Michael Meacher MP

The EU Commission decision to hand over to Member States the right to decide whether to accept the production of GM crops on their territory or to ban them is a mark of desperation which will not resolve the irreconcilable divide between pro- and anti- States.   What is wrong about this contrivance is that it evades any decision on the basis of principle (i.e. whether GM food entails a risk to human health and to the environment, and how conventional and organic crops can be protected from contamination) and simply takes the unheroic line of least resistance.   And for several reasons Britain emerges from this 12-year struggle with arguably the most dishonourable record in Europe. (more…)

Should whistle-blowers be protected, together with the organisation that seeks to give publicity to their revelations – Wikileaks?   The upcoming trial of Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, is a case in point.   He is charged with leaking a highly classified video of US soldiers in an Apache helicopter killing unarmed civilians in Baghdad.   The air crew is heard falsely claiming they came across a firefight, laughing over the dead, and then attacking a van trying to rescue the wounded.   Wikileaks published the video under the title Collateral Murder.   The US military establishment was hugely embarrassed.   Should Manning and Wikileaks be punished? (more…)

Two big structural changes in the 1980s launched by its Tory predecessor are now coming back to haunt this Tory government.   Thatcher thought that the abolition of exchange controls in 1979 together with screwing down the trade unions in the vice of anti-union legislation throughout the 1980s would consolidate the market capitalism she so much cherished as well as crushing any working class threat to her own class dominance.   For a time they did have such an effect.   But now their long-term effects look very different and are undermining the very system she fought so hard to protect. (more…)

The  Tory NHS plan, to be unveiled on Monday in a White Paper, is essentially the next corporatist stage in the dismantling of the founding NHS principles of efficiency, integration, universality, and careful need-based planning.   The original commercialisation of the NHS was initiated by New Labour under Blair with the establishment of independent foundation trusts, the continuation of the Tory split between the commissioning and provision of health care, the marketising of specific NHS services, and the encouragement of the private sector through independent treatment centres and other subsidised schemes.

The issue now is whether any political party is sufficiently committed to the genuine principles of the NHS to rally a massive campaign to fight vigorously for them, given that Labour has been so deeply compromised by the Blair years.   For nothing less is at issue than whether a universal health care system free at the point of use is going to survive. (more…)

The botched chopping of 706 BSF school-building schemes will have much more serious results than the 25 deplorable errors in informing schools that their projects were going ahead, only to be quickly told by a red-faced Secretary of State that actually they were not.   We now know what a senior Departmental source meant when he leaked his view that it had been ‘bloody chaos’ inside DE.   It shows when an inexperienced and administratively incompetent ideologue takes charge.    But that’s the least of it. (more…)

Do the Tories really care about obesity, alcoholism, rubbish food?   Apparently not?   Lansley, who disgracefully calls himself Secretary for Health, is quite content to let his corporate friends in the lucrative Food and Drinks Federation poison the health and well-being of the population so long as they pay for the government’s advertising campaign which is a cover for inactivity.   It costs the NHS £17bn per year to deal with alcohol misuse, another £17bn to treat obesity, while junk food – deliberately corrupted with high fat and salt and sugar content by the food industry – hugely damage health partucularly among the poor.   But the government turns a blind eye. (more…)

The Cameron/Clegg inquiry into whether MI5 and MI6 officers, whilst not themselves committing torture on those caught up in the post-9/11 wars, nevertheless were complicit with countries abroad in the use of  torture on their behalf, is certainly welcome but rather more murky than at first sight both as to its causation and its likely outcomes.   It is right that the inquiry is judge-led rather than being headed up by a senior politician who would be less credible and less forensic.   But disquieting aspects about both the origins and intended objectives of this initiative include the following hidden reefs ignored in the Commons exchanges. (more…)

Last week it was £6.5bn cuts announced by Danny Alexander (the former PR chief for the Cairngorms), yesterday another tranche of £1.5bn cuts from him, pepped up by Michael Gove’s scrapping 715 new school-building schemes (including 8 in my own constituency) in order to make way for his so-called ‘free schools’ and academies.    This is just one tiny part of the additional Tory public spending cuts of £32bn a year by 2014-5 which will be brought about by slashing Government departmental budgets by a zany 25%. (more…)

