Coalition Multiplies the Damage

Background

Despite the IMF warning the UK government that its austerity measures are causing significant economic damage, George Osborne today announced a further round of spending cuts. Recently the IMF (International Monetary Fund) posted a paper noting that the British government had significantly underestimated the impact of the ‘Fiscal Multiplier’ which has caused even greater damage to the economy as they have pursued their ‘Austerity’ policies. The thing is I don’t think the Coalition did anything of the kind. I think they knew exactly what they were doing, but since this idea is not simple to understand, they thought they could get away with it.

The multiplier is a complicated and very wordy economic idea, and for that reason this news has largely missed the British public’s attention. However, this is the ‘smoking gun’ that proves that coalition policies are pre-designed to further their ideology of shrinking public services at any cost – and the costs are immense.

 Here I’ll try to take you step-by-step through the reality of what the IMF have said, and the real reasons for and effects of current government policies.

 What is the ‘Fiscal Multiplier’?

Imagine an economy of a government and only four people. One person is a hunter and the other three are unemployed. Right now all we have is a hunter hunting for themselves, and so the other three people are starving.

The government spends £1 training an unemployed person to be a builder, which he receives in wages, so that the economy is now worth £1. He spends the wages on meat, paying his £1 to the hunter. The hunter realises he needs help to hunt the extra animals and so employs one of the other unemployed people to help him hunt, paying them 50p to do so. The hunter has 50p profit which he spends on having a new roof built. From the helper’s 50p wages he spends 25p on the final unemployed person asking him to gather some vegetables, and the other 25p on building a new wall. So now, our economy is no longer worthless and no one is unemployed. The £1 spent by the government has caused much more than £1 of economic activity. The total value of the economy is:

£1 spent by government

£1 spent by the builder on meat

£0.50 spent by the hunter on building a new roof

£0.25 spent by the hunter on vegetables

£0.25 spent by the helper on a new wall

£3 Total economic activity

Thus, the £1 government spending has been increased by the fiscal multiplier of 3 to become £3. No one is now unemployed, and no one is starving. Instead of just having a hunter hunting meat for themselves, we now have more meat, vegetables and buildings.

*For a more precise and developed discussion of the Fiscal Multiplier please see this internal document from the very right-wing IMF which discusses it in more depth.

 

The Ideology of the Right

Economic growth, is the main economic aim of the government which is why it is such a problem for the government when the media report that the country is in recession (negative economic growth) as this means the economy is shrinking, or as in our earlier example; fewer people working, more people starving and the economy is worth less. However, the government have not told you how they have contributed to low and negative economic growth over the past three years.

Our Coalition government is dominated by Conservatives, who do not believe in government spending to help the economy or its people, and for this reason they have been cutting things. Some of the cuts include £6.2bn within the first 100 days of this government’s reign and have continued for example with plan to reduce spending on the NHS of £20bn by 2015 and £50bn by 2020. For some this is still not enough, with many prominent Tory cabinet members stating that further cuts should be made here.

In total the number of public sector jobs is expected to fall by over one million, but the misery continues for those who are the victims of these policies. If either you become unemployed, or your income is reduced because of these things you cannot expect much of a safety net. The government plan to cut over £23bn per year from the welfare budget meaning those on lower incomes will suffer. Indeed, over 7million working families are expected to see their incomes reduce as a result.

This is the result of having a government dominated by millionaires who do not need these services, and feel no obligation or desire to help those less fortunate than themselves. Think about it, if you have private health insurance would you be worried about the fact that the government has just removed its obligation to treat people’s health concerns equally, if at all. Similarly, if your child attends Eton, why would you be concerned that state schools are being turned into de-humanising exam factories?

Unfortunately though, these cuts (and they go far further than I have described) have a larger impact beyond the direct effects to your services. Austerity itself creates a need for further austerity which means the things we have lost so far are barely the tip of the iceberg.

 

The Fiscal Multiplier Effect

The UK government estimated that the multiplier effect was 0.5. This means that they thought that for every £1 they cut from the economy, only £0.50 of economic activity would be lost. The paper that I mentioned at the beginning of this article outlines that this was wrong, and states that the multiplier was likely to be 1.5. Some speculate it could even have been as high as 3, meaning that for every £1 cut from government spending £3 of economic activity was lost. This is what has caused the UK’s slow economic growth, and the consequent unemployment, fall in wages and fall in living standards that have accompanied it.

The UK government got it wrong! Or did they? When we consider the multiplier effect in reverse, we have to include the figure that is being cut. So, in our earlier example, the cutting of £1 led to a fall in economic activity of £3 including the money that the government originally spent, so a multiplier of 3. As we have to include the money that the government cut, it is very difficult for the multiplier to be less than 1. E.g.. Government cuts £1 from the economy, even if no further money is lost, the economy still shrinks by £1 because we count government spending in the size of the economy. Therefore, the minimum the multiplier can be is 1. The Coalition were telling us that they were in effect going to cut £1 from the economy, but that the economy would only get smaller by 50p. My A-level students could tell you that this doesn’t make sense!

Admittedly, George Osborne’s lack of economics training could be responsible for his mistake, but how did this get past the other 1,459 treasury employees,  Osborne’s four special advisors who are qualified or the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee who effectively run our economy from the Bank of England? If you accept that such an obvious flaw cannot have escaped everyone’s attention, then we have to begin looking for other explanations of why this could have happened.

Remember, the incoming Governor of the Bank of England has stated that the UK is an economy in crisis. It has been estimated that the government cuts have contributed to this costing an additional £76bn, and this is a conservative estimate. The entire justification for this programme of cuts was to close the fiscal deficit, and yet because of the “miscalculation” of the multiplier effect, this has not happened. Thus, 4,800 nurses have lost their jobs for no reason, among 25,000 other NHS staff. This phenomenon is not particular to the NHS, as I stated earlier, over 1million public sector jobs are being axed.

 

The Rationale

Public sector workers are those who have chosen to accept lower pay to work in the interests of the public good. These people are being sacked through no fault of their own, not to do with their performance or their competence but because someone in a Whitehall tower decided it would be better if they weren’t paid by the state.

Why? I hear you scream. I could take you through the history of the Conservative party as an organisation of the financial elite. The land-owning aristocracy and the post Thatcher corporate glitterati. I could discuss how this party stood against the formation of the NHS and the welfare state at its inception and has attacked it ever since. I could talk about the number of Tory MP’s and Peers who stand to profit from the privatisation of the NHS, but it might be much easier just to follow the money…

The money previously earmarked for all of us through the public sector has been used to finance tax cuts for the already wealthy, and for large businesses that often currently do not pay their full taxes anyway. The TUC estimate that £25bn is lost annually from the treasury (more than the entire annual savings that the government expects to make from cuts to the welfare budget) in this manner, and while this is at the lower end of the estimates nothing is being done by the government to prevent it. Similarly nothing is being done to curtail the activities of the banks that gambled our way into this mess in the first place, and these are just a couple of small examples without referencing the estimated £20bn on offer in corporate profits from the widely discredited carve up of the NHS.

