US declares trade war at Davos
The US has gone to Davos to tell the rest of the world it is declaring a trade war.
The US Commerce Secretary declared, ‘Trade wars are fought every single day. Every single day there are always parties violating the rules and trying to take unfair advantage of things. So a trade war has been in place for quite a little while. The difference is US troops are now coming to the ramparts.’
The US has decided to go on the offensive after its attempt to scupper the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) were undermined by its own allies and trading partners. Japan, Australia and Canada were party to the decision to reinstate the TPP but without the USA as a partner.
Another US representative, Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Secretary, helped boost US competitiveness by downplaying the significance of a recent drop in the value of the dollar. As a result the dollar dropped even further, presumably because traders interpreted his attitude as indicating the administration were comfortable with a lower valuation to assist them in trading overseas.
The US onslaught comes at a time when their allies are increasingly frustrated at American attempts to block new appointments to the WTO (World Trade Organisation) court, weakening the ability of the institution to adjudicate on international trade disputes.
The WTO has been in existence since 1995 when it replaced the GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade). They represent an attempt in the post-war era to minimise the disruption caused to international capitalism by trade disputes. The US decision to put pressure on it, and to declare trade war on its allies, is a measure of how much trouble the world economy is at the moment. The US administration is preparing to go to war, and the last thing it needs is a court prepared to rule that it is taking advantage of weaker countries.
As the economic crisis develops, US capitalism is positioning itself to try and destroy its major trading competitors. The breakdown of post-war international agreements is only part of the general instability in international capitalism. The contradictions created by the creation of hundreds of billions of new dollars/GB pounds/ Euros by central banks following the banking crisis is coming to a head.
For the working class the issue we face is how to prepare for the shocks that are coming. There is only so much the ruling class can expect the workers to sacrifice before they reach an impasse. At it feels like that impasse is fast approaching.
For us the issue is to develop a working class leadership that recognises the size of the task ahead, and is prepared to take the necessary steps to end the chaos of capitalist economics. We do not need Labour’s social democrats with their plans to tweak capitalism to make the crumbling system fairer. That sort of blind alley plays into the hands of a ruling class who want workers to believe there is no alternative to capitalist chaos.
Tories discriminate against mental health patients. Official.
The Tories discriminate against mental health patients. It’s official.
The Tory government wanted to save money on benefits. The Tories have a record of attacking the poor Cameron and Osborne claimed they were making difficult decision when they launched their anti-working class offensive, codename Operation Austerity.
In March 2017 the Theresa May government decided to accelerate those attacks by depriving people with serious mental health issues of the right to claim additional benefits for travel. The PIP scheme, which is supposed to assess the genuine needs of people with health issues, contains provisions for additional payment to people who have difficulty travelling, for example with using public transport. People who have mobility issues are assessed and given a score. Claimants who have more than 8 points get a mobility allowance of £22 per week. Claimants with a score of 12 points get an enhanced rate of £58 per week.
So the post-Cameron Tory government, the new caring Theresa May government, the one who makes speeches about caring and supporting the genuinely needy, thought up a great wheeze to save themselves billions of pounds. In early 2017 they introduced regulations that meant people with mobility problems as a result of psychological distress could not get more than 10 points on their assessment. So, no matter how severe the mental health issues affecting their ability to get around, they could not get the higher rate as a direct result of their psychological state.
Why introduce such a specific regulation, unless it was to discriminate against people with mental health problems? No reason. Or at least, that was the finding of the High Court. In December 2017 the court ruled that the regulations were ‘blatantly discriminatory’.
Blatantly discriminatory.
It is estimated that about 164,000 people are affected by these regulations. The government itself estimates that their the ruling against their discriminatory regulations will cost them £3.7bn between now and 2022. Not that cost was an issue for the anti-working class government. They reason they give for their attempt to discriminate against people with psychological medical issues? In the words of Esther McVey, Work and Pensions Secretary, “Our intention has always been to … provide the best support to claimants with mental health conditions.”
By discriminating against them? Saving billions was just a lucky bonus.
The uncaring side of Theresa May
The British Prime Minister cares about the excesses of capitalism. We know, because she told us so. Just not enough to do something about it.
