that’s no more fanciful than believing that ‘market forces’ and private enterprise will solve all the world’s problems.   He is, I think, likely to prove to be a man of his word. 

The election of a new Labour leader is proving much more exciting than had been expected.  There appear to be three ‘New Labour’ candidates with proposed policies that are much the same as the Conservatives but perhaps – depending on what the latest opinion poll says – a little less harsh on the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.   But now there’s another candidate; Jeremy Corbyn, fighting for the ‘old Labour’ policies of a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth, an end to privatisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament.  At least one of those who sponsored him said that she didn’t think for a moment that he would get anywhere but that she felt the voice of ‘old Labour’ should be heard.  No doubt lack of support for Corbyn was expected to demonstrate beyond doubt how thoroughly ‘New Labour’ had destroyed the tattered remnants of the ‘old Labour’ of George Lansbury, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot.

            But, once again, it hasn’t happened like that.  Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be a very likeable, straight-forward chap, and his radical policies are proving unexpectedly popular, especially with younger Labour voters.  Opinion polls suggest that he could win the leadership election.  Hundreds of people who have previously not bothered to vote, may decide that Jeremy Corbyn offers something different; something that it’s worth turning out to vote for.  I don’t know why everybody should be so surprised. The democratic socialist policies for which Corbyn stands are much the same as those held by the Scottish National Party who, you will recall, made an almost clean sweep of Scotland’s New Labour MPs in the recent General Election.  Are the Scots really so different from the rest of we British?

            Needless to say, prominent has-beens from Labour’s past have been paraded to offer dire warnings of endless years of opposition for Labour if Corbyn were to be elected leader.  Finally former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave us his great thoughts on the matter - and probably increased rather than diminished Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of success..   Anyone, he said, whose heart was inclined towards old Labour ‘needed a heart transplant’.   That, I think, was bound to infuriate hundreds of sincere Labour supporters who cherish the memory of the up-hill struggles of the 19^th and 20^th Century pioneers of the Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative movements. 'Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the Red Flag flying here!'

            No-one could deny that Tony Blair was a great winner of elections.  He did so by creating 'New Labour and dragging it far enough to the right to attract the support o the Murdoch Press.  Thousands of Labour Party members who voted to revoke Clause 4 imagined that they were voting against everything being nationalised.  They were, in fact, opening the door to the privatisation of every public service.

            In the ten years that New Labour formed our government, the gap between the wealthy and the poor actually widened, Tory legislation like the Right to Buy Act which lies at the root of today’s housing problems, remained intact.  An unholy friendship between Tony Blair and the most reactionary American President in living memory, led to an illegal bloody war in Iraq that has resulted in the ruin of that country, the growth of terrorism throughout North Africa and in Europe and the USA too, and the martyrdom of hundreds of Christians in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian sub-continent.  Tony Blair was made United Nations Peace envoy to the Middle East.  As I have previously said in this blog, that was like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  

            It simply isn’t true to claim that a political party can achieve nothing in opposition.  Had Nick Clegg not entered into coalition with the Conservatives the Lib.Dems. could have retained their independence – voting for, or at least abstaining from voting against – any legislation to which they didn’t object and joining with Labour and the small opposition parties to oppose legislation they found objectionable. Where the party in government has only a small overall majority this can be very effective.  In this parliament David Cameron was all set to pass legislation legitimising fox hunting with hounds.  The SNP MPs said they would join with Labour in opposing this (largely to remind the Conservatives of their fragile majority) and, to avoid the possibility of humiliating defeat, that legislation has been put on the back burner.

            Had they adopted that policy the Lib.Dems. could have prevented particularly objectionable legislation from being passed, and retained their own integrity.  They wouldn’t have been given any seats in the government and their leader wouldn’t have become ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ – but they might well have been spared humiliating defeat in the General Election.  ‘This above all, to thine own self be true!’

            I am neither a member nor a supporter of today’s Labour Party.  I am a member of and support the Green Party because I believe that today, care of the environment and countering the effects of climate change are more important than any other political issue.  I think though that if Jeremy Corbyn were to be elected leader of the Labour Party a great many, perhaps most, Greens would be delighted that one of the main parties  would be working towards the resolution of at least some of our concerns.

           

10th May 2015

Tendring Topics…….on line

The Day of Reckoning (2)

            I can’t even say, ‘I told you so!’, because I didn’t!  Like almost everyone else, I believed that the outcome of the General Election would be a hung parliament. Either David Cameron or Ed Miliband would have to form a coalition, or at least come to an understanding with one of the smaller parties in order to produce a workable government.  Most of the press feared an understanding between Ed Miliband and the SNP.  I would have welcomed it because I thought that Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader was far more impressive than any of the other party leaders. She might prevent a Miliband premiership from becoming a pale imitation of a Tory one.  Perhaps that’s just what the press lords feared!

            My own worst possible outcome was of a coalition between the Conservatives and the Ukippers which I felt could easily develop into a right-wing dictatorship.

