Permanent Austerity.

Bound in white tie, but not gagged, merely primed for performance as always, the Prime Minister finally admitted what some of us had suspected from before the beginning. In his speech David Cameron came out with the rhetoric of small government, that we have to do more with less and shrink the state to a more effective role. So the point of the austerity measures is not to reduce the deficit necessarily, it is to slim down the size of the state. Of course, it is worth saying that the ideological mission of a shrunken state is one and the same with the claims to 'necessity'. It is no coincidence that the claim that the spending cuts are 'necessary' comes with added promises of greater 'productivity', 'innovation' and 'efficiency'. In fact, a government euphemism for cuts is 'efficiency savings'. This is the lexicon of neoliberal managerialism.

If we are to take David Cameron on his word then we might say that the austerity is meant to be perpetual and never ending. The key part being when he said "We are sticking to the task. But that doesn't just mean making difficult decisions on public spending. It also means something more profound, it means building a leaner, more efficient state.  We need to do more with less. Not just now, but permanently." The sight of the Prime Minister in his white little frock at the throne dripping gold and these words coming out of his mouth was something to be seen. Unfortunately the irony of the Head of Her Majesty's Government proselytising on the virtues of 'small government' is lost on conservative opinion. Meanwhile the handful of liberal and leftish rags immediately seized on the words of the Prime Minister. But no one should be so surprised really.
 

Just observe the fact that the original proposals by George Osborne were meant to reduce the deficit to naught by 2015 and now the plans to wipe the deficit have been extended to 2020. To this picture we may add the claims that the NHS is facing a shortfall of £10 billion, that was back in 2010, it was Andrew Lansley, who used the figure to justify the cuts he was making at the time. Now there is talk of a coming shortfall by the end of the decade of £30 billion. One wonders if Cameron's lot will ever feel they have lowered the rate of spending far enough. Every problem of the public services and welfare state are seized on by these vultures as proof of the need for deep cuts. The various scandals to be endured by the NHS of late fit the example perfectly. Hunt will make a statement on the problem at hand (which is no doubt real) to buttress his position as a competent Health Secretary coming up with the prescription for a better health service. Cuts and more cuts.

The examples the Prime Minister reaches for are quite interesting for this reason. He singled out for praise the accomplishments of Michael Gove, the 40% cuts to administrative staff at the Education Department to be specific. Then there are the 3,000 'free schools' and academies set up under the watch of Gove. He lumps in the shrinkage of the department with the use of public assets and money to ensure education for the children of sharp-elbowed middle-class parents. 'Free schools' are established at the expense of the tax-payer and even at a cost to comprehensive and other state schools in terms of resources. This is the same ministry to rearrange the pensions system for teachers with the hopes of devaluing their retirement funds by 15% and raising their payments by 50%. Over the same timeline you'll find tuition fees introduced and raised almost at every university to £9,000, apparently to reduce the deficit when HE funding accounts for 0.7% of GDP.


This is the manifest reality of what Cameron means when he speaks of a "leaner, more efficient state". The idealised slim-line state of libertarian imaginations is not to be taken seriously as a realistic prospect. Really we're looking at the possibility of living in a society where the social safety-nets is non-existent while the state intervenes to create markets, boost supply and ensure vast profits. There will be plenty of bailouts to come. In some respects the neoliberal period seems much more like a state of flux than a rigidly set social order. It is partly identifiable by its oscillations, the sudden shift in gears from taking a chainsaw to financial regulations to diving into the public purse to save the lemmings before they go over the cliff. Though it is a very narrow and restricted spectrum with serious limitations. There is only so many regulations to burn and so far the taxes can be cut.

Jumping each hurdle might become much more difficult as we go long. Crises will offer opportunities to reconstitute the economic formations as they were prior to them. Schumpeter called it 'creative destruction': the field of competitors is wiped clear for old forces to go from strength to strength. A better diagnosis from Naomi Klein would be economic 'shock therapy' whereby the crisis provides a cover for a series of assaults to be launched on the living standards of working-class people. It's worth bearing in mind that the current order took shape in the way that the Thatcherites circumvented the crisis of social democracy: 1) cutting public expenditure, 2) privatising state industries, 3) smashing the unions and 4) deregulation of finance. Incidentally the average rate of growth in the 70s was 2.5% and it remained the same in the Thatcher decade. So those who think the austerity is about high rates of growth are sadly mistaken, at best.

