I thought I would give myself a day before blogging about the recently announced £16 billion sell-off of public assets, which is the Government's latest economic wheeze. I thought it might make it seem more like common sense.
Didn't work.
So, you're facing an annual £175 billion deficit. Frankly, unless you start selling off the entire state, asset sales aren't going to make much of a dent. They particularly aren't going to make much of a dent if you are selling off some services (British Waterways is on the list, for example) which, one presumes, you are then going to have to lease back in various forms, or at least pay to use.
Whichever way I look at it, frankly it seems like a bit of a firesale to private companies - the kind of companies who have already benefited massively from Gordon Brown's reign under PFI contracts, PPP and various other dodgy financial instruments which have been used to channel public money into private pockets. The Lib Dems at least have pointed out that, if you think the sell-off is a good idea (which all three establishment parties seem to) you at least should try to get good value for the assets - i.e. not sell them off at the bottom of the market when you don't actually need to.
All in all, very strange...and another example of the way in which the UK's response to the financial crisis seems to be more and more mirroring Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" analysis - the idea that global capitalism now takes advantage of crises - whether financial, social or natural - to privatise everything in sight. Spare a thought in particular for the workers at the Dartford Crossing. Not only did they put in a large amount of work towards a failed attempt at employee ownership earlier in the decade (exactly the kind of thing that any Government supported by the Co-operative Party should be supporting, of course), now even the asset they are working with has been shipped off into private hands.
We have to stop this wave of privatisations - and stop them now. The answer to this crisis lies in public investment and support for greater economic democracy - not cuts and privatisation.
P.S. I haven't even covered the sell-off of the student loan book here - mostly because I am still trying to wrap my head around what that means, what dodgy ways whoever buys it is going to make profit out of it, and how exactly it is going to hurt people like me who still have lots of outstanding student loans....
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Another Consensus - On Asylum
I could probably spend the rest of the time from now until the General Election pointing to every way in which the establishment political consensus is dehumanising, immoral and just plain wrong.
Since I'd probably run out of time before I finished, here's just one more example - the continuing attempts to make poverty and deprivation obligatory for asylum seekers. Hot on the heels of the Government's despicable decision to cut asylum seeker benefits to just £5 a day, Rowenna Davis has written this piece on the experiences of one asylum seeker, contrasting it with the view at Conservative Party Conference.
I doubt anyone in the Cabinet, or Shadow Cabinet, has any idea how they would live on £5 a day - but they are happy to proscribe it for others. Disgraceful.
Since I'd probably run out of time before I finished, here's just one more example - the continuing attempts to make poverty and deprivation obligatory for asylum seekers. Hot on the heels of the Government's despicable decision to cut asylum seeker benefits to just £5 a day, Rowenna Davis has written this piece on the experiences of one asylum seeker, contrasting it with the view at Conservative Party Conference.
I doubt anyone in the Cabinet, or Shadow Cabinet, has any idea how they would live on £5 a day - but they are happy to proscribe it for others. Disgraceful.
Monday, 5 October 2009
Mainstream Benefits Consensus Is Sickening
Apparently, the Tories are going to create jobs and opportunity by cutting benefits for disabled people.
Yes, I don't quite see how that one is going to work, either. It seems to me that further reducing the spending power of vulnerable people, dumping them on the JSA, and then forcing them to compete with millions of other unemployed people for dead-end jobs is probably not the solution to our economic ills. Economic ills which, lest we forget, have been brought about in large part by the kind of unregulated, cut throat, free market economics that the Tories have championed for so long.
Not that you'll hear Labour criticising the plans too loudly. Why? Well, because, as this piece by the BBC's Nick Robinson makes plain, there is a cosy consensus when it comes to benefits policy between Labour and the Tories. Neither are interested in supporting vulnerable people or maintaining a strong safety net for those who need society's help, but rather scapegoating easy targets for a quick headline. Little wonder then that Sir David Freud (who famously wrote New Labour's benefits policy in only three weeks, having never been on benefit himself and apparently not bothering to speak to anyone who had been) has so easily jumped from the sinking Labour ship and onto the Tory platform. I guess that is what rats do.