            In this blog I did at least consider the possibility that, despite the predictions of the opinion polls, one or other of the two main parties might achieve an overall majority and  manage to form an effective government without seeking the support of any other party.  I said that if that happened I could confidently predict that the final outcome would not be as good as supporters of the majority party were hoping, but was unlikely to be as awful as their opponents feared.  I still stand by the first part of that prophecy – but am a little less confident of the second.

            I did correctly foretell the humiliating defeat of the Lib.Dems but really didn’t expect Ukip to lose one of the two seats it held prior to the election, thus making Douglas Carswell, our own MP for Clacton-on-Sea, the sole Ukipper in the House of Commons.  Ukip gained a lot of votes but they were spread fairly evenly over England.  As a result, our first-past-the-post electoral system prevented those votes being translated into parliamentary seats.  It has been quite educational to observe Mr Carswell’s sudden conversion to the idea of proportional representation. I quite expected the SNP to triumph in Scotland but was astonished by their almost complete demolition of the previously dominant Labour Party there.  

            Ed Miliband’s defeat was, I think, at least partly due to the constant drip, drip, drip of denigrating and scare headlines principally in the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, about his weakness as a leader and the probability that he would be subjugated by the wicked witch from the north (Nicola Sturgeon).  Several people interviewed after the tv debates said they were quite surprised to discover that the Ed Miliband they had seen on tv didn’t match those headlines.

            The Sun is part of the Rupert Murdoch press empire, the Daily Mail is owned by Lord Rothermere, and the Daily Express by Richard Leonard, who also owns the ‘adult’ tv channels Television X and Red Hot TV   (No, I haven’t tried to access either of them but their names suggest their nature).  Oh yes, and Richard Leonard has recently donated over a million pounds to Ukip.

            Do you find it as extraordinary and shaming as I do that three very wealthy individuals – a foreigner with no ties of loyalty to the UK, a ‘non-dom’, and a purveyor of soft porn, should own and control the means of influencing the British electorate?

            The Conservative Government will have only a very small majority over all other parties in the House of Commons. I don’t think they’ll find their task to be an easy one, especially bearing in mind the fact that the opposition, with its Scottish, Welsh and English MPs, is much more representative of all the people of the still-united United Kingdom than the members of David Cameron’s government.

…….and the Green Party?

            I have never made any secret of the fact that I voted for the Green Party in the General Election and am now a member of that Party.  On the face of it they failed dismally.  They gained not a single extra member in the House of Commons.

            Look a little deeper though and it will be clear that they are a Party on the way up, not down.  Their candidates obtained a total of over a million votes throughout the UK.  Remember too, that for every voter who puts a cross against the name of a Green candidate there are probably at least two others who would be supporters, but because they live in a strongly Tory or Labour area, or like me, in the heart of Ukipland, imagine that a vote for the Greens is a wasted one.   I knew perfectly well that Chris Howell the Green Candidate in my area hadn’t a hope of being elected, but he did get twice as many votes as he did in the by-election only a few months ago.  Caroline Lucas, our one MP, retained her Brighton seat in Parliament with a substantially increased majority, and the Green candidate came second in four constituencies.  The Green Party now has more actual members than either the Lib.Dems. or Ukip.  

            No, I don’t consider that my vote was a wasted one.

Some sage advice

          Did you see that some has-been Labour politicians have been commenting on Ed Miliband’s lack of success in the election.  Some say that he should have made a greater effort to reach the ‘aspirational’ voter.  Lord Mendelson (he’s an architect of New Labour who has ‘no problem with billionaires!) says that Ed Miliband took the Labour Party too far to the left.  Too far to the left!  We’re talking about the chap who apologised for Labour’s original opposition to ‘right to buy’, who, if he had been elected would have carried on with austerity, and who supported the renewal of the wildly expensive and utterly useless Trident submarines!

            Hasn’t anyone noticed that Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party swept away New Labour in Scotland with policies well to the left of anything that any Labour leader in England has ever dared to suggest?

            If the electorate want Conservative policies, they’ll vote Conservative – not New Labour!

24 January 2015

Tendring Topics………on line

Keeping things ‘in proportion’

          I am not one of Lord Mendelson’s greatest admirers.  He was one of the creators of New Labour which, to win elections, surrendered the Labour Party’s soul and converted British politics into a pale imitation of the politics of the USA. There is precious little difference between the objectives of the two main parties.   They only differ in how best to achieve them.  In office Tony Blair, Lord Mendelson’s friend and political colleague, continued the process begun by Mrs Thatcher of turning the UK into a Prime Ministerial dictatorship.