 

The Consequences

Let’s assume that the IMF is now correct in its assumption that the multiplier is 1.5 (Many suspect it is significantly higher than this). For every £1 that is cut from government spending, £1.50 disappears from the economy. As nurses, teachers, police officers and other employees are sacked as part of this policy, not only do we lose our services, but we also lose spending power from the economy.

Unemployed police officers spend an awful lot less on tax, reducing the money coming into the treasury for further spending. They also then claim unemployment benefit, increasing the money going out of the treasury. This means even less money left to pay for our schools, hospitals, fire-brigades and all the rest. It also means that the newly unemployed reduce their consumer spending, they have to spend less on everything including food, cars, entertainment electronics – everything.

This means that businesses suffer as they cannot sell things to people who do not have any money to buy them. Sales fall and as a result, profits fall. This means that business have to cut costs or go out of business. Thus, businesses have to let employees go, meaning that these employees have lower income and can spend less which forces the process to repeat itself, and compounds the entire problem. Sooner or later this lack of spending in the economy and consequent fall in business sales results in those businesses closing down.

Fundamentally, austerity is a policy of the wealthy for the short-term benefit of the wealthy, and everyone else will have to suffer the consequences. Austerity is the economics that can and will cause another great depression, just as it has before. When it does, we will all suffer but it will be the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer first and suffer most.

We are beginning to see the first signs of this with growing demand for food banks, high unemployment and falling wages, but it’s going to get much, much worse. For every Police Officer, Nurse, Doctor, Fireman, Teacher or other Public employee that Osborne shows the door, not only are you less safe for them not being there but the threat to your job or your business grows.

Austerity is a nasty policy designed to transfer money from the poor to the rich, it is a threat to your job, your standard of living and potentially to your very life!

Are Lazy Ineffective Teachers Failing Your Children?

Background:

Today the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) roundly condemned the Educational policies of the Coalition government as they passed a landmark motion of No Confidence in Michael Gove (Education Secretary) and Michael Wilshaw (Head of Ofsted). For the uninitiated, the ATL is known as the most moderate of the Teaching Unions and up until recently had not taken industrial action for over three decades.

The other Unions (NUT and NASUWT) have also announced a ramping up of their own industrial action calling strikes as well as voicing their own criticisms of Mr. Gove’s Educational Reforms. To many outside the profession however, teaching is a soft option with short working hours, long holidays, comfortable pay and a cushy pension.

For Teachers and their Unions the issues are broadly centred around three areas:

·         Workload

·         Pay (Including Pensions)

·         The General Direction of Educational Policy

As a Teacher I hope to add as much clarity to this growing debate as I can in a [relatively] short blog post. I do not contrast the profession with situations in other industries since I know everyone works hard – too hard. Nonetheless, here is an example of our government’s “more-for-less” policies in action, forget the media bias against benefit claimants and immigrants, the Coalition are the biggest something-for-nothing merchants in the country!

 

Workload:

A day for a good or outstanding Teacher is as follows: Arrive to work at 7am to set out lessons and prepare for the day. After doing this, going through and responding to e-mails and having whatever briefings / meetings and morning duties that are normal for that particular school it is time to teach somewhere between 8.30 and 9am. Teaching is the fun bit of the job, but with upwards of 22 possible hour long lessons each week there is little time for anything else until the end of the day, with the exception of a bite of lunch or a coffee break perhaps if there is any time  - after dealing with student queries, any behaviour issues or anything else that may have arisen.

At 3.15, 4.15 or 5pm depending upon where you work it is then time to hold detentions before you have to attend any meetings scheduled for that day (the limit is one per week but this is now routinely ignored by schools. Then any phone calls home concerning achievement (the fun ones), concerns regarding academic progress, or concerns regarding behaviour.

Once this is done, preparation for the following day commences. This cannot be done entirely over the weekend since (A) there simply isn’t time; and (B) you need to know what your students have understood during the day in order to prepare appropriate lessons. This also means that marking has to be done, but this is a job for home.

You get home, have dinner and then settle down to marking. In primary schools for example, Literacy and Maths books have to be marked every day. Even allowing for only 5mins per book, a class of 30 takes a combined time of 300 minutes for both subjects, or five hours. But you aren’t finished there either.

Once this is complete and written feedback given you then have to prepare the following day’s lessons. Different activities have to be planned for as many as six lessons for different groups. These activities must all lead to the same points but in different ways so that all leaners can access the topic. This means planning work to stretch higher ability students; Writing frames and supported tasks for lower ability students; Language resources for students whose first language is not English; And additional materials and tasks for students with additional needs such as dyslexia. Each lesson must also include opportunities for Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development as well as Literacy and Numeracy – in all subject lessons, yes even art, it’s not just drawing anymore!

Teachers are also responsible for the safety of students, child protection, a range of after-school activities, assessing and reviewing additional needs, completing student reports and attending Parents’ Evenings several times each year. Furthermore, in direct breach of the negotiated workload agreements from 2003, Teachers are now expected to attend additional meetings and training, design and implement classroom displays regularly (very time-consuming), collect pupils’ money for excursions or charity events, investigate absence and a range of other tasks that should be undertaken elsewhere in the school.

By now, if I have described the situation properly you have begun to realise there are simply not enough hours in the day. For this reason every Teacher I know sacrifices at least one day every weekend and often more. “Ah, but the holidays make up for it.” I hear you say….

Unfortunately, no. Our government likes to regularly change our national curriculum including the content of the courses every year, the methods of examination (exams, coursework etc…) every year and the way they want us to deliver lessons (the OFSTED framework for this has changed twice in the last five years). All of this means that vast swathes of holidays are spent catching up on work that it wasn’t possible to complete during the term or planning in order to figure out a way to jump through the next set of hoops that the government has moved tantalisingly out of reach.

 

Pay:

This is a relatively easy one. Government pay freezes and attacks on Pensions now mean that Teachers pay is now only 85% what it was in 2010. Meanwhile, the Pension age has increased to 68 and Teachers are expected to contribute more and receive less. All in spite of the fact that the Teachers’ Pension fund was one of the very few which already paid for itself due to earlier increases in pension contributions under the previous government in 2007, when Teachers were guaranteed that no further changes would be necessary.

Mr. Gove also plans to introduce performance related pay from September, without any consultation with the profession or its representative Unions. Again, he has not considered the wider context that many Teachers are responsible for students for whom education is by no-means the first priority. Students who are the victims of abuse or domestic violence, students from families in the midst of breakdown or living in poverty. Clearly he believes that the over-simplistic figures produced by exam results which reduce children to numbers on a spreadsheet are enough to determine the standards of living of those who work hard to educate them. One wonders how many strong, talented Teachers will now choose to teach in schools from poor or challenging areas.