Not surprisingly then 0.8% of growth is enough for George Osborne to declare a great victory, a strange position given that there has been no opposition in Parliament to his agenda. Only a brat as expensively educated as the Chancellor could perceive competition in a game rigged in his favour. The Cameron lot want to patch up this sorry set-up, not to fundamentally alter its trajectory. The failures of the past are accentuated, and framed in a certain way, by the abstract principles of today. A high-rate of public expenditure is measured by a criterion not of the social democratic era. The 1970s was a terrible time in British history not because it necessarily was so awful, but because the conditions differ so greatly to today. To be specific, the scope of the state - particularly in the ways that helped poor people - in those days is what outrages conservative-minded people.

The standard of a high level of government debt was changed by the Thatcher-Major era. Suddenly it was set at a benchmark of 40% when this country has seen rates as high as 250% in the wake of World War Two. And that was a well managed economic situation. The Labour government of 1945 established a social democracy complete with the trimmings of a welfare state and universal health-care. The story of how the social democratic post-war consensus developed systemic problems and crises is a long one and a subject for a different article. What may be said is that the failures of that epoch have been accentuated in the years since. The abstract principles of today are applied to those yesteryears with the self-serving results one would expect. The rightward trend of discourse leaves the state-led settlement of the 50s and 60s looking almost Soviet to too many people today. This is the death of social democracy.

The Politics of a Litterateur.

With the campaign slogan "You'll get more with Gore", Gore Vidal ran for Congress in 1960 in a traditionally Republican district of New York. The planks in the platform including recognition of Mao's China, federal aid for education and progressive taxes. He received more votes than any Democrat in five decades, but still lost. Though Gore Vidal has strong links to the Democratic Party through his family as well as his own affiliation in the early 1970s he chaired the People's Party alongside prominent socialists like Benjamin Spock. The Party campaigned for withdrawal from Vietnam, legalisation of cannabis, a higher minimum wage and the introduction of a maximum wage. Ultimately Vidal opted to support McGovern against Nixon, to avoid splitting the anti-war vote and hopefully end the Vietnam war. It would be the last chance for New Deal liberalism to save itself. He ran for the Senate in 1982 and campaigned to tax Church income, nationalisation of natural resources and the replacement of the current system with a Parliamentary democracy.

In 1988 Gore Vidal presented five proposals to improve the American Republic. The first of which was to limit elections to 8 weeks and secondly to ban any candidate or party from buying time on television, radio and newspapers. In Vidal's America the media ought to provide free time and space for the candidates to be interviewed and debate with one another. No more, no less. The growing decay of political language and the system at large was a great worry of Gore's in his later years. The costs of advertising must be eliminated as a necessary step to the removal of money from the political arena. Thirdly, social security should be factored out of fiscal policy in order to expose the bloated military expenditure to the American people. This is all a part of Vidal's isolationist convictions. He goes further to recommend American withdrawal from NATO and all foreign adventures, as well as an end to military aid to foreign countries (e.g. Israel). The line is populist as the cash can be put to better use at home, for infrastructure and public education Vidal stresses.

The fourth proposal was to legalise the use and sale of all drugs because Prohibition only made the Mafia rich while alcoholism sky-rocketed in the 1920s. Addiction cannot be eliminated through criminalisation. This fits into his own commitment to civil liberties and rights pitched since the 1960s when Vidal first moved to the Democratic Left. He later corresponded with Timothy McVeigh and found that he understood the libertarian reasoning for a rebellion against the government. After all the Clinton regime had the FBI incinerate 80 people at Waco with the broad approval of the liberal Left. Vidal remained a scourge of civil authoritarianism when the Bushites stole the election and launched the country into war. The last proposal was to end the Cold War and initiate the beginning of economic integration between America and Russia, justified by self-preservation in a world increasingly centred around China and Japan. It would seem Vidal was internationalist on economics and isolationist on foreign policy.

The propositions are reformist, even conservative, in tone as the recommendations of are about the preservation of the body politic. The ruling-class and prevailing politics had become a drag on the Republic in his mind. The national security state would inevitably threaten the foundations of the United States. Its rapacious growth would eventually devour every chunk of the mountain of revenues from the American tax-payer. It was in this same presentation that Vidal delved into the details of the 1986 US Budget. He breaks it down for us: out of $794 billion in revenue a total of $294 billion goes to social security while $286 billion goes to defence, $12 billion on foreign arms to client states and $8 billion on energy (e.g. nuclear weapons); $27 billion on benefits for war vets and $142 billion on interest payments for loans used to prop up the national security state. Other federal spending came to $177 billion, partly the size of the deficit. Out of the $500 billion left over after social security around $475 billion is spent on the national security state.