            However, I am inclined to be on Lord Mendelson’s side in his current disagreement with Ed Miliband and his shadow Chancellor Ed Balls.   It is, I think, shameful that multi-millionaires in this country are likely to pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than those whose income is so low that they pay no income tax at all, but do have to pay the government every time they buy an object or service that is subject to VAT or purchase something that is subject to customs duty, like a packet of cigarettes or a pint at a pub.  Multi-millionaires also, of course, pay a much smaller proportion of their income in taxation than do those mythical beings who David Cameron always claims he is eager to help – average hardworking wage earners who pay income tax and, of course, the indirect taxes and custom duties that this government prefers

Ed Miliband’s mansion tax may not be intended to be a one-off tax to help the NHS – or any other good cause – out of its current crisis, by taking a few hundred thousand pounds from the bank accounts of the super-wealthy, but that’s how it sounds.  I think that the government should be fair to both the wealthy and the poor by claiming an equal percentage of the gross income of all of us to fund public services.   The obvious way to do this is by means of the income tax system, the only tax that is linked to ability to pay.  I think we should consider it not as an imposition but as a privilege to pay our annual subscription towards the not-inconsiderable benefits of being a British Citizen, or towards our permission to live and work within the UK.  We would then all have an equal stake in the prosperity or economic failure of our country.  We really would be all in this together!

            Income tax is the obvious means that a government could use to level the economic playing field but another way that would help to do this would be – as Lord Mendelson suggests – adding additional tax bands to the Council Tax system.

            Blog readers past the first flush of youth will recall the ‘bad old days’ in which local authorities, County, Borough and District Councils raised part of their income by means of ‘the domestic rates’.  These were an annual charge on each dwelling within the district.  Nobody enjoyed paying them but they were based on the estimated rental value of the property. They therefore had at least a rough relationship to the income of the occupier of the occupier or occupiers

Mrs Thatcher’s government changed all that.  Instead of the rates we were to have a ‘community charge’ (almost instantly rebranded ‘the poll tax’) which taxed each individual equally regardless of whether that individual was a millionaire or a refuse collector.  It took no account whatsoever of ability to pay. The rating system may have been disliked but the poll tax was actually hated.   It was just such a tax that had provoked the medieval ‘peasants revolt’.  In the late twentieth century it produced wide-spread demonstrations, riots and the eventual fall of the Thatcher government.     

The Poll Tax was replaced by the ‘Council Tax’. This is based on the estimated purchase value of the property and therefore makes a pretence of bearing some relationship to the income or wealth of the householder.  Properties are classified as being in one of eight ‘tax bands’, the lowest of which is under £40,000 and the highest £320,000 and above.  A glance will make it clear that those bands are hopelessly out of date.   I suppose for £40,000 you might, just possibly, get some kind of a shack in an area like the Brooklands Estate, Jaywick  just a couple of miles from my home – but that estate has been declared to be the most deprived area in the UK!

At the other end of the tax bands the situation is even more ridiculous.  The highest tax band for Council Tax is £320,000 and above. I agree that in the Clacton area you would get a very nice property for £320,000 – but not in many other parts of the UK

Do you ever watch ‘Escape to the Country’ ­on BBC tv.   Briefly it’s about very fortunate (and often very hard working and gifted) folk who have made a fortune in London, or Manchester or Sheffield or wherever and are now seeking a residence ‘in the country’.  A BBC presenter introduces them to three or four ‘desirable residences’ in the area of their choice.   It’s not a programme I like to watch.   I have spent too much of my professional life trying to help people who are homeless, or overcrowded or living in squalid conditions, to enjoy seeing well-heeled folk looking over a luxurious home and complaining that ‘the view isn’t quite what we’d hoped for’ or ‘the paddock isn’t really big enough for Rosalie (their spoilt brat!) to exercise the pony we’ve given her for her birthday’.

It’s very unusual for one of those very comfortable and very desirable homes ‘in the country’ to change hands for as little as £320,000.   That sum would probably buy a roomy three bedroom home in one of London’s more pleasant suburbs.  That means that an executive officer of a biggish enterprise or a middle-grade civil servant, living in a comfortable but hardly palatial home in Cheam or Twickenham would pay exactly the same Council Tax as the owner of a ‘Downton Abbey’ or similar stately home or family mansion.

There should be at least three higher tax bands, ending at homes valued at £2 million pounds or more, to bring something like fairness to the Council Tax system. The Council Tax bands, like the income tax system, need urgent reconstruction to make sure that those who have done best from our market economy should pay at least as big a proportion of their wealth in tax as those who have been less fortunate.

A trusted ally – or a ‘pariah state’?

In recent months I have been quite proud of the fact that I am a member of the Church of England as well as of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers).   I welcomed the Church’s decision to ordain women as Bishops as well as Priests.   I have applauded the Archbishop of Canterbury’s campaign to replace ‘pay day lenders’ with local ‘credit unions’ and his criticism of economic policies that have led to the proliferation of Food Banks throughout the UK.

That enthusiasm suffered a severe blow this (23^rd January) afternoon when I learned that, to comply with government guidelines, the authorities of Westminster Abbey would be flying our national flag at half-mast in mourning for the King of Saudi Arabia.  It suffered a further blow with the news that the Prince of Wales (a future ‘Defender of the Faith’) together with our Prime Minister were to fly to Saudi Arabia to express their condolences.  I suppose that the Prince is aware that any expression of the Faith that he will pledge himself to defend is strictly forbidden in Saudi Arabia and that any Muslim in that country who converts to Christianity is likely to be executed!