What a crisis!   Bank profits + 20%, public spending – 25% (might it be – 40%?).   The nation (or at least the government) seems to have forgotten about ‘moral hazard’ – that if people aren’t punished or properly brought to book for their bad bahaviour, they may draw the lesson that they can do it again with impunity.   The City of London is certainly an immoral place, but we should hardly encourage it – yet that’s exactly what the government’s doing.   And it’s not just an abuse of morality, it’s hard-headed economics that is being abused, in two clear ways. (more…)

We have now just been told by the Treasury, with typical PR chutzpah, that government departments should prepare cuts, not just of 25% which is itself unprecedented, but of 40% which would be insane.   No doubt this is, in the way politicians usually manipulate bad news ahead of the event, to make people think, when the final tally comes out rather less, that the cuts were not really as bad as all that.   It’s also of course to open up a broader range of options for cuts – just in case the opportunity offers.

Worst of all, it’s keeping up the propaganda blitz driving us down the track of cuts inevitability.   Whilst Blair in 1997 had a once-in-a-century chance of radical reform to change the face of Britain – and blew it – the Tories in 2010 have a once-in-a-century chance of turning Britain back to its conservative past, and are grabbing it with both hands.   So who will now stand up for the real Britain? (more…)

The British seem to regard homicide when committed by a corporation as rather different from ordinary murder.   It’s true that companies don’t want or intend to kill people (unless of course they’re arms manufacturers), but how should we regard (a) bribing officials of a non-Western country to import a fuel additive known to cause brain damage to children? (b) secretly dumping in a Third World country waste oil residues with a toxicity to kill? and (c) paying out a $15m out of court settlement in a Third World country to avoid further action against its collaboration with that government in the execution of protestors challenging its oil depredations?   All 3 cases involved British companies. (more…)

Lord John Browne, Sun King of casino capitalism, Blair’s favourite businessman and a High Court liar, is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time.   The qualities needed – if indeed such an appointment is required at all – are personal integrity, an unblemished record, and an understanding of the real nature of government and democracy.   Browne is a failure on all three counts, as his following record shows. (more…)

Nobody emerges well from the heated exchanges at PMQ yesterday in the Commons.   The Guardian that morning had argued the Treasury estimated that the Budget would cost 1.3m jobs.   In the ensuing mele’e Cameron responded to Harriet Harman’s taunt in two ways by claiming that (a) “unemployment will be falling during this Parliament” (words that he may well come to rue) and (b) the rise in unemployment would have been worse under Labour.   He is vulnerable on both counts. (more…)

Ken Clarke’s attack on the Michael Howard/New Labour bang ‘em up culture is welcome.   With currently 85,000 prisoners behind bars, by far the highest rate of detention of any country in Europe, he is right to demand alternatives.   Prison does take violent men out of circulation so as to protect the public for a time, but it is not a deterrent (i.e. not a punishment sufficient to prevent a large majority from re-criminalising after release) and it fails drastically in rehabilitation – the main effect of prison experience is to intensify criminality.

It’s obvious that prison is not a suitable repository for most prisoners.   Half of the men and three-quarters of the women have no qualifications.   Two-thirds are innumerate and half are illiterate.   Two-thirds were unemployed and one-third homeless when they were detained.   Three-quarters are either mentally ill or mentally unstable (compared with 5% in the wider population).   Over half suffered from alcohol excess or drug abuse.   And economically the system is counter-productive: it costs over £40,000 per prison place per year (over £3.2bn), while the cost of re-offending (which 60% even of short-term offenders do) is put at £11bn a year.   So what should be done? (more…)

We have already been told that more than a third of the £32bn extra cuts unveiled in the Budget a week ago will come from welfare.   Yesterday’s Commons debate began to reveal how deeply unjust is some of the thinking behind that.   In addition to ‘on yer bike’ to wherever 200-300 miles away there may be (temporary or impermanent) work, the question of where you’ll move to in view of the 4 million on the Council/housing association waiting lists was solved by IDS telling us it would be into “under-occupied” Council homes when the current occupiers transfer to smaller properties.

Then there’s the drastic cuts planned in DLA and Incapacity Benefit entitlement after pilot schemes suggested half were fit to do some work.   Everyone agrees that anyone genuinely capable of work should do so.   But what if there aren’t jobs available when unemployment is already 2.45m and likely to rise soon to over 3m?   What if there’s a mismatch within the locality or region beween work skills and job availability?   Can we be sure of the skill and judgement of those assessing whether someone is capable of work, as opposed to doctors paid by DWP who are not independent or bounty-seekers under some private scheme that pays bonuses for targets reached in work placements? (more…)