 

 

Out of all the Founding Fathers it is Aaron Burr who is most admired by Gore Vidal, not Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson or even Tom Paine. For Vidal it is the man who was never President but served as Vice President under Jefferson who is most important. He notes that Burr introduced a degree of professionalism to American politics. Later, Aaron Burr challenged Alexander Hamilton to a duel before shooting him - a standard maintained by Vice Presidents until Dick Cheney mistook a lawyer for a quail. It's clear that Vidal saw himself as a man of the Jeffersonian revolutionary tradition. He remained concerned that the US was desecrating its republican ideals. The way Vidal portrayed Jefferson in Burr was particularly controversial back in 1973 as it included an account of Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings. The historians of the time argued that a gentleman would have never had sex with a slave and since Thomas Jefferson was the consummate gentleman he would've never had an affair with Sally Hemings.

Obamarama - the Republican Drama.

Starve the Beast.

The talks between the Democratic administration and the Republican leadership have broken down just days before the deadline for the decision on the ceiling on borrowing for $14.3 trillion. There is the real possibility of an American default for the first time in the country's history. The results of which could be catastrophic for the US economy and other economies around the world. The shock-jocks and attack dogs have been out of control for years. We can hear Rush Limbaugh yelling that the GOP can't cave in or Obama will be re-elected in 2012. The negotiations will effect the next 10 years of American life, which might be the reason for the stalemate initiated by the Republicans as there could be a Republican administration in office by then. The policies initiated in the next 10 years will effect the pretext for a second Republican term in 2020. A huge surplus would provide the means for another round of tax-cuts, which would in turn create another deficit and the means to cut even further into programmes for the poor.

Just a couple of days ago Larry Elliot thought that the Republicans are not serious about tipping the US economy over the edge and taking the global economy down into recession once more. Rather the GOP will push this as far as they can and walk away after Obama has made major concessions (which he already has). The GOP will allow the debt-ceiling to be raised but in a way which is satisfying for the Tea Party. If the government was actually shut down as it was briefly in the 1990s it functioned to make Bill Clinton look like a statesman and raised his popularity among the electorate. Today 67% of Americans support Obama in his approach to taxes and spending on this issue. It is possible that the Republicans are looking to walk a fine line between a disaster which would only benefit the Democrats and a cop-out that will leave the Tea Party outraged. It is a serious possibility that the GOP are willing to instigate an economic crisis for indirect political gains, Obama has conceded an awful lot already and there will be a Republican administration in office by 2017.

The organs of the Republican machine have been about a "Starve the Beast" fiscal strategy for a long time, which differs from Goldwater conservatism in that taxes are cut in order to secure lower levels of spending. The approach actually generates huge amounts of debt as spending easily exceeds tax-revenues that have been slashed to bits for the benefit of about 1% of Americans. But this is part of the grand plan as the debt then acts as a means to call for more spending cuts. Keep in mind the huge changes in fiscal policy over the past few decades. In 1950 taxes on corporate profits accounted for 38% of tax revenue and by the 1990s it had been shrunk to 10%. Over the same time period income tax for the highest earners was chiseled from 91% in the 1950s to 28% in the 80s, with the 1990s marked out by a moderate tax increase. Now there is a moderate tax rise on the table, as the Democrats are arguing for a ratio of 83:17 cuts to taxes in tackling the debt whereas Republicans think a ratio of 85:15 is optimal. The narcissism of fine distinctions if there ever was one.

The Starved Beast.

So we now know how to contextualise John Boehner when he said "In the end, we couldn't connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country." Keep in mind, Boehner is the man who personally handed out checks on the floor of the House to sway a vote on tobacco subsidies and backed the bailouts as he was in the pocket of Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. The "Gang of Six" which Boehner belongs to has put forward a plan to cut $3 trillion in spending and to reduce marginal rates in order to relieve the rich of about $1.5 trillion in taxes. The plan aims to reform social security in that the costs of living will be shifted to the extent that the benefits the elderly receive today will be reduced as they get older and older. It is likely that this would lead to a huge rise in impoverished retirees. The premise of necessity of this deal provides a means through which cuts in social security and health-care can be imposed without any fuss from the public. This is the work of the Wall Street wing of the Democrats and the Republican Party as a whole.