For many Teachers the biggest issue here is the Pension, whilst it would be nice to receive the average pay increase of the private sector (circa 2%), most Teachers in my experience do not object to contributing some of their earnings for the sake of the wider economy. However, I know no-one in the profession who believes that continuing to teach until 68 is realistic, especially with the increasing demands that have been discussed above.

 

The General Direction of Educational Policy:

Teachers get into teaching for a myriad of reasons. However, they only stay in teaching because they enjoy working with young people, particularly the opportunity to make a difference in young people’s lives. More and more however, teaching seems to be reduced to an endless monotony of ‘teaching to the test’ and lesson observations. Both of these destroy the less tangible facets of the job such as building positive relationships with young people and facilitating their personal growth - there is no longer time.

I have already mentioned the immense workload that Teachers bear, but this has to be viewed in a context where every lesson is either observed or observable meaning that any deviation from this programme is impossible. Teachers now work in an environment where not a minute can be wasted, and where checks are regularly carried out to ensure that it is not. There’s no room for digression and no room for discussion beyond what the Teacher is forced to plan in a regimented fashion (even down to the questions that they will ask) prior to the lesson.

In this climate there is of course no room for student individuality let alone bad behaviour, and to that end students are endlessly drilled to make them compliant. They are lined up in silence up to 20 times a day. Uniform is checked at the start and end of every lesson, and talking about anything other than what is on the curriculum is strictly prohibited. Only impeccable behaviour is accepted on the corridors at breaks and lunch-times and these are rigorously planned by leadership teams across the country to ensure they have as little impact upon “learning” as is conceivable.

Children are no longer allowed to be children. They are herded relentlessly and indoctrinated every hour of every day so that the educational system can provide compliant and hard-working Human Resources to industry. The results they achieve in their exams appear increasingly to be little more than a measure of the extent to which they have learned to comply with authority. For some reason, no-one in the Department for Education seems to have considered the idea that this industrial scale repression of young people might actually be responsible for what the majority of Teachers describe as deteriorating behaviour over the last two years.

Whilst few Teachers are comfortable with this process, it is the individual educator themselves who is forced to foist this de-humanising and inhumane routine onto their charges. Off-topic talking in your lesson? That student is disengaged, time has been wasted and you must improve. Student late to lesson? What are you doing about it? Why haven’t you planned a lesson that fully engages all students? Hold on, there must be a magic wand around here somewhere…

The more ideological concerns are also evident in the ever changing curriculum. Mr. Gove’s view runs contrary to five decades of educational research and development, he would have Teachers teach children to recite facts and only facts. Understanding is secondary according to the government which is fortunate since as 5-7 year olds will soon have to learn about Parliament and the Monarchy, the likelihood of students so young  understanding such complex topics is fairly remote.

 

The Big Picture:

There are many other issues that I could cover here, but there simply isn’t the space. Essentially it comes down to unequivocal enforcement of the government’s programme no-matter how misguided, no matter how damaging. The only thing that matters is the exam results, students have ceased to be viewed as young people, and now are seen purely as materials to be moulded, tested, re-moulded and re-tested.

Teachers are over-worked doing a job they didn’t sign up for on vastly reduced pay. The job is rapidly becoming a forced process of exposing children to a stressful de-humanising routine, and they have no choice. Any dissent and the authorities are ruthless. An unsatisfactory lesson can lead to months of intense and pressure-filled capability proceedings, and a school failure at OFSTED leads to the prospect of  Special Measures or worse still, becoming an Academy. Should this happen, all bets are off. Teachers pay and conditions are transferred to their now Private Sector employers and they are often required to re-apply for their own jobs. There is no compunction for Academies to hold to the nationally agreed pay and conditions which in practice means that they are circumvented to an even greater extent.

Teacher’s lives are becoming a pressure cooker filled with guilt and misery, and these are the people looking after your children. Teachers no-longer prepare children for their lives ahead, they are forced to indoctrinate them ready for the tests ahead. To be fair though, it could be worse for the Teachers. With pressure from the age of five. Revision, tests and homework from day one. Summer schools extended school-days, after-school classes and booster sessions in the holidays, I would hate to be a child today.

Are Lazy Ineffective Teacher Failing Your Children? No, the government is failing Students, Teachers and the rest of society. It is time for us all to stand up and put an end to this madness.

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21829950

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21931110

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21895705

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21857689

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2013/jan/15/teachers-pay-performance-michael-gove

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CD8QFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nasuwt.org.uk%2Fconsum%2Fidcplg%3FIdcService%3DGET_FILE%26dDocName%3DNASUWT_006849%26RevisionSelectionMethod%3Dlatest%26allowInterrupt%3D1&ei=EKRQUZTJNoeS0QX0rIGoBA&usg=AFQjCNHEGfiGk6eB8gIsX2Iph3Z7OwW5FA

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/reality-check-with-polly-curtis/2011/nov/28/pensions-public-sector-pensions

http://www.atl.org.uk/help-and-advice/workload-and-hours/workload-agreement.asp

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum2014

Does the Government Represent You?

Government of the people, for the people and by the people is the ideal of democratic nations, as Laid down by Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg Address (I haven’t seen the film yet honest…). Our democracy is older than that of the USA but the sentiment remains valid, a point Winston Churchill made when he echoed it in his famous “We will fight them on the beaches…” speech. I wonder though whether or not the UKs modern Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government has ever bothered to consider the broader spirit of the words because it seems to me that their make-up and their policies fall short in every area.

Two thirds of the cabinet  – the crux of government – are millionaires. Does anyone really believe they understand what it is to have been made redundant and be struggling to pay the mortgage? To have a disability? To have a low paid job and struggle to pay the bills? Have they ever been in a position where they have had to choose between heating and food, and are they ever likely to be? If not, then how can they represent those elements of society? 2,700 pensioers die each year because they cannot afford to heat their homes. According to the UK government’s own figures over 13m working people exist on less that 60% of the average income, and more than 7m people (again in work) in 3.6m households live in extreme financial stress unable to feed themselves and their families at the end of each month.

We have 2.6m unemployed people in this country, and according to the Office for national statistics one in four employed people want to work more hours than they currently do. In fact the number of these people has increased by 1million people in the last four years. Why do they want to work more hours? Because they cannot afford to support themselves and their families on their meagre wages. The Tory aim to increase labour market flexibility has meant that many have had to take part-time jobs because there are no full time positions available. These people do not sound like the benefit seeking scroungers that our government would have us believe they are, and yet the war on the welfare state continues.

