Respect Supporters Blog on holiday for one week from Saturday 24th May

Our luxury 'value' mobile home - just ready and waiting for our weeks holiday in Clacton!

Blog Notice - on holiday for one week from Saturday.

From Saturday 24th May to Saturday 31st May I shall be on holiday so postings may not occur or be few - it all depends on access to a computer link (I have always been successful in the past).

So where am I going? - Clacton, a place I have never been to before in a mobile home. Just got an E-Mail from the holiday camp with a picture (above) of our 'Last Minute, Luxury, Value Mobile Home' booking. I wondered why it was such value - think I will keep it a surprise for my wife, Anne and just tell her is was a really good bargain. And the weather forcast for Clacton is rain for Sunday! Never mind it will be a nice change. First holiday for a year.

Link: Clacton-on-Sea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The ASBO ministers - Morning Star

Morning Star - Download today's front page - pdf file.
ANYBODY who relied on the ravings of the right-wing press for their news probably believes that there's a civil war going on in Britain.
We're a nation under siege. The enemy is our children.
Certainly, new Labour seems to have been attracted to the siren call of backwards Daily Mail-style pundits baying for a hard line on youth.At least, that's if the assessment of ex-Youth Justice Board head Rod Morgan is anything to go by.
In the wake of the release of a King's College report on youth justice yesterday, he went public to attack his former employers for spending far too much time trying to lock up kids and far too little time tackling the root causes of youth crime and alienation.
What's this? New Labour taking shortcuts by focusing on easy, headline-grabbing initiatives rather than rolling up its sleeves and trying to get to the heart of the matter? Yes, people, it's business as usual.
But this is, of course, no joking matter.
It is said that a nation can be judged on its treatment of children. By any measure, Britain stands condemned.
It seems that the government's main "success" in this area, if such a word could be used, has been to cut the amount of time it takes for a youngster to go from charge to sentence.
Offending itself has not fallen. A raft of targets relating to the causes of youth crime have been missed.
But this should come as no surprise.
Vast areas of Britain have become post-industrial ghost towns, neglected by government and left to their own devices.
Communities, families and individuals have been crushed and forgotten by politicians more interested in implementing free-market dogma and chasing the votes of some mythical Middle England than forging a just society that caters for the most vulnerable.
Now, the results are coming back to haunt us.
Child poverty rates in cities and countryside alike remain among the highest in the developed world. The gulf between rich and poor yawns ever wider.
Our children are being born into a damaged, dog-eat-dog culture that celebrates wealth and celebrity and has pulled up the ladder on the rest of us.
One group of people in particular knows perfectly well the day-to-day impact of years of flawed government policy.
They see it every day in their jobs.
Yet, rather than being given the tools and resources with which to make a difference on the ground as part of a wide-ranging strategy to solve Britain's social problems, public-sector employees are faced by an assault on pay and conditions and job cuts.
Effectively, the workers who are actually charged with hitting the headline-grabbing government targets on youth crime have themselves fallen victim to a very particular brand of anti-social behaviour.
Britain's treatment of its children is due to be scrutinised by the UN committee on the rights of the child next month.Its findings will certainly make interesting reading.
The question is, will anyone in Whitehall get their noses out of the gutter press long enough to see them? Learn More below:
Link: Shutting the stable door - Morning Star
Link: Fruits of flexibility - Morning Star
Author of article: Morning Star
Home page of article: Morning Star
Full Story - read the full article

Corporate cherry-picking isn't delivering the goods - Seamus Milne

From: The Guardian
As New Labour heads for humiliation in the Crewe byelection today, those who want to find a way out of the wreckage need to face up to the lessons of its ideological bankruptcy fast.

For more than a decade, Tony Blair and, puffing slightly to keep up, Gordon Brown have always insisted that the only test for their policies is “what works”. That has been the theme tune of their ever more enthusiastic embrace of public service privatisation and commercialisation. Not for them the pickled nostrums of the past: if the corporate world could deliver the goods, it had to be given the freest of reins.
The farce of their claims couldn’t have been more clearly demonstrated than in the liberalisation and creeping privatisation of Britain’s postal service. Far from “working” or delivering the goods, the corporate-skewed opening up of the market is progressively destroying a publicly owned network at the heart of Britain’s social and business life. When New Labour came to power, the Post Office was an effective public monopoly handing over more than £100m profit a year to the public purse. Public and political support saw off successive attempts by the Tories and, more tentatively, Tony Blair to privatise what had become Royal Mail.
But eight years after New Labour began exposing the network to private competition and two years after Royal Mail’s 350-year-old monopoly was finally abandoned, the postal service is in crisis and the universal service which guarantees delivery of mail anywhere in the country at a single price is in peril. A devastating independent review for the government this month found that liberalisation had only benefited big business, brought “no significant benefits” to consumers or small businesses, and created a “substantial threat” both to the future of Royal Mail and the universal service.
Of course, few people needed to be told that the service was deteriorating, when the last five years have seen an end to Sunday collections and fewer and later daily deliveries. But the response of the postal regulator Postcomm, whose ideological passion for markets and unchained competition has been central to this sorry saga, was to demand an intensification of the private treatment: far from stepping back, it last week insisted that part-privatisation of Royal Mail was the only way to prevent a further decline in the service, including an end to Saturday deliveries.
Naturally, Royal Mail’s executives like the idea, from which they would stand to benefit richly. But it’s hard to see how it would help protect the unprofitable parts of the universal service or the threatened network of post offices on which it depends. What has really tipped Royal Mail over the edge are Postcomm’s rigged rules for access to Royal Mail deliveries, which have levered corporate operators into the most profitable parts of the business – they now handle 40% of the profitable bulk mail which previously underwrote remote deliveries – and turned an operating profit of £233m in 2006-7 into a £279m loss this year.
Of course, the growth of the internet and years of under-investment in mechanisation have also had an impact – though online transactions also generate mail. But it is this deliberately engineered leaching off the public sector which has been the decisive factor in delivering a worse service to most users and lower pay and conditions to those employed by the corporate cherry-pickers. Meanwhile the government’s continued drive to close thousands of unprofitable post offices, shutting off social lifelines for some of the country’s most vulnerable people, has directly fuelled the public rejection of New Labour which now appears to have passed the point of no return.
When one Labour rebel recently challenged Brown about the impact of postal liberalisation, the prime minister blamed the European Union. It’s true that EU directives require the opening up of postal and other public services to competition – and those neoliberal catechisms are now locked into the Lisbon treaty, due to face its first popular test in the Irish referendum next month. But Britain, ever more royal than the king, has gone much further, much faster than required to do by Brussels, and has failed to use the protective measures available to keep its “dominant provider” afloat.
Not that there’s much hope of either of the other two main parties taking a more sensible approach. David Cameron’s Tories may have opposed post office closures, but they have carefully avoided committing themselves even to the current level of government financial support and can be safely relied on to head off further down the privatisation and liberalisation path, while the Liberal Democrats now want to part-privatise Royal Mail to raise cash.
What’s needed instead is the debunking of the privatising dogma that has created this crisis, a halt to preferential pricing for private predators, a universal service charge for market entrants, and a broadening of Postcomm’s remit. At the same time there is a huge untapped potential to turn local post offices into far more viable hubs by, for example, making them centres of access to public services and reintroducing public banking facilities.
But then the gutting of the postal service isn’t the only part of the government’s corporate-driven market agenda that isn’t working. As Allan Asher, chief executive of Energywatch, told parliament this week, competition in the privatised energy market is a myth, and British gas and electricity consumers are being fleeced by the “tacit collusion” of a “comfortable oligopoly”.
There is clearly going to have to be a more far-reaching change of course. Tuesday’s compromise agreement between the government, CBI and TUC to give exploited contract and agency workers the same basic rights as permanent staff after 12 weeks is certainly a significant move in the right direction and was greeted with squeals of rage by business lobbyists. But there was also disappointment among Labour MPs and trade unionists: once again, Britain has signed up to less worker protection than most EU states wanted and is now likely to be able to continue opting out of long hours regulation as a result of the deal. It may be too late to avoid defeat, but if Labour is to reverse its haemorrhage of support and lay the ground for a better future, it will have to take more than these faltering steps.
Learn More below:
Link: Galloway slams post office closures - Respect
Link: Communication Workers Union

