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Vote Plaid Cymru

contribution by by Ceri Ames, as part of Hagley Road to Ladywood‘s pre-election series.

For the first time since 1992, this year I will be casting my vote in a UK general election in Wales. In 1992, despite some reservations, I voted Labour, hoping that they would form a government. This time round I will vote Plaid Cymru, and while there may not be any great breakthrough for Plaid, I suspect that many ex-Labour voters will act like me.

There are two main factors influencing my vote. The first is my despair at Labour’s policies. Whatever lip service New Labour has paid to its leftwing over the years, and despite the pitiful attempts recently to shore up its traditional support, it remains committed to the policies that have predictably failed over the last 13 years.

Plaid offers the kind of social democratic policies that Labour shed in the years leading to power, such as a commitment to reining in the power of the financial sector, greater employment rights and the creation of worthwhile jobs, and a more progressive tax regime. continue reading… »

The bombing of Moscow and the bombing of Grozny

One perennial riposte to condemnation of terrorism is to point to salient counter-examples of state brutality. Those who may wish to defend what happened in Moscow yesterday will have little difficulty in crafting suitable soundbites.

Russia has exercised imperial dominance over the Caucasus for over two centuries, under tzarism, Stalinism and authoritarian neoliberalism alike. Often the repression in Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, Adygea and Kabardino-Balkaria has taken the most direct forms.

The paradigm case here is the sustained bombing of Grozny in December 1994 and January 1995, which probably constitutes the worst saturation bombing of a single city since Dresden.

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Breaking – LHC working: No Black Hole

“ATLAS has seen collisions !” may not become as iconic a statement as ‘The Eagle has landed” but that tweet, sent by Prof. Brian Cox at 12:06 BST, marks the beginning of a new frontier in particle physics.

The Large Hadron Collider is working as expected and Switzerland is not – I repeat NOT – rapidly disappearing into an artificially generated black hole.

How much worse would inequality be without Brown?

I remember how infuriating I found Cameron’s assertion last autumn about poverty, and how bad for poverty reduction Brown et al have been.

Now they are at it again, in their latest increasingly negative poster campaign. The one that really drives me nuts is the first – “I increased the gap between rich and poor, vote for me”.

Brown did not increase this gap. The gap increased. There is a difference. Brown took steps to try to reduce it, as the non-partisan IFS made clear in a presentation this week, which has this slide: continue reading… »

Why efficiency savings won’t fund Tory tax cuts

It will be interesting to find out whether or the George Osborne National Insurance cut proves to be, according to choice and political inclination, the political masterstroke which rescues Osborne’s credibility as the next Chancellor, or ends up looking more like an ill-thought through clever political wheeze which seals the Shadow Chancellor’s reputation as an economic lightweight.

There is much scrutiny of the fairly scant details already. James Kirkup at the Telegraph is among those with some of the good early questions about whether the costing of the policy adds up. As do the Institute of Fiscal Studies and The Times, pointing out that the announcement was not quite what it seemed.

ConservativeHome can claim to have first predicted the new policy – and Tim Montgomerie celebrates the policy as reaffirming the Tories tax cutting credentials, noting they are already committed to inheritance tax cut and a married couples’ tax break. (He doesn’t mention the existing corporation tax cut pledge too).

But there’s the rub. The always excellent Hopi Sen concisely captures the potential coherence risk to the overall Tory message and platform:

1. Say you’ll reduce taxes.
2. Don’t say you’ll cut any major spending programmes.
3. ????
4. Lower deficit!!!!

But surely there is another reason why no party can get an election winning dividing line and expensive policy out of claims to painless efficiency savings.

All Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling would now need to do is send Gershon and Read’s rather sketchy four sheets of A4 to the relevant Permanent Secretaries, to judge whether any of the suggestions offer painless savings which can be made immediately.

If so, they could make the savings, to protect other spending or reduce the deficit.

If not, they could explain what the real policy choice is. Either way, George could well then have to find his £6 billion somewhere else.

