Osborne and the banks

With all the fuss quite rightly being made about the duplicitous Osborne and his ridiculous "blue-collar Budget claims", the favours granted to HSBC have received far too little publicity (Morning Star,10/07/15). We all remember how the bank is threatening to move its headquarters out of London, possibly to Hong Kong, because, it said, the bank levy imposed by the government was so high it was seriously limiting the amount dished out to shareholders. The reduction in its profits, presumably, had nothing to do with the huge fines it had to pay out for the raft of fraudulent misdemeanors it had committed, from money-laundering the profits of Mexican drug cartels to the help given to customers of its Swiss arm to avoid the payment of billions in tax. In order to encourage the former, the tellers` windows in the banks were widened to allow access for the massive boxes of cash!

    Predictably, our brave chancellor, frequently lauded by the right-wing press for his courage in taking difficult decisions, caved in to the threat, and the bank levy was duly halved, and to apply only to banks` British operations. No prizes for guessing which bank`s new levy bill will no longer be £1bn but a mere £300m!

 It will be interesting to see how hard the slap on the wrist is for Stephen Green, ex-trade minister in the last government, and of course, the boss of HSBC during  its most blatantly criminal period, when he faces questions from a House of Lords economics committee next Tuesday. Perhaps even more revealing will be which financial corporation employs Osborne when he hangs up his political boots!

 

Verdict on leadership candidates` Guardian interview on education

At least there was no mention of ridiculous oaths, re-licensing and Performance Related Pay, all of which perhaps explain why Labour`s election campaign "failed to project a strong radical message" on education, but there were some serious omissions in the leadership candidates` proposals (And so, leadership candidates, what`s the devil in the detail? 07/07/15). Whilst all four rightly condemned Gove`s narrowing of the curriculum with the "compulsory Ebacc", only Burnham seemed aware of the "unjustifiable" nature of the former Education Secretary`s damaging assessment reforms. They do support more responsibility for local authorities, and most stressed the importance of "investing in the early years" of education, but there was no mention of solving the problem of teachers` workload of around 60 hours a week. No mention, either, of solutions to the profession`s recruitment and retention problem. Corbyn regretted the amount of "pressure" on teachers, and Cooper admitted "teachers are not being listened to", but if "Labour`s education policies in the past were timid", where is the evidence for change? The fact that there was no mention by any of the would-be leaders of the role of teacher unions speaks volumes.

     Timidity was evident, too, in the views on "cracking inequality" and increasing social mobility, with no candidate writing about ending the dominance of the privately educated in the senior ranks of politics, medicine, the law and journalism. As 7% of pupils attend private schools nationally, couldn`t the same proportion be the maximum of privately educated undergraduates at any university? Surprisingly, the term "coasting schools" was nowhere to be seen, despite the Education Secretary`s recent definition of them as "those that fail to ensure 60% of pupils get five good GCSE grades" (Education secretary raises the bar with new "coasting schools" criteria,30/06/15). Where is the candidate with the knowledge and courage to say that there are some brilliant schools, with hard-working staff and pupils, with results nowhere near 60%? 

     I would have thought, too, that with the recent fuss about the party being insufficiently "aspirational", Jeremy Corbyn would not be the sole candidate wanting to "bring back the Education Maintenance Allowance", whatever the cost.

Osborne has done Labour a favour

Of course, as Chris Leslie said in the Commons, this week`s budget was "entirely concerned with chasing headlines" to support the chancellor`s personal ambitions (Morning Star,10/07/15). In fact, Osborne has done the Labour party a massive favour. Although he was attempting to finish off what the election result had started by stealing ideas from Labour`s manifesto, Osborne may well have seriously miscalculated; he has illustrated beyond doubt that Labour should never try to out-Tory the Tories on business, as his proposal to have corporation tax levels 22% points lower than those in the US has shown. His attempts to woo the "working people of Britain" are already being  revealed by the Institute of Fiscal Studies to be misleading and little more than electoral posturing. Resolution Foundation`s revelation that, with cuts to tax credits, the real living wage needs to be above £11 an hour, and higher, when inflation is taken into consideration, by 2020, needs to be shouted by Labour from the rooftops. Failing to attack Tory mythology led to the last election defeat, so all four leadership candidates should know exactly what is immediately needed.

