Are we in it together?

David Cameron says it is time to pull together to help reduce the national debt. But he has only given us his plan about cuts in public services and reducing the benefits for the poor. He has failed to put the burden of reducing national debt on the bankers and the mega rich of the country. 

OK then here is a suggestion. How about this idea? A one-off tax of just 20% on the richest 10% would practically clear the national debt at a stroke. And without having to slash public services and throw people on the dole.

Seems fair to me. The total wealth of the top 1,000 increased by a third in the last year. The top 200 people alone on the rich list were worth a collective £228.8 billion and the richest 10% are worth over £4,000 billion!

Think the Tories will go for it? Not in a million years. When Cameron talks about spreading the pain, it is not the rich he has in mind who will be doing the suffering.

(Watch Respect Party's Ken Loach make the same case for taxing the rich on Newsnight from earlier in the week).

World Day for Decent Work

Across the world this Thursday, 7 October, will be marked by Trade Unions as 'World Day for Decent Work'.

The campaign's core message for an economics that puts people first couldn't be more timely with the Con-Dem government onslaught on jobs and working conditions.

In any global race to the bottom in labour standards, then Bangladesh is where the finishing line is.

Thankfully, a national campaign for the country’s three million garment workers has been able to lift the minimum wage from a medieval £15 per month, up to £27 per month.

This  is still short of the modest £46 that unions were asking for and the police repression against workers and unions has been terrible. At least 21 garment factory employees and labour rights activists have been arrested. Many more have gone into hiding or faced threats of imprisonment, and worse.

I'm pleased to say that the British TUC has been at the forefront of international solidarity with our brothers and sisters campaigning in Bangladesh for decent work and the leader of the country's textile workers trade union, ZM Kamrul Anam, will be speaking this Thursday at the TUC's Stand Up for Decent Work event

Child benefit cut, bankers bonuses rise

Two weeks ago, the Liberal Democrat conference voted to “Safeguard universal child benefit in conjunction with progressive taxation in order to provide a reliable source of income protection throughout childhood.”

But, as we all know by now, the Lib Dems are only useful for keeping Tories in power, and this week the Tory conference was told that child benefit would be withdrawn for any family where a parent was paying higher rate tax.

The Tory plans are full of holes. A single parent earning £44,000 will lose child benefit, but a couple earning £43,000 each, that is total household income of £86,000 will keep it. More than a million families will lose out.

But there is a bigger principle at stake. By focussing on the issue of child benefit being paid to better-off families, the Tories are looking for an easy target. It seems illogical to pay benefits to some people who clearly don’t need it. The evidence shows, however, that universal benefits are extremely successful, and child benefit is one of the most successful of all.

As Kate Green, Director of the Child Poverty Action Group, said last year: “Simple, straightforward and easy to claim, child benefit reaches more children living in low-income families than any of the complex means-tested benefits or tax credits intended for them. With a take-up rate of 98%, it provides financial security in households that are struggling to keep afloat.”

The Tories say they can “no longer defend paying out £1bn a year to better-off families”. But at the same time, as the Independent reports, cash bonuses to bankers will reach £7bn in this year alone. If the Tories were genuinely interested in 'sharing the burden', they could start with the bankers. This attack on child benefit is just another part of the ideological drive to roll back support for the welfare state.

(For another look at whether the cuts are a necessity or ideologically-inspired, see this video by Guardian journalist, John Harris at Sunday’s demonstration outside the Tory conference.)

Getting some perspective

A defensive David Cameron is busy trying to downplay the impact of the cuts by saying we need to put them into 'perspective'. Yes we should. As this excellent article by John Lancaster points out, 'the £82b worth of cuts that George Osbourne is going to announce in 2 weeks time are unprecedented. No government has ever achieved anything like that reduction in public spending. To put it in perspective, since 1950 there have been only two periods during which public spending was cut for two years in a row. The coalition is proposing to cut it for six consecutive years. Their cuts will exceed anything Margaret Thatcher did.'


Indeed she oversaw the return of mass unemployment, greater inequality, increased social tension, and riots on our streets. The new Thatcherites want to achieve what the old ones could not quite manage; a permanent reduction in the size of the state and an end to extensive public services. If they get away with it Britain will be a more divided, a more unequal, and a more unfair society for generations to come.

Respect Rejects Racism

It has come to my attention that a prominent Respect member in Tower Hamlets has made antisemitic remarks.

We can't stand racism. It rots the core of our humanity. It is the tool of those who seek to divide and rule. It especially angers me when people who have been victims of bigotry themselves, and who know what that feels like, make bigoted remarks against others. I won't tolerate it, and neither will the Respect party.