Saudi Arabia’s disregard for democracy and human rights makes North Korea seem like a liberal Paradise!  Torture is routinely practised in Saudi gaols and public executions, amputations and floggings are daily occurrences.  The case of a blogger who considered the possibility that Saudi Arabia might become a secular state and who is being publicly flogged with fifty lashes every Friday until, if he survives long enough, he has received a total of 1,000 lashes, has recently made the press headlines.  Women in Saudi-Arabia are said to be much more free than they were a decade or so ago – but they are still forbidden to drive cars or leave their homes without a male escort (husband, father or brother).

Most of those involved in the 9/11 outrages in New York were Saudis.  Saudi Arabia is the home of the noxious fundamentalist Islamic faith that IS (the Islamic State) is trying to impose in Syria and Iraq and that Boko Haram is imposing, even more blood-thirstily, in sub-Saharan Africa. Donations from oil-rich Saudi millionaires financed IS during its early days. They possibly still do so.

Do we really need oil (and arms sales) so badly that we are prepared to befriend a state whose philosophy is the exact opposite of the British values that David Cameron and his colleagues are so eager to propagate?

   

18th January 2015

Tendring Topics……….on line

The Parliamentary General Election

          There was a time when political parties existed to promote specific policies – the Conservative Party on retaining the status quo and, in general, observing the sage advice, ‘If it ain’t bust, don’t fix it’.  They were naturally the party of the ‘haves’ rather than the ‘have nots’.  The Labour Party on the other hand, was the party of change.  They wanted a fairer, more equal Britain, a Britain without nuclear weapons and without imperial pretensions or ambitions.  They argued that these objectives could best be achieved if most or all public services were owned and run by the public.   They were the party of the ‘have nots’.  Both parties tried to persuade a majority of the electorate to support them.

            Now both main parties, and what’s left of the Liberals, claim to serve the interests of the whole country.  In reality they all have just one overriding policy. It’s the same policy; to win elections, gain political power – and keep it.  To this end the Conservatives under Mrs Thatcher became a party of revolutionary change; among other things selling off most public services to private enterprise and compelling local authorities, who had built houses to rid their districts of overcrowding and homelessness, to sell them to sitting tenants at bargain basement prices; thus very cleverly buying votes with other people’s money.

            New Labour, ‘to make itself electable’, sold its own soul by going along with the retention of a nuclear ‘deterrent’, accepting the revolutionary changes that had been introduced by Mrs Thatcher and erasing ‘Clause 4’ from its own constitution.  I have little doubt that many party members voted for the removal of Clause 4 imagining that they were simply acknowledging that some activities were best carried out by private enterprise.  If fact they were accepting the wholesale privatisation of every public service.  In addition, they allowed our country to become the puppet of the most reactionary American president in living memory.  This resulted in our engagement in two ‘colonial’ wars – one illegal and the other unwinnable – resulting in the loss of billions of pounds and the sacrifice of hundreds of British lives

            Party policies are decided nowadays, not by principles or by the exercise of reason and compassion, but by the findings of the latest opinion polls.  And influencing opinion polls is the popular press, owned largely by foreign billionaires who owe no loyalty to the United Kingdom and care only about ‘circulation and profit’. I don’t find it in the least surprising that thousands of electors are now disillusioned with the traditional political parties.  It is upon the way that they react to that disillusion that the future of our country depends.

Don’t bother to vote

            Probably the commonest reaction is to decline to vote.  What’s the point?  They’re all the same – feathering their own nests.  If voting changed anything they’d ban it. Our first-past-the-post electoral system makes sure that the voice of those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the main parties, is never heard. The Chartists of the nineteenth and the Suffragettes of the twentieth century must be turning in their graves.  They suffered and died to make sure that everyone had a vote – and they really believed that universal suffrage would change the world.

           

Those who don’t bother to vote have no right to complain when they find themselves represented by someone whose views they thoroughly detest.  Those who can’t bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates must surely be able to select one of them whose policies and attitudes they detest more than those of the others. Vote for the candidate most likely to defeat him or her.  For the much-publicised recent Clacton-on-Sea by-election I voted Conservative for the first (and probably only) time of my life.  Although I disliked the Conservative candidate’s policies, he seemed to be a nice enough chap and I thought he was the candidate most likely to defeat Douglas Carswell who had defected to UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party).   He didn’t do so and Clacton had the dubious honour of returning the very first UKIP MP to Westminster!  Still – I did my best. 

Vote for one of the ‘minority’ candidates

            We don’t yet know how many candidates there will be for our own constituencies in next May’s General Election. In every English constituency there will certainly be representatives of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrat Party.  There will almost certainly be a Ukipper (in my Clacton constituency he’ll be the sitting MP) and a Green Party Candidate.  Also there’s likely to be a variety of fringe party and special-interest candidates ranging from the Official Raving Loony Party to those eager to publicise local or special concerns like ‘saving a hospital from closure’, ‘building a new bypass’ or, as we had for the Clacton by-election, a lady who wanted to raise the status and ensure the safety of ‘sex workers’.   

