The ConDemNation

So there you have it. We have a Government none of us voted for. Most of those who voted Lib Dem in Scotland did so to keep the Tories out. 85% of people in Scotland voted anti-Tory, - 68% UK wide. Two Eton boys then sat down and carved out a Government made up of old Etonians, bosses, Lords and Ladies. Not one person who negotiated this ‘coalition of thieves’ had a working class accent – nor did they stand a chance of being hit by the austerity measures the so called “left of labour” Lib Dems and the Tories are about to mete out on the working and middle classes.

All of the negotiators were white, well shaven men. No women, single mothers, Union representatives – no-one with a modicum of empathy for working class people and our struggles were there. The public sector is – East Dunbartonshire is - about to be hit with a barrage of cuts that will see working families and the poor bleed to feed the markets and to pay off the rich man’s debt.

This is not what we voted for in the UK, neither in Scotland nor in East Dunbartonshire. Jo Swinson was buoyed up by a tactical vote both from SNP and Conservative supporters who gave her a 4000 vote margin between her and Labours John Lyons in 2005. This time, the tactical vote, for the most part, was seen to be unnecessary. The SNP vote gained, as did Labours. Swinson halved her majority.

Sally Magnusson hit the nail on the head in her recent TV programme, "Why didn't the Scots vote Tory?" She concluded that the electorate here do not vote out of the self interest promoted by the Tories - we think of others. Self interest sums up this squalid deal. Swinson and the Lib Dems delivered Tory majority rule – and the swingeing cuts and misery the Tories and Liberal Tories will mete out on us.

Let her know your thoughts and ensure the non-alternative – the lie of a “left of Labour” Liberal Democrat party is put to rest. Do not vote Tory/ Lib Dem again – they are unnecessary in East Dunbartonshire. The Tories can only win in this constituency with a leg up and the “looking in both directions” of the Lib Dems. This has been proved both here and country wide.

This is a coalition of cuts.

It has been strapped together in order to allow the worst cuts meted out on the working and middle class in history. Brought together by the ruling class and their media. The markets are not happy, we are told, and this means you should lose your job or take pay cuts.

Let’s unite against the rubbish they spin – the racism and the financial fairy tales that are forced down our TV sets that set working class against working class. The true enemy is not the immigrant, the true friend is not the “markets” and marketeers who are making you pay for their gambling.

We need a coalition of the electorate. - We need a vote for real – Scottish Left– alternatives.

The Scottish Socialist Party believe the rich bankers and corporations who got us into this economic mess should pay – not the health workers and bin men , education workers, small businesses, posties, rail workers or street cleaners in East Dunbartonshire. Ordinary people and their jobs should be protected from this greed induced crisis, not made to suffer to allow the rich to keep their millions/billions.

Who is fooling us?

A common thread ran through Twitter after the last leaders debate. “Were the pollsters watching the same debate as us?”

This was the case not only in the “Twitter-sphere,” but the right wing Andrew Neil pop-politics show panel named the debate as being Browns.

Channel 4’s live poll, like quite a few of these live polls, named Cameron as a poor third or at least, neck and neck with Brown or Clegg as second place.

Even Murdoch's Sky, in a poll it has no members on the board – ie. a radio listeners poll, put Brown in first place.

So what is going on?

The biggest and most quoted pollsters in the media at the moment are You Gov. YouGov, like all polsters, tell us they are “neutral.”

Let's see. The CEO of YouGov PLC, Stephan Shakespeare, is a business associate, close personal friend and former campaign manager of Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced Tory Lord. He owns the ConservativeHome website, was Jeffrey Archer's spokesman during his London mayoral bid and was the Conservative candidate for Colchester during the 1997 election. Archer, by the way, was on telly last night for the first time in years - STRAIGHT AFTER THE DEBATE ON NEIL'S BBC PROGRAMME "THIS WEEK", calling his man the winner because of the "polls." Ahem.

An “ex” YouGov CEO Nadhim Zahawi is standing as a Conservative MP for Stratford Upon Avon in the 2010 General Election. Nadhim Zahawi also worked on Lord Archer's mayoral bid. Nadhim has stated he is not CEO anymore however he is still an active board member
see

HERE

HERE

and HERE

After Craig Murray published evidence that YouGov’s polls were rigged, they (or more specifically, Sheakspeare) denied it -But where did they publish their denial? ConservativeHome!

I am at present trying to get info on ComRes, the polsters that seem to be the second most quoted.