At a time when around 45% of Americans oppose tax-cuts for the rich and 55% oppose tax-cuts for corporations, according to a recent Gallup poll. 71% of Americans and 51% of Republicans are opposed to the way the GOP have acted. It's no wonder when you think about. The American tax-payer pays more income tax than General Electric did from 2008 to 2010, when the company paid no taxes and received $4.7 billion from the IRS as it pocketed $7.7 billion in profits. The company has a team of lawyers and accountants working around the clock on ways for GE to avoid taxes altogether. The asses of non-financial companies are sitting on a cushion stuffed with $2 trillion in inert dollars that produce nothing and only earn a minuscule interest. Just 10% of that sum could be used to pump $200 billion into the US economy. Naturally, the Republicans continue to run with the line that the average corporation is overtaxed and actually pays the majority of taxes in the country.

As Ralph Nader has pointed out the 35% statutory tax rate for corporations is an absolute joke. Most corporations are adept at avoiding taxes and do so on a massive scale. These corporations include: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo. According to the Citizens for Tax Justice "from 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pre-tax US profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: $2.5 billion." The actual 35% rate would have raised $59 billion if it had been implemented properly. The highest rate was paid by ExxonMobil over three years it paid over 14%, whilst its net tax rate was a minuscule 0.4% on $9.9 billion in pre-tax profits. Since Obama took office in 2009 as of 2011 there has been a 40% increase in corporate profits. These are the same crowd who'll benefit most out of the "Gang of Six" proposal.

Obamarama - the Deficit Drama.

The Narcissism of Fine Distinctions.

Every serious commentator on US politics is aware of the fact that if you want to know who is about to win the election you should take a close look at campaign funding. Follow the money and you'll separate the loser from the winner in no time. It is the norm in the US that the President is elected from the campaign that receives the most cash. The campaign to re-elect Obama has raised $86 million in the first quarter and the Republican nominees are still in a state of disarray. The GOP is still split between the rightist wing-nut of Bachmann and the unsellable Mormon 'moderatism' of Romney, neither candidate is a realistic contender and collectively the GOP candidates have raised $35 million. There is still time and we'll see if the Republicans can make any headway in coming months, but my guts see a second term for Obama. The current issue of the debt-ceiling has raised signs of what we might see on the campaign trail as well as from the prospective second term for the Democrats.

As pointed out by Shawn Whitney there is not much difference between Republicans and Democrats on this issue. It is only a minor dispute over the extent to which the rich should contribute to the debt reduction plan. Obama has insisted that there will be trillions of dollars in cuts, no doubt to health-care, welfare and social security without scathing the bloated military budget. The military-industrial complex is untouchable because it functions as corporate welfare, whereas 'handouts' for the poor and elderly is too costly for the state to maintain apparently. Obama has tried to win over the Republicans with a round of spending cuts that amount to $4 trillion, though that much could have been raised had the Bush tax-cuts never been renewed under Obama. The Bush tax-cuts which cost the Treasury trillions of dollars over the last 10 years, at first it benefited many Americans but the number dwindled under the Bushites until only the richest Americans reaped the rewards. That's a real sunset policy!

The coalition government of the UK is running with a ratio of 80:20 in spending cuts to taxes, whereas Republicans found a ratio of 85:15 optimal and then walked out of negotiations after the Democrats only conceded 83:17. The kind of changes needed to make up that 17% would mostly come in the form of closing loopholes in the system. There are Republicans who want 100% spending cuts and no tax increases at all. The stalemate raised the prospect of a forced default on America's debts. Even conservatives have criticised the GOP line on the debt-ceiling as childish and ridiculous because they recognise it is not in the interest of the Republican Party to push for an economic disaster. But it is not the first time that politicians have created fiscal crises in order to initiate a wave of market reforms and austerity measures. This is especially true of the "Starve the Beast" approach of conservative strategists, which is a way of increasing debt to provide a pretext for more cuts to services that assist the poor.