The Green Party's economics spokesperson, Molly Scott-Cato, explains the sheer idiocy of the Tory approach better than I can, while the excellent and still inexplicably Labour Don Paskini gives a short version of the Conservative policy on his blog.
The long and the short of it is - under either Tories or Labour, people on benefits will be treated as electoral punchbags for middle England. By the Greens, they will be treated as human beings who have a valuable contribution to make towards society. If I'm elected as an MP, I'll be campaigning to raise JSA, not lower Incapacity Benefit.
Yes, I don't quite see how that one is going to work, either. It seems to me that further reducing the spending power of vulnerable people, dumping them on the JSA, and then forcing them to compete with millions of other unemployed people for dead-end jobs is probably not the solution to our economic ills. Economic ills which, lest we forget, have been brought about in large part by the kind of unregulated, cut throat, free market economics that the Tories have championed for so long.
Not that you'll hear Labour criticising the plans too loudly. Why? Well, because, as this piece by the BBC's Nick Robinson makes plain, there is a cosy consensus when it comes to benefits policy between Labour and the Tories. Neither are interested in supporting vulnerable people or maintaining a strong safety net for those who need society's help, but rather scapegoating easy targets for a quick headline. Little wonder then that Sir David Freud (who famously wrote New Labour's benefits policy in only three weeks, having never been on benefit himself and apparently not bothering to speak to anyone who had been) has so easily jumped from the sinking Labour ship and onto the Tory platform. I guess that is what rats do.
The Green Party's economics spokesperson, Molly Scott-Cato, explains the sheer idiocy of the Tory approach better than I can, while the excellent and still inexplicably Labour Don Paskini gives a short version of the Conservative policy on his blog.
The long and the short of it is - under either Tories or Labour, people on benefits will be treated as electoral punchbags for middle England. By the Greens, they will be treated as human beings who have a valuable contribution to make towards society. If I'm elected as an MP, I'll be campaigning to raise JSA, not lower Incapacity Benefit.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
More campaign endorsements
I'm very pleased that London's Green MEP, and the Chair of the London Assembly, have both taken time out to endorse my campaign!
Keep Our NHS Public
LOBBY OF HACKNEY'S HEALTH SCRUTINY COMMITTEE
STOP THE SELL-OFF OF GP SURGERIES TO PRIVATE COMPANIES!
CONSULT THE PEOPLE OF HACKNEY!
WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER - 6 PM TO 7 PM - HACKNEY TOWN HALL
I am going to be at this lobby in 10 days time. I hope you will be too. As I've made clear before, I think that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is an ongoing disgrace. Lets make sure it is stopped in its tracks.
STOP THE SELL-OFF OF GP SURGERIES TO PRIVATE COMPANIES!
CONSULT THE PEOPLE OF HACKNEY!
WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER - 6 PM TO 7 PM - HACKNEY TOWN HALL
I am going to be at this lobby in 10 days time. I hope you will be too. As I've made clear before, I think that the creeping privatisation of the NHS is an ongoing disgrace. Lets make sure it is stopped in its tracks.
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Market Morality
So, some people liked Gordon Brown's conference speech today. Others didn't. No one seems to have come to the same conclusion that I have, which is that he should resign as a result of it.
Allow me to explain.
You see, Gordon Brown spent quite a long time talking today about the failure of the free-market idea. About the fact that deregulation was a massive disaster, that laissez-faire economic philosophy got us into this mess and that market-driven capitalism cannot be allowed free reign. I agree with him. The only problem? Well, he's spent the last decade implementing exactly the policies he repudiated today. We aren't where we are simply because of the Tories - we are where we are because Brown and Blair decided to agree with the Tories rather than fundamentally challenging their ideas.
Here's just one example, from a speech he gave upon becoming Prime Minister to the City of London. It's one example of thousands over the last twelve years:
“Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader…. Now today over 40 per cent of the world's foreign equities are traded here, more than New York… 80 per cent of our business is international….