The Daily Mail were caught out rigging their polls and had to change the result after 1o,000 people read the analysis of how they were doing it

As has been pointed out on the Campsie website before, Murdoch and the Daily Mail have made a deal to back each others editorial in order to get the Tories in AT ALL COSTS. So, not only do the Tories at the moment own the press, they own the “independent pollsters.”

Don’t get me wrong – I cannot defend Labour in this – they quite happily took support from the Murdochracy from 1997 until this election – and their spin has been overtaken by the Tories ability to pay to buy search terms on google (enter “Leaders debate" into your google search engine and notice the advert from the tories at the top of the page).

The New Labour project has failed - and the public's Clegg/Lib Dem love in has shown that (even though the Lib Dem message is full of HUGE holes and spin) the truth starved public want to hear alternatives to the non-answers the politicos throw at us.

But what has become clear in this election – the media needs to be separated from the political parties in the way the BBC are supposed to be (though Nick Robinson, the Tory political editor at the BBC needs a slap) – and this would be a priority of a Scottish Socialist Party politician.

Follow the debate on the pollsters

HERE

Campsie articles relating to this

HERE

HERE

and HERE

Polly Toynbee on Murdoch's scandalous influence on our political system HERE

It was the Son wot Lost it?

Is the Media Mickey Mouse Degree tide turning?

One thing has been made obvious by the welcome knock-back of the “sure winners” the Tories. The media has been exposed. The journalists who have vested interests in pleasing Murdoch daily with even more rancid headlines have been outed.

I know this is the case for one primary reason. In the way miners used to bring birds down the mines to let them know that gas was present, I talk politics to my parents. This can be painful for a Socialist – my parents are Daily Mail/ Sun reading pensioners who worked hard all of their lives. They come from a generation who grumbled about politicians and in fact had no illusions (they live in Northern Ireland) – but every year were fooled by the scare politics of the unionist hegemony in the province. This year, in Northern Ireland is a little different. Unionism is shattering and a beleaguered UUP is being bolstered by a desperate Tory Party.
But it isn’t Northern Ireland politics that my parents have noticed is rotten – they knew that many years ago. No – it is that their usual Daily Mail and Sun line has slightly changed. They still say unreasonable things straight from the pages- but last night, when I spoke to them on the phone, both said to me, more or less in the same words, “the papers told lies about Nick Clegg.”

Let me expose my partisanship – I am a socialist. I want a fair society. I just don’t want you to get the wrong impression… but…

Last night Ann Leslie appeared on BBC Question Time. This experienced old tory hack was also a miners bird (not literally – she did her very best back during the Thatcher years to destroy that industry and those peoples lives). Leslie started her usual less than subtle Tory diatribes with the sentence, “As someone who votes tory, but is not a member of the tory party – I don’t hold with journalists belonging to political parties…” - an unprecendented admission on a populous political programme. With most of her points there was a knowing audience titter and certainly on Twitter as her name, surprisingly trended, the twitter-atti were certainly not fooled by her.

Murdoch Mess

This morning on asking Gordon Brown a question about honesty, a Sun reporter was openly laughed at by the press and Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman and Mandelson joined in the laughter, Brown saying, “That’s rich from the Sun, the sun should give people more credit,[and be honest] and allow people to make their own minds up.”

Yesterday the Independent Newspaper was confronted by James Murdoch (Rupert’s son who advised his dad to back the Tories) openly at a press do. His objections were because the Independent dared to say, “Rupert Murdoch won’t decide this election, you will,” in a promotional ad. This shows the flakiness and panic setting into the Murdoch empire as they are feeling the pressure of the fact they have pumped millions of pounds behind a Tory campaign that seems to have ran off the rails. If the Tories fail, that would be millions of pounds wasted on both sides of the Atlantic as President Cain and Vice President Palin failed to reap the Fox News dividend. Murdoch had also met with the Daily Mail pre-the attacks on Nick Clegg – exposing that short lived and transparent joint strategy. The Murdoch’s are under pressure because of the seeming imminent failure of their support for the Tories and their want to place online news print media behind a paywall. Is an empire unravelling?

