Ed's call for plan B fails to put his finger on the problem, as usual.

Ed Ball's mentor, Gordon Brown, was responsible for Private Finance Initiatives, cuts, privatisations and other pro business, City friendly policies. Now Ed supports the call for a Plan B put forward by many Economists, who last year told us that the Con Dem budget strategy would work. Perhaps Ed should listen to unions such as PCS instead, who argue that there is an alternative to the austerity measures, IMF cuts and attacks on working people.

Thanks to Stuart Richardson of Birmingham Socialist Resistance for this contribution:

Taxing the Rich

Readers will have seen publicity this morning on the letter in the Observer from more than 50 prominent economists calling for a plan B on the governments deficit reduction plan. It is  labelled by the BBC as a contribution from left wing economists actually many are from the political  establishment and former advisors to David Cameron.

Their main point is expressed in the sentences "As economists and academics, we know the breakneck

deficit-reduction plan, based largely on spending cuts, is self-defeating even on its own terms. It will probably not manage to close the deficit in the planned time frame and the government's strategy is likely

to result in a lot more pain and a lot less gain."

These points have been made by many observers including the TUC. More interestingly is there viewpoint

on TAXING THE RICH a major theme of the Anti-Cuts movement. They propose among other things

"*by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion, as well as by RAISING (my emphasis) taxes on those

   best able to pay"

This is in complete contrast to the statements of Ed Balls, shadow chancellor of the exchequer, speaking

this morning on Sky News. He supported the big cuts in corporation tax introduced in the last budget and

amazingly said the rise in capital gains tax by the Condem government "was not wise". But to explain this

we need a little background.

Recent changes in taxation of the Rich   

The super rich are subject to three main taxes other than income tax. These are corporation tax, a tax on

company profits, capital gains tax is a tax on trading property and shares and Inheritance Tax paid when a person dies. If you have many millions you will mainly pay capital gains tax on buying and selling property  and shares. The rate of corporation tax will also affect your returns because you will receive dividends from company profits.

Shortly after Mrs Thatcher came to power and for the majority of her term in office the top rate of tax on

the super rich was 60%. This was reduced to 40% in the famous 1988 Lawson budget. When Blair came

to office the top rate was still 40%. But after the business friendly Blair/Brown governments corporation tax had been significantly reduced and capital gains tax had been reduced to an amazing 18%. This is ofcourse less than someone working for measly £6 an hour would pay. Part of the reason for the massive financial black hole which developed during the last Labour government was this massive cut in the taxation of the super rich.

The Condem government's shift of taxation onto ordinary working people is illustrated by the rise in  VAT to 20% and the cuts in corporation tax. In several western countries the rate of corporation tax is between 40-50% whereas the government proposes to go to a rate of 24%.

The one small token in difference to this was the rise in capital gains tax under pressure from the Liberal Democrats. It was increased last year to 28% for higher rate taxpayers from Labour's 18%. NOW ED BALLS SAYS THIS INCREASE IN TAXATION OF THE SUPER RICH "WAS NOT WISE." We have supported campaigns against Free Schools. According to the Times Educational Supplement 27.5.11. page 16 this is not Labour's policy. The TES reports

"Labour softens free-schools stance. Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham has softened his stance against the Government's free school policy. Speaking at the Education 2011 conference in London earlier this month, he said Labour would not oppose every free school." What next!!

Sussex Socialist Resistance: Fourth International in Britain.: What is the leadership of the GMB up to now??

Sussex Socialist Resistance: Fourth International in Britain.: What is the leadership of the GMB up to now??: "VINCE CABLE SHOULD NOT BE SPEAKING AT OUR CONGRESS This Government has launched a massive attack on the trade union movement, public service..."

What is the leadership of the GMB up to now??

VINCE CABLE SHOULD NOT BE SPEAKING AT OUR CONGRESS 

 Some Brighton GMB members are quite correctly furious at this invite. Holly Smith of Brighton GMB union and Brighton Stop the Cuts writes regarding a protest this coming Monday against ConDem Business Secretary Vince Cable being invited to speak at the GMB's annual conference:

This Government has launched a massive attack on the trade union movement, public services, and working class people, and we are appalled that we should sit and take a lecture from one of the ConDem’s leading figures. When it was proposed that Cameron speak at the TUC Conference this rightly outraged the trade union movement and the furore eventually forced him to pull out.