So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London….
And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created….
Britain…. a world leader in stability….
So let me say as I begin my new job, I want to continue to work with you in helping you do yours, listening to what you say, always recognising your international success is critical to that of Britain's overall and considering together the things that we must do - and, just as important, things we should not do - to maintain our competitiveness… enhancing a risk based regulatory approach, as we did in resisting pressure for a British Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron and Worldcom….”
To those who want a translation of that last bit, it roughly reads "to maintain our competiveness, I agree that we shouldn't regulate financial transactions heavily, but instead rely on the common sense of bankers and the market to regulate themselves".
The sheer, nauseating hypocrisy of watching a man who has been a driving force in the continuing liberalisation of the world financial system (prefaced, yesterday, by Peter Mandelson, one of the most neoliberal EU Trade Commissioners in history) stand up and talk about the need for 'moral markets' (as if there were such a thing, markets are allocation systems, not moral agents) was almost overwhelming. It would have been so even if Brown wasn't still forcing bank liberalisation on the developing world.
The truth is, deregulation, destruction of capital controls and a globalised free market have led to this mess. As Robin Hahnel's anaylsis of the earlier 1998 crisis makes clear, the warning signs have been there for well over a decade. These problems have been caused by the deregulation championed by Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, and the Labour Government as a whole.
If he doesn't believe what he said today, Brown should resign because he is a liar. If he does believe what he said, he should resign because it proves that his entire tenure has been an abject, utter and complete failure from beginning to end.
As the Beijing Declaration and many other statements from the movement for 'globalisation from below' have shown, there are alternatives to the sickening spectacle of our leaders turning their policy on its head and yet still failing to challenge the root causes of the problem. Z Magazine's reflections on the US economy are largely applicable to the UK as well - while the recession may come to an end, the continuing problems faced by ordinary people will not - without more radical social, economic and political change. Capitalism is based on the primacy of profit, and unending growth is its inevitable consequence. After we have stabilised the current system, preferably through the methods recommended by the Beijing Declaration and similar statements, we must begin building an entirely new economic system - not a reformed version of this one.
It has to be said that until this point, the left has not stepped up to the challenge. Mired in sectarian squabbles from the last century, we have allowed the centre-right and right to regain some of the initiative. It is up to movements such as the EcoSocialist International Network to highlight the hypocrisy of our current politicians, to forge a movement of ordinary people determined to challenge the status quo, and to champion policies that will safeguard both the planet, and the people who live on it. We certainly can't rely on a man as dishonest (or terribly confused) as Gordon Brown to do it for us.
P.S. I haven't even started on the sheer, terrible awfulness of the policy he announced, which seems to advocate forcing 16-17 year old parents into a network of state hostels. At least temporarily, words fail me.
Allow me to explain.
You see, Gordon Brown spent quite a long time talking today about the failure of the free-market idea. About the fact that deregulation was a massive disaster, that laissez-faire economic philosophy got us into this mess and that market-driven capitalism cannot be allowed free reign. I agree with him. The only problem? Well, he's spent the last decade implementing exactly the policies he repudiated today. We aren't where we are simply because of the Tories - we are where we are because Brown and Blair decided to agree with the Tories rather than fundamentally challenging their ideas.
Here's just one example, from a speech he gave upon becoming Prime Minister to the City of London. It's one example of thousands over the last twelve years:
“Over the ten years that I have had the privilege of addressing you as Chancellor, I have been able year by year to record how the City of London has risen by your efforts, ingenuity and creativity to become a new world leader…. Now today over 40 per cent of the world's foreign equities are traded here, more than New York… 80 per cent of our business is international….
So I congratulate you Lord Mayor and the City of London on these remarkable achievements, an era that history will record as the beginning of a new golden age for the City of London….
And I believe it will be said of this age, the first decades of the 21st century, that out of the greatest restructuring of the global economy, perhaps even greater than the industrial revolution, a new world order was created….