Press owned by self interested billionaires

Johann Hari sums it up in an article today saying, “The British media is overwhelmingly owned by right-wing billionaires who order their newspapers to build up the politicians who serve their interests, and marginalise or rubbish the politicians who serve the public interest. …Only a tiny spectrum of opinion was permitted [by the Murdoch’s according to ex-editor of the Sun, David Yelland]. Everyone to the left of Tony Blair (not hard) had to be rubbished – even when their policies spoke for a majority of British people.” (full article HERE )

Hari believes the TV debates have been one of the biggest factors in the changing of the public’s ability to be fooled. I nearly agree. I would say it ruins slightly deeper. Thatcher’s nightmare has come about. She used to attack Media Studies as a Mickey Mouse course – but those educated into how the media works seem to have spread the word. Not only that, the ability to blog, twitter, youtube etc has brought different views to people – showing there is more of a view than through the Murdoch/ Rothermere looking glass. The internet has shown people they can make a difference in controversial issues (Trafagura/ Iran/ Haiti etc) and also make little changes to what is accepted will happen (Rage Against the Machine as the very festive number one instead of Simon Cowell’s latest singing cash cow). The people have been educated, and perhaps slowly (a move to the Liberal Democrats is hardly revolutionary!) consciousness is creeping into elections – and these are going to be more than an X-Factor glamour contest.

I predict it will be less of a “It was the Sun wot won it,” than the trending Twitter hashtag this morning of “#itwastheSONwotlostit”.

After the upset this election promises, watch out for an even more colourful Scottish Parliament in 2011.

Cuts in Services, Jobs, Wages and Pensions to Pay for Their Crisis

by Raphie de Santos

Cuts: that’s what all the major parties - Labour, SNP, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - are arguing about. But not if there is an alternative to the cuts but who would be the best at making the cuts. But let’s be clear we are bailing them out of the complete mismanagement of their economic and financial systems.

Bring on the Clowns

Governments led by Thatcher, Blair, Brown, McConnell and Salmond have supported the changes to the running of the financial and economic system that have led to the greatest crisis since the 1930s. They have overseen the deregulation of financial markets and institutions and the liberal use of interest rates that created a huge speculative bubble in every type of debt and a mountain of 700 trillion US dollars of unregulated derivatives. They bailed these systems out with hundreds of billions of pounds of borrowed money which they are asking us to pay back through cuts.

Having all cheered from the sidelines patting each other on the back for their wonderful creation they now blame everyone but themselves for the mess and are asking us to pick up the bill for their reckless folly.


Bailouts

The shortfall in money has come from a bailout of the crisis ridden financial system and a deep UK recession caused by the resultant collapse of consumer credit. So far the government has spent about £150 billion (bn) bailing out the banks and another £150bn on quantitative easing (QE) – where they print money and buy back government and other debt from financial institutions. They are going to spend another £25bn on QE and are prepared to underwrite another £700bn of the banks bad debts. Practically none of the money spent so far has found its way into the real economy - about £2bn has gone into mortgage lending helping to temporarily stop the fall in house prices. Most of the bailout money is being horded by the banks to pay off losses and to have for any future potential losses. So far the money spent amounts to 25% of what we produce (gross domestic product) annually.

At the same time central government revenues are falling because of the recession they have caused. Rising unemployment has a double edged sword of reducing tax revenues and increasing benefits payments for central and local government. In August of this year there was a £17bn deficit in the UK budget from this trend.

One way to pay for the shortfalls is borrow money on the international financial markets through issuing UK government debt – called gilts. Then pay it back over several years with increased revenues from a growing economy. The average that was raised in the five years prior to 2009 by the UK government in this way was £47 bn per year. In 2009 the estimate is £146bn and in 2010 the forecast is £180bn. The problem with this model is two fold: one the economy will not recover (if at all) sufficiently to create extra tax revenue to make these payments; second the UK economy is so fundamentally weak that Bank of England interest rates will have to remain at very low levels which means a weak currency and therefore nobody – domestic or international – will want to buy these UK government bonds.

That is why all the plans put forward to make cuts by the major parties are so vague: nobody knows how much will have to be cut to cover the unknown developing black hole in the UK’s finances. That is why there is a general message of we are all going to have “bear the pain over several years” to sort out their mess.


But if we are correct about the prospects for the UK economy – years of stagnation or decline – then the cuts will be on a massive scale year after year with the dire social consequences that will bring for the majority of the working class.

The SNP

These cuts will affect central and local spending. Local spending by councils is financed by a block grant from central government making up about 75% of the local budget – the rest comes from council tax. Similarly the Scottish government receives a block payment from central government to finance services such as heath and education. The SNP minority government are in effect administering the cuts from London whether Tory or Labour. They have made matters worse for local councils by freezing council tax and refusing to implement a progressive local or national income tax. Even if such a proposal was defeated by the other parties in Holyrood it would have the effect of galvanising a campaign amongst Scottish voters for a commitment for such future tax changes from the next Holyrood election. It would also have strengthened the argument for independence for Scotland.

But the SNP did not want to rock capitalism’s boat and instead be quite happy to implement the cuts and makes some noises that it is all London’s fault.

Alternative

There is an alternative to the bank bailouts and cuts.

