6th March 2015

Tendring Topics……..on line

The New ‘Levellers’

          For many years I would have described myself, if asked, as a democratic socialist.  In today’s market-based society, everything, and everybody, is deemed to have a price.  It’s a society in which it is assumed that everyone’s ambition is the acquisition of greater personal wealth; in which everyone grabs as much as he can for as little as he (or she) can get away with.

            I have learned to survive, even to prosper, in this society.  I didn’t and don’t like it.  I hoped that democratic socialism could develop, if not into an earthly paradise, at least into a fairer and happier society than the one in which we live today.   However reading of the researches of two Quakers, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in their book ‘The Spirit Level’ published in 2009, convinced me that, although public ownership could be one way of producing a fairer society, there are other ways – the co-operative movement could be one, as could employer/employee partnerships like the John Lewis business group.

            Richard and Kate discovered and demonstrated that our society’s greatest evil was the ever-widening gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest members of our society.  Furthermore they discovered that levelling off incomes didn’t just benefit the poor (though they are the immediate and obvious beneficiaries) but the whole of society – rich, poor, and the great majority of us who are neither the one nor the other.   More equal societies, Denmark, Sweden and Norway for instance, are happier, less crime-ridden, have fewer teenage pregnancies, and are more peaceful and healthier societies.

            The United Kingdom has the most unequal society in Europe and one of the most unequal in the whole of the developed world.  The gap between the incomes of the wealthiest and the poorest in the United Kingdom steadily gets wider.  The Labour Party was created to provide a political voice for working people and the poor.   It is to the party’s shame that during ten years of New Labour government, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest widened!

            In 2009, in the wake of the publication of The Spirit Level the Equality Trust was formed to draw attention to our unequal society; to promote policies that work towards greater equality and oppose those that widen the gap.  All over the country there are groups working towards those ends.  A newsletter is sent regularly to supporters and below is an extract from the latest newsletter:

February has been a successful if troubling month for exposing some of the forces behind our extreme inequality. Revelations on HSBC’s role in tax avoidance saw the media focus on the incredible schemes used by the very rich to shield their wealth. With impeccable timing it was also revealed than banks themselves have done pretty well over the last few years. The Robin Hood Tax campaign found bonuses paid out by banks and insurers since the start of the financial crisis are set to top £100bn this year.

It didn’t end there either, as a sting operation led to claims that MPs Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind were involved in a ‘cash for access’ scandal.  We calculated that Rifkind and Straw command rates of around £2,290 and £500 per hour for some of their consulting work. That’s 197 and 43 times the average wage rate respectively. Once again the question is asked as to how, and how much, our politicians are paid.

If you’d like to know more about the Equality Trust and its work, the address is 18 Victoria Park Square, London, E2 9PF.   Its email address is info@equalitytrust.org.uk and its web site is www.equalitytrust.org.uk

The major parties are setting out their policies in attempts to persuade us to vote for their candidate in the General Election which is now only weeks away.  It seems to me that the only Party attempting anything more than a slight nudging in one direction or the other of the present grossly unfair economic and political system is the Green Party. I was surprised and heartened to learn that the Greens now have more members that the much more publicised Ukippers. Green policies are not all that different from those of the Party for which I voted and which won the election in 1945 at the end of World War II.  They do promise the hope of a fairer, more equal society.  The Green Party candidate will get my vote.

That General Election in 1945, held just after I had returned to England at the end of World War II in Europe, was the first opportunity I had ever had to vote. I voted I thought, for a fairer Britain and a more peaceful world. The vote that I hope to cast in May this year will almost certainly be my last opportunity to vote in a general election. I shall cast it with exactly the same hope of a fairer Britain and a more peaceful world, not for myself this time (I certainly won’t see any sign of it in my lifetime!) but for my grandchildren.

There’s no place like home……..

……….and no vote-winner like ‘homes for all’ or, as far as the Tories are concerned ‘Home ownership for all’.  At least that’s what all the Party leaders think, because they’re competing with each other to promise 100,000 200,000 (why stop there – the sky’s the limit as far as promises are concerned) new homes if only they’re elected in May.   To hear them talk you’d think they were going to don the overalls and hard hats they wear for ‘photo opportunities at the workplace’ and go out and build those houses themselves.  A blog reader and regular correspondent, who has expert knowledge and experience in the field of housing explains the rationale of David Cameron’s promise of 200,000 cut-price homes.

He is promising to build 200,000 new homes and sell them at a discount to first time buyers under 40 (a high age limit, but that’s how long it takes to save a deposit these days!)  He claims this “scheme” will cost nothing to the public purse. Developers are apparently very enthusiastic.

The London Evening Standard explains, as no other news medium  is doing, that these homes are to be built on “brown field” and ex-commercial sites, not normally available for housing.  When Local Authorities allow these sites to be built on for a major development (as Croydon Council is  doing right now), they normally get money from the developers for building infrastructure, of £45,000 per home. They also have a requirement that 20% will be “affordable homes” and are sold to a Housing Association. Both of these rules are being scrapped for this scheme, thus “allowing developers” to sell the homes at a 20% reduced price. Presumably, for the concession, they are forced to sell at this reduced price (but in a market economy this doesn’t make much sense). If the buyers sell within 5 years they have to return the subsidy (I don’t understand that, because it isn’t really a subsidy, just a concession, which cannot be reversed). I don’t know who they would return it to? The homeless families who are being short changed by this scheme?  It sounds like a good 5 year savings plan to me, to buy a 250K flat and get a 50K discount, wait 5 years while you live in it, then sell and get the 50K back, plus the value of house price inflation which probably means it would be worth 100K.

The reality is, that this is another calculated move to help core Tory voters – middle aged, middle class people aspiring to buy their first home – while robbing would-be Labour-Voting Social Housing Tenants of potential housing.  In the end, this isn’t reducing the cost of housing, but rather it is increasing it, by increasing the supply of inflated owner-occupied housing at the direct cost of the supply of the shrinking supply affordable rented housing.  However, it makes a good headline before an election; about as meaningless as many of the other promises being made right now.

It is worth remembering that much, if not all, of our country’s current housing problems date from the Thatcher years when ‘right to buy’ legislation compelled local authorities (but not private landlords) to sell, at bargain basement prices, houses and flats that had been provided by their predecessors to eliminate homelessness and overcrowding from their districts; ‘buying votes with other people’s money!’  Prior to the ‘avaricious eighties’ local authorities had a right and a duty to provide homes in their districts for letting and to allocate them to those with greatest need.

‘The Government giveth – and the Government taketh away!’

I recently commented in this blog on the Government’s proposal to hand over all health and welfare services in the Manchester area to the local authority for that area. That’s quite a responsibility!

Today I have just heard on ‘BBC Breakfast’ that, in connection with another public service,  the Government is interfering in the very minutia of local government administration.  Motorists nationwide parking their cars in municipal car-parks are to be allowed an extra ten minutes before any action is taken about their over-running the time for which they have paid.  Furthermore local authorities mustn’t use illegal parking fines as a source of revenue.

Goodness – local government can be trusted to run the health and welfare services of a large conurbation but  can’t be trusted to administer its own car-parks!   It couldn’t, I suppose, be anything to do with the fact that a great many supporters of the present Government are owner-drivers of cars – and that a general election is only a few weeks away?

  

                       

                

             

            

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!