Britain…. a world leader in stability….
So let me say as I begin my new job, I want to continue to work with you in helping you do yours, listening to what you say, always recognising your international success is critical to that of Britain's overall and considering together the things that we must do - and, just as important, things we should not do - to maintain our competitiveness… enhancing a risk based regulatory approach, as we did in resisting pressure for a British Sarbanes-Oxley after Enron and Worldcom….”
To those who want a translation of that last bit, it roughly reads "to maintain our competiveness, I agree that we shouldn't regulate financial transactions heavily, but instead rely on the common sense of bankers and the market to regulate themselves".
The sheer, nauseating hypocrisy of watching a man who has been a driving force in the continuing liberalisation of the world financial system (prefaced, yesterday, by Peter Mandelson, one of the most neoliberal EU Trade Commissioners in history) stand up and talk about the need for 'moral markets' (as if there were such a thing, markets are allocation systems, not moral agents) was almost overwhelming. It would have been so even if Brown wasn't still forcing bank liberalisation on the developing world.
The truth is, deregulation, destruction of capital controls and a globalised free market have led to this mess. As Robin Hahnel's anaylsis of the earlier 1998 crisis makes clear, the warning signs have been there for well over a decade. These problems have been caused by the deregulation championed by Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, and the Labour Government as a whole.
If he doesn't believe what he said today, Brown should resign because he is a liar. If he does believe what he said, he should resign because it proves that his entire tenure has been an abject, utter and complete failure from beginning to end.
As the Beijing Declaration and many other statements from the movement for 'globalisation from below' have shown, there are alternatives to the sickening spectacle of our leaders turning their policy on its head and yet still failing to challenge the root causes of the problem. Z Magazine's reflections on the US economy are largely applicable to the UK as well - while the recession may come to an end, the continuing problems faced by ordinary people will not - without more radical social, economic and political change. Capitalism is based on the primacy of profit, and unending growth is its inevitable consequence. After we have stabilised the current system, preferably through the methods recommended by the Beijing Declaration and similar statements, we must begin building an entirely new economic system - not a reformed version of this one.
It has to be said that until this point, the left has not stepped up to the challenge. Mired in sectarian squabbles from the last century, we have allowed the centre-right and right to regain some of the initiative. It is up to movements such as the EcoSocialist International Network to highlight the hypocrisy of our current politicians, to forge a movement of ordinary people determined to challenge the status quo, and to champion policies that will safeguard both the planet, and the people who live on it. We certainly can't rely on a man as dishonest (or terribly confused) as Gordon Brown to do it for us.
P.S. I haven't even started on the sheer, terrible awfulness of the policy he announced, which seems to advocate forcing 16-17 year old parents into a network of state hostels. At least temporarily, words fail me.
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Caroline Lucas Reacts To Calais Clearances
My outrage at headlines like this has been tempered slightly by the knowledge that at least one political party in this country is standing up for basic human rights and decency. Caroline Lucas, as ever, said it eloquently:
- British and French governments’ plot to deport ‘Jungle’ asylum seekers breaks EU human rights law, says Green Party leader
Green MEP for the South East, Caroline Lucas, today responded angrily to news that French police have raided the ‘Jungle’ camps in Calais, reportedly detaining 278 people – 132 children of whom are said to be children.
Police have swooped on a squalid tented area known as ‘The Jungle’ outside Calais, home to hundreds of refugees and migrants from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. Around a fifth of them are thought to be children, living in desperate and dangerous conditions, sleeping rough, with little access to sanitation or resources.
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP said:
“Today’s mass clearance and destruction of the ‘Jungle’ camps by the French authorities, involving the detention of hundreds of refugees, is simply unacceptable – and must be condemned by the international community.
“Rather than fulfilling their responsibilities to seekers of asylum under both EU and international law, the French and British governments are turning a blind eye to the suffering taking place on their own doorsteps. Home Secretary Alan Johnson‘s glee in the wake of this aggressive police raid is particularly disturbing.
