Michael Meacher MP

Tomorrow clause 144 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act kicks in, which will make squatting in residential buildings punishable by up to 6 months’ jail and/or fines of up to £5,000.   Given that there are now nearly 5 million households on Council (including ALMO) and Housing Association waiting lists, together with 80,000 families officially classified as homeless, and given that fewer houses are being built this year than in any year since 1923, the expulsion of squatters under the Tories’ new law can only result in a big increase in homelessness.   Some estimates of the number of squatters across the country believe that 20,000 persons could now be at risk of being displaced without anywhere else for them to go. (more…)

The news today that 3 more NATO troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers - bringing the number of such murders to 15 in this month alone and 45 this year so far – is serious enough, but it hides a much more disturbing background.   It has been dismissed as a series of random killings, not connected by any common thread, simply the result of personal grudges.   However, a recent US military psychologists’ investigation found that it actually reflected deeply ingrained hate stereotypes on both sides.   The US military generally viewed Afghan soldiers as “cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals”.   The Afghans regarded US soldiers as “violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving, profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology”.   If theses are the mutual attitudes in the current partnering programme, what hope is there for the strategy of a controlled drawdown which is based on ISAF units forming close working relationships with Afghan units leading up to full handowver in 2014? (more…)

Why is Clegg making the argument that the rich should contribute towards resolving the deficit in the interests of fairness, but not Labour?   The super-rich, roughly the 1% of the working population (around 300,000 individuals) with incomes in excess of £3,000 a week rising to £92,000 a week for the average FTSE 100 chief executive and soaring into the stratosphere beyond that, have contributed virtually nothing additionally since 2008-9 to pay for the costs of the bank bail-outs.   The very poorest are being made to pay £18bn through benefit cuts and are expected to have a further £10bn cut imposed on them shortly because of the current shortfall in debt reduction.   The rest of the population, as well as the poorest, are being made to suffer the effects of £81bn cuts in public expenditure, overwhelmingly through 300,000 or more public sector job losses.   The super-rich meanwhile sail on, untroubled by the pains of austerity and, according to the available evidence, doing very well thank you.   So why isn’t Labour raising the roof about this?   Thirty years ago Labour would have done so, but not in today’s PLP. (more…)

Gove is right in wanting to raise educational standards in the UK but, unsurprisingly in light of his record, is setting about it in completely the wrong way.   According to the OECD’s PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests  covering 65 countries, the UK was placed 7th in reading for 15 year olds in 2000, then 17th in 2006, and then down further to 25th in 2009.   In maths the UK was placed 8th in 2000, then 24th in 2006 (below the average) and finally 28th in 2009.   In science the UK was 4th in 2000, but 14th in 2006, and then 16th in 2009.   The UK was the only country to fall from a top-performing group in 2000 to a lower group just 6 years later, and then fall further still 3 years beyond that.   Clearly this slide should not be allowed to continue.   But Gove’s plan is misplaced on all four counts. (more…)

The disgraced pathologist, Freddy Patel, has now been stripped of his right to practice.   However, it is deeply disturbing that accountability for his malpractice has taken a whole decade to come into effect.   The failure of the authorities to act on the evidence of misconduct, incompetence and dishonesty over public issues of such importance throughout such a long period of time raises very serious questions about whether the framework for calling such shortcomings and defectiveness to account is really fit for purpose. (more…)

The revision of the second quarter growth figures which now show the UK economy contracting by 0.5% compared with the original estimate of 0.7% obviously gives Osborne some (small) relief, but still means that the economy has shrunk by 0.6% in the last year and has been flat for the last 2 years as a whole – the period that this Tory-led government has been in office.   As a result of this sharp decline in tax receipts Osborne is now forced to borrow some £158bn more than planned and austerity may well extend to 2020.   In the short term this rising gap can only be covered by cutting benefits or public spending even more sharply or by raising taxes.   It is a certainty that Osborne will rule out any increase in taxation for the super-rich, even though that would be the most obvious and fairest way of raising significant funding quickly, on the grounds that they are the wealth-creators who must be protected and indeed cosseted.   He is wrong on two counts. (more…)

Housing is the biggest social disaster area in Bitain today, and the report published today of Sir Adrian Montague, chair of 3i investment group and big donor to the Tories, reveals all too clearly why Tory housing policy is stuck in an impasse from which it cannot escape.   Even he admits that housing demand has been rising each year at nearly double the rate of new build.   Only some 162,000 houses have been completed annually over the last 10 years, yet an additional 232,000 households are expected to be formed each year over the next 20 years or so, a large proportion within the poorer income brackets.   The problem for the Tories is: as growth fades and incomes and tax receipts slide, the demand for housing is suppressed by unaffordability, while in the one area where demand is at its most intense - affordable housing for those on the lowest incomes – housing is put out of reach both by rocketing rents and abandonment of the whole concept of social housing. (more…)

Is there anybody left in Britain who seriously believes that Osborne’s strategy is a success and the right way to cut the deficit?   Well, yes, step forward, John Redwood.   But who else is there?   The perversity of carrying on with the present policy is mind-blowing.   Despite the savagery of the cuts already inflicted, the whole object of this callous policy – to reduce the level of government borrowing – is actually going into reverse.   Instead of meeting the OBR target for borrowing of £120bn for the current 2012-13 year, it is likely that borrowing will actually soar to £160bn.   The cuts are now expected to continue till 2020, as Cameron announced recently, so that austerity is stretching for at least a decade and a half, and quite possibly more.   Equally disastrous, the deficit on traded goods, which reached £99bn in 2010 is now likely, on the basis of the latest mid-year figures, to reach £120bn in 2012, or 8.3% of GDP.   These results are nothing less than calamitous. (more…)