Her most recent foray into the world of faux caring is an article she wrote in today’s Observer. Boardroom excesses can no longer be tolerated, she tells us. So what is she going to do about them? Nothing.
Well thanks for squat, Mrs May.
Perhaps the rhetoric reminds you of the day she stood on the steps of Downing Street just after she came to office. She told us she would ‘make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few, but for every one of us’. And then did nothing about it. She reached out to the ‘only just managing’ with a sympathetic hand, only for them to realise it was an empty gesture: the hand patted them on the head condescendingly and gave them nothing..
The working class is not taken in with saccharine words. They have heard it all before. If the recent changes in the political environment tell us anything, it is that workers are more cynical about traditional politicians than ever before.
And trite words get an appropriate response from workers who are tired of being treated like fools.
Osborne’s pathological hatred
It must be hard for George Osborne to hide his hatred and disgust for the woman who sacked him: Theresa May. Or else he just does not try to disguise it at all.
Since taking the plum job of editing the London Evening Standard, a job he does on a part-time basis for a full-time salary, the paper has hardly missed a chance to lay into his former colleague, and at the same time to attack the Brexit process she is trying to negotiate..
Today’s headline in the business section of the Evening Standard is no exception.
Before the June 2017 referendum Osborne and his Treasury lackeys were making dire predictions for the economy if the result was Leave. And sure enough the British working class gave this class warrior the hearing he wanted. They listened. And they decided, if George Osborne wants us to stay then we had better vote Leave. And they did.
The economy did not collapse. The end of the world was not nigh. Life went on.
Every snippet of the economic news now has to be spun by Osborne in the most negative way possible. Let me quote the article word for word:
“The Chartered Institute for Procurement & Supply’s latest health-check on the sector [manufacturing] was short on New Year cheer after a surprise downturn for UK industry in December. Its activity index – where a score over 50 indicates growth – dropped to 56.3 from November’s six-year high of 58.2.”
According to our curmudgeonly journal, failing to maintain what they admit was a 6-year high is a ’loss of momentum’.
Suck it up, George. Admit you got it wrong. You were prepared to lie, exaggerate and cajole to get the result you wanted, and the working class still gave you a bloody nose. Do the honourable thing. Tuck your tail between your legs and go hide in a corner.
We have got your number.
Bank of England supports Brexit
The BoE (Bank of England) decision to increase interest rates to 0.5% was a vote of confidence in Brexit. That was what the headlines should have been in the capitalist press.
When the rate was reduced in August 2016 we were told it was because of the vote to leave the European Union. The decision to leave would have calamitous consequences for the UK economy. Armageddon had been predicted, the sky was about to fall in on us. The BoE had to take steps to protect us. So the interest rate was reduced from 0.5% to 0.25%.
The world carried on. The sky stayed in the sky. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were NOT sighted.
Mark Carney, the governor of the BoE, might argue that his minuscule change in interest rates was what saved us from collapse. Even if we give him credit for controlling a tsunami of destruction with a minimal interest rate change, he would have to admit that his dire predictions for the referendum result were not borne out by the facts.
So yesterday the BoE decided to return to the rate of interest that had existed before the referendum.
All the media who swallowed the hype about the effect of a Leave vote, and who have attributed every bit if negative news to “Brexit” would surely now concede that this reversal in BoE policy was a recognition that the rate drop fifteen months ago was no longer needed. And that must mean the economy was getting better. Or, at the very least, it was not getting worse.
But no. The interest rate increase has been reported as if it were a drastic measure needed to deal with another catastrophe. Inflation is too high. Unemployment is too full. Whatever rationalisation they give us, they are adamant that leaving the EU is a bad thing.
Meanwhile the British working class look at the reporting and see, yet again, the press have their own agenda. They are not reporting facts. They are not describing events. They are interpreting them, with all the pro-capitalist, pro-establishment bias we have come to expect of them.
Grenfell Tower – let the workers decide
When a tragedy like the Grenfell Tower fire happens, people instinctively know why. We can pore over the detail. We can set up public enquiries. We can dissect the fire regulations, and the relationship between the government, the local authority and the KCTMO (an NGO set up to allow the council to keep the day-to-day management of the housing stock at arm’s length).
But we know the reason.