      Labour should also be clearer, now, about where to target their policies; research showing women being hit more than twice as hard as men by the budget makes the female vote an obvious target, as long as no idiotic pink buses are involved, while the removal of the maintenance grant, withdrawal of housing benefit from 18 to 21 year olds, and exemption from the so-called "new living wage" for under 25s should alert Labour to the electoral potential thereby provided, especially when private landlords inevitably retaliate to Osborne`s changes with rent increases. With public sector workers facing more job cuts and decreasing real wages, and the government`s attack on six million trade unionists yet to start, Corbyn should not be the only leadership contender supporting forthcoming industrial action!

        The Tories` timing of this "emergency budget", so-called presumably to ensure floating voters have time to  forget about the cuts in time for the 2020 election, was also intended to use the forthcoming summer recess to their advantage, but Labour must not allow the details of this duplicitous budget to be forgotten, and continue the offensive against it until long after the next leader is chosen.

      Labour will never be sufficiently pro-business to win over most wavering Tories, but the race to win the "fairness vote" is theirs for the taking!

Europe needs to do more to contain Germany

Fintan O`Toole is absolutely right to say that Europe has changed since the Cold War; no longer is it deemed necessary to "compete with communism on its own terms", and with the lack of a perceived enemy, it seems perfectly acceptable for the Greek people to be left to suffer (Europe was once a story we all believed in. It was about solidarity and security. When did we stop believing?05/07/15).

  The truth is, of course, that the European people are being tricked by conservative politicians and monetarists into believing that deficits need instant reduction, only achievable by austerity, with opposition parties in general, unwilling to appear spendthrift despite the vital need for investment in infrastructure. Why doesn`t the Labour party, for instance, at least show an inkling of solidarity with the Greeks? If there is, as O`Toole suggests, a "need to contain Germany", why isn`t some of the blame for the Greeks` predicament being put at the German door? Didn`t they encourage the lending of billions to Greece and other poorer states so that German goods could be bought? Wasn`t it Germany who sold tanks and submarines to the Greeks, but who, restricted in their own arms expenditure for obvious reasons, kept the lid on their own defence requirements?

 Similarly, the Italian Prime minister Renzi has to do more than just rebuke fellow EU leaders for their pathetic "voluntary plan" to deal with the migrant and refugee crisis, when it is left to the countries with the weakest economies to take the majority of the fleeing people. Sensible politicians would not allow Germany to give the austerity orders without taking responsibilty. Further irony is added when one considers what effect German-inspired policies will have on the polling potential of Greece`s neo-nazi party, Golden Dawn!

Our duplicitous "courageous" chancellor

How duplicitous can the Chancellor get? After forcing the BBC to "accept the £650m annual cost of providing free television licences for over-75s", Osborne had the gall to say that this "fulfilled the Conservatives` manifesto pledge to maintain pensioner benefits" (You must pay for pensioners` TV licence from now on, BBCi s told,07/07/15). No doubt such economic chicanery will be evident in this week`s "emergency" budget, presumably called this because most of the unfair £12bn of cuts have to be announced now to ensure floating voters forget about them in time for the 2020 election; when making his reductions to tax credits, there will probably be vague suggestions that firms take it upon themselves to raise pay to living wage levels, £9.15 an hour in London, and £7.85 elsewhere. What he will not admit is that these figures are calculated assuming tax credits and housing benefits remain unchanged, and that without them, according to the Resolution Foundation, the London living wage is actually £11.65 an hour.

