Michael Meacher MP

The latest reports estimate unemployment in Britain rising to nearly 3 million in 2011.   It is assumed that this is all because of Osborne’s unprecedented orgy of spending cuts.   Of course they will play a big part, but they’re certainly not the whole story.   IMF, OECD and EU figures show that there is currently a financial surplus in the private sector of $3 trillions (roughly £2 trillions) for the developed world in the balance sheets of private companies.   So given high levels of labour waiting to be employed across the Western world, why isn’t it being invested in production of goods and services which many people so badly need?   The answer to that reveals the central flaw in capitalism which neo-liberal economics has made a lot worse. (more…)

One of the most odious aspects of Big Business today is that minimizing the tax paid – so-called ‘tax efficiency’ – is justified, indeed to be supported and approved.   In fact it’s part of the ugly face of corporate capitalism that employing an army of accountants to fabricate every arcane and artificial device to get round their social duty to make their fair contribution to the society on which they depend for their market is somehow a good thing.   Tax dodging of this kind should be exposed and penalised, especially at a time of austerity when the rest of us are having to pay more in tax (e.g. the January rise in VAT) to make up.   It’s another example of the shameless greed, of which bankers’ bonuses are only the worst example, which should be stamped out. (more…)

The latest figures (from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation) now show there are 3.7 million children in Britain today living in poverty.   This is conventionally defined as living in households with a total income of less than 60% of the national median income, in other words with less than £230 a week to cover all their needs.   If the adults are also included, the total rises to 13 million persons or 22% of the entire British population.   These numbers are incredibly high in a society where the top 1% today get £150,000 a year (£2,885 a week) and chief executives in the top FTSE 100 companies take home an average £71,000 a week.   So why isn’t this a huge issue? (more…)

There’s really one basic reason why Labour is not already ten percentage points ahead of this Tory government in the polls.   Aided and abetted vociferously by a Right-wing media, the Tories have succeeded in propagating three fundamental myths – that the country’s in the state it’s in because Labour was guilty of huge over-spending, that the only way therefore to redress this disastrous legacy was to cut back this excessive over-expenditure the country couldn’t afford, and that therefore the focus of this consolidation had to be on spending cuts rather than raising taxes.   All three of these seemingly plausible propositions are actually profoundly wrong.   But the public believes them, and until Labour can thoroughly discredit these canards, the public will continue to give the Tories the benefit of the doubt on the grounds that while the economic situation may look dire, it’s not the Tories’ fault and there’s really no alternative but to endure the pain to get things better. (more…)

Britain has yet to take an official view about the fate of Julian Assange or Bradley Manning – the latter, whilst obviously primarily a matter for the US authorities, because his activities were so closely intertwined with WikiLeaks and Assange over the last two years.   The motivation of both men appears to have been principled – they leaked evidence that they believed should be placed in the public domain so that wrongs that had been committed should not go unpunished or be continued in future with impunity.   The most obvious example so far is the harrowing Collateral Murder video showing 17 non-combatants including 2 Reuters employees mowed down in a Baghdad street in 2007 by a gung-ho US Apache helicopter crew, but there are many others like the setting up by the US of an espionage network to spy on and manipulate UN Security Council members.   Both Manning and Assange clearly have a public interest defence. (more…)

No sooner do I go away and it all falls apart.   Vince Cable’s boastful indiscretion, tricked out of him by a media sting operation, puts at peril the whole future of public service broadcasting if Murdoch can now get 100% control of BSkyB and turn it into Fox US-style.   But one important question has not been pursued in this murky affair.   Who laid the trap for Cable?   Was it just the Telegraph looking for dirt from the LibDems in order to lever them out of the coalition and restore a proper Tory hegemony?   Or was it No.10 who knew perfectly well beforehand what Cable’s attitude to Murdoch was and wanted an pretext to take the BskyB decision out of Cable’s hands and give it to the subservient Jeremy Hunt, and thus ensure the electoral backing of the Murdoch stable for years to come?   Or was it, conceivably, an undercover ploy hatched from deep within the Murdoch camp itself? (more…)

The Assange extradition affair exposes several murky facts.   First, despite all the overblown protestations of treason and espionage, it’s clear that no lasting damage has been done.   Nothing has really been revealed which any informed observer would not have known or suspected.   Nobody has been murdered, no retaliatory action has been taken by any of the parties involved.   It’s all about embarrassment and the infringement of US power to run the world in the way they want without any external fetter.   If that is the real charge against Assange – and it is – why is Britain now doing the US’s dirty work for them? (more…)

Wherever the buck stops, it isn’t here.   BP (we have just learnt from a WikiLeaks cable, and wouldn’t have known otherwise) had a blow-out and giant gas leak in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea just 18 months before their Gulf of Mexico disaster.   It was largely hushed up at the time, which is significant because of the striking resemblances between the two disasters.   Did BP put its other deep-sea drillings on hold till the cause of the Azerbaijani disaster was known?   No, it did the opposite: after the 2008 Caspian blow-out it looked to Turkey to ‘rough-finish’ (i.e. below international safety standards) their pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Mediterranean in order to speed up its oil transmission to Europe. (more…)