“The plan for mass deportations of these refugees rides roughshod over the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Geneva Convention. And given that so many facing expulsion are children, the plans may also breach the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"This short term ‘solution’ is not only inhumane – it will not work. The French are not playing their part in allowing people to claim asylum in Calais, and must commit to making the official procedures for seeking asylum more accessible to those in need. Equally, other EU Member states must recognise their duty to share the responsibility.”
The majority of refugees in the ‘Jungle’ have had no contact with official authorities since entering the EU. Many face a risk of deportation before they have even been interviewed in order to determine whether they are seeking asylum and are, therefore, protected by EU asylum law. They are also often at the mercy of ruthless people traffickers within the camps.
Caroline Lucas MEP concluded:
“Many migrants into France and the UK are fleeing in part from the dire consequences of the West’s foreign policy mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given this reality, you would hope that these governments would take their responsibilities to the international community more seriously.
“It is disgusting that vulnerable people from some of the world’s most troubled countries are treated so inhumanely on European soil. Many residents in the camps are genuine asylum-seekers and not illegal immigrants. It is crucial that those people fleeing persecution and war have free access to the correct information so that they know they can make a genuine claim for asylum.”
In a letter to the European Commission back in July, the UK’s Green MEPs called for an immediate suspension of plans to deport around 1,800 individuals from the ‘Jungle’, warning that the planned action – being taken jointly by the French and British authorities under the Evian Agreement – would be in direct breach of EU and international law on human rights and refugees.
- British and French governments’ plot to deport ‘Jungle’ asylum seekers breaks EU human rights law, says Green Party leader
Green MEP for the South East, Caroline Lucas, today responded angrily to news that French police have raided the ‘Jungle’ camps in Calais, reportedly detaining 278 people – 132 children of whom are said to be children.
Police have swooped on a squalid tented area known as ‘The Jungle’ outside Calais, home to hundreds of refugees and migrants from war-torn countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. Around a fifth of them are thought to be children, living in desperate and dangerous conditions, sleeping rough, with little access to sanitation or resources.
Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP said:
“Today’s mass clearance and destruction of the ‘Jungle’ camps by the French authorities, involving the detention of hundreds of refugees, is simply unacceptable – and must be condemned by the international community.
“Rather than fulfilling their responsibilities to seekers of asylum under both EU and international law, the French and British governments are turning a blind eye to the suffering taking place on their own doorsteps. Home Secretary Alan Johnson‘s glee in the wake of this aggressive police raid is particularly disturbing.
“The plan for mass deportations of these refugees rides roughshod over the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the Geneva Convention. And given that so many facing expulsion are children, the plans may also breach the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
"This short term ‘solution’ is not only inhumane – it will not work. The French are not playing their part in allowing people to claim asylum in Calais, and must commit to making the official procedures for seeking asylum more accessible to those in need. Equally, other EU Member states must recognise their duty to share the responsibility.”
The majority of refugees in the ‘Jungle’ have had no contact with official authorities since entering the EU. Many face a risk of deportation before they have even been interviewed in order to determine whether they are seeking asylum and are, therefore, protected by EU asylum law. They are also often at the mercy of ruthless people traffickers within the camps.
Caroline Lucas MEP concluded:
“Many migrants into France and the UK are fleeing in part from the dire consequences of the West’s foreign policy mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Given this reality, you would hope that these governments would take their responsibilities to the international community more seriously.
“It is disgusting that vulnerable people from some of the world’s most troubled countries are treated so inhumanely on European soil. Many residents in the camps are genuine asylum-seekers and not illegal immigrants. It is crucial that those people fleeing persecution and war have free access to the correct information so that they know they can make a genuine claim for asylum.”
In a letter to the European Commission back in July, the UK’s Green MEPs called for an immediate suspension of plans to deport around 1,800 individuals from the ‘Jungle’, warning that the planned action – being taken jointly by the French and British authorities under the Evian Agreement – would be in direct breach of EU and international law on human rights and refugees.
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