Principles above self-interest

Swindon is undergoing an ‘options appraisal’ of its Council housing. This is the charade that offers ‘choice’ to tenants to stay with their Council or to transfer to a Housing Association or some other body. From a high of 18,000 homes, since the ‘Right to Buy’ was introduced by Thatcher, the Council stock has declined to around 10,500. With the New Labour government maintaining the ‘Right to Buy’ (albeit it with less of a reduced price) and the effective ban on new Council house building, the housing waiting list in Swindon has trebled since Blair came to office. This is despite the fact that many people do not even bother to put their name on the list since they know they have no chance of getting a house.

Swindon Palestine demonstration

Here are a couple of pictures from a demonstration in Swindon today, in support of the palestinian people and against the Israeli agression. There were around 250-300 people present.

The premature announcement of the death of New Labour – tackling the recession or tinkering?

According to some of the right wing press, Gordon Brown has abandoned New Labour. Some trade union leaders agree, roaring their approval. Derek Simpson reckons that “Gordon Brown has thrown off the shackles of New Labour to reveal the real Labour”. Dave Prentis welcomed the Government’s “courage and determination in facing the economic crisis head on”. He wants the government to “hold firm to its commitment for increased public sector investment to create and sustain jobs”. For Tony Woodley the government has “shown that it is listening to people’s fears and is helping the people of this country weather the economic storm”. It has also shown itself “willing to embrace progressive politics”. Whilst these comments are made with one eye on the next General Election union officials are seeing what they want to see. In a situation where their members are faced with a growing wave of redundancies they should be raising their voices for action to save and create jobs rather than painting these changes as the abandonment of the politics of New Labour. Judged by the criteria of how the government is tackling the economic crisis, the pre-budget report fails the test of our members’ interests.

A gentleman’s agreement?

The government has said that it has an agreement with the banks such that repossession will be a “last resort”. BBC Radio 4’s File on Four has put this ‘agreement’ to the test and placed a big question mark over whether there is any substance to this agreement.

“US hedge fund bosses threaten to move to Britain”

Some weeks back one of our New Labour MP’s, Anne Snelgrove, asked one of her constituents how she thought the government was handling the global crisis. In response to a comment about this being the result of deregulation the MP told the astonished constituent that Britain was the most regulated country in Europe!

Today’s Guardian reports on the hearing before the US Congress of the great five hedge fund leaders. Defending their industry against the dreaded threat of regulation they more or less threatened the US government with taking all their jobs over to…London.

“It breaks my heart when I go to Canary Wharf and I look at thousands and thousands of jobs in London (this was before the crash, of course) in the derivatives market which belong in America.”

The reason they came to Britain was obviously because we are “the most regulated country in Europe”.

In a column in the local paper recently, Snelgrove referred to “spivs” in the City (that is the great ‘innovators’ that Gordon Brown fell in love with). Yet here we have some spivs threatening to come to Britain precisely because it is the most under-regulated country in Europe. Only last year Snelgrove’s great leader announced in a speech to the City big-wigs that they had ushered in a “new Golden Age” of the City of London. As they say, politicians have short memories.

TINA is dead on the ground

This is a letter to the Swindon Advertiser

TINA is dead on the ground

In criticising Gordon Brown for the current crisis of the British economy, David Cameron conveniently forgets the responsibility of Thatcher who began the process of de-regulation and freeing capital from any restrictions. She was the author of the “Big Bang” in the City which opened the way to “financial capitalism”. The current global crisis is a historical judgement on the ‘Reagan-Thatcher revolution’ and ’self-regulating’ markets.

“Financial weapons of mass destruction” – time for decommissioning

Will Hutton in the Observer last weekend said:

“What needs to happen is an assault on the dark heart of the global financial system – the $55 trillion market in credit derivatives and, in particular, credit default swaps…”

The size of the market is huge – more than twice the size of the combined GDP of the US, Japan and the EU.

As Hutton explains credit derivatives grew in response to the growth of the $10 trillion market in securitised assets, the packaging up of such things as office rents, port charges, mortgage payments and sports stadiums, and their sale as a ‘security’ to be traded between banks.

“Mere gambling transactions”

I sat down the other night to watch a DVD of one of the old Ealing studio comedies, ‘Kind Hearts And Coronets’. It was a break from all the feverish media reporting on the global financial crisis. Or so I thought. The film follows the success of Louis Mazzini (played by Dennis Price) in reclaiming what he considers his birthright. His mother was abandoned by the family for the crime of marrying an Italian of no social standing. He aims to murder his way to the title of Duke of D’Ascoyne, clearing his path of the individuals in the line ahead of him one by one.

Vlad the impaler returns

Oh my God, the trades unions better get out the garlic, the holy water and a few silver bullets. The BBC is reporting that Mandelson is being brought in to take charge of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (Regulatory Bonfire more like). If only I were a mind reader. You can imagine how stunned all those trade union leaders are: the ones who supported Brown in his coronation. Only the other day Derek Simpson was telling ‘Gordon’ to get rid of all those Blairites plotting against him.

The ETUC in it’s “London Declaration” on “the crisis of Casino capitalism” talks of “the dominant model of financial capitalism” being close to collapse. With this one act, ‘Gordon’ has shown precisely what he has learned from the global financial crash: apparently nothing. He is inviting back an ultra-Blairite, totally hostile to the unions, and a supporter of “financial capitalism” (together with Gordon, of course). It underlines the fact that Brown is no friend of the unions or our members. It’s about time some trade union leaders stopped acting as if he was.

“Straight from impossible to inevitable”

This is the first of a series of pieces examining the global financial crisis.

 

Socialists are often accused of overstating the extent of the periodic crises of capitalism. However, today it is difficult to overstate the scale of the current global financial crisis. Supporters of the system are out-bidding each other in hyperbole. One shell shocked “senior banker” in London told the Times that there was no future left for the traditional investment bank.