Friday 15 April 2011

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.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is the biggest load of rubbish I've ever read - was this an attempt to litter an article was so many cliches and phrases you clearly don't understand.

Pathetic; especially when you call the rally against debt an extremist ideal - who on earth wants debt? There is a massive silent majority.

Unknown said...

I'd like you to point to what exactly I "clearly" don't understand because it's not actually that clear to me what you think I don't understand. Please inform me! I didn't call the rally an "extremist ideal" I pointed out that the rally has the support of UKIP, which is just a more far-right version of the Conservative Party.

As for the "massive silent majority" you mention, I didn't actually deny there isn't such a majority, I merely pointed out that the phrase refers to the dead and not the living. Though I do suspect the Rally Against Debt only represents a minority among the living. It will be minute in comparison to the March for the Alternative, in which over 500,000 people participated.

It's also not a case of who wants debt... I suggest you read my last article on the Rally Against Debt and then think about your objections to this article. The articles 'Trickle Down Bullshit!' and 'A Rally for Cuts and Debt' were originally intended to be one piece, but I thought it might be too long and split them into two:

http://livinginphilistia.blogspot.com/2011/04/rally-for-cuts-and-debt.html

Thanks for reading.