Apart from the outright assaults on public sector jobs, pay, pensions, and terms and conditions, Business Secretary Cable and his cronies are proposing to water down workers’ rights by raising qualifying periods for employment tribunals to two years, are considering bringing in fees for a claim, and making first stage compulsory mediation with ACAS essential. This will deprive workers of the right to justice, and undermines the very role of trade unions in defending our members.

Having Cable on a platform is simply a publicity opportunity for a man whose Government is hell-bent on destroying our movement. Our Congress should be a platform for mobilising the co-ordinated fightback against the attacks on our jobs, pensions, services, and living standards. His speech at our Congress won’t be an opportunity to ‘have a dialogue’ with him, or ‘put our point of view’; it will just be a public platform for a member of the anti-worker Government to argue his case. Our union should be ‘putting our point of view’ to the Government by balloting our members who are facing attacks due to his Government’s austerity program.

Some GMB members will be boycotting this event and walking out, or holding placards to express our point of view. Please join us.

BrightonStopTheCuts@yahoogroups.co.uk

The GMB activists want to make it clear that they are protesting at Cable himself, and the Government he is part of, NOT the GMB or its members.

Worthing & District Trades Union Council – Launch Meeting

Union members are at the forefront of of the fight to defend jobs, public services, pensions and workers' living standards. The need for strong trade union organisations at a local level is needed today more than ever. That is why we must all welcome and support the launching of the Worthing & District Trades Council .

The unions have to be able to reach out to the local communities they serve, including the youth, pensioners, the unemployed, women, members of ethnic communities and the gay community. They have to be able to show that they are able to unite all of us in the fightback against the austerity measures and that there is an alternative to cuts. It is in the interest of all of us to support our unions and to ensure that our unions fully represent us.

The building of support for initiatives around the joint day of action on 30th June by the unions will show that Cameron and co do not have the answers that are acceptable to us. From Greece, Spain and Southampton, workers organisations refuse to pay the price for the crisis caused by the bankers. Whilst City profits increase and the shares on the Stock Exchange go up in value at our expense, trade unionists are saying " put people before profit".

In the words of Joe Hill, "Don't moan, organise!"

Worthing & District Trades Union Council – Launch Meeting

Wednesday 22nd June - 7.30 pm - Labour Hall, Lyndhurst Rd, Worthing BN11 2DE

On 16^th May a local group of Trade Union activists including Unison,GMB,CWU,PCS,Unite,UCU held an organising meeting in Worthing with a view to re-establishing a Trade Union Council for the Shoreham,Adur,Worthing & Littlehampton areas. We are supported by SERTUC.

We are inviting Trade Union Branches with members employed in this geographical area, to attend the above dated open launch meeting, hopefully with a view to affiliating.

The business of the meeting will include;

·         Proposed Constitution – A draft copy will be sent out in time for the meeting

·         Election of Executive Committee – Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Minutes Secretary, Treasurer and up to 8 others elected from the floor. This will be an Interim Committee pending AGM on a date to be agreed.

 Branches agreeing in principle to affiliate will be invited to nominate delegates who will be from their own branch, for election to the Executive Committee. To ensure proportionality Branches may have one representative on the Executive Committee.

Election if required will be by show of hands from those present at the meeting.

·         Affiliations - Annual affiliation fee of £10 plus 10p per member in the geographical area, will be payable shortly after this launch meeting in a timescale to be agreed. Any Branch not paying the affiliation fee in this timescale will vacate any position held, which will be re-elected from branches that have paid the affiliation.

·         Supporting Action on 30^th June

Discussion on how Worthing & District Trades Union Council will support this day of action.

·         Guest Speakers

Please RSVP, contacts below, we look forward to seeing you at this exciting initiative for the organised labour movement in the area.

In Solidarity

Richard Jones   rjonescwu@hotmail.com  07931 682996

Lee Billingham  lee.billingham@gmail.com  07733 151116

.pp

 Worthing & District Trades Union Council

Southampton Council workers fight back.

"Southampton City Council has a commitment to high quality services and this means that we need to employ talented and committed people." (16 Nov 2010- Council website).

“The tactic being deployed by Southampton city council is possible because UK employment law reinforces the medieval ‘master-servant’ principle that has no place in the 21st Century. Our members are standing up for basic human rights against bullying tactics and the Council should be condemned by all decent people.”

