From The Sunday Mirror:
Half of the state-owned forests could be sold off in a cash-raising scheme by the Government.
Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman will reveal plans this week to put two million acres of Forestry Commission up for sale.
The sale, which will involve some of Britain's most historic woodlands, could raise between £2billion and £5billion by 2020.
But critics fear the sell-off to private firms will pave the way for a major expansion of golf courses, commercial logging and rural holiday villages such as Center Parcs.
Laws which restrict what can be done in "ancient forests" such as Sherwood Forest and the Forest of Dean could also be changed, giving private firms the right to chop down trees.
......A senior Labour source last night condemned the plan as a move "to sell the crown jewels of the British countryside".
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
An Open Letter from CPO co-founder Neil Clark to Ed Miliband
This open letter from CPO co-founder Neil Clark , to the new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, is published in the Morning Star.
Dear Ed - if I may -
Congratulations on winning the contest for Labour leadership.
In your leadership campaign you presented yourself as the candidate for change. You've said that new Labour is "dead" and that a new generation has now taken over.
But in order to convince those thousands of former Labour members and voters (myself included), that the party really has changed from the days of Blair and Brown and will once again put the interests of people before capital, mere words will not be enough.
Nothing could demonstrate better that a clean break has been made with the new Labour years, than for the Labour Party once again to embrace public ownership.
Clause IV, drafted by Sidney Webb and adopted by the party in 1918, stated that the aim of Labour was "to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."
It remains the best definition of socialism I have ever come across. The Labour Party since its inception had always been an alliance of social democrats and democratic socialists, but when the party ditched Clause IV in 1995, it was a sign that it had lurched dramatically to the neoliberal right. To its shame, new Labour when in government continued the Conservatives pro-privatisation policies, despite privatisation's growing unpopularity with the public at large.
The restoration of the original Clause IV into the Labour Party's constitution would be a sign that Labour's privatisation days are over.
But short of that, there are four important areas where Labour, under your leadership, can prove that it really has broken with the failed economic dogma of the past.
First, Labour can campaign for the return of Britain's railways to full public ownership.
In opposition Labour opposed the Tory sell-off of British Rail. But to the huge disappointment of Labour supporters and the travelling public, Labour reneged on its promise when it came to office in 1997 and continued to subsidise profiteering private rail operators.
Rail privatisation, as all but the most fanatical free-market ideologues would agree, has been a total disaster.
Despite Britain's privatised train operators receiving around four times more in public subsidy than British Rail did in the last years of its existence, British rail fares are easily the highest in Europe, with commuters paying around twice as much as other Europeans. Trains are frequently overcrowded, with commuters who have paid thousands of pounds for season tickets being forced to stand in toilets.
Renationalising the railways would not only save taxpayers' money in the long term, it would be a voter-friendly policy - even a majority of Tory voters support taking the network back into public ownership.
It would also make sound environmental sense - bringing back British Rail and reducing prices to the European average would encourage people to leave their cars and use the most environmentally friendly form of transport.
Second, there is the fight against the privatisation of the Royal Mail, whose sell-off was recently announced by Business Secretary Vince Cable.
Royal Mail has been in state hands since its inception in 1516. It's proposed sell-off shows just how far to the neoliberal right Britain has travelled in recent years.
Shamefully, the last Labour government, of which you were a member, advocated a partial sell-off, but this fortunately was abandoned.
Will Labour now join the fight to keep the Royal Mail in full public ownership?
Again, this would be a voter-friendly policy which would put Labour on the side of the majority and expose the coalition for the extremists that they are.
Third, there is the battle to save the NHS. As the Guardian commentator Seumas Milne has pointed out, Andrew Lansley's white paper Liberating The NHS would, if enacted, mark the end of the NHS in all but name.
Will you give a commitment to unequivocally oppose Lansley's reforms and pledge Labour to defend the NHS and the principle of socialised, state-run health care - one of the party's greatest and most long-lasting achievements?
Fourth, there is the shameless profiteering of Britain's privatised utility companies such as British Gas, whose profits doubled to £585 million in the first six months of 2010, after it failed to pass on to consumers the full benefit of a sizeable drop in wholesale gas and electricity prices.
Before the privatisation of our utilities, household water, gas and electric bills were not the major items of expense for homeowners that they are today.
Last year a survey found that Britain's energy bills were rising four times faster than the EU average, while earlier this month a survey found that Britain's electricity bills - like our train fares - are the highest in Europe. Only renationalisation can end this profiteering and bring bills down for hard-pressed families and businesses.