And you do not have to be a revolutionary to say it out loud. A headline in one of today’s newspapers sums it up in the words of Sadiq Kahn, the Labour Mayor of London. The headline reads:
COMMUNITY’S ANGER IS ROOTED IN ‘COUNCIL AND GOVERNMENT NEGLECT’
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (to give it it’s full bombastic title) has long been a bastion of right-wing Tory thinking. The Council has been a breeding ground for ambitious Tories trying to climb their way up the slippery pole to parliament. Career politicians sucking their way towards a cosy ministerial post with its in-office perks and its cosy non-contributory pension would do well to start here.
The types who run this council do not think they have to pander to the hoi-polloi who live in the tower blocks at the northern edge of their borough. Upgrading and improving their living conditions and prioritising their safety is not at the top of their agendas. RBKC and their close neighbours, Westminster City Council have, for many years, vied with each other to charge the lowest possible council tax. For years these two Tory boroughs, together with their Tory colleagues south of the river in Wandsworth, enthusiastically cut and slashed their own budgets. Before cuts had been rebranded as ‘austerity’ these pioneers of slashing budgets and picking statistics that ‘prove’ services are getting better while the resources to deliver them are being cut, were doing their work. Burrowing under the foundations of the support mechanism that protect the weakest and most vulnerable.
A cynic might think that they were trying to impress their political masters at the head of the Tory Party. Look at me! See how efficient a council can be, when it is run by Tories. Efficiency, in this context, meaning cheap.
The anger felt by residents and their supporters in the locality has been fuelled by a sense, over many years, that this council was not for me. It was for the posh Tories with their multi-million-pound houses and their weekend homes in the country.
There are estate agents you go to in RBKC when you are looking for a flat to rent, where a resident of `Grenfell Tower could not get through the front door. The agencies that deal with the “top” end of the market have high street offices more spacious than the flat allocated to a family of six. The agencies that deal with people most like the residents of Grenfell Tower are far less salubrious.
The difference in social status is palpable and obvious as you traverse the borough.
We do not need a public enquiry to know why sprinkler systems were not retro-fitted to tower blocks after the Camberwell fire in 1979. We know why. It was too expensive. It was too inconvenient. It was too difficult.
Theresa May tries to kick the problem into the long grass with her judge-led public enquiry. We do not need a judge to tell us the truth. If we are going to have an enquiry, it should be carried out by the FBU (Fire Brigades Union). The union that represents the workers at the sharp end of the catastrophe are the best people to make these judgements. They know that if and when it all goes wrong, it is their members whose lives will also be put at risk dealing with the fire.
Let the FBU be the judge. Every day they walk into shops and office blocks, and if they see a significant fire hazard they close it down. They have no truck with the ‘economics’ argument. Economics should play no part in decisions about life and death.
I doubt even of the LFEPA (the organisation for which they work) have the strength to withstand the political pressure that will be put on whoever runs the enquiry. So give it to the FBU. If we are going to get answers that we believe, the enquiry cannot be carried out by a judge.
The working class victims, their relatives and friends, deserve an enquiry overseen by their peers. The workers of the FBU are the only people I would trust to speak the truth, point the finger of blame in the right direction, and tell us what needs to be done to prevent this happening again.
https://medium.com/@bolshieVic/grenfell-tower-let-the-workers-judge-dc13317ed766
Macron election victory is a tainted chalice
The media are hailing Emmanuel Macron’s election as President of France as a victory for their own bourgeois-liberal agenda. But analysis of the results gives a very different picture.
Macron is a former merchant banker who was recruited by the reformist President Hollande to the position of Finance Minister. The idea that he could attract the support of the majority of working class voters and French youth is laughable. In fact 3 million voters cast blank ballot papers, and a further million spoiled their papers. So about an eights of everyone who cast their votes actively participated in the election just to say ‘A curse on both their houses’.
The abstainers were also notable. More people decided not to vote than in any presidential election in nearly fifty years. The last time so many abstained was in the aftermath of the 1968 revolutionary actions when the right wing had suppressed a rising by workers and youth.
The media may crow about a resounding victory for the centrist consensus. But it is more a case of a defeat for neo-fascism.
You can be sure a lot of the workers who cast their vote for Macron were actually casting their vote for the only candidate left standing against the neo-fascist Marie Le Pen. When the Left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon was narrowly eliminated in the previous round, opponents of Marie Le Pen were left with the choice of abstaining, voting for Macron or spoiling their ballot paper.