Mark Wood, Unite Convenor at Southampton city council

Is this to be our Wisconsin? Union members are uniting against pay cuts, redundancies and privatisations. They are at the forefront of the fight to defend local public services. Unison and Unite members are serving our society in a big way and deserve our full and total support.  Strike action is underway by a wide range of their members and they deserve our support. So much for the false claim of being good employers. As in Birmingham and elsewhere, only the unions fighting back, with the full support of the communities that they serve, can stop these cuts causing catastrophies to us all.

UNISON anger over cost of Agency Social Workers used by Southampton City Council - Unison S.E. press release 1/6/11

While cutting the pay of social workers by over 5.5%, Southampton City Council is proposing to pay £250 a day for eight Child Protection Social Workers recruited via a temporary employment agency.  Directly employed Social Workers are paid between £26,000 and £38,000 a year depending on experience.  Only the most “Senior Practitioners” are paid over £34,000 a year.

A leaked e-mail from a private Social Worker recruitment agency states:

I currently have a number of opportunities to work for Southampton Social Services as part of a small improvement project.

We are looking for 8 qualified social workers and 2 senior practitioners to work within the assessment teams and long term teams in the council. These posts are to start immediately and applicants must have extensive CP experience in the UK.

The pay rates for the posts are non-negotiable and are as follows:

QSW - £230 per day Senior Practitioner - £250 per day

If you are interested in these posts please reply to this email and I will call you straight back.

As a result of the proposed wage cuts, which will reduce Social Workers annual pay between £1000 and £1500 a year, the City Council is finding it difficult to retain staff.  Social Workers are leaving the Council to work for nearby Councils.  Yet while cutting the pay of the Social Workers it employs, the Council is prepared to pay up to £63,000 a year for temporary, self employed Social Workers.

Andy Straker, UNISON Regional Organiser, commented, “This is madness.  The Council is forcing experienced Social Workers to leave the Council because it is cutting their pay, and then paying self employed Social Workers up to double what it pays its own staff.  If the Conservatives needed another reason to re-think their plans to cut Council staff wages from 11 July, then surely this is it.”

He added “Here we are in a middle of a dispute over cuts to pay and conditions with rubbish building up on the streets and misleading council statements trying to persuade members of the public to pay for parking while its parking enforcement workers are on strike and we have the Council offering to pay £230 a day for Social Workers.  Here’s an idea Cllr Smith, stop the cuts to all council staffs terms and conditions and treat them as you would want to be treated and you will not need to advertise for agency workers as staff just might want to remain in SCC employment”.

For more information contact:

Andy Straker, UNISON Regional Organiser on 023 8024 9126.

Walking the Vale of the Brooks, south of Lewes-Saturday June 11th

ACTION FOR ACCESS

Walking and working for a people’s countryside

Walking the Vale of the Brooks, south of Lewes

Saturday June 11^th meeting at Lewes rail station at 11.00am and finishing back there about 4.00pm

(but folk can easily return earlier or go on to Southease station, if they wish)

This wetland vastness is as remote from the middle of Brighton or London as Atlantis…

 This is a land of lost content…all flat greenness and Buttercups, Yellow Flag, bird song and huge skies (when you escape the noise of the encircling roads…the A26, A27, and villages road). Long lines of reed-filled ditches (or ‘sewers’, or ‘brooks’,  to use the local names); and others full of Frogbit and Crowfoot; the scratchy jangling song of Reed Warblers, smart white-collared Reed Bunting, Marsh Frogs loud croaking and plopping into safety, Snipe zig-zagging low over soaked winter meadows, Barn Owls ghosting the ditches in those same  harsh times, Kingfisher – blue jewel - flashing by, and  Lapwings flap, flapping flight. The Downs are far-off green rumples, shaped with shadows.

After decades of arable intensification which saw the landscape dried, and fossil saltmarsh channels’ ancient creases ironed out, the small brooks lost and all ploughed level, or turning into lines of dry thorn scrub, and domestic tips and commercial fish ponds nibbling at the edges, we now see a limited return to erstwhile usages as wet grazing pastures and haylage. The RSPB has made an important 80 acre purchase.

We should be able freely to walk this special place…It is, after all, with our taxes that the improvements are being made, and it is our consumer purchases that buy the beef and lamb and grain products grown here.

But we can’t.

Though these brooklands sprawl along the river for 4.6 long miles, and 2 miles at their widest, the largest part of them has no legal public access beyond the path along the Ouse bank.