Link: Either Labour represents its core voters - or others will - ukwatch

Link: CAPOC - Post Office Closures National Action Group
Author of article: Seamus Milne
Home page of article: The Guardian via ukwatch
Full Story - read the full article

'New Labour': Nothing Left to Fight For - George Monbiot

From: Monbiot.com
You can hear the wringing of hands and tearing of cloth all the way down Farringdon Road. Dismayed by the results of the local elections, convinced that Labour will be crushed in the byelection on Thursday, afraid that this will presage disaster in the next general election, my fellow columnists are predicting the end of the civilised world. But I can’t understand why we should care.
Yes, I worry about what the Tories might do when they get in. I also worry about what Labour might do if it wins another term. Why should anyone on the left seek the re-election of the most rightwing government Britain has had since the second world war?
New Labour’s apologists keep reminding us of the redistributive policies it has introduced: Sure Start children’s centres, reductions in child poverty, raising the school leaving age, the national minimum wage, flexible hours for parents and carers, better conditions for part-time workers, the Decent Homes programme, free museums, more foreign aid. All these are real achievements and deserve to be celebrated. But the catalogue of failures, backsliding and outright destruction is much longer and more consequential.
One fact alone should disqualify this government from office: we have a cabinet of war criminals. The Nuremberg Tribunal characterised a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime.” It is not just that Britain’s Labour government launched and has sustained an unprovoked war, it also sabotaged all means of achieving a peaceful resolution. In April 2002 it helped the Bush administration to sack Jose Bustani, the head of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to prevent him from settling the dispute over Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction(1,2). In two separate offers before the invasion began, Saddam Hussein agreed to meet the terms the US and Britain were demanding. But they slapped him down and concealed his offers from their electorates(3).
Cluster bombs can be legally used because the British government helped to block an international ban in 2006(4): it is still holding out against an outright ban at the current talks in Dublin(5). The government has undermined another international peace agreement – the nuclear non-proliferation treaty – by deciding to renew the Trident missile programme. It was the first administration to announce a policy of pre-emptive nuclear attack(6): even the great nuclear enthusiast Harold Macmillan never went this far. In 2007, the defence secretary, without parliamentary debate, revealed that the US would be allowed to use the listening station at Menwith Hill for its missile defence system(7).
Labour appears to be prepared to meet any demand, however outrageous, the Bush administration makes. In 2003 the government signed a one-sided extradition treaty, permitting the US to extract our citizens without producing prima facie evidence of an offence. In the same year the defence secretary announced that he would restructure the British armed forces to make them “inter-operable” with those of the United States, ensuring for the first time in British history that they became functionally subordinate to those of another sovereign power(8).
Labour’s foreign policy is as unethical as Margaret Thatcher’s. It provides military aid to the government of Colombia, whose troops are involved in a campaign of terror against the civilian population. It granted an open licence for weapons exports to the government of Uzbekistan, and sacked the British ambassador when he tried to draw attention to the regime’s human rights abuses. It has collaborated with the US programme of extrajudicial kidnapping and imprisonment, left our citizens to languish in Guantanamo Bay, and made use of Pakistani torture chambers in seeking to extract testimony from British suspects(9). Until 2005 it tied its foreign aid programme to the privatisation of public utilities in some of the world’s poorest countries(10,11). Last year it held out against reform of the International Monetary Fund’s unfair allocation of votes(12).
The proportion of the British population in prison has risen by a fifth since the Tories left office. Today Britain locks up 151 out of every 100,000 people(13). The Chinese judiciary, by contrast, which is notorious for its willingness to bang up anyone and everyone, jails 119 people per 100,000; Myanmar imprisons 120, Saudi Arabia 132(14). The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act, passed in 2005, contains clauses which permit the police to ban any demonstration, however peaceful(15). It is one of a long series of bills the Labour government has passed which restrict the right to protest.
The citizen has been re-regulated; business has been deregulated. Last year deaths caused by serious injuries at work rose by 11%(16): a predictable result of the sacking of 1000 staff at the Health and Safety Executive and a 24% reduction in workplace inspections(17). In 2006 the government instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop its corruption case against the arms manufacturer BAe. It has obstructed efforts by other states to investigate the company(18,19).
Labour has shifted taxation from the rich to the poor, cutting corporation tax from 33% to 28% and capital gains tax from 40% to 18%, and introducing a new Entrepreneurs’ Relief scheme, taxing the first million of capital gains at just 10%. It tried to raise the income tax paid by the poorest earners from 10% to 20%. Labour has lifted the inheritance tax threshold from £300,000 to £700,000, and maintained the cap on the highest rates of council tax. While vigorously prosecuting benefits cheats, it has allowed tax avoidance, mostly by the very rich, to reach an estimated £41billion(20). Inequality today is slightly worse than it was when Labour took power (the Gini coefficient which measures it has risen from 0.33 to 0.35(21)).
Both as Chancellor and as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has forced the private finance initiative into almost all public services. His privatisation schemes have crept into places where the Conservative government never dared to tread. Labour has waged war against our planning system and overseen a disastrous decline in social housing: under Margaret Thatcher’s tenure an average of 46,600 social homes were built every year; under Tony Blair the average rate was 17,300(22). Labour is closing post offices, small schools and GPs’ surgeries, while overseeing a doubling of the UK’s airport capacity and the construction of 4000km of new trunk roads(23). These developments ensure that even the modest targets in the climate change bill are likely to be missed. Carbon dioxide pollution fell faster under the Conservatives than it has under Labour(24).
Above all, the Labour government has destroyed hope. It has put into practice Margaret Thatcher’s dictum that “there is no alternative” to a market fundamentalism that subordinates human welfare to the demands of business. It has created a political monoculture which kills voters’ enthusasism, and delayed the electoral reforms which would have given smaller parties an opportunity to be heard. All we are left with is fear: the fear that this awful government might be replaced with something slightly worse. Fear has destroyed the Labour party: people keep supporting it, whatever it does, in trepidation of letting the other side win.
Save this government? I would sooner give money to the Malarial Mosquito Conservation Project. Of all the causes leftist thinkers might support, New Labour must be the least deserving.
Learn More below:
Link: Labour’s “re-launch” stymied by worsening economic forecast - ukwatch
Link: The Culture of Capitalism - ukwatch
Author of article: George Monbiot
Home page of article: Monbiot.com via ukwatch
Full Story - read the full article