   Despite this, as Sir Christopher Bland wrote, Osborne has somehow acquired "a reputation for taking courageous decisions" (Osborne has silenced debate with accounting worthy of an Enron finance director,07/07/15). It is time this myth was well and truly debunked; it does not take courage to attack the most vulnerable in society, as this budget will almost certainly do, and as he as Chancellor in the last five years has done repeatedly, from cutting benefits for the disabled to introducing the notorious bedroom tax. Courage is required, however, to challenge the financial sector to change their culture of greed, to reduce the country`s growing inequality, and to end the tax avoidance and evasion which costs the country hundreds of billions in lost revenue every year. As Bland says, Osborne lacked the courage to deal with the issue of "free TV licences for the over-75s", and we can expect his budget to be delivered with a similar cowardly display of deceit and subterfuge. There will be rhetoric about workers being allowed to keep more of their earnings, without mentioning that six million do not earn enough to pay any income tax; he will mention the Greek crisis and the deficit, but not the £375bn miraculously found for our banks through quantitative easing, something that makes comparison with Greece totally fallacious.

Letter on Germany and Greece

Larry Elliott`s article was a timely reminder of how leniently Germany was treated after the second world war, particularly in relation to the Marshall Plan, from which Germany was granted "four times as much as Greece received", and to the "granting of debt relief at the London conference of 1953" (For Germany 1953,read Greece 2015,07/07/15). This "Lesson from History" surprisingly omitted the important point that such generosity was brought about by the realisation that "squeezing" a country "until the pips squeak" was counter-productive, and creates only increased animosity; the continued insistence by the eurozone to impose harsh austerity on the Greeks can only lead to exactly that.

   Regardless of the suffering about to be endured by the Greek people, including, after its exit from the eurozone, hyper-inflation, which ironically is etched into the mind of every German politician following Germany`s 1923 experience, politics takes precedence. An anti-austerity party like Syriza cannot be allowed any form of success, for fear of encouraging electorates in the other debt-laden countries, and that, sadly, is more important, obviously, than not only all historical antecedents, but also than driving Greece into the arms of Russia, and the Greeks suffering yet more intolerable hardship. And all the while, the fact that prosperous countries like France and Germany lent Greece billions to enable her to buy their goods, including weapons, as Giles Fraser reminded us at the weekend, remains conveniently forgotten (Throughout history, debt and war have been constant partners,04/07/15).

 

Nato spoiling for a new cold war

 If there is anything more despairing than reading about the duplicitous Tory government trying to hide the increases in child poverty it has caused, it possibly is catching up on latest thinking at Nato (Nato rethinks nuclear weapon strategy,25/06/15). On learning that Russia has responded to Nato`s decision to store weapons on her border in Poland by stating an intent to "buy 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles", Nato has decided to "re-evaluate its nuclear weapons strategy". Presumably the extra missiles, added to Russia`s existing total of "515 missiles and bombers", take their numbers too close for comfort to Nato`s 785? Even though a superiority of 230 is apparently not enough, they still deny a return to cold war arms racing, begging a question about their knowledge of recent history.

       Added to this is the recent outburst from the US commander in charge of most of America`s nuclear missiles, General Wilson, whose claim that there has never been so much power "put in one person in Russia" as there is with Putin, reveals a total ignorance of Tsarist and Stalinist Russia. It seems that the lack of diplomatic skills is not the only problem at Nato`s headquarters!

      Unsurprisingly, the historical lessons of "squeezing until the pips squeak" have obviously not been learned at Nato, but sadly, not by EU politicians either; this is made obvious with the approval, "without debate", by EU foreign ministers of the extension of existing sanctions on Russia for another six months (Sanctions on Russia are extended until January,23/06/15). How can compromise solutions be made over, not only the future of Ukraine, but also the expansion of Nato, when economic uncertainty in Russia is being purposely exacerbated by the west? At a time when diplomatic talks are urgently needed, and when there are opportunities for east-west deals over energy provision, what can be achieved by the permanent exclusion of Russia from the G7? Isn`t 20th century history on the curricula of private schools?