Where such efficiency savings can genuinely be identified, every party can bank or use them. What they can’t provide is a spending-protecting, tax-cutting, deficit-reducing magic bullet.

(For proof, look at how this morning, Osborne has already “banked” the £11 billion of future efficiency savings which government departments announced as future plans after the budget: he appears to be very confident those will be delivered in full, and guessing that there won’t be too much overlap with his new savings).

***

There is also a rather more detailed critique from David Cameron about exactly why the Conservatives would not be doing exactly what they did this morning:

We all know that the easiest thing in the world is for an opposition party to stand up at an event like this and blithely talk about all the efficiency savings we will make in government; how we will streamline public spending, how we can close tax loopholes, how we can move towards a bright future of less spending and less tax with a few well-chosen cuts that miraculously deliver substantial savings without harming public service delivery at all

… The government “efficiency drive” is one of the oldest tricks in the book. The trouble is, it’s nearly always just that – a trick …

… I do not believe in simplistic lists of cuts. In naive over-estimations of potential savings. Or in cobbling together a big number in order to get a good headline.””

Left triumphs in Chancellors’ Debate

I imagine most of the analysis of Channel 4′s Chancellors’ Debate will be about which Vince politician Cable “won” it, analysis of any “gaffes”, and what it means for the Leaders’ Debates.

But what struck me about the debate tonight was how much Darling, Osborne and Cable agreed on. They all supported higher taxes on the rich, dismissed the idea that high taxes would lead to a “brain drain” of high earners, and saw an active role for government in helping people into employment and reducing economic inequality. They were competing on different ways of taxing bankers more, and different ideas for regulating the City of London.

Osborne angrily denied Cable’s claim that the top Tory priority was to cut taxes for millionaires, and said that the priority had to be to help “the many, not the few”. And unlike the media elite, who analyse changes in the budget in terms of how they affect the top 10%, they all presented their tax plans in terms of how they would affect people on middle incomes of around £20,000 per year.

And the biggest applause from the audience was for Cable’s attack on Thatcher’s policy of demutualising the building societies.

Five years ago, all of this would have been deemed unthinkably and electorally suicidally left-wing. And now, whether the politicians really believe it or not, it is the new political consensus. So the instant verdict on the debate – clear win for the left.

Gullible press taken in by CSI Woo York claim

In the last few days we’ve seen a couple of classic pieces of lousy and wholly uncritical technology churnalism in the media.

One, the spurious claim that ‘Facebook cause syphilis’ was quickly taken apart by Ben Goldacre despite the somewhat worrying refusal of NHS Tees to provide Ben with access to the data on which the ridiculous claim, which, rather alarmingly, was made by the trust’s Director of Public Health.

That leaves me to tackle this story, which emerged as wire copy from the Press Association and rapidly found its way into both the Daily Mail and The Sun before, worryingly, creeping into the industry press as well:

Typing technology ‘pervert trap’

Paedophiles using the internet to target youngsters could be tracked down – by the way they use a keyboard.

Researchers are investigating ways to use technology that can determine a typist’s age, sex and culture within 10 keystrokes by monitoring their speed and rhythm.

Former Northumbria Police detective chief inspector Phil Butler believes the technology could be useful in tracking down online fraudsters and paedophiles.

Professor Roy Maxion, associate professor at Newcastle University, has been carrying out the research in the US.

This is industrial-grade bullshit piece of advertorial from start to finish but, for reasons that will shortly become clear, still well worth picking to pieces.

Let’s start by telling you the truth about Dr Roy Maxion’s background and his actual research. continue reading… »

Vote Green

Guest post by Peter Tatchell. Originally at Hagley Road from Ladywood.

Labour has lost its heart and soul. It has become the party of war, privatisation and the erosion of hard-won civil liberties. The Lib Dems support free market capitalism, use dirty tricks during election campaigns, and when they get into office they always drift to the right. The Conservatives are split between modernisers and the reactionary old guard. Their green-friendly image is contradicted by their anti-green policies of supporting new motorways, aviation expansion and more nuclear power stations – just like Labour.