So the latest Tory wheeze to commercialise the NHS is to get hospitals to sell their services abroad, using the NHS brand to rake in more private money (which would not of course be necessary if the government were not imposing £20bn cuts over 5 years).   It is claimed that NHS patients will benefit.   But the (very considerable) funding required to set up expensive state-of-the-art clinics and hospitals in the Middle East, India or China will have to come from already severely depleted NHS budgets, reducing services still further for NHS patients in the UK.   And what guarantee is there that any proceeds from these foreign investments will all be used to benefit NHS patients rather than extending private facilities in NHS hospitals? (more…)

It is sad, tragically if not pathetically sad, that 5 years into this long-drawn-out recession still virtually none of the key lessons have been learnt.   It is not about injecting a new morale and spirit of Olympic aspiration into UK economic enterprise after two weeks of glorious athletics achievements.   It’s about realising that the financial crisis will not end until certain fundamental decisions are taken, none of which are in sight at the moment.   Prime amongst these decisions is radical reform of the finance sector.   For the last three decades the banks have been treated with kid gloves at the expense of everyone else.   And the same intellectual virus continues to infect governments everywhere. (more…)

The arrival of Paul Ryan on the US Presidential scene not only has big implications for that election in November (perhaps the opponent that Obama really wanted), but also casts interesting light on the British political situation.   Ryan’s plan is based on the now regular US Republican device of unfunded tax cuts – a device which we may see spreading soon across the Atlantic.   Ryan is not the originator of this ruse, but following in the footsteps of its main architect, George W. Bush.   Bush pushed through, utterly irresponsibly, enormous unfunded tax cuts and hugely expensive unfunded wars.   This was not a reluctant necessity of the times.   It was a deliberate policy of cutting revenues (tax cuts for the super-rich) and feeding the Pentagon (Iraq and Afghanistan) precisely in order to drive up the deficit and thus justify cuts in spending.   The financial crash and subsequent bailouts, so far from being a disaster, were manna from heaven in driving this policy even further and faster. (more…)

So who instructed Barclays to reduce its submissions to LIBOR, the London inter-bank offer rate which the Economist recently estimated underpins contracts worldwide worth over £60 trillions?    On this rather crucial question the Treasury Select Committee has done a fudge.   The answer apparently is – nobody.   Del Missier, the chief operating officer at Barclays, admitted he had told his staff in October 2008 to cut submissions after a conversation with Diamond, the chief executive, who was relaying a conversation with Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England.   So who was responsible for this colossal rate-fixing scandal which continued for 6 years – Diamond, Tucker or Del Missier?    What a surprise – none of them.   “If they are all to be believed (well, well, well!)” , says the Select Committee report, “an extraordinary, but conceivably plausible, series of miscommunications occurred”.   Manipulating LIBOR over a 6-year period must be one of the biggest financial rackets in modern times: are we seriously to suppose that they didn’y check to make absolutely sure they’d got the message right before they would commit an offence of such enormity? (more…)

So Standard Chartered gets away with hiding $250bn (£160bn) of Iranian funds in illegal transactions over nearly a decade by ‘agreeing’ to pay a fine of £340m (i.e. 0.13% of the money laundered).    Another way of putting the fine in perspective is that it represents about 4% of the bank’s annual pre-tax profits (StanChart’s pre-tax profit in the first half of this year was $4bn).   So what’s the lesson in all this for the bank?   For nearly 10 years it illegally distributed enormous forbidden funds through the US financial system, no doubt charging the Iranians at a high premium $multi-billion rate for the risks involved, and very nearly got away with it.   Then, once exposed, the bank claimed that the New York Dept of Financial services was “talking rubbish” and payments of only $14m were at fault, yet when threatened with court proceedings the bank’s chief executive, Peter Sands, then immediately pays out $340m, 24 times as much.   Third, StanChart is a British bank, but the British authorities were apparently asleep at the wheel (as usual), and it was only the US law enforcement agencies that brought the bank to book.   Lesson: cheat, deceive, cover up. lie - it’s well worth it. (more…)

The latest news about inflation – RPI up last month from 2.8% to 3.2% when wages are virtually flat – is bad enough, but the background makes this a whole lot worse.   Since 9 August 2007 when the collapse at Northern Rock heralded the start of the Great Financial Crash, debt, despite all the privations of the last 5 years, has not eased, it has deteriorated further.   Total debt – not just government debt which gets all the attention, but the equally important household, financial and corporate debt – has actually increased in 10 Western countries since 2007.   One of those is the UK, but the list also includes the US, Germany, France, Canada as well as the more predictable countries in deep trouble – Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Ireland.   That is deeply worrying since it implies two things on current policies: the crisis is going to get worse, a lot worse, and it’s going to be prolonged beyond any current estimates.   If the limit for debt reduction is about 10% a year before it produces unrest and rioting on the streets, then this could go on for 15-20 years.   Such a scenario is unprecedented since the quarter century depression in the UK that started in the late Victorian age in 1873. (more…)

Wow!   “We need to have a low tolerance for firms that consistently bump along the bottom”.   With a warning like that from the new head of enforcement and financial crime at the FSA, Tracey McDermott, the Big Five banks must be……………….laughing all the way to the bank.   We’ve heard all this sort of thing before: mistakes were made, we express our regrets, but we’ve learnt our lesson, and these things will never happen again………..until the next time.   So what’s really changed?   Why, 5 years after the crash began in 2007, have no top bankers been sent to jail?   Why did the authorities get not an inkling that the explosion of toxic derivatives (probably some £2-3 trillions worth) might bring down the whole system?   Why did they take no action for 7 years when LIBOR was being regularly manipulated by 14 major banks under their very noses in London?   Why is it that, when there is another colossal scandal, it is nearly always triggered by the US courts, not by the British regulators? (more…)