George Galloway MP: "The election of Boris Johnson as mayor is a disaster for London"

George in training to take on New Labour in the next election.
George Galloway's letter to the East London Advertiser.

THE election of Boris Johnson as mayor is a disaster for London. For all the criticisms one could have of Ken Livingstone, and I had many, he was devoted to improving London for all in its rich cultural mix. Livingstone was particularly keen to see regeneration in the East End. We might have disagreed about the best way to secure improvement, but there can be no doubting his sincerity.

Johnson, on the other hand, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and it's been there ever since.

He has no idea what it is like to live in overcrowded housing, struggling to make ends meet, desperate for decent education in the midst of so much hardship. His track record is of insulting all those he considers beneath his class.

Why did he win? Not because Livingstone's vote went down, as some fools on the left have suggested. His vote actually increased, never more so than across East London. He lost above all because New Labour is now so unpopular, Livingstone's positive qualities and the fear of Johnson were not enough to keep Johnson out. Nor can we, or should we, ignore the role the Evening Standard's campaign played, with its nasty racist overtones.

The one bright spot pretty much in the whole country for New Labour was East London.

The invisible Labour Assembly member for the last eight years, and now sadly for another four, has been crowing that New Labour's vote means there is no future for me or Respect in East London.

Sadly, Ted Jeory seems to have joined in the speculation that I will be looking for an alternative career.

I have news for you. I am not for turning and nor is Respect. Respect's vote in East London was quite remarkable given the Ken/Boris squeeze and the fact the war has receded as an issue in this election.

We increased our constituency vote by 7,000 on 2004 and came third, a short distance behind the Tories and well ahead of the BNP. The Lib Dems were crushed with half our vote.

Moreover, I will bet my bottom dollar our vote was concentrated in Tower Hamlets and Newham. New Labour are unlikely on current form to be much more popular in two years time when we have the next council and general elections. And this time they won't have Ken Livingstone's popularity to help them.

Nor do I believe the voters of Tower Hamlets will return a Conservative MP, despite the fact that many Tower Hamlets residents are being forced out to make way for Conservative voting yuppies.

I therefore have every confidence Respect can win both Tower Hamlets seats at the next general election and take control of this council from New Labour. In the meantime, it is time we had a charter for East London around which all progressive forces can gather to begin to ensure that we get what we need.

This means campaigning to get the emergency council house building programme to dramatically reduce the overcrowding and unaffordable housing we are suffering from now.

It means campaigning to get an Olympics which means jobs and prosperity for local people and a lasting legacy for East Enders, as opposed to the debacle that has marked the aftermath of so many Olympics. And it means campaigning on every issue small or large where the interests of the working people of Tower Hamlets are affected.

I and Respect intend to be in the forefront of those campaigns over the next two years, and we will then wipe the smug grin off the faces of those in New Labour who were oh so lucky they had Ken Livingstone to save their bacon this time round.
Learn More below:
Link: The housing crisis and the credit crunch - Rob Hoveman - Respect
Link: Racism, the War On Terror, and the Muslim Community - Stop The War meeting with George Galloway - Respect
Author of article: George Galloway
Home page of article: East London Advertiser
Full Story - read the full article

Postal ballot means Asian women miss out on vote, says Salma Yaqoob

Postal voting is robbing Asian women of the right to take part in democracy, a Birmingham councillor has warned.

Salma Yaqoob (Respect, Sparkbrook) called for a return to the traditional system of voting at polling stations, as she was appointed an advisor to the Government on encouraging more black and Asian women to become involved in politics.
Coun Yaqoob is to be the West Midlands representative on a taskforce designed to find ways of making councils more representative of the communities they serve.
But Ministers also announced that they have ruled out controversial ethnic minority shortlists for Parliamentary elections.
Labour’s Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, had been pushing for all black and Asian shortlists to get more ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons, following the introduction of all-women shortlists before the 1997 election.
The proposal, which would require a change in the law, had been highly controversial and opposed by Labour MPs including Sion Simon (Lab Erdington), Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) and Roger Godsiff (Lab Sparkbrook & Small Heath).
Ms Harman told the House of Commons: "The Government does not consider that the time is right to take legislative measures to permit all Black and Asian and minority ethnic election shortlists."
However, the taskforce would help make local authorities more representative, she said.
"Empowering black, Asian and minority ethnic women in public life is a key priority for Government. They are a force for good within their communities, and in building bridges between communities. Their contribution must be better recognised and supported.
Only around 168 out of 20,000 councillors are black, Asian or minority ethnic women. This is less than one per cent, even though they make up more than five per of the general population.
Coun Yaqoob said she welcomed the opportunity to take part in the taskforce. She said: "I know the barriers I have faced myself and anything that helps Black, Asian and minority ethnic women to take part at this level is important."
But she said one of the first changes the Government should make was to scrap rules which allow anyone to demand a postal voting form. Before this, postal votes were only provided in exceptional circumstances.
Some critics have warned that this may allow family members or community leaders to dictate how others vote.
Coun Yaqoob said: "A particular issue I want to raise is postal voting on demand. I want to call for it to be scrapped.
"Thousands of Asian women have been denied secret ballots and thousands of ballots have been stolen."
She said she had experienced pressure from within the Asian community not to stand as a councillor.
"There were people saying it wasn’t the job of a woman to be doing this," she added.
But she had experienced no overt racism when she stood as a councillor, she said.
"There are misconceptions. People assume you are only interested in representing part of the community and you have to tell them you want to represent the whole community."
The taskforce will be chaired by Baroness Uddin, the first Muslim woman in the House of Lords. Its task is to encourage women to step forward to become local councillors; identify and tackle barriers within political parties, and reduce disadvantage and stereotyping from within and outside the communities.
Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said: "Democracy at its best should be a reflection of the people it serves and the proportion of councillors from ethnic minority backgrounds represents only half the number of black and minority ethnic people in this country
"It is vitally important that British citizens of whatever background feel that they are represented in democracy and I welcome the work that this taskforce will do to ensure that everyone can have the opportunity to contribute to politics and have their voices heard."
Learn More below:
Link: Respect
Link: The housing crisis and the credit crunch - Respect
Author of article: Jonathan Walker
Home page of article: Birmingham Post
Full Story - read the full article

Britain obstructs global ban on use of cluster bombs

Ali Jouma, 12, whose thumb and finger were blown off by a cluster bomb in Lebanon.