The fact that the Democrats conceded almost the entire plan and it wasn't enough for the Republicans is indicative of the dramatic shift in politics that has occurred in the US over the last 40 years. The Democrats are now what used to be considered moderate Republicans while the Republicans have become even more extreme. In the words of Bill Maher "The Democrats have moved to the Right and the Republicans have moved into a mental hospital." To be even more blunt the American political system is a lot like a plane with two right wings. Noam Chomsky once distinguished between the Republicans and Democrats by noting that the GOP represent the business community in general whilst the Democrats are for Big Business specifically. The White House is looking to gain a 'moderate' platform for 2012, meanwhile the Left and the social democrats can go hang. The Democrats are aware that there is nowhere for the 'moderates' to run and Obama's real problem is how to win over enough of the 'crazies' to prop up a platform crafted for the ultra-rich.

A Rally for Cuts and Debt.

The TaxPayers' Alliance have pledged to lend the Rally Against Debt the 'debt clock' it paraded through the streets of London last year in a bid to secure a Conservative victory at the General Election. Ironically this populist rally for less government debt is effectively a rally for more debt per household. The household debt is set to rise from £1,560 billion in 2010 to £2,126 billion in 2015 which would represent an increase of 36%. Since the decline of the workers' share of GDP began in the late 1970s and social mobility has stagnated, the loss in wages had to be substituted for in debt by a great deal of working-people. By 2015 it is projected that public debt will be reduced by £43 billion whilst household debt will have skyrocketed by £245 billion. This should not be a surprise given the situation in the economy, the process of financialisation which was undertaken in the 70s and has intensified over the years. With the 'Big Bang' of 1986 in which Thatcher liberated the financial markets from regulations and taxes, of which UKIP and the TaxPayers' Alliance are admirers.

The fall in aggregate demand created by the financial collapse of 2008 will be made up for through an even greater reliance on debt. Credit is the only way for consumption to increase in a time when there is mass-unemployment, high inflation, stagnant wages and a VAT hike. The cuts will dispossess millions of people of an adequate safety-net which has the potential to force a lot of people to fall back on credit and take on even more debt. Since the financialisation of the economy began in the late 1970s and early 80s debt has been used to substitute for the losses in wages. The economic crises over the last 30 years have been a result of this process of financialisation. The austerity measures are part of an attempt to ensure the survival of the financialised economy we had before the Crash of '08. The prevention of a turn to social democracy, or worse socialism, along with the destruction of the welfare state are a part of this process. The public has to flip the bill for this process at a time when the population has been left jobless by the recession.

The current line about the national debt and the budget deficit exacerbated by the recession blames New Labour for "irresponsible" spending and giving "too much" to benefit claimants. This line reeks of bullshit. Even though public spending is low when compared to the rate of expenditure in the social democratic era which spanned from the 40s to the 70s. The amount of debt is also small compared to the immediate aftermath of WWII, when it was around 260% of GDP and today the debt is 70% of GDP. As right-wingers like to point out, in a war the national debt and budget deficit increases due to the impact of war on a country. This is often used to defend the position that the amount of spending under New Labour was unusual and irresponsible. It is conveniently left out that it is the norm in a recession for a deficit to emerge as public spending, which would normally be sustainable, becomes unsustainable as tax-revenues fall due to the economic collapse. The amount of debt incurred by such crises is then used to justify a series of deep cuts, this has been standard practice for over 30 years.

The joke about tuition fees and cuts to higher education is that the national debt is 70% of GDP and spending on higher education is 0.7% of GDP. So to pay-off less than 1% of the debt students are expected to take on around £30,000 in personal debt. Naturally, the subjects - science and math - prioritised are potentially valuable in Canary Wharf and Wall Street. Similarly absurd are the cuts to benefits which amount to £18 billion over 5 years, supposedly to deter benefit fraud (which costs £500 million a year) and to reduce the deficit. All the while defence has been essentially ring-fenced and the Trident missile programme is being renewed, even though it is under the control of the American nuclear command system and will cost £80 billion to renew. All the while there are billions being accumulated in offshore accounts at the expense of the public, various loopholes in the tax system allow the ultra-rich to get away without paying their full share. The estimates range from £25 billion to £125 billion as to how much this costs the Treasury.