Though they are crossed by many raised medieval village causeways (known locally as ‘walls’) – Well Green Lane, Swanborough Drove, Norton Wall, Sutton Wall, Northease Wall, Pool Bar Wall, White Wall - and though they are marked by strange (and often lost) names – The Shine, The Sound, Broadwater, Bormer Brook, Itford Shallows, Bramble, Cliff, Piddinghoe, Deans and other Shallows, and many lost fordings – like Iford and Itford - we have no legal right to be there.

Though this was still a landscape of commons in the age of Cromwell and right through till the cusp of modernity in the time of young Queen Victoria, we have no legal right to be there now.

To be sure, some small part is open under Stewardship’s agri-environmental scheme and that farmer is friendly; and, to be sure, you can take the Rodmell Wall, or the Lane to Southease station, and a couple of other paths…but the wildness of the place is still forbidden to you.

The helicopter whirrings of green, blue, red, yellow, brown Dragon and Damselflies are not for you. The Great Silver Diving Beetles, (now found only here and in three  other wide marshlands), the thumb-sized gold and green Dytiscus Diving Beetles, the Sticklebacks, the young Eels, the many, many kinds of water snail (so many where the clear chalk streams’ influence is strong that your kick-net bottom fills with them like gravel), the Arrowhead, the Water Plantain, the Flowering Rush, the rare and special tiny beasties found only here and scarce at all elsewhere…they are not for us…just some few experts and officials that the landowners need satisfy to get their pay cheques cleared. 

We shall respectfully walk to see some of these treasures. On our rehearsal walk a Cuckoo called persistently from north, from south, and further south again…or was it two, or even three ? What Reed Warblers were about to have their broods usurped by its cunning mate’s foundlings ? Swifts flew screaming overhead…unusual sight outside our towns.  Skylarks belted out their trills above some far-off buttercup meadows, and a Meadow Pipit parachuted down and down. Herons flapped, a Redshank alarmed, and even a solitary Cormorant flapped towards its customary pylon. (On which, in winter, you may count up to 80 of its friends). A Linnet showed off its almost Robin-like red breast and a Wagtail kept it company. We chewed some Horseradish shoots and flowers and wondered why we bother with the sauce…the flowers taste just as good.

Today, I returned again for more exploring and we were privileged to see two Grass Snakes, a Brown Hare, two Egrets, dozens of Cormorants, many Skylarks, Meadow Pipits and Reed Buntings, half a dozen species of Sedge, and more Sussex cattle and sheep than I’ve had hot dinners…

We hope this walk will be blessed with sun and shadow, warmth and peace, and that all the birds will be singing once again…

Led by Dave Bangs. Notes by him as well.

Wear strong shoes, SORRY, NO DOGS, children doubly welcome, bring eyeglass & magnifying glass if you have them, maybe a jam jar, binoculars, warm enuf clothes, and a bite and a drink. Be prepared to cross the odd wire fence (though hopefully not), for which help will be given in getting over.

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ACTION FOR ACCESS
walking and working for a people's countryside

Facebook  - "Downlanders -Action for Access"

 

AFFILIATED TO THE OPEN SPACES SOCIETY

Revolt don't moan

They came for the schools-I do not have children, I did nothing.
They came for the local hospital -I am healthy, I did nothing.
They came for the council estate- I have a house, I did nothing.
They came for the pensions - I am working, I did nothing.
They came for the unions - I am not a member, I did nothing.
They came for the benefits - I do not claim, I did nothing.

They said Big Society, Low taxes- I said great.
They blamed it on immigrants- I am white, I said nothing.
They blamed it on the Greeks and Spanish who are fighting back- I saw nothing.
They said the tabloids said it was everyone else's fault- I nodded.

Then came the cuts.
Then came the poverty.
Then came the unemployment.
Then came the strikes.

Perhaps I should have said something.
Perhaps I should have done something.
Perhaps I should have joined WITH those who blame the bankers, the Con Dems and the system.
The royal wedding is over now on with the right royal revolt. It is not too late.

SO BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE
WE MUST ALL DO SOMETHING
WE MUST AND ARE ALL FIGHTING BACK.

The unions and the people
The youth and the poor
The women and all ethnic communities
Together we wont take any more.

No racism, no scapegoating
No Islamaphobia or homophobia
United together
We can change it so it never gets through the door.

From Egypt to Greece
From Spain to Syria
In Gaza and Ramallah
The people say enough.
Now we too say go

The deficit is their problem
The cuts we reject.
A new world comes calling
The environment demands help.

They say one world, one people
Capitalism tries to divide all
So reach for your banners and march
We fight for all.