The British Government is accused of being the chief obstacle to the signing of a treaty to ban cluster bombs, which have maimed and killed thousands of civilians worldwide.
Countries that have suffered the impact of the bombs, humanitarian groups and former commanders of British forces have called for the UK to drop its insistence on retaining cluster munitions, a stance, they say, that is likely to scupper hopes of securing an agreement at an international conference starting in Dublin today.
More than 100 countries are taking part in the talks. Delegates will point out that the vast majority of cluster bomb victims are non-combatants. Opponents of the weapon received the backing yesterday of Pope Benedict XVI, who called for a "strong and credible" treaty to end their use.
The two sets of weapons at the heart of the argument are the M85 and the M73, munitions fired, respectively, by artillery and rockets. British officials claim these are "smart" weapons which minimise the risk of "collateral damage" and are essential for military operations. The M85 is meant to self destruct and not pose a lingering threat to civilians. However, according to the United Nations, 300 civilians were killed or injured in Lebanon, where Israel used the weapons in 2006.
An Apache helicopter can launch 684 M73 bomblets in one attack. They were used by the Americans in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Their use was criticised by US forces, who had to negotiate unexploded cluster munitions on their way to Baghdad. The first two British soldiers killed in Kosovo were casualties of Nato cluster bombs they had been trying to clear. Senior Foreign Office sources said the UK was not prepared to give up the M73 and the system was "non-negotiable". There was said to be flexibility over the M85, but the Ministry of Defence is expected to resist losing them.
The UK is said to be under strong pressure from the Americans – who are not taking part in the Dublin talks – to resist signing up to banning cluster bombs. Defence officials in London say a range of issues is at stake, including munitions stored at US bases in Britain, and the legal status of British soldiers serving alongside Americans where the US may use cluster weapons.
There are said to be divisions within the Government over the Dublin summit. Lord Malloch Brown, Foreign Office minister for Africa, Asia and the UN, is reported to have said he would be "uncomfortable" about a compromise that leaves some cluster bombs in the UK arsenal. The Environment Secretary, Hillary Benn, favours an overall ban.
Campaigners say the Government must live up to Gordon Brown's promise last year "to work internationally for a ban" on weapons that cause unacceptable harm to civilians. "Insisting on keeping some weapons and saying they are not negotiable is a deal breaker," said Simon Conway, a former British Army soldier who is director of the pressure group Landmine Action. "The position of the UK is a huge stumbling block to achieving a comprehensive treaty. Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, has told me himself that he did not believe the M73 was appropriate for counter-insurgency operations."
Lord Ramsbotham, a fomer British Army general and chief inspector of prisons, is among a number of distinguished senior officers, including General Sir Rupert Smith, General Patrick Cordingley and Field Marshal Lord Brammall, who have asked the Government to sign the treaty. Lord Ramsbotham, who flew to Afghanistan yesterday as part of a parliamentary delegation, said: "I am going to ask the commanders there whether they intend to use cluster weapons and I would be very surprised if the answer is 'yes'. There are moral objections to using cluster munitions, but tactical ones as well. They were designed to stop Soviet armour in the Cold War. There is no place for them in the type of warfare we are seeing now."
Learn More below:
Link: Martin Bell: The UK has no ethical foreign policy if it battles to keep these munitions - The Independent
Link: Conference to Ban Cluster Bombs Starts in Dublin

Link: Cluster bomb - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Author of article: Kim Sengupta
Home page of article: The Independent
Full Story - read the full article

Labour’s “re-launch” stymied by worsening economic forecast

From: World Socialist Website by Julie Hyland.