Not that the Labour Party offers an alternative to cuts, it is totally on board with the cuts agenda in a less extreme form. Ed Miliband has only jumped on the back of the anti-cuts movement and sought to use it to further his own political career. Labour stands for across-the-board cuts of 10% rather than 12%, which would hit front-line services and working-people. It should also be remembered that it was New Labour under which the financial crisis came about, as a result of policies which are supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as well. If there had been a Conservative administration in office the Crash would have still occurred. Down to the disillusionment with Labour, as well as the Establishment in general, and the usual herd behaviour amongst voters the outcome of the election was a hung Parliament. Those who claim there is a democratic mandate for a Con-Dem Coalition along these grounds are mistaken, a minority Conservative government maybe but not a coalition.

There may not be an alternative promised among the political class, but there is an actual alternatives to the cuts. At the Glasgow Media Group, Greg Philo has researched the possibilities of a one-off wealth tax of 20% which could wipe the deficit and replenish the government's coffers. It could rake in £800 billion to the Treasury from the £4 trillion in wealth accumulated by the richest 10% in this country. It would stabilise the stock market and the 10% would get their money back in the long-term. Even without this tax public spending can be used to supplement the fall in consumption and investment. Once the economy has recovered and growth is rising, tax-revenues would recover as employment increases and businesses recover. The country's debt could be paid off over time as spending which was temporarily unsustainable once again becomes sustainable. These are just two alternatives to the cuts, which do not exist according to the BBC and the mass-media.

Trickle Down Bullshit!

 

The Right have coalesced to organise the Rally Against Debt, RAD for short, with the media already drawing comparisons between the rally and the Tea Party in the US. According to the Rally against Debt website the march will be "polite" and attended by "civilised people" who consider many government initiatives unworthy of funding. These "civilised people" who want to see public spending slashed include: the TaxPayers' Alliance (who represent less than 20,000 rich people), the UK Independence Party and Toby Young. In other words, the ultra-rich Tory donors and the extremist wing of the Conservative Party gone AWOL have called for a rally to defend the cuts agenda. Oh and the son of Michael Young is involved, the man who coined the word "meritocracy" must be so proud of Toby. There has already been populist talk of the "quiet majority", hopefully that phrase was not an appropriation of Homer's silent majority which actually referred to the dead. Though it might as well as the rally will be minute in comparison to the March for the Alternative.

Supposedly this "quiet majority" is made up of middle-class organisers of free-schools and devotees of supply-side economics, the people who want a small state, that's assuming this "majority" is not the dead. These are the sort of people who favour tax avoidance, apparently, the billions owed to the Treasury will create jobs by being hoarded in an account somewhere. The main organiser behind this street campaign for austerity is Annabelle Fuller, a member of UKIP and adviser to the Party leader Nigel Farage. On Fox News Farage has expressed the view that taxes are "too high" and government is "too big" in the US. Keep in mind this comes from a man who has leached over £2 million in expenses from the EU over the years. UKIP will have it's chance to demonstrate that it really is the Tea Party of Great Britain, even though it will effectively be taking the side of the government and the Europhilic establishment it officially rails against. These people pledge to set an example of "polite" and "civilised" behaviour, followed by the occasional purchase at Fortnum and Mason's.

In the same message on the Rally Against Debt website you can also find further insights into the intellectual inclinations behind the rally. Aside from the obvious implications of leanings towards the hard Right, specifically towards that rightist sector who want to pull out of the EU and sell off everything except the military and the police. In the following claim the trickle-down theory can be detected "Trips to see Vodafone and other high street chains will result in congratulations to the company for providing jobs and growth in the UK." The trickle-down theory holds that by cutting corporation tax and the top rate of income tax, the government can encourage expansion by entrepreneurs, leading to job creation and thereby decrease unemployment. But as pointed out by the public school boys at Private Eye, this is the Vodafone which has got away without paying £6 billion in taxes and has cut several hundred jobs in Britain in recent years. Vodafone is about to close its Banbury call centre, which will cut 400 jobs. 



Conservative MEP and self-described libertarian Daniel Hannan has come out in support of the RAD. We shouldn't forget his verbal assault on the NHS when he appeared on Fox News back in 2009. Not to mention his admiration of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell. The undertones of the rally are Thatcherite and will not go down well. That is just going on the fact that Mrs Thatcher was never more popular than her own party and was removed from power after the mass-demonstrations against the Poll Tax turned violent in 1990. The Conservatives have had to pretend to be those wets Tebbit compared to Nazi collaborators because a Conservative government cannot be elected on an openly Thatcherite platform. So naturally there will be a counter-march to this counter-march organised by the Coalition of Resistance, an umbrella organisation of leftist groups and parties united against the tri-partisan agenda of austerity measures. This development is no surprise as the Coalition of Resistance has been instrumental in the rallies and marches of recent months.