Meanwhile we have a cabinet worth £70m pounds collectively, led by a Prime Minister of the rich who tells us “We’re all in it together” while cutting tax on the richest in the economy. The richest 1000 people in the country (according to the Guardian) have increased their wealth by £155bn while the rest of us suffer recession after recession and cut after cut. Why does he defend the priviledged so staunchly? Could it be anything to do with his net (largely inherited) £3.8m fortune? How does he get away with it? This is depressingly easy to answer. The telegraph estimates that there are 280,000 millionaires in the UK, or roughly 0.4% of the population and yet 67% of the cabinet are millionaires. It appears we do not have a government of the people, we are governed by the rich and as the old saying predicts: “Power corrupts”.

Does this government have a mandate from the people to do the things it is doing? On a seemingly constant basis the PM and those in both coalition parties tell us that they have to take unpopular decisions. That they are the ones with the strength to make difficult choices regardless of how unpopular they might be. This is wrong. The government of the UK is a representative body, they should be acting in accordance with the wishes of the electorate and doing nothing more. Clearly this is not what is happening, but if you’re not sure consider these points as examples and note that there are many, many more:

a.       Effective Privatisation of the NHS

This policy was so predictably unpopular that the Conservatives “forgot” to mention it during their electoral campaign. They did tell us that there would be no top-down reorganisation of the NHS, but I’m not sure that this statement really covers their policy of using the NHS as a franchise logo for private businesses that use your ailments to make a profit. Unsurprisingly the early signs predict disaster, with vast cuts in available treatments, privatisation of NHS trusts and individual hospitals and warnings from doctors, nurses and professionals throughout the organisation that there will be fewer treatments, more waste, less efficiency and a higher cost.

 

b.      Cuts to the welfare state

Most people take this to mean cuts to job-seekers allowance but it’s much more than that. Child tax credits have recently been re-structured in the least fair way that anyone can imagine. Being fair is not really this government’s priority though, for example the changes to child tax credits will save up to £1.5bn by depriving working families of that money, but the Tories gave this away by cutting the top rate of income tax and costing the country over £3bn. That’s a pretty tough pill to swallow for anyone who has been told that their allowances are being cut to help pay off the debts caused by rich investment bankers who will pay significantly less tax on their astonishingly large bonuses-for-failure in future. Nonetheless, the government has taken no direct action to tackle the banks or bankers and instead focussed on selling your healthcare to businesses that are trying everything to avoid paying tax at all.

 

c.       Reduction of your employment rights

In short, this government wants to make it easier and cheaper to sack you when business is poor. This may not be your fault, you may have served the organisation faithfully and successfully for years but as far as the government is concerned, the business owes you no loyalty. According to the Office for National Statistics there are 29.6million employees in the UK, and 2.6million job-seekersin a potential workforce of 34.1million people. This means that over 95% of people in the UK are employees or potential employees and the government is eroding their rights. In addition to this, cuts to the economy and the ensuing economic effects have meant that average pay increases have been 1.9%, considerably below the inflation rate which has been hovering close to 3%. This means not only are employees losing their rights, but they are also effectively taking a pay cut.

 

d.      I could go on…. And on…. I don’t want to over-egg the omelette though, so perhaps people could add other government policies since 2010 that have hurt the majority of the country to the comments (below).

It is clear that we do not have a government of the people, for the people or by the people. These people do not represent you, this is a collection of career politicians that are making decisions that benefit only the richest people at the top of the largest organisations in the country. A collection of people that pretend their decisions were difficult and have the temerity to tell you that they are acting in your best interests. We do need strong politicians that are capable of making difficult decisions, but those decisions are very different to the ones that are being made. We need politicians with real experience of life’s difficulties who are prepared to stand up to the tyranny of corporations and protect their people from the life-destroying effects of poverty and inequality.

Our current government however is simply a collection of weak politicians who are selling your rights, your health, wealth and your services. And they expect you to be grateful!

The Sale of The West

For the first time in its long history, Great Britain is no longer self-sufficient. For example, we now import over 40% of our food, and according to ‘Food Matters’ this figure is rising.  Indeed, comparatively speaking we no longer actually produce much of anything at all. We have sold the future of our children and our grandchildren for the benefit of a few cheap consumer goods and an annual holiday abroad.
 
Hijacked Economy
To appreciate the problem, you have to see what the economy really is, and what it’s for. In statistical terms it is the total value of the goods and services produced by all of the people in the country. But it’s more than that; it is a collection of all of our jobs taken together, all of our work taken together. Our economy is the collective value of our efforts as a people, a nation. The outcomes are supposed to feed us and clothe us, to provide healthcare and many other things. But our economy is also supposed to allow us to contribute to a collective effort to develop and improve living standards for everyone. It is supposed to be “Our” economy!

Not only do we not produce as a country the things that we need to survive. We also do not give our people the opportunity to contribute to their own existence.  The government tell us that UK unemployment stands at 2.6m people a dubiously low figure. The TUC’s alternative count is over 6m people and rising, meaning that over 16% of UK people of working age are not able to contribute to their own standard of living. Unfortunately however, wherever the true figure lies, that isn’t even half the story. According to the UK government’s own figures over 13m working people exist on less that 60% of the average income, and more than 7m people (again in work) in 3.6m households live in extreme financial stress unable to feed themselves and their families at the end of each month.

 The Political Lies

The political right, and the right wing press would no doubt tell us that this is because the unemployed are lazy, they won’t work hard enough. Lest we forget however that France have a maximum 35 hour working week and the average real income over the channel is still a third higher than ours. In Holland people work among the shortest working week in Europe and yet their average income is 50% higher than in the UK. This is not about effort unless everyone in The West is lazy, this is about the way we allow our economy to operate.

The UK economy is now service based (services account for 74% of GDP and rising) with virtually no primary industries such as farming (7%) or manufacturing industries which together now account for only 11% of UK GDP having steadily fallen from 22% in 1990 and considerably over 30% in the 1970’s. We have all noticed and much has been written about corporations outsourcing jobs to cheaper countries, and the vacuum has been filled with low skilled, low paying service sector jobs.  Perversely we even have an industry which specialises in outsourcing UK jobs and employs directly or indirectly 3.1m people to do it. 10% of the UK workforce are dedicated to taking away jobs from British people.

 
Outsourcing
Through the media we are constantly told that economic growth is the only way to improve standards of living, and yet we choose to send our work elsewhere. In contrast, let’s look at current successful economies. The undisputed engine room of the world’s economy is now China, and they will shortly become the largest economy in the world too. The secret of their success has been export led growth, a reliance on improving skills and maximising output as opposed to paying people in other countries to do it for them. For evidence of this witness the fact that China produces 20% of the world’s manufactured goods already. Despite this, and while the west continues to languish in austerity-fuelled recessions, the Chinese government have recently announced £800bn of further government spending in an economy experiencing over 7% growth.