The Labour government brought forward a series of measures this week in a rearguard action to try to rescue its political fortunes in wake of the party’s collapse into third place in the May 1 local elections.
With a by-election due on May 22, in which the Conservatives are currently tipped to overturn a 7,000 Labour majority, Prime Minister Gordon Brown sought to placate voters’ wrath.
On Tuesday, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced what many described as an emergency “mini-budget” on taxation. The government’s abolition of the 10 pence tax band has severely financially affected more than 5 million low-earners. While the measure had been announced last year, it only took effect last month.
In 2007, the move won applause from Labour’s backbenches, not least because it had enabled the government to make cuts into corporation tax. But a lot has changed since then, particularly the sharp decline in living standards due to the global economic crisis.
Rising food prices sent the UK’s official annual inflation rate to 3 percent in April—the sharpest increase in the cost of living in almost six years, rising 0.5 percent in just one month. Reports indicate that the real cost of living, however, is far greater, as food costs alone are increasing at an average of 15.5 percent a year. Rising costs in other essentials such as fuel and utilities mean that many families are already spending £1,000 a year more out of pocket—without taking into account spiralling mortgage costs.
In his mini-budget Darling announced that personal tax allowance would rise by £600. Those earning less than £40,000 per annum (the overwhelming majority) will gain up to £120 this year. The chancellor claimed that this would also compensate the majority of those who lost out from the scrapping of the 10 pence tax band.
Labour’s attempt at a political re-launch was followed by Brown outlining planned legislation to be brought forward in the next Queen’s speech, which he claimed would create a “more prosperous and fairer Britain.”
He set out the further “reform” of schools, hospitals and the welfare benefit system. His government will grant new powers to local authorities to intervene against “failing schools,” link hospital funding to performance, introduce tougher controls on immigration and more punitive measures against the long-term unemployed.
The government had given an indication of just what this amounted to in an earlier statement promising a radical shakeup of England’s social care system for the elderly. State support for elderly care is means-tested in England, with most having to pay for home help and assisted accommodation. Thousands have been forced to sell their homes to raise the finance as a consequence.
Health Secretary Alan Johnson said that the government was initiating a six-month consultation period to consider how people could be provided for in old age. He claimed that the government had set “no pre-determined answers,” but went on to make clear that what was intended is a move away from universal state provision to an insurance-based scheme paid for by the individual. “If we are running out of so-called free personal care—which even the Liberal Democrats have dropped as a commitment—then you are looking at some kind of insurance that can be provided by the state or the individual,” he said.
It is a measure of how far removed Labour is from the realities of millions of people’s lives that it could consider such measures to be a popular re-launch. Moreover, while the government claims that these moves are necessary because of a £6 billion shortfall in provision, it has had no such qualms over using some £100 billion of taxpayers’ money to shore up the banks, or the some £800 million per month being spent on the occupation of Iraq.
So right-wing are Labour’s politics that the Conservatives are casting themselves as a “progressive” alternative, even while boasting that they are the only party prepared to “break open the monopoly” on state education and social welfare.
But as Brown was speaking in Parliament, asking the voters to “judge and test” him on the basis of his economic stewardship, his room for political manoeuvre was rapidly diminishing. Not only are some 1 million low-earners still out of pocket despite Darling’s announcement, but hopes that tax changes will help re-stimulate the economy were almost immediately dashed by the Bank of England’s quarterly inflation report.
Governor Mervyn King warned that the “the nice decade is behind us” and the economy was “travelling along a bumpy road.”
“Real take-home pay has not risen by much in the past four years—by well below 1 percent a year. The next couple of years are going to see at least as great a squeeze on living standards that will erode purchasing power,” he continued.
The report spelt out that millions of working people would be hit financially from all sides over the next period. According to the Bank, gas, electricity and food prices will continue to rise pushing inflation towards 4 percent while the housing market, which it stated has already worsened “markedly,” is set to fall even further. The banking crisis could continue well into 2009, the report stated, while economic growth is likely to slump toward 1 percent by the end of 2008, bringing the risk of recession.
The assessment made a mockery of the trade union bureaucracy’s claims that the chancellor’s tax allowance changes were sufficient to salvage Labour. Tony Woodley, joint leader of Unite, had pronounced that Darling’s mini-budget meant the party was “reconnecting with Labour’s social conscience” and “with voters generally,” while GMB general secretary Paul Kenny congratulated Brown and Darling for “listening to the public and changing tack.”
No doubt the trade union leaders hoped that Darling’s measures would be enough to prevent the party imploding in an orgy of unprincipled factionalism.
Labour’s latest drubbing in the polls coincided with the publication of memoirs by Tony Blair’s wife, Cherie, former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and Blair’s Middle East envoy, Lord Levy.
All seized the opportunity to settle personal scores with Brown directly—and to make some money in the process. Prescott described Brown as “prickly,” saying that he could “go off like a volcano” while Levy, who was arrested twice during the cash-for-honours inquiry before being cleared of any wrongdoing, told the BBC that it was “inconceivable” that the former chancellor had not known about the party’s financial arrangements.
Darling’s announcement proved to be enough to silence a potential rebellion by sections of Labour backbenchers who are afraid they will lose their seats. Frank Field, who had led threats to vote down the government’s budget and who had said he would be “very surprised” if Brown were still Labour leader at the next election, pronounced his satisfaction with the changes and publicly apologised to the prime minister.
But outside of Labour’s immediate environs, criticism of Brown and the government in ruling circles rages unabated. Under banner headlines on the day Brown spoke, the Independent reported that the “spectre of ‘stagflation’” associated with the 1970s was back on the agenda. “The 15 percent decline in the value of sterling—as steep as when the pound was forced out of the ERM on ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992—has exacerbated inflationary pressures,” it said, “hitting living standards, especially for pensioners and the poorest,” hardest. There was little leeway for policymakers, it continued, “as they are pulled between the need to fight inflation and avoid a slump.”
Against this background, economists complained that Darling’s compensation package would push public borrowing towards £50 billion this year, jeopardizing the government’s fiscal rules. The Financial Times said that Darling’s measure smacked of “desperation,” as the government failed to make tax policy “with an eye to the long-term health of the public finances and a coherent fiscal philosophy.” It had “shattered any residual idea that Mr. Brown’s administration can run an orderly fiscal policy,” the newspaper pronounced.
Such comments were intended to serve notice that big business will not tolerate any palliative measures, no matter how pitiful, even at the expense of the government’s fall.
More significant for Brown’s political survival was the savaging he received in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun newspaper. Describing Darling’s tax changes as a “gamble” with taxpayer’s money, it complained that it was “not the first time Gordon Brown has panicked in the face of the polls.”
Having backed out of calling an early general election in November it had “rewritten a Budget just over two months old … if he can be persuaded to rip up a Budget, what’s to stop Labour’s union paymasters and the public sector demanding pay rises this summer?” the newspaper thundered.
There is already widespread discontent across the public sector at the government’s imposition of a below-inflation pay award. The Sun is only too aware that this will grow significantly over the next months and does not believe Brown has the mettle to face down the opposition. In a particularly hostile piece the next day, associate editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote that the local elections had “torpedoed this Government beneath the waterline.”
“As Gordon Brown prowled the TV studios saying sorry yesterday, we were watching a dead man drowning. I give him six months.
“Labour has burst asunder from stem to stern, its timbers rotten to the core,” he continued, as the “Blair/Brown Government has been sussed as the incompetent, interfering and wasteful political con-trick it was from May 1, 1997.”
Given that Rupert Murdoch and his tabloid have been one of the main political backers of New Labour and have played a major role in shaping its policies, such supposedly newfound wisdom is deserving only of contempt. More ............
Learn More below:
Link: Labour’s electoral meltdown continues to worsen - ukwatch
Link: Reaping What they have Sown - ukwatch
Author of article: Julie Hyland
Home page of article: World Socialist Website via ukwatch
Full Story - read the full article

EAST LONDON - HOW GOOD WAS RESPECT’S VOTE?

Reproduced from the Socialist Unity Web Site.

LONDON - HOW GOOD WAS RESPECT’S VOTE?