• take all the banks under full ownership and control turning their toxic loans into social rents and social projects and cancelling their destructive derivative contracts;
• a redistributive tax – a one off greed tax would repair the damage already done to our public services and a permanent progressive tax could generate an extra 33% to the total Scottish budget; and
• scrap the expenditure on nuclear weapons, withdraw from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reduce our armed forces to one for defence not invasion.



This is the alternative the Scottish Socialist Party is fighting for in the Glasgow North-East by election and the forthcoming UK and Scottish elections. It is the rationale alternatives to what the major parties are offering us - that we pay for their crisis. It is the start of the building of a society that operates in the interests of the majority instead of the few.

The Scottish Socialist Party Alternative Summit...

On 16th April 2009, Gordon Brown and his New Labour Cabinet met in the SECC, Glasgow to discuss their reaction to the current stage in the economic crisis. Two weeks later, the Scottish Socialist Party European Election candidates met informally at the same venue. The video shows the SSP alternatives to the decisions made by the "Glasgow Cabinet"...
Promoted by Pam Currie on behalf of the Scottish Socialist Party, Suite
308/310, 4th Floor Central Chambers 93 Hope St, Glasgow G2 6LD.

Indict Blair...

A new campaign has been launched to indict Tony Blair in the Hague as a war criminal.

The petition text is below, follow the link to sign it.

To: President of the United Nations General Assembly and the UK Attorney General

BWCF - THE BLAIR WAR CRIMES FOUNDATION

To The President of The United Nations General Assembly, H.E. Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, and The Attorney General of the United Kingdom, and their successors in office.

RE ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR

We, the citizens of the United Kingdom and other countries listed, wish to uphold The United Nations Charter, The 1998 Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court, The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Rule of International Law, especially in respect of:-

1. 1949 Geneva Convention IV: Article 146
   The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention.
2. 1907 Hague Convention IV: Article 3
   A belligerent party which violates the provisions of the said regulations shall, if the case demands, be liable to pay compensation. It shall be responsible for all the acts committed by persons forming part of its armed forces.

We therefore call on you to indict Anthony Charles Lynton Blair in his capacity as recent Prime Minister of the UK, so long as he is able to answer for his actions and however long it takes, in respect of our sample complaints relating to the 2003 Iraq War waged by the UK as ally to the United States of America.

We are concerned that without justice and respect for the rule of law, the future for us and our progeny in a lawless world is bleak, as revealed by recent US declarations about the use of torture and the events of December 2008 in Gaza show.

The following are our sample complaints relating to the Iraq War 2003-2009:

1. Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, 4 million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.
2. Employing radioactive ammunition causing long-term destruction of the planetary habitat.
3. Causing the breakdown of civil administration, with consequent lawlessness, especially looting, kidnapping, and violence, and consequent breakdown of womens’ rights, of religious freedom, and child and adult education.
4. Failing to maintain the medical needs of the populace.
5. Despoliation of the cultural heritage of the country.
6. Supporting an ally that employs ‘waterboarding’ and other tortures.
7. Seizing the assets of Iraq.
8. Using inhumane restraints on prisoners, including dogs, hoods, and cable ties.
9. Using Aggressive Patrolling indiscriminately, traumatising women and children and wrecking homes and property.
10. Marking bodies of prisoners with numbers, writing, faeces and other degrading treatment.
11. The use of cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons including white phosphorous on shake and bake missions.
12. Supporting indiscriminate rocket attacks from F16 fighter planes on women and children in Fallujah in Nov 2004
13. Supporting the shooting up of ambulances and medical personnel in Fallujah in Nov 2004
14. Supporting the expulsion of the entire population of Fallujah save for young men of military age, for a reprisal attack on that city in Nov 2004.

Glasgow East By-Election

CLICK ON PHOTO FOR MORE IMAGES FROM THE SSP GLASGOW EAST CAMPAIGN

Ritchie Venton on the outcome:

"Thousands of Labour voters simply stayed at home in disgust with their record on food and fuel prices; failure to tackle poverty and inequality; assaults on the sick and disabled, and their wholesale neglect of the working class. Others did a straight swap to the SNP, as punishment for New Labour in an area they have treated with decades of contempt, stepping on people’s heads en route to grossly overpaid political careers."

MORE HERE

Aldermaston 2008 - the Bomb Stops here

(click on image to see leaflet)
















Aldermaston is Britains nuclear bomb factory.

This Easter marks the 50th anniversary of the first march to Aldermaston.

Let's join in telling Gordon Brown we want a safe, nuclear free UK and world.

Help build a future of peace and international justice.


www.cnduk.org/aldermaston/