Melenchon had stood on a platform of opposing austerity (or ‘cuts’ as I prefer to call it), calling for withdrawal from the EU and extending workers’ rights. He came within 2 percentage points of defeating Marie Le Pen. And that would have left Macron campaigning for cutbacks and attacks on workers’ rights against Melenchon’s anti-austerity rhetoric.
The French working class did not vote for Macron. To the extent that he got any votes from French workers, they were voting against fascism.
Macron now has the daunting task of trying to impose his neo-liberal programme on the French working class. With youth unemployment standing at around 24% he may find he is sitting on an explosive situation.
The Tory propaganda machine
They try to brainwash you.
They don’t care if you know they are doing it. It works. So they just keep on doing it
The Tories are using the mantra ‘strong and stable’ to describe themselves at every opportunity. Even though interviewers have picked up on the ploy, they continue regradless. They believe that if they describe themselves as ‘strong and stable’, or say repeatedly that their leader is ‘strong and stable’ it will be an effective campaigning technique.
And there is some truth in that. Even if they are challenged on the mantra, they win. Half the interview will then be taken up discussing whether Theresa May is strong and stable or not. They have put their little propaganda ear-worm into our heads.
I hate the idea of being brainwashed. And brainwashing is what this is. So I have come up with a counter-strategy. Simple.
Every time I hear the phrase ‘strong and stable’ I say out loud ‘weak and wobbly’. Even if I am watching a TV programme on my own, I say it out loud. I know the effect of the spoken word is greater than the effect of internal thoughts. I say it out loud when I am in company, too. If I am sitting next to you during a news broadcast, or we are watching Question Time together, you will hear me say ‘weak and wobbly’ out loud as many times as the Tory propagandist repeats the mantra.
If nothing else, it emphasises how deliberately repetitive the use of the phrase has become during the election campaign.
If you want to counteract the propaganda machine, and keep the election debate rational rather than psychologically manipulative, use my phrase. Be my guest. Say it out loud wherever you hear the Tory mantra.
Weak and wobbly.
Weak and wobbly.
George Osborne – the great multi-tasker
The announcement that George Osborne is to take over as editor of The London Evening Standard is just another example of corruption in high places.
What experience does the ex-Chancellor have of editing a large circulation newspaper? Zilch.
The salary he will earn has not been disclosed, but it is unlikely to be a major factor in his decision to go for the job. He has been sidelined since David Cameron quit as PM following his EU referendum humiliation. And that must hurt. He was unceremoniously kicked out as soon as Theresa May formed her first Cabinet.
Conservatism’s golden boy (in his own estimation) deserves a front row seat in current politics. He should not be sitting on the back benches, representing his constituents and supporting the government. No, he has more important things to do. Like making sure nobody forgets what an important person he is. And if he can use his position at the forefront of London’s only free daily evening paper to promote his own political career, what is the harm in that?
Why, you might ask, would the owners of the paper recruit such an inexperienced man? The Standard’s owner, Lebedev is a multi-millionaire. A Russian oligarch with a conviction for hooliganism (for punching another guest during a TV programme) he owns the Independent newspaper, as well as an interest in the anti-Putin publication Novaya Gazeta.
Traditionally, ex-Chancellors and ex-Prime Ministers can expect a warm and generous welcome from the banking sector after leaving office. Perhaps the bankers do not want to get on the wrong side of the woman who sacked Osborne, Theresa May. Not to worry. Lebedev is a banker too. Time to set up a nice little sinecure for Osborne, the loyal servant of finance capital for so many years.
As a thank you for spending his entire time as Chancellor attacking the poor, reducing welfare spending, cutting the wages of millions of NHS, central and local government employees, a job as editor of a newspaper might seem a paltry reward. But George does not need a lot of money to get by. He already earns a generous MP’s salary, plus hundreds of thousands of pounds for speaking to rich people (speaking engagements earned him hundreds of thousands of pounds last year). And only last week it was revealed that he earns £650,000 per year working one day a week for BlackRock, the world’s biggest fund manager.
If it is not the money that drew slippery George to journalism. It is probably the opportunity to stick it to the woman who sacked him.