We take no credit for the following excellent and informative number crunching, which was done by Prinkipo Exile in a debate over at Liam’s blog. The detailed ward level results for City and East constituency in the London assembly elections give the following votes for Hanif Abdulmuhit, the Respect candidate.
Respect won two wards outright - Shadwell in Tower Hamlets and Green Street East in Newham. There were a further three wards in Tower Hamlets where the combined Respect and Left List vote was greater than Labour - Bromley by Bow, Whitechapel and Limehouse.This means five wards in total where the combined left won.
Respect achieved above 25% in its own right in six wards in each of Newham and Tower Hamlets, plus there was one ward (Limehouse) where the combined left vote was above 25%, making 13 wards in total where more than a quarter of voters put their X to a left alternative to the Labour Party.
This is despite the overwhelming majority of muslims in those wards giving their votes to Ken Livingstone and Labour in the Mayoral election.There were 24 wards across both boroughs in total where Respect on its own came either 1st or 2nd. In addition to the ward won by Respect, there were 6 wards in Tower Hamlets where the gap between Labour and Respect was less than 5% (and another one where the gap was only 6.7%), making them strong targets in London Borough elections in less than two years.
Each of these wards has 3 councillors. If Respect could improve marginally on these results (a swing of say 5% from Labour to Respect) then Respect would be capable of winning 10-20 councillors in Tower Hamlets, and should have 3 safe councillors in Newham.
While the results in Barking and Dagenham were generally much poorer, there was one ward (Abbey) where Respect won more than 10% on its own.The Left List results were pitiful and indicates that they will lose all three of their councillors in the 2010 borough elections unless they return to the Respect fold. The best Left List results were 3.0% in two wards, one each in Tower Hamlets and Newham (compared to 21.4% and 10.9% for Respect in the same wards).
The key issues [to understand in analysing these votes] are:1) In 2004 there were only 10 parties standing for the list places, in 2008 this increased to 14.
2) In 2004 there was only one ‘left of labour’ list, in 2008 there were 3.
3) In 2004 the Greens refused to call for a second vote for Livingstone; in 2008 the Greens not only endorsed a second vote for Livingstone there was also a clear pact and many left voters would have realised that they could vote for Livingstone for Mayor and the Greens for the List place, and had a reasonable hope that their vote could help elect someone on both ballot papers
4) In 2004 there were four ballot papers, five votes, and every ballot paper had a “Respect (George Galloway)” candidate - even though it was the first time the voters had been exposed to the new “party”, it was easier to get across a clear message; in 2008 there were 3 ballot papers (4 votes) but “Respect (George Galloway)”was only on two ballot papers in City and East and in the other two votes there were “Left List” or other candidates (including Livingstone and the Greens) that previous Respect voters could “cross vote” for - “cross voting” works to the detriment of homogeneity. Outside City and East there was only one ballot paper/vote with “Respect (George Galloway)” and three without that option.
5) The List voting system is the opportunity for minority progressive voters to cast a useful vote that might get someone elected eg Greens and prevent the BNP getting in - the constituency vote is the one where votes are more likely to be wasted and there was no risk of the BNP or indeed anyone other than Tories or Labour getting in/ therefore astute progressive votes can cast their vote for the party closest to their views without worrying too much about the consequences. Evidence from the last London election and the survey of voters published on the Socialist Unity Network indicates that Respect voters are among the most sophisticated of voters in terms of tactical voting.
6) Within Tower Hamlets and Newham, the Respect campaign focussed on the candidacy of Hanif Abdulmuhit for the constituency member, rather than the list slate headed by Galloway - this was a deliberate decision by Respect.
Taking all these things into account, it is therefore no surprise that the list vote for Respect in City and East was down, and only approx 76% of the constituency vote, compared to say the Greens who had a close correlation between their list and constituency vote.
It is reasonable to say the constituency member election is likely to be a better guide to Respect’s prospects in both the General Election and the next Council elections in May 2010. (I haven’t totted up the votes by parliamentary constituency yet but will do so later).
What the results of the City and East constituency member election do indicate is that Respect has a real block of support that could win seats in both general and local elections. Given the obvious strength in Birmingham, this indicates a base of support in the two biggest cities in the country that can be built on. By contrast, Left List did reasonably well in one ward in Preston and one ward in Sheffield, and very poorly everywhere else, while the Socialist Party won one ward in Coventry and did poorly elsewhere.
As an aside we should also note that local Socialist Party Councillor Chris Flood got 13.1% (472 votes) in the Telegraph Hill ward in Lewisham he holds on the council. This is creditable, but hardly a good indicator that the advantage of incumbency as a councillor on its own helped left candidates. Hanif Abdulmuhit got 38.3% and ‘won’ his own ward of Green Street West in Newham - the opposite outcome. (The SP vote appears to have come fairly equally from Labour, Greens and Respect plus a few from Left List compared to the List vote). Lots more including detailed tables on vote brakedown in Newham and Tower Hamlets .................
Learn More below:
Link: Racism, the War On Terror, and the Muslim Community - Stop The War meeting with George Galloway - Respect
Link: East London - A springboard for building Respect - Respect
Author of article: Socialist Unity
Home page of article: Socialist Unity
Full Story - read the full article

The tactics of Crewe expose a truly nasty party: Labour

In the absence of a cogent government message, the dog-whistle politics of the byelection campaign are drowning all else out.

From The Guardian by John Harris.

Edward Timpson is the Conservative candidate in the Crewe and Nantwich byelection, charged with taking on Labour's Tamsin Dunwoody, the daughter of the late Gwyneth. A 34-year-old son of the family behind the famous chain of British shoe shops, his upbringing was enlivened by the fact his parents fostered more than 80 children - many of whom, he says, were escaping "very difficult starts in life". On the face of it, he may look like an archetypal member of the moneyed Cheshire set, but this detail - along with the fact that he says he was inspired by his childhood to forge a career in family law, specialising in "the welfare of vulnerable children" - suggests something a bit more complicated; a belief, perhaps, in exactly the Cameroonian "fraternity" that some insightful Labour people are beginning to take very seriously.
But never mind all that. The Labour campaign, under the command of the Birmingham MP Steve McCabe, has rebranded its chief adversary "Tory Boy Timpson", and is going for him with an eye-popping ferocity. Volunteers have been stalking him dressed in top hat and tails; now, there comes a very nasty leaflet titled "Tory candidate application form", replete with questions and ticked boxes. Number one is, "Do you live in a big mansion house?" Question two is - and, really, the sense of humour on display is quite something - "Do you think that regeneration is adding a new wing to your mansion?" The third reads: "Have you and your Tory mates on the council been soft on yobs and failed to make our streets safer?" But the best is saved for question four, at which point pantomimic class hatred is suspended and we get something altogether more sinister. "Do you," it asks, "oppose making foreign nationals carry an ID card?"
Though the Tories seem to be hardly mentioning it, the presence of immigration in the campaign isn't a surprise. What's unsettling is the language used by Labour, and the implication of a tough measure to be wrought on uncooperative outsiders. It has to be said: there are deeply unpleasant historical echoes here that would cause any decent person to blanch, but the people behind the Dunwoody campaign surely know exactly what they're doing.
There has been a Polish community in Crewe since the 1940s, but as many as 6,000 Poles have made their home there during the past four years. According to the BBC, Cheshire police unofficially estimate that they make up one in 10 of the town's population. Local schools are inevitably feeling the pressure, and though the social fabric seems to be holding up, things have hardly been easy. With all that in mind, the essential Labour strategy is clear enough: not to concentrate on anything progressive or inspiring but to run instead on a mixture of the Dunwoody bloodline, utterly witless class warfare, and the politics of fear. One wonders what the more shrill aspects of the party's campaign will do for Crewe's community relations - but there again, it's doubtful that such thoughts are troubling many Labour high-ups. Misanthropic nastiness, after all, seems to be a central plank of the government's fightback.
This stuff has a pedigree dating back well into the Blair years but seems to be turning ever more ugly. Among the first announcements in the wake of May 1 was a loud Home Office pledge to try to realise Brown's drive for "British jobs for British workers", by forcing employers to prove no Briton can fill a vacancy before offering it to anyone from outside the EU. Soon after, there came Jacqui Smith's bizarre plans to "harass" badly behaved youths using video cameras and a technique hyped as "frame and shame". Going back a few months, one thinks also of James Purnell's proposed clampdown on the long-term jobless, Caroline Flint's priceless proposal that the workshy should be threatened with homelessness, and the government's increasingly baffling drive on "Britishness", in which fine words about inclusion are often overshadowed by the sense of dog-whistles being desperately sounded.
Given the absence of any comprehensible government message, such talk - much of which, as Charles Clarke recently put it, "flatters some of the most chauvinistic and backward-looking parts of British society" - is now in danger of drowning everything else out. Moreover, as the voters of Crewe may well have surmised, none of it adds up.
While seizing on fears about immigration, Brown has still made no headway on the issue of agency workers, which underlies so many modern tensions. At the same time as maligning many of the nation's youth as yobs, Labour also wrings its hands about their "unlocked talent". Apparatchiks are encouraged to wage class war for the cameras, but the government refuses to talk about compelling the ultra-wealthy to pay their way, or to make any move on, say, the totemic issue of charitable status for private schools. The impression is of politics at its most dried-up and disingenuous. The result: activists and once-loyal supporters decide to leave the party well alone, and floating voters decide that Cameroonian confidence and optimism is much the better option. Lots more ............ (worth a full read)
Learn More below:
Link: Britain’s rich get richer even as recession begins to bite - Simon Whelan - ukwatch
Link: Crewe and Nantwich byelection 2008 - The Guardian
Author of article: John Harris
Home page of article: The Guardian
Full Story - read the full article