            My guess (and you can’t exaggerate how much I’d like to be proved wrong!) is that in the Clacton-on-Sea Constituency Douglas Carswell (the sitting UKIP MP) will retain his seat though with a smaller majority, The Conservative Candidate will come next but with only a few more votes than  his Labour opponent, followed by the Green, the Lib.Dem. the Official Raving Loony Candidate and the various ‘special interest’ candidates who will get only a tiny handful of votes each.

UKIP versus GREEN

            In my constituency (Clacton-on-Sea) our sitting MP is a Ukipper.  That is true of only one other constituency in the United Kingdom.  In most other constituencies there will be a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat MP who will be looking nervously over his or her shoulder at the UKIP contestant and wondering what effect this new and apparently growing party will have on the election result.

            UKIP and its leader Nigel Farage, remind me uncomfortably of the NAZI party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, in Germany in the 1920s and early ‘30s.   There too, the electorate was disillusioned and tired of the old political parties and their failing policies.  In Adolf Hitler they found someone who was a fervent German nationalist, just as Nigel Farage is a fervent British Nationalist, who disliked the ‘old politics’ and offered a new path for Germany of action rather than talk.  What’s more he assured the Germans that they weren’t to blame for their country’s problems – it was all the fault of ‘the Jews’.  At first most Germans thought that he was a bit of a joke,  Then the wealthy thought they could manipulate him for their own purposes.   One morning though they woke up to discover that he and his brown-shirted followers had taken over their country. – Hitler’s Third Reich had arrived.

            Nigel Farage also assures us that outside forces – the European Union (demonised as ‘Brussels’) and all those foreign immigrants for which the EU, so he says, was largely responsible – were the cause of Britain’s problems.  Shake off the European yoke and get rid of all those foreigners, and Britain would be great again!  At first everyone thought that Nigel Farage – usually seen holding ‘a fag and a pint’ to assure those who saw him that he was ‘one of us’ - was a bit of a joke.  Then, as with Hitler, the wealthy and powerful thought they could use him for their purposes. They have poured their spare thousands of pounds into his party’s coffers. The story is on-going……….. UKIP is essentially a ‘one-objective party’.   The EU and immigrants are its main target.  Other causes are taken up as seems opportune, but generally UKIP policies are those of the extreme right of the Conservative Party.  Abolish ‘green taxes’ and cease subsidising solar and wind power schemes.  Encourage ‘fracking’ for cheap oil and gas.  Ignore the warnings about climate change and global warming.  It either isn’t happening or, if it is, it’s got nothing to do with human activities so there’s nothing to be done about it.  Vote for UKIP and cheaper fuel oil!  I have little doubt that thousands will be short-sighted enough to do so.

            The Green Party is almost the exact opposite of UKIP.  Below is a brief account of their policies and intentions.

We live in unsettling times. Many of the securities that our parents and grandparents fought for – a functioning National Health Service, free education, and an affordable home – now look out of reach for most of us. Coupled with this, climate change is bringing unpredictable and threatening weather patterns. People feel let down by politicians, and yet there has been an explosion in political activism. People want to do things differently and aren’t afraid to be bold and challenging.

We believe that public services should be for the benefit of the public, not sold off in bits; we believe that education is worth investing in and not something that should mean a lifetime of debt; we believe in leaving behind a better world for our children and grandchildren. This is the only world we have and its welfare, above all things, should be the highest priority for us all.

Politics should work for the benefit of all, not just those who shout the loudest or have the deepest pockets.  We believe in “The Common Good”. A vote for the Green Party is a vote for The Common Good.

            Like UKIP, the Green Party is growing.   They have just one MP – in Brighton – but in the European Parliament elections and in recent by-elections (including that in Clacton) Green candidates received more votes than the Liberal Democrats. Currently there is controversy as to whether The Green Party’s President is to join with the leaders of the Conservative Party, Liberal-Democratic Party, Labour Party and UKIP in public televised debate before next May’s general election.  David Cameron is refusing to take part in the debate unless the Greens are also invited.  He is probably wise to do so.   Green arguments, persuasively presented, are far more likely to draw voters from Labour, Liberal Democrat, and even UKIP than they are from the Conservatives.

            If (and it’s quite a big ‘if’) I’m still around in May, I shall vote for the Green Candidate.  I hope that a great many other people will do the same.    

           

24th November 2014

Tendring Topics…..on Line

Bankers Bonuses

          The previous Governor of the Bank of England said publicly on several occasions that the financial crisis in the UK and world-wide was not due, as Messrs. Osborne and Cameron would have us believe, to the policies of the previous government, over-generous welfare benefits, nor even the activities of immigrants and the machinations of ‘Brussels’.  Fairly and squarely to blame were the activities and incompetence of ‘the Bankers’, obviously not the management and staff of your local Barclays, Lloyds or what-have-you (they’re as much victims as we are), but the ‘super-brains’ at the top – and the Governor of the Bank of England really should know.