You will, I'm sure come under enormous pressure from capital and its political emissaries to keep to the same pro-privatisation, neoliberal policies as your immediate predecessors.
It certainly concerned me that in your leadership election campaign you made no commitment to renationalise the railways - as fellow leadership candidate Diane Abbott did. Now though, you have a great opportunity to show that Labour really has changed.
If you do ditch Labour's support for privatisation and adopt a more positive stance towards public ownership, it will be proof that new Labour really is dead. You will be adopting policies that have the support of the vast majority of the British public, who are sick and tired of privatisation.
Supporting public ownership will make your more - and not less likely - to become the next British Prime Minister.
I hope that you will seize this historic opportunity to make Labour once again the party that puts the interests of ordinary people above the interests of capital.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Clark
Dear Ed - if I may -
Congratulations on winning the contest for Labour leadership.
In your leadership campaign you presented yourself as the candidate for change. You've said that new Labour is "dead" and that a new generation has now taken over.
But in order to convince those thousands of former Labour members and voters (myself included), that the party really has changed from the days of Blair and Brown and will once again put the interests of people before capital, mere words will not be enough.
Nothing could demonstrate better that a clean break has been made with the new Labour years, than for the Labour Party once again to embrace public ownership.
Clause IV, drafted by Sidney Webb and adopted by the party in 1918, stated that the aim of Labour was "to secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service."
It remains the best definition of socialism I have ever come across. The Labour Party since its inception had always been an alliance of social democrats and democratic socialists, but when the party ditched Clause IV in 1995, it was a sign that it had lurched dramatically to the neoliberal right. To its shame, new Labour when in government continued the Conservatives pro-privatisation policies, despite privatisation's growing unpopularity with the public at large.
The restoration of the original Clause IV into the Labour Party's constitution would be a sign that Labour's privatisation days are over.
But short of that, there are four important areas where Labour, under your leadership, can prove that it really has broken with the failed economic dogma of the past.
First, Labour can campaign for the return of Britain's railways to full public ownership.
In opposition Labour opposed the Tory sell-off of British Rail. But to the huge disappointment of Labour supporters and the travelling public, Labour reneged on its promise when it came to office in 1997 and continued to subsidise profiteering private rail operators.
Rail privatisation, as all but the most fanatical free-market ideologues would agree, has been a total disaster.
Despite Britain's privatised train operators receiving around four times more in public subsidy than British Rail did in the last years of its existence, British rail fares are easily the highest in Europe, with commuters paying around twice as much as other Europeans. Trains are frequently overcrowded, with commuters who have paid thousands of pounds for season tickets being forced to stand in toilets.
Renationalising the railways would not only save taxpayers' money in the long term, it would be a voter-friendly policy - even a majority of Tory voters support taking the network back into public ownership.
It would also make sound environmental sense - bringing back British Rail and reducing prices to the European average would encourage people to leave their cars and use the most environmentally friendly form of transport.
Second, there is the fight against the privatisation of the Royal Mail, whose sell-off was recently announced by Business Secretary Vince Cable.
Royal Mail has been in state hands since its inception in 1516. It's proposed sell-off shows just how far to the neoliberal right Britain has travelled in recent years.
Shamefully, the last Labour government, of which you were a member, advocated a partial sell-off, but this fortunately was abandoned.
Will Labour now join the fight to keep the Royal Mail in full public ownership?
Again, this would be a voter-friendly policy which would put Labour on the side of the majority and expose the coalition for the extremists that they are.
Third, there is the battle to save the NHS. As the Guardian commentator Seumas Milne has pointed out, Andrew Lansley's white paper Liberating The NHS would, if enacted, mark the end of the NHS in all but name.
Will you give a commitment to unequivocally oppose Lansley's reforms and pledge Labour to defend the NHS and the principle of socialised, state-run health care - one of the party's greatest and most long-lasting achievements?
Fourth, there is the shameless profiteering of Britain's privatised utility companies such as British Gas, whose profits doubled to £585 million in the first six months of 2010, after it failed to pass on to consumers the full benefit of a sizeable drop in wholesale gas and electricity prices.
Before the privatisation of our utilities, household water, gas and electric bills were not the major items of expense for homeowners that they are today.
Last year a survey found that Britain's energy bills were rising four times faster than the EU average, while earlier this month a survey found that Britain's electricity bills - like our train fares - are the highest in Europe. Only renationalisation can end this profiteering and bring bills down for hard-pressed families and businesses.