T-SHIRTED CELEBRATION of 1968

The self-styled 'sporting outfitters of intellectual distinction ' aka www.philosophyfootball.com mark the 40th anniversary of 1968 with a range of T-shirts to suit dissenters everywhere.

The four designs feature the iconic Angela Davis, black power leader, framed by the FBI and cleared of all trumped-up charges in a celebrated trial. The flag of the Vietnamese NLF who began 1968 with the Tet Offensive which included the heroic capture of the US Embassy in Hanoi. Protesters from the Czechosl;ovak Prague Spring bravely resisting the Soviet Tank invasion which crushed this brave experiment in socialist democracy. And a fist taken from a Situationist poster of Paris in May '68 against a background of hundreds of situationist slogans.

All four shirts are available from www.philosophyfootball.com
Prague '68 T-shirt above, one of four designs from Philosophy Football.

In January 1968 Alexander Dubcek was elected leader of the Czech Communist Party. In April the Communist Party published their Action Progamme describing ‘a new model of socialist democracy’. The Prague Spring began, a few months later crushed by the invading tanks of the Soviet Union.
Learn More below:
Link: Prague Spring - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Link: 1968 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Link: BBC - Radio 4 - 1968 Myth or Reality?
Author of article: www.philosophyfootball.com
Home page of article: www.philosophyfootball.com
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Video: War Without End by AlJazeera

Video: War Without End by AlJazeera (in English) Parts 1 and 2.

On May 1 2003 George Bush, the president of the United States, gave a speech on the aircraft USS Abraham Lincoln declaring an "end to major combat operations" in Iraq.

Five years on with violence continuing unabated across the country Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid - in a special five part series - looks at the major events of the Iraq war.

Each week will focus on one of the last five years looking at the events and the policies that helped shape Iraq and the current chaos in the country.

War Without End: 2003 - 5 May 08 - Part 2
Learn More below:
Link: Video: The Promised Land? - Pioneers - 5 May 08 - Part1 - Aljazeera
Link: Video: The Promised Land? - Pioneers - 5 May 08 - Part 2 - Aljazeera

Link: Video: Iraq war veterans accuse US military of coverups - 16 Mar 08 - Aljazeera
Author of article: Aljazeera
Home page of article: Aljazeera
Full Story - read the full article/video

Bucking the trend: RMT to ballot 17,000 maintenance and signalling staff

Morning Star - Download today's front page - pdf file.
HOW many times do we hear from employers that workers' decisions to take industrial action are unbelievable or premature because the employer is willing to talk?
That's what Grangemouth refinery management said when workers seeking to defend their pension scheme went on strike for 48 hours last month.
It's what Network Rail is saying in response to the decision of rail union RMT to ballot 17,000 maintenance and signalling staff over two separate issues of harmonising terms and conditions and defending pay levels.
Workers do not vote by a margin of 100 to one for action unless they are utterly frustrated by a lack of progress in tackling their grievances.
Workers do not take industrial action, losing substantial amounts of pay, unless there is a good reason for doing so.
And that good reason is usually management foot-dragging.
Many of the plethora of private companies that used to do rail maintenance work offered pay and conditions that were below the Network Rail norm.
Now that these maintenance workers are coming under the Network Rail umbrella, justice dictates a single set of terms and conditions.
Workers' awareness that the company is looking to reduce its maintenance budget by 12 per cent must set the alarm bells ringing.
If they rely on the goodwill of Network Rail, they will be disappointed. Far better to let Network Rail know that there will be no shilly-shallying and that they want results.
The same goes for the signallers and other operational staff who are not prepared to see the value of their pay packets eroded.
Even in these days of co-ordinated neoliberalism as the official creed of all three major parties, working people can still improve their situation through unity and determination and, in so doing, buck the trend of falling trade union membership.
Learn More below:
Link: Hard times for in crowd - Morning Star
Link: Blast from the past - Morning Star
Author of article: Morning Star
Home page of article: Morning Star
Full Story - read the full article

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: Eat only local produce? I don't like the smell of that

The language in this debate is a proxy for anti-immigration sentiments.