This is an even more serious threat than it sounds and not just for Britain. The western world relies on China for its manufactured goods, just as it does on Africa and South America for cheap agricultural produce. As these economies grow (and they are growing at astounding rates) their currencies will increase in value and our imported goods will cost much more money as a result. The Chinese Yuan has increased in value by 40% over the last ten years meaning that goods from China now cost 40% more. Very soon this means an end to cheap consumer goods and food. Of even more concern than this is the fact that we do not have the skills to produce these things ourselves anymore and so we will have to pay higher prices or go without. We have relied on other people to produce things for us for so long, that we couldn’t do it now if we wanted to - or even if we had to…

The Mortgage on Our Futures
What this means then is that over the last 40 years we have profited from the fact that people in developing countries have a very low standard of living and have been prepared to provide both our luxuries and our necessities at extremely low prices. We have profited from the poverty and the misery of others, and sold our souls to do so. But it is not only us that will have to pay the price when the tide turns, it is our children and our children’s children. We are leaving the next generation with an economy they cannot contribute to beyond low paid, low skilled service sector jobs - regardless of how they perform in education. Just as worryingly though, we are leaving them without the skills or the infrastructure that they will need to provide for themselves. Instead they will be doing anything from tracking the stock market to serving drinks, as we slowly forget how to grow food, catch fish, mine for minerals, make things or generally satisfy our basic survival needs.

The ‘Sale of The West’ is real in that we have sold our infrastructure and our independence for a few cheap distractions and the illusion of progress. But with these we have also sold the aspirations of our children and their very ability to provide for their own needs. We have mortgaged the future of our countries and it’s almost time to start the repayments!

Does Britain Need a New Party?

Background
To discuss this I’m going to need to take you through the short term future of politics in Britain. Here is a (subjective) diagram which highlights where our main political parties stand on the political spectrum at the moment. Just a quick glance demonstrates how the parties and so our political discourse has become bunched together on the right-wing. This is dangerous and disenfranchising since it allows politicians to make the frankly absurd claim that there is only one solution to any given problem, safe in the knowledge that their competitors will not stray too far from their dogma. It also limits the debate around political and economic issues that can take place since no one is presenting an alternative to the 'Big-Business-is-Best' argument that currently prevails.

NB.. I use the word capitalism in the diagram to denote an emphasis on free markets.

Labour
Clearly there should be something of an appetite among the electorate for more socialist policies in 2015, given the effective privatisation of the NHS and the further erosion of rights and services by the coalition. For this reason, Labour will engage in a great deal of rhetoric as a veneer for not very much policy. The issue is this, Labour do not need to be left of centre to win an election. The poorest people in Britain who benefit most from socialist policies, have fairly set voting patterns in that they tend to be either staunchly Labour or staunchly Conservative. Thus even though they are the clear majority in the country they will not determine the outcome of an election. Therefore Labour only need to be to the left (or seen to be to the left) of the Conservative party to compete, and so they will continue to target their policies at Middle England and London where the majority of the floating voters are located. They will frame themselves as the alternative to the unpopular right-wing policies of the Tories without actually offering a real alternative.  Because of this, most of their campaigning will be negative and focus on the bad things that the Coalition has done during their time in office. Labour's position is also likely to harden with the potential loss of Scotland from the Union as the Scots constitute a part of their traditional left-leaning base. Labour will therefore have to place even more emphasis on luring traditional Tory voters and so their creep to the right which began in earnest under Blair, will continue and accelerate.

Conservatives

In contrast, the Conservatives are masters at selling the unsellable and having set out their stall on the far right during this term, they cannot backtrack without looking weak – political suicide. They have masterminded the right's high-jacking of the agenda over the last four decades using the media to mobilise the poor to vote against their own interests. They have also been remarkably successful at using propaganda to link socialism with communist experiments in other parts of the world. Sobriquets such as the “Loony Left” have forced left and centre parties to the right, creating a climate where dialogue around alternative economic models has been impossible and so all major parties now attempt to use the same tools to achieve only slightly different ends. In ideological terms there is no realistic electoral threat from the left and on the right the Conservatives will have no serious concerns about UKIP’s relatively modest vote share.
They will be conscious of the damage to their image among Middle England voters from their ‘austerity’ and ‘squeeze the middle’ policies and so they will play to the patriotism of the British, most likely by attempting to provoke another war with Argentina in the run up to the election – the scrapping of naval assets has virtually been an open invitation to the Argies to attack the Falklands. Of course this will bring with it expense and therefore a further mandate for austerity after the 2015 election. Nonetheless, they will not communicate a commitment to further austerity until after the 2015 election since it will certainly be a vote loser. They will attempt to force the coalition to collapse about a year to eighteen months before the contest, and then roll up the most politically damaging policies and hang them around the necks of the Lib Dems - they do not need to be completely successful in this endeavour, they merely need to create some doubt concerning their percieved 'nasty party' antics. They will follow this by embarking on a charm offensive based on spun statistics of what is likely to be a jobless recovery much like that in the US. - More manufacturing and technical jobs will quietly move  to cheaper countries overseas while the vacuum continues to be only partially filled by low paying 'flexible' service sector jobs which will allow the Tories to claim unemployment is being reduced. Money is likely to be pumped into the real economy (instead of into the banks) for a short while roughly eighteen months to a year ahead of the election to create something of a feel good factor, but this will only be spent on short term projects that can be ditched without drama, after the election.

A Note on Patriotism in Politics
Digressing briefly on the subject of patriotism since I mentioned it above, politicians speak of it conveniently when it suits their interests. Threats to our freedom, Terrorism, the Axis of Evil, and malcontents who want to hold the country to ransom all figure prominently in their hyperbole. No real reference to patriotism as a love for your country and fellow citizens is ever made though. It can’t be, otherwise we would have the contrasting relief to see how treacherous our leaders and their financial backers really are. Our politicians should take a leaf out of Hollande’s book who notes that the wealthiest should pay higher taxes in France since it is their patriotic duty to contribute to the welfare and prosperity of the nation; to help the people whose efforts have provided their wealth. Unfortunately that can’t happen in Britain since we still equate patriotism with the glory of the Crown.  With an outdated imperialist vision that sees us line the streets as our young people die in wars that they don’t understand and ignore the fact that many people profit from their deaths. Regardless of the questionable motives for war in Iraq, who do you think profits when embargos are lifted as a result of Saddam’s passing and the free flowing oil that results? Who profits from the government’s purchase of weapons to fight an extended war in Afghanistan or incursions into the Middle East? Whether or not you believe in the moral or legal cases for these military campaigns, no-one can ignore the money trail. Meanwhile the donors to all political parties and the lobbyists and politicians who have supported the conflicts, auctioned our public services and sold our rights, store the proceeds off shore and avoid even contributing a small portion of their blood money to the cause of the public good. Talk of patriotism is a smokescreen, a front to manipulate the easily led and poorly informed to think, act and vote as will be required to enrich the rich and impoverish the poor.