As I see it, the Green Party is the most progressive force in British politics, with a visionary agenda for democratic reform, social justice, human rights, global equity, environmental protection, peace and internationalism.

With an empowering new political and economic paradigm, the Greens offer the best hope for radical reform, as set out in our Manifesto for a Sustainable Society. continue reading… »

Lefties launch “People’s Agenda”

The Labour Representation Committee has launched its “People’s Agenda”. The LRC has over 20 Labour MPs affiliated, and 28 candidates at the next election will be standing for the following policies:

Demands include:

* Public and collective ownership of key industries
* A decent standard of living for all: a living wage for all work, and an income that provides dignity to the unemployed, pensioners, students and the disabled.
* The nationalisation of the banking sector to invest not in speculation but in the goods and infrastructure our society needs.
* We need a redistributive tax system in which the wealthy and big business pay their fair share, and to clamp down on tax avoidance and evasion.
* We want public services that people feel are theirs, that they control and that provide them with the necessary foundation for a decent life.
* Schools should be run by those with a stake in them: parents, students, staff and the local community. There should be no selection by ability or religion: schools should be secular and serve all children.
* There should be universal maintenance grants and no fees.
* A massive council housebuilding programme (which would also provide thousands of jobs) is needed immediately.
* The NHS is internationally-respected for its founding principles of universal provision, free at the point of use.
* Public transport is an essential service and cannot be run for short-term interests. Investment in public transport projects such as high-speed rail is a vital part of tackling climate change, and would create jobs.
* We need to invest in universal publicly-funded childcare.
* Personal care should be universal and free, no one should have to suffer in old age.
* Mandatory pay audits would expose institutional discrimination.
* There should be a minimum wage that provides a decent standard of living, as well as equal pay for equal work. All workers should have the right to holidays, pensions, flexible working, and trade union membership.
* The anti-trade union laws must also be repealed.
* Vital industries should be in common ownership.
* We need a politics in which everyone participates and feels that they have a voice. Under-representation of young people, women and minorities must be addressed.
* We should promote local and decentralised energy projects run along co-operative lines.
* Our society should not be launching wars of aggression against other countries and should have a foreign policy based on human rights, co-operation and justice.
* As a society we also need to challenge the discrimination that blights some people’s lives and prevents them from playing a full role in society. We should challenge discrimination against people based on gender, race, sexual orientation, disability and age. Everyone should have a right to live free from prejudice.

The Labour Representation Committee is a socialist organisation which believes in fighting for an alternative to the current unsustainable consensus.

April 6th: The day British democracy dies?

There are many problems with British democracy, and also many upsides, but the one thing about UK government is certain; every MP, elected by their constituents, has the option to vote on laws that are being put to parliament and to scrutinse their contents. On April 6th this basic element of our democracy will be undermined for party political expediency and corporate interests as the Digital Economy Bill is attempted to be shoehorned in to a session on the same day Gordon Brown is expected to call the next General Election.

The Digital Economy Bill has many problems, it is poorly worded, it is detrimental to our liberties in a way that would not be tolerated if the liberties being thrown to the wind were ones we exercised in the streets rather than virtual highways, and furthermore it is in part drafted by corporate lobbyists in the form of the BPI.

There was some hope earlier this month when Harriet Harman “promised” that there would be debate on the bill, however those words have turned (predictably) in to shallow and hollow shadows of themselves. Harriet Harman has given the House of Commons less than one day to debate a bill than similar sized bills of the past (Harman’s own Equality Bill had a good 12 days worth of parliamentary time for scrutiny). Labour (through Harman) have effectively said today that the kind of scrutiny usually reserved for our laws matters less than their own authoritarian decision that the law must pass before the next election. The BPI come before the concerns of the people.
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