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?

Exposing the Myth of Economic Growth

Economic growth does not work for the vast majority of us! Yep, you read the right, the fabled solution to all of our problems, our government’s plan to get us out of this mess, leads only to more problems. Never has our economy been so large and yet most people are facing real wage cuts, privatisation of basic tax-payer owned services and unemployment. In the US over the last 15 years, 93% of economic growth has been gorged by less than 1% of the population. Economic growth is a lie foisted upon us to force us to make the sacrifices needed to feed wealthy bank accounts. To really follow this argument you have to accept that money isn’t real. Of course we really have some notes and some coins, but it is worth only the amount of goods or service that we agree it is worth. We have to learn to think of it as separate from the items we buy with it, in that people would still produce things if we decided to change the way that money works.

 There is something called the Philips Curve which demonstrates the relationship between unemployment and inflation. You spend money to curb unemployment and this causes inflation. When prices go up two things happen. Firstly it disproportionately affects the rich, since the proceeds of their ventures are worth less in real terms. However, it immediately affects the poor as prices rise meaning living standards decrease and the poorest do not have the savings to insulate them. Since developed countries will not tolerate hunger and deprivation where it is clear and blameless, we have mechanisms in place to ensure that workers can unite to force their masters to share the spoils of the ever growing cake. This is what happened throughout the 60’s and 70’s, after a massive boom caused by revolutionary public spending where all our living standards improved, the economy came to a juddering halt. Workers, realising that employment was better than low inflation battled for the right to work and refused to accept any attacks on this. When inflation kicked in they battled for higher pay to keep pace or stay ahead and if they didn’t get what they considered a fair deal they downed tools and stopped producing the wealth that fed their financial superiors. Obviously such a course could not be tolerated by the wealthy and so the Philips Curve was disproved (no it wasn’t, but that was the story).

You see, the Philips curve had to be disproved since while that relationship was held to exist, no government would ever be elected by the masses, that favoured policies which threatened employment. Even now, when we talk about changing our system to make sure people can be sacked more easily by their super-rich over-lords we call it “making the labour market more flexible”. The terms here demonstrate how working people have been turned into a commodity, this is backed up if we consider titles such as “Human Resources”. People are bought and sold, but markets take the blame. However, that relationship between unemployment and inflation still very much exists, it has not been disproved but merely hidden. For example, there were over 20 changes to the way that unemployment has been counted between 1979 and 2000. All but one of these has served to reduce the published figure of unemployment. The way we measure inflation too has been altered, the new count (CPI) is disgned to produce a lower figure than its predecessor (RPI). If we still used the 1979 system, unemployment would be considerably over 4,000,000 people, and inflation heading toward double figures. We now count the amount of unemployed in this country not by counting those who claim unemployment benefit, or those that suddenly stop paying income tax or some other sensible method. No, we use a system which is much more simple to manipulate, a survey (seriously, who really believes a survey is going to accurately predict this?). But, this had to be done, you cannot justify rich individuals and organisations treating workers as resources if they are seen to be suffering. You have to demonise the working poor, to hoodwink those lucky enough to have a job into thinking the unemployed are the ones responsible for life’s difficulties. Well, I have never known an unemployed person close an outlet and fire all of its it employees just because they wanted to join a trade union, McDonalds on the other hand…  Nor have I ever known an unemployed person cut tax for the highest earners while indirectly increasing it for the lowest, our government however…  “Benefit cheats” cost us around £1b per year according to even the most ascerbic estimates, while anything between £60b and £100b is lost from the tax avoidance or tax aversion by the richest in our society.

It’s worse than that though, we have actually given the right to some companies to print money! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you then banks. The popular assumption is that a bank receives deposits from savers and then lends that money out, keeping some in reserve to ensure savers can withdraw money if they want to. This is wrong. Criminally wrong. While the rest of us scrape by and deal with job insecurity, pay freezes, loss of rights and loss of democracy, the banks create their own wealth. They do not actually lend out money that has been deposited, in this digital age there is no legal requirement for them to be able to guarantee their debts. Hold on, I’ll walk you through it. If I go into a bank and deposit £2 in a new account, the bank is then legally allowed to create £100 and lend it out. They hold on to my £2 as they have to hold 2% of whatever they lend, but the £100 is new money. Notes and coins are produced by the government, and when they are created the government charges interest to the banks. However in our digital age only 2.4% of money in our economy is actually paper and coin, the rest is numbers in a computer. Banks are free to add these numbers to the computer whenever someone walks in with a deposit, and they are allowed to add 50times the value of that deposit. Incidentally, this is what really caused the financial meltdown. The banks can only create this money if they have someone to lend it to, and so the search was on for ever more lending opportunities until the only way to continue to grow was to lend to people who couldn’t pay it back.

The scam goes deeper however, most people borrow money for big ticket items like houses which require a mortgage. Well, if banks decide they will lend more money in mortgages, despite the fact that there aren’t actually any extra houses all that happens is there is a bidding war which forces prices to go up. No one is materially better off since the money we can borrow is taken up by the inflated cost of living. Even if you choose not to buy a house, you still need somewhere to live and that most likely means renting. If your landlord is forced to borrow more and thus pay back more to secure the property it stands to reason that the rent is going to be higher. What actually happens is the banks create this money, which causes a boom in the economy in the same way that the public spending did after the Second World War. The difference is that the banks are the beneficiaries of the money they lend, since it is then paid into the bank of the person who sold the house, and that bank can now lend 50times what was deposited. But that’s fine because the value of the house will increase so we always have that. Wrong again. Sooner or later as the banks give ever riskier loans to produce the growth in their balance sheets that their shareholders demand, they lend to people who can’t pay it back. Oops, now the banks are in trouble and don’t have enough money to lend meaning house prices fall. Fortunately, they have a safety net in the lender of last resort, enter The Bank of England. Our government did not choose to bail out the banks, it was legally obliged to do so. The Bank of England guarantees all other banks, and thus the money printing, growth grabbing monsters of the private sector are effectively bankrolled by the public sector! We all put money into a pot which is used to guarantee profit making companies as they lend us thin air. We use this thin air to impoverish ourselves and guarantee that we will spend the rest of our lives paying for a home that should be a basic human right. The act of borrowing this thin air and using it to buy the things we need causes these organisations to lend more thin air meaning that more people have more thin air to compete against each other with. In reality there are the same number of houses so the people selling them can sell them for ever more deepening our debt, and deepening our servitude. Now all of a sudden we cannot afford to lose our jobs, and must work ever harder to avoid the arbitrary blade of the axe, since the axe represents the loss of everything we have spent our lives acquiring.

We are slaves. Slaves to a system that we finance and work within. Slaves to a system that we no longer even question. Slaves to a very small number of people with the knowledge and the organisational means to impoverish us if we refuse to bend to their will. Economic growth is an illusion that only tightens our chains. And when economic growth falters we must pay once again, with our jobs and our homes, to repair our crumbling prison.