   Mind you, I think that a considerable measure of blame does lie with the previous New Labour government – not because they were too eager to spend money on social services, but because, blinded by billionaires, they were just as keen to seek the favour of the bankers, the money lenders and the financial fiddlers as the present lot at Westminster.   They should have spotted what was happening and curbed it.  I don’t recall that the present Bank of England Governor has ever publicly blamed the banking fraternity as had his predecessor – but then he has never suggested that his predecessor was wrong.

            What is particularly infuriating to the ordinary British citizen – the ordinary voter – is that throughout the period of recession top bankers have shed a few hundred junior staff; carried out mergers; effectively reduced the value of savings (including mine!) by paying savers an interest rate below the rate of inflation - and have continued to draw eye-wateringly high salaries for just turning up at their offices.   For actually doing their best at the job for which they are paid those enormous salaries, they expect to receive even more gargantuan bonuses!

            Quite apart from causing the world-wide financial crisis there have more recently been the muck-ups and illegal fiddles in which some of them have been involved.  Millions of pounds had to be repaid to bank customers who had wrongly been sold insurance.  For weeks I had regular phone calls from ‘ambulance chasing’ lawyers assuring me that they’d get my money back for me despite my assurances that, as far as I knew, none of my money had been involved!   Then there was the fiddle with interest rates that led to huge fines – all passed on to customers I have little doubt.  Yesterday we learned that one of the biggest banking groups had been heavily fined for having a faulty IT system that resulted in customers being unable to access their own money for several days.    Rents, mortgage repayments and direct debit payments were not paid!  No doubt this was the fault of someone well down the line in the banking hierarchy – but the top people claim the credit for success, so they should also be prepared to accept the blame for disaster.

            Something should really be done to cut those huge salaries and abolish those enormous bonuses  but, so we are assured, market forces demand that we offer those rewards if we want the ‘best’ brains.  If we don’t they’ll just go elsewhere.  Well, we’ve seen the disasters that ‘the best brains’ can cause.  Who knows?  The ‘second best’ might be less successful – or they might just be less disastrous!

            One way that ‘the best brains’ could be discouraged from migrating in pursuit of a few extra millions would be to limit or reduce the number of places to which they could migrate.   The European Union probably had this in mind when they decided to put a legal limit on Bankers Bonuses.  Throughout the EU, they suggested, no banker should receive a bonus in excess of his or her annual salary.  They then added a rider to the effect that the bonus could be up to double the recipient’s annual salary if the Bank’s shareholders agreed.

            It doesn’t take a financial genius to see how utterly feeble that is.  It means that a banker with an annual salary of £500,000 (common enough among top bankers though at least ten times more than a salary that most of us would consider very high) he would be able to receive another £500,000 as a bonus.  He’d be receiving a million pounds for his year’s work!   But that’s not all.   If he could persuade a majority of the bank’s shareholders to agree, that bonus of £500,000 could be doubled, making his total pay for the year  £1.5 million. That’s nearly £29,000 a week!  You could hire quite a few doctors and nurses for that.

            Would you believe it? – pathetic as the EU’s decision is, Cameron and Osborne were determined to  oppose any limit to bankers’ bonuses on the grounds that it would only lead to their being offered even higher salaries!   I understand that they have now withdrawn their opposition, having been told they haven’t a leg to stand on.

            No wonder the UK electorate is sick of all the existing political parties!

UKIP triumphant?

          I concluded my comments about Bankers’ bonuses by saying that the UK electorate is sick of all existing political parties.  Their members in Kent demonstrated that distrust last week when they followed the ‘Clacton example’ and, in a by-election in Rochester, returned another defecting former Conservative  to the House of Commons as a Ukipper.

         Once again I see parallels between the situation in the UK today and that in Germany in the late 1920s, early 1930s.  In Germany too a dynamic and charismatic leader, first thought of as ‘a bit of a joke’, transformed a struggling political party into a dynamic, powerful and all-conquering force that struggled into shared power and then became a ‘cuckoo in the nest’, turning out members of all other parties and establishing the Nazi one-party state. ‘One People, One United Kingdom, one Leader!’  I can just imagine Nigel Farage acknowledging that Nazi acclamation when he and his party finally acquire the power they covet!

             A month or two ago, during the run-up to the Scottish referendum, I wrote in this blog that the worst-case possibility in the event of there being a majority YES vote, could be the creation of a Conservative/UKIP coalition government after the May 2015 general election; a coalition that the more ruthless and determined Ukippers would quickly dominate.   Well, there was a NO vote majority and the United Kingdom remains united.