Liberal Democrats (although I’m not sure there’s much point…)
As far as the Lib Dems are concerned, they are fighting a losing battle to the point where it’s hardly worth wasting a paragraph. Their unpopularity as a result of their sheepish, whipped  support for Tory policies is irreversible whether or not they now terminate the association. Clegg knows this and I would guess his escape route is already assured, probably as a conservative MEP or some ‘non-partisan’ figurehead position such as taking over from Chris Patten at the BBC. The Lib Dems will try to present a new Clegg-less face of hope and leftward reform. This will not wash however, and the Libs vote share will be halved at best, making them even more irrelevant than they have been in coalition. Because everyone knows this, they will struggle to garner the corporate sponsorship that is now a pre-requisite for election success in that it is the basis for the expensive smearing campaigns that are now a necessity.

The corporate donor issue will also cripple any idealistic plans Labour might have too. As much as many MP’s and party members will champion a movement to the left, the leadership will be well aware that they need to get elected first and foremost, so they will have to chase funding from the super-rich corporations and donors that this government is creating with its current and its historic Public Sector “reforms”. Promises will clearly have to be given about 'favours' to be delivered in return, for such is the nature of politics in a corporate fascist democracy. Not buying it? Ed Miliband acknowledged this recently, stating in a speech that no political party can afford to be anti-big-business.

General Election 2015
In reality then, little will change in the run up to 2015. The Conservatives will stay ultra-right and attempt a PR coup to maintain power. They will have a vague manifesto and a plan to shade the election and continue their policies to make the rich richer and the poor and disadvantaged work harder for their scraps. Labour will decide that all they need to do to beat the Tories, is to not be the Tories (not being Bush won Obama a Nobel prize remember), and so their policies too will be vague and effectively they will maintain the status quo if they attain office. For Labour – and because the public will always equate them with the left no matter how misguided this is - it means a slow drift ever further rightward which will contribute to the on-going reduction of confidence in the party and a strengthening of the belief that the only way is the Tory way. Fundamentally, this means the only choice we have is a faster or slower movement to the right now, and an unavoidable accelerating movement right as we head further into the future.

An Alternative?
There is another way however. If another party were created and supported, if a modern party of nationalisation, employment rights and responsibility for all were to emerge. A number of things would change. Yes there is the threat that the left would be divided, but this is only a concern to those who seriously believe we still have a party of the left. A new party would offer the potential for a wider popular movement which could then begin to seriously discuss equality and rights in the public domain. More importantly though, it would put pressure on the Labour party - precisely because their vote share would be threatened. They would be faced with the choice of committing to the left or holding the moderate right. No longer would they be able to coast into elections without real convictions and values beyond stopping the Tories. No longer would they hold their position as the major opposition to Conservative rule, by promising only to not be as bad as the Tories. If they hold the centre-right they will condemn the Lib Dems to long term extinction, and if they move left they begin to provide a real alternative to the corporate fascism that we currently endure, as was their function in the early 1900’s. The Tories too would need to respond, they would need to renew their message that capitalism can be socially responsible, and in all likelihood they would commit to promises of greater regulation (probably in the financial sector) since this is the cheapest guarantee (both in terms of spending and their own private interests in large corporations) that they can give in the near-term. Again, this would put pressure on the Labour party to move further left to differentiate themselves and thus go some way to putting social and economic justice back on the agenda. Unfortunately though, the emergence of a new party at this late stage is somewhere between unlikely and the second-coming. This has to be the long term plan, in the immediate future we must seek to limit the damage.

What Now?
So then, either the Tories get re-elected, or Labour edge it without making any 'risky' ideological changes. Even in the latter scenario Labour merely keep the government benches warm until the Conservatives return at the following election. And return they will, with a reinforced argument to criticise their most obvious competitors on the basis of their limited achievements during that period, and continue their looting of our country. Once we strip away the PR, the spin and the mainstream-media smokescreen, modern politics is not about patriotism, policy, conviction, ideology or representation. It is about one thing and one thing only – career politicians getting elected! This means that manifestos will get progressively more vague, rhetoric ever louder and real debate ever marginalised until something changes, or something is changed. Until as a populace we create a viable conviction based leftward challenge that represents real political plurality. Until then we have only the choice between staying right or moving further right, and that means a smaller Public Sector, the eventual complete loss of free healthcare, education and the police. The gradual disappearance of employment rights, corporate regulation, our progressive tax system and the abolition of our already diluted democracy. In concise terms we as a nation will head further into the neo-liberal wilderness as the wealthy become the overlords of a post-modern feudalist state. As people, our status as resources will be solidified and our ability to protest or force change irrevocably compromised for another generation at least.

Summary
We need a new political movement to make change - real change - because the truth of the matter is that the Labour Movement has fizzled out. Either it has been infiltrated by the more priviledged classes or its political leaders, like the pigs in Animal Farm, have fallen pray to the spoils on offer in our society for the wealthy and well connected. They are now themselves part of the top 1%, and too many of them will have too much to lose by implementing the policies that would really help the majority in our country. In 2015 we all need to vote anywhere but Tory; to vote for the person standing against the Conservative candidate with the best chance of beating them (best to avoid BNP though). Not just to protect the poor, but because we all deserve a stronger, fairer and happier society where we value each other as free individuals rather than inanimate factors of production.

But after 2015: Yes, Britain does need a new political movement and a new political party. We need them because in the long-term, we will have to create our own alternative to resurrect our democracy.

The Secret British Coup

Do you ever wonder who really runs our country?

In a speech this week Nick Boles MP outlined his vision for a leaner Public Sector. In his view the Public Sector should only be a mechanism for the advancement of the productivity of the country as a whole. Thereby demonstrating his ambivalence for anyone who cannot or does not produce. The BBC quote him thus:

“…only those tax and spending policies that can explicitly be seen to increase competitiveness of the UK workforce should be supported.”

If I were feeling pedantic I could discuss the comment he made about us all wanting further spending in the Public Sector on NewsNight the previous evening. If I were in this mood I might reference the cheering in the House of Commons from MPs which greeted the latest round of cuts as evidence that this is not the case. I could also mention that with proper taxation and tax collection from the wealthiest individuals and organisations, this is more than possible since it would more than wipe out our national deb. However such arguments would be tantamount to an ethical debate over the design painted on a nuclear missile. The debate should not surround individual policies, terminology or spin, but must focus upon the ideology that is being adopted among our political representatives as the basis for their actions.