You will, I'm sure come under enormous pressure from capital and its political emissaries to keep to the same pro-privatisation, neoliberal policies as your immediate predecessors.
It certainly concerned me that in your leadership election campaign you made no commitment to renationalise the railways - as fellow leadership candidate Diane Abbott did. Now though, you have a great opportunity to show that Labour really has changed.
If you do ditch Labour's support for privatisation and adopt a more positive stance towards public ownership, it will be proof that new Labour really is dead. You will be adopting policies that have the support of the vast majority of the British public, who are sick and tired of privatisation.
Supporting public ownership will make your more - and not less likely - to become the next British Prime Minister.
I hope that you will seize this historic opportunity to make Labour once again the party that puts the interests of ordinary people above the interests of capital.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Clark
Thursday, August 26, 2010
UK’s sky high train fares now double what Europe pays
James Fielding: The Sunday Express
BRITAIN’S beleaguered rail passengers are paying twice as much to travel by train as other Europeans.
Fares in the UK, particularly London and the South-east, are already the highest in the EU.
By next January they could be up to 10 per cent higher.
The Sunday Express compared London rush-hour fares with equivalents in Europe. We found commuters here are already being unfairly hammered even without the planned hikes. A day return from Reading, Berkshire, around 40 miles from the capital, costs £34.40.
Commuters from Beauvais and Chartres in France, which are both around 40 miles from Paris, pay the equivalent of £12 and £13.50. In Italy rail travel is even cheaper, with commuters in Latina, 40 miles from Rome, paying £7.50. Back in Britain workers commuting from Luton, Bedfordshire, just 35 miles away, are charged £22.40.
That is only 40p more than the fare from Chelmsford, Essex, a similar distance from London.From Canterbury West, a 100-mile commute is £23.50. Commuters from Eberswalde, 30 miles from Berlin, are charged around £15, while an 80-mile round trip from Toledo to Madrid costs the equivalent of just £9.50.
BRITAIN’S beleaguered rail passengers are paying twice as much to travel by train as other Europeans.
Fares in the UK, particularly London and the South-east, are already the highest in the EU.
By next January they could be up to 10 per cent higher.
The Sunday Express compared London rush-hour fares with equivalents in Europe. We found commuters here are already being unfairly hammered even without the planned hikes. A day return from Reading, Berkshire, around 40 miles from the capital, costs £34.40.
Commuters from Beauvais and Chartres in France, which are both around 40 miles from Paris, pay the equivalent of £12 and £13.50. In Italy rail travel is even cheaper, with commuters in Latina, 40 miles from Rome, paying £7.50. Back in Britain workers commuting from Luton, Bedfordshire, just 35 miles away, are charged £22.40.
That is only 40p more than the fare from Chelmsford, Essex, a similar distance from London.From Canterbury West, a 100-mile commute is £23.50. Commuters from Eberswalde, 30 miles from Berlin, are charged around £15, while an 80-mile round trip from Toledo to Madrid costs the equivalent of just £9.50.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Diane Abbott: Nationalise now to end rail chaos
We subsidise train operators to the tune of £1billion a year and subsidise Network Rail by £4billion. Yet managers continue to pay themselves fat, private-sector salaries and bonuses and the companies continue to squeeze the travellers. That is why I believe it is time to take the railways back into public ownership. It was a mistake to privatise them in the first place as it’s allowed private companies to profiteer without regard to public interest.
My opponents in the battle for the Labour leadership are the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. They all claim that it would be too expensive to bring the railways back into public owner ship but they are wrong, it would actually save the public money. For one thing network Rail is effectively state-owned already. The rail infrastructure was effectively renationalised when Railtrack went into administration in 2001.
It would cost nothing to bring back train operations into public hands. The Government would have two options: either it would not renew the franchises when they expire or, as the companies got into financial difficulties, they could be taken over. Additionally private-sector train operators receive a huge direct subsidy from the Government.
This is just subsidising their profits. It would be cheaper and in the public interest to operate the trains directly. The current mess doesn’t serve the general public, the taxpayer or the rail commuter. The Labour Party that I would lead would start listening to the public for the first time in a long time. On the railways, as on other issues, I would introduce policies that made sense instead of running scared of big-money interests.
You can read the whole of Labour leadership hopeful Dianne Abbott’s brilliant Sunday Express article here.
My opponents in the battle for the Labour leadership are the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham. They all claim that it would be too expensive to bring the railways back into public owner ship but they are wrong, it would actually save the public money. For one thing network Rail is effectively state-owned already. The rail infrastructure was effectively renationalised when Railtrack went into administration in 2001.