            I now think though that, despite that NO vote, Ukips’s continuing success means that a very dangerous Conservative/UKIP coalition could emerge from the general election (I can’t tell you how fervently I hope that I am wrong!) and that Ukip members, with their vigour and ruthlessness  could dominate the coalition, so that the situation could end with Nigel Farage as a 21^st century Oliver Cromwell.  Conservatives proclaim that a vote for any party other than the Conservatives makes it possible that Ed Miliband will be the next Prime Minister.  I very much fear that a vote either for the Conservatives or Ukip will make it possible that, sooner or later, our government will be headed by Nigel Farage.

            However, another – to me more cheering – future seems possible.  An  unexpected result of the Scottish NO vote has been the increasing popularity of the Scottish National Party that has, since the referendum, more than doubled its membership.  Alex Salmond, a dynamic and charismatic leader  has retired and has been followed by a forthright and politically experienced still-young woman who promises to be a worthy successor. She has taken his place both as Party Leader and as Scotland’s First Minister.

            Conservatives and Lib Dems. have been all but eliminated from the Scottish scene.   Ukip has never gained a foothold there – and the machinations of New Labour have little appeal.  It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Scotland, still part of the UK thanks to that No vote, returns a solid block of Scottish National Party MPs in the new Westminster Parliament.   It is possible that they might make common cause with MPs from Wales and Northern Ireland and join with Labour to create a formidable coalition that could well outnumber the combined Conservative and Ukip forces.  Who knows – the fervour of the Scots might inspire Ed Miliband at least to attempt to narrow that yawning gap (no, not the deficit) between the wealthy and the poor and induce the wealthy to carry their fair share of the burden of taxation.

            There's another quite different matter about the Rochester and Clacton by-elections that’s worth bearing in mind. In both by-elections (and in the earlier European Parliament elections) the Green Party Candidates received more votes than the Lib-Dems.   Nick Clegg in his urge to become Deputy Prime Minister has effectively finished off his once-great Liberal Party.  Gladstone and Lloyd-George must be turning in their graves.  Yet the BBC and other  tv channels are still inviting Nick Clegg, and not the leader of the Green Party, to take part in televised debates before the General Election.  The only conclusion that I can come to is that the BBC and whoever funds the independent tv channels doesn’t want Green Party policies to be considered by the public because the Greens are the only party working towards real change.  He who pays the piper calls the tune.

             

Week 32 2014

Tendring Topics…….on line

Nick Clegg

          Do you remember the televised debates of the Party leaders prior to our last parliamentary General Election?  I don’t usually listen to politicians sounding off – but I did watch those debates, and thought that I learned from them. 

 I had for many years considered myself to be an internationalist and a democratic socialist. More recently though I had come to the conclusion that the most important task any new British government needed to undertake was the reduction of the yawning gap between the incomes of country’s wealthiest and poorest citizens. I had been impressed by The Spirit Level by Quakers Kate Picket and Richard Wilkinson which demonstrated that reducing that gap benefited the whole community and not just the poor. I had become a modest supporter of the Equality Trust* and had come to realize that public ownership of the means of manufacture and distribution (whether by local or national government) was only one of the means by which greater economic justice could be secured.  .

During the decade of New Labour rule the gap between the incomes of the rich and poor had actually widened!  Lord Mandelson, a creator of New Labour had publicly declared that he had no problem with billionaires.  Well, I believe that while there are families that are homeless, ill-clad, and don’t know where the next meal is coming from, he should have a problem with them! 

Despite being well into my eighties at the time of the last election I was one of those ‘floating voters’ that politicians are eager to persuade. I intended to vote for the candidate of the Party most likely at least to attempt to reduce that ever-widening gap.

           I have to confess it.  I was taken in by Nick Clegg.  He I thought was the most inspiring of the three speakers, and the one with the most radical ideas.  He appeared to have a ‘fire within’ that reminded me of some of the early twentieth century Labour Movement pioneers  Because of this, for the first time in my life, his party received my vote and although with our system of voting it would have made no difference which way I voted, I have since deeply regretted it.

            Tony Blair, although he abandoned many of the purposes for which the Labour Party was created, did at least win elections for his New Labour.  Nick Clegg didn’t.  His party did quite well – but not well enough.  He went into an unequal coalition with the Conservatives and began to drop the principles on which he had been elected.  I had hoped that he might work towards a more equal society.  He supported the new Chancellor’s early gift to the super-rich, the reduction of the highest rate of income tax, thus benefiting those with a taxable income in excess of £150,000 a year – while beginning an austerity programme that particularly affected the poor and disadvantaged!  In his election campaign he had tried for the student vote – promising not to raise tuition fees.  In coalition this was one of the first promises that he abandoned.

            He would no doubt claim that by membership of the coalition he had been able to modify his Conservative partners more objectionable policies in a way that would have been impossible had he been in opposition.  In the world of British politics today, I don’t believe that that is true.  When a government doesn’t command the majority of votes in the House of Commons a determined opposition party can support the government on matters about which they agree or at least find acceptable, and join (or threaten to join) with other parties to defeat legislation that they find unacceptable.  Thus, in modifying the policies of a ‘minority’ government  a determined opposition party can exert more effective influence than a coalition partner.