I use the word “representatives” quite deliberately. It is the basis of our democracy in that it would be rather awkward to have a functioning government of 64million people each shouting to be heard. For this reason we each elect a spokesperson from our residential areas to put forth our views in Parliament. I would contend however that this no longer occurs, if it ever did. Instead huge corporately funded political parties use their financial muscle to dominate the list of candidates. The candidates then differentiate themselves based upon vague ‘promises’ that bear little resemblance to what they actually plan to do. These people expect us to trust their judgement as they write laws and formulate policies, despite the fact that we have no idea what they plan to do, and therefore no guarantee that the actions that are taken are actually in our interests as the electorate at large. In short, we do not have democracy if we have no idea what we are voting for. How many people would have voted Conservative had they known prior to the 2010 election that the party were already paying for advice from a company on how to carve up and sell the NHS? Some perhaps, but I suspect considerably less than actually did. If there had been enough popular support for the plan it would have appeared in the manifesto rather than the somewhat contradictory words “no top-down reorganisation of the NHS”. Once again I could be pedantic and ask what could be more top down than changing the actual owners of services? But this is not the point I wish to make.

Here I want to take a closer look at the ideology (and where it comes from) that is the basis for our government’s approach to running our country. Much has been written about cuts, welfare reform and privatisation (not least by me), and the financial case that has been set out for these actions have already been completely discredited – despite the fact that our media chooses not to report this on many occasions. Since they have been advocating the policies that the coalition is implementing for far longer than anyone else has been discussing them, I shall look to the Tax Payer’s Alliance as the source of the ideology we are following, and here’s why.

“…frontbench Conservatives and business leaders [have been] flocking to the TPA, and at the Tory conference policy after policy seemed to bear the TPA's stamp.” (Guardian)

Indeed, TPA Chief Executive Matthew Elliott has commented that the Tory Party have moved on to their agenda. This however is not a surprise given that many leading associates of the Tory party are also have associations with the TPA. Liam Fox MP, David Davies MP and Eric Pickles MP have recently spoken at TPA events. Other supporters include various large Tory donors including Sir Anthony Bamford (who has donated over £1m to the conservative party), Stuart Wheeler (who has donated £5m to the Conservative party, a range of Conservative MPS and even David Cameron’s former Chief of Staff Alex Deane. Further they are chaired by Stephan Shakespeare who also runs the ConservativeHome website. The Telegraph also reports that No.10 have had discussions about making Matthew Elliott (Chief Executive and Founder of the TPA) Senior Policy Advisor to the government. Nonetheless,  Elliott maintains they are not a front for the Conservative party, and I would heartily agree. Research suggests that the Conservative party are a front for the Tax Payers Alliance since many of the policies that are being pursued by the government are those of the TPA. The Guardian reports:

“George Osborne's public sector pay freeze was recommended by the TPA last month and Elliott, who describes himself as "a free-market libertarian", said he had been "banging on about" the idea that no public worker should earn more than the prime minister without the chancellor's approval long before Osborne announced it”

Indeed, the TPA have a running commentary on their website about the progress that this government have made toward TPA objectives:

“In tax and spending the Government has introduced a 2-year public sector pay freeze (3/5) and cut middle class welfare (3/5) but has not matched benefit reform with better tax policy (2/5)…”

The Tax Payer’s Alliance however are a difficult organisation to research, despite their insistence on Public Sector Transparency they refuse to hold to the same lofty ideals. This is an organisation which depending on what you believe either has huge influence within the government or has wholly infiltrated it. Yet beyond its claim to have 60,000 members (it doesn’t have any members since it is a corporation, it has this many on its mailing list), it refuses to give information on the identity of either its donors or its members. Since they are a corporation rather than a political party they are under no obligation to reveal this information. Fundamentally this means that within our democracy we have no idea who is formulating the strategies that our country is following. And we are following them – the Guardian again:

“The TPA's proposals include scrapping the secondary school building programme, child benefit and Sure Start centres for the youngest children.”

Sound familiar? I bet it does to Nick Boles. The BBC note:

“Conservative MP Nick Boles is also urging a significant further scaling back of tax credits and housing benefit, and a re-examination of the "lazy sentimentalism" of the Sure Start programme of children's centres.”

What we have is a very small number of extremely wealthy people attempting to reduce their own tax burden and that of the organisations that they own which have contributed to their fortunes. They have no concern for the public good, the welfare of children, of the disabled or living standards of the elderly. Nick Boles mirrors this perfectly when he suggests such ideas as cutting benefits for elderly pensioners, notice he is extremely vague on where the line is to be drawn. Since this is floated as a money saving exercise you can be sure he isn’t talking only about millionaires, more likely his idea will consist only of reduced payments to those already in poverty and none to anyone else. Beyond this headline however what Boles is advocating is complete destruction of the welfare state and the Public Sector as we know it in order to make us a harder working and more productive country. The old Conservative maxim of “you make the rich work harder by making them richer, and the poor work harder by making them poorer” is back, and the ideas to live up to it clearly come from the TPA.

I would comment this on Nick Boles’ plans. Our country is not a business, we are not and never should be UK PLC. Our goal should never be to increase the wealth of the minority at the expense of the majority. There is a name for this kind of system, it is called slavery! When we no longer take care of our children, elderly and disabled. When our goals shift from providing the greatest quality of life to the greatest number, not only do we not have democracy, we do not have freedom. We must proceed with care because this hidden lurch to the right signifies the transformation of people into commodities who’s value, who’s only reason for existence is to provide greater wealth to those lucky enough to be born into privileged circumstances. Yes, the TPA/Tory plan is about forcing people to work harder, longer and hitting them with the starvation stick if they refuse. More than that though, the new ideology is not one of individual endeavour rewarded, it is one where the wealthy are absolved of their responsibilities as contributing parts of a larger society. An ideology where the poor are cast adrift as the rich wrestle an ever tightening grip on resources, education, government and the law. This is a grab for a position of total power and zero responsibility.

The fact that the TPA are hidden within our government tells us two things. First, they are not acting in the best interests of the majority. If they were, they would be electable on their own account and would thus form a political party with their not inconsiderable means and implement their ideas directly. Secondly however, it tells us that they have achieved a position of unelected power. Given that we as an electorate have not given a mandate to any party to govern, have never been consulted about the nature and severity of the policies that are being followed and have no powers to hold the TPA accountable to any degree, we must conclude that there has been a coup d’etat. Our government has been replaced by a corporation, a range of corporations who are governing purely in their own short-term self interest. They have no responsibility to the electorate and no incentive to care about the lives of the individuals within it.

The UK no longer has a government of the people, for the people, by the people. The fact that it is so difficult to say exactly what we do have tells us that. Whatever it is though, it does not value you or me or anyone outside of the wealthiest circles. What we have is a system where  you don’t matter beyond your work and your spending. A system where you have few rights and are only as valuable as the things you produce.