On Saturday night I committed untold crimes – against the nation, the planet, my grandchildren, and theirs. I should feel contrite and shabby, but I don't. Fourteen dined at our table and were fed patties of cassava and sweet potatoes, spicy Kenyan beans with tindola – vegetables like cucumbers the size of a baby's fingers. Also tilapia, a freshwater fish from East Africa, and a gruellingly difficult dish made with eight kinds of lentils, meat, oats and cracked wheat. Finally, almond and orange cake and raspberries in saffron cream. None of the ingredients was produced locally. This unrepentant sinner even chose Spanish raspberries, so sweet and more concentrated than the English variety.
Please don't tell Gordon Ramsay, he might come over and shout obscenities, maybe throw foodstuff out in a testosterone surge. He has just called for the banning of imported, "unseasonal" produce from restaurants. Some diners at his fancy restaurants say that this would make him a hypocrite; it would also make him one of those crusader environmentalists whose organic piety promotes unwholesome nativism and conservatism.
Indigenous Britons are in a mighty sulk over strangers on their shores, our weird languages, strong colours and tastes, and "unBritish" ways. Keeping out Kenyan beans and Caribbean pineapples is a sop to cultural paranoia, rising nausea. The country can't stomach any more foreignness and wants old simplicities back again. The rightful inhabitants think they want nothing but turnips and potatoes through our long winters, and in the summer, asparagus of genetically proven Englishness.
For centuries, our island nation has been seafaring and roaming, restless and lusty, hedonistic and insatiably curious, mercantile and capitalist, unable ever to stay put. Through that history, the land periodically goes through cycles of self-pity and dread of the very things it seeks, withdrawing into itself, its cliffs becoming fortresses. Sybaritic excess is followed by puritanism; internationalism is pushed out by petty patriotism. One thing for sure, this zeal will not be followed through to its logical end for that would mean the closure of Carluccio's and tandoori houses, and even the most fundamentalist food purists would not dare tread that far.
OK, maybe I should take more seriously the green arguments. So I do, and the calculations make no sense. Take a typical middle-class, UK family. They go on Ryanair trips and weekends abroad many times a year; drive hideously big cars, have umpteen gadgets and limitless consumer goods. But being conscientious, they will not buy corn sugar snap beans from East Africa. Big deal. Really do their bit, don't they just?
Writing in Time Magazine, Joel Stein incisively questions "locavores" who are "deeply Luddite, part of the green lobby that measures improvement by self-denial more than by actual impact". Furthermore, he implies, the injunctions encourage isolationism in the USA: "I'm going to keep buying food from my foreign neighbours. Because that is the only way Americans learn about other countries, other than by bombing them." Extreme, I agree, but indicating a link between politics and food that has gone missing in this Age of Environment.
Should good people be party to a vociferous movement which wants to refuse entry to "alien" foods? Look at the language used and you realise it is a proxy for anti-immigration sentiments: these foods from elsewhere come and take over our diets, reduce national dishes to third-class status, compete unfairly with Scotch broth and haggis, both dying out, excite our senses beyond decorum, contaminate the identity of the country irreversibly.
Turn to the clamour for the west to cut imported foods and a further bitter taste spreads in the mouth. If we decide – as many of my friends have – not to buy foods that have been flown over, it only means further devastation for the poorest. These are the incredibly hard-working farmers in the developing world, already the victims of trade protectionism imposed by the wealthy blocs. It means saying no to Fair-trade producers too, because their products have to travel to our supermarkets. Are we now to say these livelihoods don't matter because we prefer virtue of a more fashionable kind? Shameful are the environmentalists who are able to be this cavalier. They could only believe what they do if those peasant lives do not matter at all.
The 18th-century politician and gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote: "Tell me what you eat: I will tell you who you are." Localists tell us what to eat and turn Britons into panicked introverts just when we need global mutuality. Go buy foreign, spite Gordon Ramsay, and save the world.
Learn More below:
Link: Leading article: A rotten policy demands a rethink - The Independent
Link: Tightening of immigration laws means farmers face losing 50,000 tonnes of fruit - The Indepenent
Author of article: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Home page of article: The Independent
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Israel 60 years on: Nothing to celebrate

Morning Star: Download today's front page - pdf file.

Nothing to celebrate
ISRAEL celebrated its 60th anniversary this week, but, for the dispossessed Palestinian people who paid the price for this new state, there is nothing to celebrate.
For all the talk of Israel's evacuation of Gaza, barely a day passes without the Israel Defence Force deploying air power, tanks, armoured bulldozers or undercover death squads to assassinate Palestinians there.
Tel Aviv imposes a collective punishment of unimaginable horror on the 1.5 million people - a million of whom are refugees driven from other parts of Palestine - squeezed into this overcrowded, squalid enclave.
They are deprived of adequate supplies of food, water, medical supplies, power and fuel. Most are unemployed, dependent on meagre UN rations that are delayed by Israel.
And, worst of all, they are denied the right to free movement, hemmed in by barbed wire fences like animals.
Israel justifies this crime against humanity by citing Palestinian resistance groups' direction of rocket fire against Israeli towns such as Sderot, where 13 Israelis have been killed in seven years.
As indefensible as any attack on civilian non-combatants is, the death toll in Sderot does not begin to compare with Gaza, where it is not unusual for so many casualties in a single day.
When large numbers of children are slaughtered, the Israeli government often issues a grudging, insincere apology, while blaming the Palestinian resistance causing all violence.
But targeting of civilians is not an aberration. It was the deliberate strategy of the armed groups that set up Israel in the first place.
Largely unarmed Palestinian villages were attacked and destroyed by Jewish armed groups that had gained military experience either in anti-British-mandate militias or, ironically, in British army Jewish units, with the Arab population offered the choice of flight or death.
Arab villages were razed to the ground to be replaced by Jewish entities.
Despite Israel's military superiority from the outset, which has been confirmed by its state-of-the-art air, sea and land forces, to say nothing of its hundreds of nuclear weapons, Tel Aviv has successfully affected a victim status.
It claims to be afraid for its very existence, when the only state in the region that really faces oblivion is the yet to be proclaimed Palestine.
The US and the European Union turn a blind eye to Israel's constant expansion of its illegal settlements on the West Bank. Indeed, they encourage these land grabs by financing them.
And why has none of them ever questioned Israel as to why its troops are sent to protect the so-called extremist settlers who colonise Palestinian land and set up what Tel Aviv calls "unauthorised" settlements?
The truth is that Israel is still seeking to expand its borders, which is why, uniquely, the state has never attempted to define them.
Palestinians and their supporters will gather at London's Victoria Embankment on Saturday (yesterday) at 1pm to march to Trafalgar Square to spotlight this lack of justice for this nation of refugees and the dispossessed.
They will highlight the hypocrisy of the Western powers over international law, posing the questions as to why one people can be denied their right to nationhood and one state has the eternal right to ignore UN resolutions.
Learn More below:
Link: ei: The Electronic Intifada
Link: Palestine : Human Rights: Israeli forces kill Gaza mother in front of her children (8 May 2008) - EI

Link: Sixty years ago in Battir - Part 1 - EI

Link: Sixty years ago in Battir (Part 2) - EI
Author of article: Morning Star
Home page of article: Morning Star
Full Story - read the full article

Welfare Reform Act to force sick and vulnerable into work

From: World Socialist Website by Robert Stevens.
The draconian measures laid out in the Welfare Reform Act 2007 are now being implemented in Britain by the Labour government of Prime Minster Gordon Brown. The Act represents a wide-ranging attack on millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people who rely on Incapacity Benefit (IB). Recipients of the benefit are deemed unable to work due to poor physical or mental health.
Under the new legislation, their entitlement to financial support is being replaced with new, conditional Em