            Nigel Farage’s UKIP has an increased representation in the European Parliament - where the Ukippers revealed themselves as an ill-mannered rabble, insulting their fellow parliamentarians by ostentatiously turning their backs on the European Anthem!. In the European and local government elections UKIP have shown themselves capable of appealing to the xenophobia, greed and fear of a great many electors and of taking votes, particularly from Conservative candidates.  They haven’t yet any Westminster MPs and they haven’t gained control of any local authority, but they have gained many Council Chamber seats and, again and again, have driven representatives of the Conservative, Lib.Dem. and Labour parties into ‘third place’ in the polls.

            Anybody surveying the UK political scene today can see that it is the Ukippers rather than the Lib.Dems. who pose the greater threat to an overall  Conservative Majority at next year’s General Election. Ukippers themselves are becoming increasingly confident.  I have always regarded our own Conservative MP Douglas Carswell as a Crypto-Ukipper.  He has the essential qualification of acute Europhobia and has even been singled out for praise by Nigel Farage.  Yet UKIP has selected a candidate to oppose him in the forthcoming General Election.  That candidate probably won't win – but he could take enough Conservative votes to ensure that Douglas Carswell doesn’t win either.  It isn’t surprising that David Cameron is much more concerned with out-flanking Nigel Farage with ever-more Europhobic measures to halt the flow of EU visitors and immigrants, than he is with the concerns of his own Lib.Dem. ‘deputy’.

   I think it likely that Nick Clegg will be remembered in history as the man who finally destroyed the once-great Liberal Party.

*For further information about the Equality Trust and ‘The Spirit Level’ contact www.equalitytrust.org.uk or Equality Trust, 18 Victoria Park Square, London E2 9PF   Email – info@equalitytrust.org.uk

The Slaughter of the Innocents!

          Last week the CIA announced that it had found no evidence of Russia being directly involved in the destruction of that Malaysian air liner.  That, I am sure, was not what their political bosses had wanted them to report and I am equally sure that, had the Russians been directly involved, the CIA would have found evidence of it.

            On 28th July,  a spokesman for the Kiev Ukrainian Government declared that the aircraft’s ‘black boxes’ had revealed that the air liner had been destroyed by a ground-to-air missile as had been surmised.  That was surely extraordinary.  We had been told that the ‘black boxes’ had been handed over intact by the pro-Russian insurgents to representatives of the Malaysian Airline and that they were being sent to the UK to be opened and have their contents analysed.  How, I wonder, did those boxes fall into the hands of the Kiev government and had they tampered with them in any way?

It was a fortnight before international inspectors were able to secure the site of the crash and begin to make a proper inspection of the remains of the plane and even now their situation is far from safe and secure.  This has not been because of lack of co-operation from the insurgent authorities (they, after all, found and secured the ‘black boxes’ and handed them over untouched to the Malaysian air line). The reason the inspectors can't get on with their work is continued shelling by the artillery of the Kiev Government and the refusal of that government’s forces to cease their attacks while inspection is going on. 

In fact, we still don’t know for certain how that air disaster took place.  We don’t know if it was shot down by a missile and, if it was, who fired that missile, why they fired it and from where.   This hasn’t prevented the leaders of the EU from deciding that it was all the result of Russia’s support of the Ukrainian rebels – and they have imposed a further set of economic and political sanctions on Russia.  Meanwhile, NATO is holding a series of naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and the UK is sending troops to take part in military exercises in Poland. Both actions are surely quite uncalled for and dangerously provocative.  Can we really have already forgotten the horrors of the two twentieth century world wars?  The few of us who still remember World War II certainly haven’t.

Meanwhile in the ‘Holy Land', Israel is conducting a bloody and destructive campaign in Gaza which has so far resulted in the deaths of nearly 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians and many of them women and children. A fragile temporary cease-fire lasted only a matter of hours and the Israeli Prime Minister has suggested that the campaign may go on for much longer. Yes, they have been provoked.  HAMAS too bears some responsibility for the slaughter – but the Israeli response has been and is totally disproportionate.  The situation is made worse by the fact that Israel exerts a tight blockade on Gaza which means that the unfortunate victims haven’t even the choice of fleeing their country and becoming refugees. Twice at least, Israeli forces have bombed or shelled United Nations buildings in which hapless civilians have sought safety.  ISIS, Al Qaeda and the like must be delighted by the extra recruits that the situation is producing!

Why is there not even talk of sanctions and dire ‘consequences’ for Israel and those who support her and supply her with the weapons of death?  Israel is responsible for many more deaths and much more destruction than those east Ukrainian insurgents.  Are the lives of Middle Eastern women and children less sacred than those of European countries?  Or is it, as I suggested in this blog a fortnight ago: It’s not what is done, it’s who it is does it, that really matters?  How much more strident and belligerent the voices from 'the west' would have been if only it were the 'Russians’ who were slaughtering innocent women and children in Gaza! 

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.