How comfortable are you with that?

The Slippery Slope to Fascism?

The NHS has been opened up to competition, the modern parlance for privatisation. Mr. Gove, the education secretary, expects the majority of schools to become Academies and given the figure is roughly 40% now, he is clearly not mistaken. Academies are the effective privatisation of education where millions of pounds of public assets are given away to private organisations. Welfare reforms are likely to mean that those under the age of twenty-five are not entitled to housing benefit, and since as a group they are significantly more likely to suffer from unemployment, they have been condemned to destitution. If a person is in this situation, they are then told they must work for free in order to receive any financial assistance at all. So the young people of Britain have the following to look forward to: a life with few prospects since their school will be an Academy, teaching pointless courses in order to make their results look good, while the government bring in a qualification which is not open to them and is the only thing that employers and education providers will take seriously; they will have vastly reduced healthcare should they need it since private companies will not provide that which is not profitable (don’t believe me? 225 previously widely available treatments have already been rationed or withdrawn since the passing of the Health and Social Care Bill due to cost-effectiveness); they will have to live with their parents (or on the streets) until they are at least 25 since housing prices have been inflated by the irresponsible financial sector and they no longer qualify for any kind of help; But more than that, since they don’t qualify for the elitest vision of education or employment on offer they will be forced to work for free. Although, perhaps or government will develop some sort of compund where they can stay and contribute to society? "Work Camps" perhaps?

All of this is apparently justified by our flagging economy which is only flagging because bankers, who did have access to these benefits, wrote too many cheques they couldn’t cash. They created money that didn’t exist and lent it to people that couldn’t pay it back. Why? Because they wanted to improve their share prices and increase their already monstrous bonuses. Our government decided that the banks who had been allowed to grow to gargantuan sizes in a rush of de-regulation since 1979 were so big that their failure would damage our economy beyond repair. Money was poured in to save the ailing institutions (the government has so far borrowed £124bn according to the Guardian) and it is the poor who will be footing the bill. Schemes like Jimmy Carr’s K2 and non-domicile status favoured by Tory donors costs HMRC £70bn annually according to the New Statesman.  Meanwhile the increase in ‘stealth taxes’, such as VAT and duty, hit the poorest disproportionately hard since the extra money on the things they pay for make up a larger percentage of their income. For the same reason it is this group who will be hit hardest by cuts to public services since if they were more affluent they would be able to demand the higher quality provisions on offer to the wealthy few. But even these figures are a distraction, a smoke screen to obscure the true intentions of our ruling elites. Ideologically they are opposed to the idea of a public sector. They are now doing whatever they can to ensure that money that has been earmarked to ensure we all have a minimum basic standard of living ends up in the hands of the wealthy few.

So, what is the economic case for these cuts? Those few will tell us that they are necessary for the prosperity of our nation, and that the prosperity of our nation benefits all of us. The Tories will tell us that the growth of business is critical to kick-starting our stalled economy. Well let’s examine that idea. I have talked in the past about the US where 93% of economic growth feeds only the wealthiest 1% of the population, and indeed record corporate profits of $1.97tn were accompanied by real wage falls and rising unemployment during the third quarter of 2011. In Britain there has been a 21% increase in corporate profits since the third quarter of 2009. “But what about the trickle-down effect?”I hear you say. Frankly, it no longer exists, if it ever did. Unemployment here too has been steadily rising although this is a side issue in that employee compensation only accounts for 54% of GDP (down from 65% in the mid 1970’s) with the rest going to you-know-where. In short, although the situation is getting worse for employees in that their real pay has fallen by approximately 2% since mid 2010 according to the TUC, they haven’t been getting a fair deal since the 70s. Still we are given platitudes, small business growth - the endeavours of entrepreneurs - will save us. Sadly small businesses are currently in decline too, with over 50 failing every day according to the Mail on-line, this is strictly a corporate zone. If the government were genuinely serious about encouraging growth in small businesses it would be using a progressive taxation system where larger businesses pay a higher percentage of tax on their profits so that smaller businesses have more income to invest and develop, instead of the flat rate corporation tax currently in place. This flat rate system benefits the larger organisations - who already have advantages in terms of large scale efficiencies - because of their ability to transfer money beyond the tax system. Some even manage broker deals to avoid paying at all. Vodafone for example, which according to Forbes saw UK profits grow from £1.2bn to £1.3bn while it’s tax bill fell from £140m to zero in the same period.

As further rebuttal to the justifications for austerity , the UK is currently in debt to the tune of 66% of GDP. This sounds a lot until you consider the fact that our national debt was over 100% of GDP [continuously] between 1912 and 1961, a period which saw the birth of our welfare state. Indeed for only 50 of the last 300 years has our national debt been lower as a percentage of GDP than it is today. So then, we are being asked to sacrifice critical services and social mobility in the name of economic problems and promised progress which are at best ill-considered and at worst outright lies. Very quickly we have to start cutting through the spin and propaganda. If your life chances are determined by the economic situation of your parents, you are not free. If you are forced to work for nothing and a company profits from that, you are not free. If the actions of an unelected government acting without a mandate and outside of the written promises upon which its election campaign was based can destroy your life without consultation or remorse, then you are a slave to their whim. This is not hyperbole; 32 people die every week in our country having been declared fit to work. They die from cancer, from heart disease and from any other number of illnesses that our government’s system routinely ignores since it views its citizens only in the light of their value to the economy.

Culturally we are unwilling or unable to oppose this tyranny.  Not because we think it’s fair, and not because we are happy about it. But because we have a proud sense of responsibility and a strong moral compass. Teachers will say they don’t want to harm the prospects of their students, doctors will say any action they take will hurt patients. Private sector employees will not want to harm the companies they work for, and the media will tell us industrial action won’t work because this is the only way out of our economic mess. In response to that I would argue how quickly alternative ideas are generated when the wealth of the elite is threatened, as has been the case in the past. Teachers, your students will be better served by the creation of a fairer society within which they can both contribute and benefit through hard work, rather than being locked out on the day of their birth. Doctors and nurses, how many more people will suffer and die as a result of the stripping of the NHS, one of the most efficient healthcare systems in the world? If we do not do something, that is if we allow this pattern to continue, how many more rights will we lose? How much more will our real wages fall as corporate profits continue to rise? How long will we accept being second class citizens in a society that profits from our toil, before we demand the right to guaranteed reasonable living standards and the opportunity to affect our own futures? How long before we demand to be free and equal members of a democratic society again?

Fascism is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as:

“extreme right-wing, authoritarian, or intolerant views or practices”

This regime is right-wing, authoritarian and intolerant of the needs of the vast majority of our populace. We are clearly short of anything seen in Nazi Germany, but if we do nothing, how long will it take for this creeping elitism to morph into fully fledged fascism. And will we ever manage to change it back?