I completely endorse the decision of our national officers to expel the member in question with immediate effect. We cannot give an inch to racism, prejudice, and intolerance, whether directed against Jews, Muslims, women, immigrants, the Roma community, homosexuals or any other section of society. Antisemitism has proven to be one of the most virulent forms of racism through the ages. It has to be opposed whenever and wherever it raises its ugly head.

With racism set to increase as the full impact of the recession kicks in, we need to hold on even more tightly to the political wisdom and deep morality in the old trade union slogan 'an injury to one is an injury to all'.

It's not David

Let’s start with the good news. The new Labour leader is not David Miliband. By the narrowest of margins, Labour has decided not to elect the person who was ‘unrepentant’ about the Iraq war but who believes that Labour should raise the white flag in the face of the Tory war on public services.

And there’s more good news. Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, and the rest of the authoritarian, warmongering and privatising Blairites, have tasted another defeat. In fact, with Ken Livingstone having won a crushing victory over Oona King the day before to become Labour’s candidate for Mayor of London, the Blairites have not had a good week at all.

Call to Freeze Pakistan's Debt

The global anti-poverty campaign ONE International is Calling upon the IMF to freeze Pakistan’s debt as the country recovers from one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

More than 20 million people have been displaced by the floods that hit Pakistan in July. A fifth of the country was under water, with 2 million acres of crops destroyed. Thousands of people have lost their lives and millions more have lost their homes. Severe threats of water-borne disease and malnutrition are putting survivors of the initial floods at further risk.

With 60% of the population already living below the poverty line, Pakistan will need all its available resources to help it recover from this crippling crisis and to fight long-term poverty. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) – the institution that oversees debt repayments - can play a key role in this. By freezing Pakistan’s estimated $3billion annual debt repayment for two years, the international community can give Pakistan vital extra resources to spend on recovery and rebuilding, rather than debt-repayment. Currently every dollar spent on debt servicing is one that could be spent on the flood victims. Strong oversight mechanisms should be put in place to ensure this money reaches the people who need it most. Head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Khan, is the target of the petition.

Please sign the petition here

Aaifa Siddiqui sentenced to 86 years

It has been a bad week for human rights in the United States. Last night Teresa Lewis, a woman described as being 'borderline mentally retarded', was killed by lethal injection in the state of Virginia. She was the first woman to be executed in Virginia since 1912. On Wednesday another woman suffered at the hands of the American penal system. Aafia Siddiqui has not been killed by the American state. She has been given a living death sentence instead.

The Pakistani neuroscientist has been jailed for 86 years - on charges that this disturbed mother of three tried to kill US agents and military officers after allegedly snatching a rifle from one of her interrogators. There are two facts about this claim we know for sure. The only person shot was Aaifa, and her were fingerprints never found on the alleged weapon. Aaifa's arrest took place against a background in which it was alleged she was an Al-Qaida agent plotting an attack. Part of the evidence being provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. His claims are highly suspect, especially considering he was water-boarded 183 times by the CIA in a single month. Despite the claims, Aaifa was not found guilty of plotting any Al-Qaida style attack.

Vince Cable's Hot Air

It does not take much political courage these days to lay into the banks. Even children know many of our bankers are lucky not to find themselves in jail for their irresponsibility so it is easy for politicians to crank up the indignation. Vince Cable's speech is a case in point. It was high on rhetoric but short on content. As Michael White commented, there was not much in the speech that the Financial Times would have disagreed with. And on the banks, after you take out some name calling, there is very little left.

Yet two years after the collapse of Lehman's Bank, the event that triggered the global financial crisis, all the factors inherent in the banking system responsible for the crisis are still very much in place. The banks have shamelessly taken public money while resisting regulation. The appointment of Bob Diamond, the 'poster boy for casino capitalism' as the new chief executive of Barclays is evidence, if more was needed, that they really don't give a damn what the public think because they feel that no matter what, they are indispensable. Well, they are not, as the New Political Economy Network point out in their excellent e-book.

Banking in Britain delivers very little social benefit for the economy. Between 1996 and 2008, while all those profits were being made, productive business investment remained at a steady 10 per cent of GDP, and lending to manufacturing was flat. In other words, banks – as they currently operate – do not allocate capital usefully in our economy…Banking has become an industry that makes money only for itself. Ever expanding, and entangling banks in a state of mutually assured destruction, it concentrates wealth in a few hands. It is a kind of transaction-generating machine that operates in its own interests….Market fundamentalism has created a crisis of economic coordination, and this is an important aspect of the financial crisis. Too much capital is allocated to leveraged and unsustainable asset- price growth.Too little is channelled into productive, socially useful investment that might generate sustainable economic growth.

Interview with Tariq Ali

There is very interesting interview with Tariq Ali, a British Pakistani political commentator, writer, activist and editor of the New Left Review, on Democracy Now in which he talks about the impact of the floods in Pakistan and Obama's record. You can watch it here.

Tariq's new book is 'The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad'.