Slash and Burn!

Some of you may remember The Sun has actually gone as far as to claim that the unemployed are to blame, that New Labour was too soft and gave too much to the jobless. And this is the reason for the cuts according to the toilet-paper press. This is the only kind of representation for people on benefits in this country, these people have no voice and are easy targets for little Eichmanns in the right-wing media. Supposedly the reason we need cuts is because Labour gave too much to benefit scroungers and we can tell because newspapers say so. The real reason is that there was a financial crisis in 2008, the culmination of an unregulated banking sector which ran on recklessness, as a result the banks had to bailed out in order to prevent an economic depression. A recession could not be overted as the Crash had sent shockwaves throughout the economy, many businesses went bust and thousands became unemployed. This led to a fall in tax-revenues to the Treasury, which meant that spending that would normally be sustainable became unsustainable.

In other words a banker, a Daily Mail reader and a benefit claimant are sitting at a table sharing 12 biscuits. The banker takes 10 tells the Daily Mail reader "Watch out for the benefit claimant, he wants your biscuit!" The right-wing newspapers and tabloids distract the public from serious problems, playing the poor against one another with lies and exaggerations about benefits and immigrants. The issues that are agreed upon are marginalised from the public discourse so a harmless narrative can be continued. The alternatives to public spending cuts are not even acknowledged, but there's plenty of talk about benefits, immigration and overseas aid. The only exceptions are when the BBC let's an alternative view slip through only to dismiss it. All the while the richest 10% of Brits own £4 trillion in wealth and could contribute £800 billion to the Treasury from a one-off wealth tax of 20%. This proposal was one of the few to be briefly acknowledged by the BBC, but only to dismiss it as a "crazy idea". Still you will rarely, if ever, read of the cost of tax-avoidance and evasion in this country which could be as high as £125 billion.

Instead of a wealth tax we're looking at a systematic programme of deep cuts and market reforms for public services and the welfare state. The Con-Dem Coalition has set strict targets to job centres which incentivise sanctions, with the aim of driving claimants into the workforce. The target: sanction three people a week so that benefits can be cut off for a period of time, which ranges from a week to six months. This leaves claimants to survive on hardship payments which are half the normal payment from the social. Sanctions are meant to be used to punish claimants who have refused employment or are not trying hard enough to get a job. But as there is a high level of subjectivity involved, if you don't apply for a job that could lead to you being sanctioned for six months. Since the Coalition was formed in May the number of claimants deprived of benefits have sky-rocketed and had reached 75,000 by October 2010. This is only the beginning of the cuts and it has only been mentioned in the pinkish end of media.


There is such a thing as benefit fraud, it accounts for £500 million and about £3 billion is spent on "over-payments" all of which falls far short of the £18 billion reduction being pursued by Iain Duncan-Smith. This means that the vast majority of people penalised by this government will be those who either can't work or can't find work. As for the big idea Iain Duncan-Smith had for benefits, it was an investment banker David Freud, appointed by New Labour, who recommended that the crumbs thrown to the poor - housing benefit, incapacity benefit, disability allowance etc. - be replaced with a single payment that will function as an "incentive" to work. The constant attempts to drive the jobless, particularly single-parents, into the work force is regularly cheered on in the press. Yet there is no mention that the cut in national insurance effectively subsidises businesses to hire unemployed labour at the bare minimum wage. The fact that this could drive down wages across the workforce is also conspicuously absent in the media.

The rest of the cuts programme is best summed up in the words of a Conservative MP, to quote Greg Barker "We're making cuts that Margaret Thatcher, back in the 1980s, could only have dreamt of." Barker cheered on the slashing of government departments by up to 30% and the way in which the welfare state is being undermined. As the deficit is reduced, taxes for business are going to be slashed along with regulations. The core mission of the coalition government, according to Barker, is to "get government off of the backs" of business. This is a government of business and not of the people. Just from the established links with banking and Rupert Murdoch we might conclude that the Coalition is acting in the interests of business. From the words of Greg Barker we can tell, what we already knew, that the Coalition is rolling back the state for the benefit of business. Note that this is virtually ignored in the mainstream media.