Osborne is right : we should follow the Irish example.   Admittedly he’s rather less keen nowadays to proffer his advice that the right path to success is to pursue the Celtic Tiger’s route of massively cutting Corporation Tax, subsidising a colossal building boom, and letting the markets run riot and inequalities balloon.   But perhaps he should look again.   The Irish have now done something that no other government in the western hemisphere has dared to do.   It has ended the payment of bankers’ bonuses.   So if them, why not us?  (more…)

The Tories are now in very deep trouble over the NHS, education, housing, local government finance, and police numbers.   But the harsh truth remains that the electorate are still not going to turn to Labour so long as the Tory canard prevails that the country’s in the mess it’s in because Labour wrecked the economy with massive overspending.   If Labour is to grasp the electorate’s attention again, we must explain, first, why this Tory re-writing of history through constant reiteration in the right-wing media is a pastiche of the truth, and secondly, we must set out clearly and persuasively what is the alternative to the current Tory menu of devastating cuts, rising unemployment, and sinking growth.   Both of these are entirely possible and urgently necessary. (more…)

Cancun never came near to doing what is necessary to ensure that the human race can survive on Earth.   After two summit failures and with the Kyoto Protocol becoming defunct in 2012, can anything be done to obviate Earth’s 6th mass extinction?    The brutal truth is that the rich-poor North-South divisions are so deep, the stand-off between US-China so uncompromising, and the political and economic clout of the fossil fuel vested interests so enormous that any major concessions by the powerful in favour of some uncertain future gains that mostly benefit the weak are just not going to happen any time quickly.   The financial-business-political neoliberal nexus that is still intact and effectively governs the world is not going to change unless absolutely compelled to.   Is there anything at all which will do that? (more…)

If you’re going to commit a wrong today, it’s best to make it a really big wrong, so then you’ll probably get off scot-free.   Consider the news of the last week.   The financial regulator FSA investigating the RBS banking debacle which cost UK taxpayers £40bn concluded that the bank was run by misguided fools who made bad judgements, but broke no rules, so no action would be taken.   Shell’s vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa was revealed as claiming that the oil giant had inserted staff into all the main ministries of the Nigerian Government so that it exploited political channels in the oil-rich Niger Delta to its own advantage; but when Nigeria strenuously complained, no action was taken.   It was disclosed that the day before Blair privately assured Bush he would back a US invasion of Iraq, he had been warned by his own Attorney General that an invasion of Iraq would be illegal; but so far no action has been taken.   Just three examples in a week, and there are several others as follows. (more…)

The arrogance of the banks knows no bounds.   Faced with new European guidelines putting some restrictions on bonuses, Barclays Capital and HSBC have as good as put up two fingers to the regulatory authorities by hiking up salaries to compensate for the bonus loss.   Why do we put up with this?   bout When the Irish banks, whose recklessness was proverbial, nevertheless issued large bonuses as a snub to the IMF-EU Irish rescue package, the Irish Government announced a new 90% tax on all future bankers’ bonuses.   Why doesn’t the UK do the same?   Are we serious about bringing the banks to heel or just playing footsie?   The banks have already cost this country £68bn in bail-outs plus another £350bn in loan guarantees and asset protection, set against the average £20bn a year in tax they pay to the Exchequer, so they are a huge net deficit to this country.   Why do we treat them with such velvet gloves? (more…)

Something is happening in our country which is a major break from past experience.   We are I believe in the early stages of a quite fundamental change in the national mood.   It reflects a confluence of several recent profound events in the life of the country which have woven a very different texture from passive acquiescence in the consumer materialism of the last few decades.   In quick succession we have seen the bankers’ greed overwhelming the whole economy, unprecedented spending cuts aimed at the victims of the crisis, the collapse of the political class (in the expenses scandal, the failure of accountability, and the systematic breaking of promises), the continuing marketising of everything including the most precious of our public services, and now Wikileaks day after day exposing the sheer hypocrisy and manipulativeness of governments.   The surprise is, not the spirit of rebelliousness that is now beginning to happen across the spectrum, but rather that it has taken so long to happen.   So where next? (more…)

The students were firmly kettled into Parliament Square today by overwhelming force of police numbers, many in riot gear, and the vote was lost in the House of Commons next door.   Not the best result for thousands of students who have staged three major demonstrations in extremely cold weather to bring home to the country the iniquity of tripling tuition fees.   Yet the truth is that the students have scored a great victory on several counts.   They have roused the country into action against brutally unfair spending cuts.   They have made a national issue out of tuition fees which is not going to go away and which would not have happened if they hadn’t blazed the way in a manner that unforgettably caught the attention of the media and the nation.   And on the back of it that vote in the House was devastating. (more…)