It would cost nothing to bring back train operations into public hands. The Government would have two options: either it would not renew the franchises when they expire or, as the companies got into financial difficulties, they could be taken over. Additionally private-sector train operators receive a huge direct subsidy from the Government.
This is just subsidising their profits. It would be cheaper and in the public interest to operate the trains directly. The current mess doesn’t serve the general public, the taxpayer or the rail commuter. The Labour Party that I would lead would start listening to the public for the first time in a long time. On the railways, as on other issues, I would introduce policies that made sense instead of running scared of big-money interests.
You can read the whole of Labour leadership hopeful Dianne Abbott’s brilliant Sunday Express article here.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Neil Clark: Laissez-faire Britain loses another brick in the wall
This article by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears in The First Post.
Non! Neil Clark bemoans the imminent sale of International Power to a French state owned group
.....We were told by the Thatcherites, and neo-liberal think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute, which pushed aggressively for privatisation, that reducing state ownership would improve economic efficiency and be good for the country. But while Britain put up a 'For Sale' sign on our national assets, other European nations have played a far more intelligent game.
It's hard to imagine the French, wedded to a policy of Gaullist economic nationalism, allowing SNCF, their prestigious national railway, to suffer the fate of British Rail and allow foreign-owned companies to operate their train services.
It's inconceivable, too, to imagine Germany allowing an iconic company like Volkswagen to fall into foreign hands, as Britain did with its car industry.
You can read the whole article here.
Non! Neil Clark bemoans the imminent sale of International Power to a French state owned group
.....We were told by the Thatcherites, and neo-liberal think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute, which pushed aggressively for privatisation, that reducing state ownership would improve economic efficiency and be good for the country. But while Britain put up a 'For Sale' sign on our national assets, other European nations have played a far more intelligent game.
It's hard to imagine the French, wedded to a policy of Gaullist economic nationalism, allowing SNCF, their prestigious national railway, to suffer the fate of British Rail and allow foreign-owned companies to operate their train services.
It's inconceivable, too, to imagine Germany allowing an iconic company like Volkswagen to fall into foreign hands, as Britain did with its car industry.
You can read the whole article here.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Neil Clark: Open Wide for Public Service Destruction
This column by CPO co-founder Neil Clark appears in the Morning Star.
NEIL CLARK examines the coalition government's plans to carry on the backdoor firesale of our assets.
July 6 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the great Welsh socialist Aneurin Bevan, the father of the NHS.
Just six days after the anniversary, Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley announced radical government plans which, if carried out, will mark the end of Bevan's great, humane creation in all but name.
The extent of the reforms, which allow all hospitals to leave public ownership as well as scrapping primary health care trusts and the revenue cap on private patients, shocked many political observers. They were a clear breach of Lansley's own pre-election pledge not to introduce any major structural reform of the NHS.
But those who appreciate that the "progressive" Con-Dem government bats for capital and not for the ordinary British people would not have been surprised in the least.
In January, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Lansley, then shadow health secretary, had received £21,000 for the running of his private office from private equity tycoon John Nash, chairman of Care UK and several other health companies.
In company documents Nash, who also gave the Tories £60,000 in September 2009, enthused over "recent policy statements by the opposition Conservative Party in the UK which have substantially strengthened their commitment to more open market reform to allow new providers of NHS services and for greater freedom for patients to choose their GP and hospital provider."
For privateers like Nash the trouble with Labour was that after the fall of Tony Blair the "open market reform" of the NHS was proceeding too slowly.
Now Nash and his fellow private healthcare providers have got the fast-track "reforming" government they want. But for pro-privatisation politicians like Lansley there remains a problem.
Despite the relentless propaganda of neoliberal think tanks and NHS-bashing columns by right-wing writers such as Janet Daley, Simon Heffer and Richard Littlejohn, the NHS remains an enormously popular institution. It's loved not just by socialists and social democrats, but by Conservative voters too.
If the government announced that the NHS was to be privatised en bloc there'd be a huge public outcry. So Lansley needs to present his reforms as "liberating" the NHS and achieve privatisation through the backdoor.
The government is clearly using the destruction of NHS dentistry as its model.
From the 1990s onwards, private dental chains started buying up NHS practices and converting them to private-only practices. The value of private dentistry grew from £289m in 1994-95 to just under £2bn in 2001-2. And costs for treatments soared - on average private treatments are four times more expensive than those offered on the NHS.
Millions of Britons, unable to pay the higher costs and without an NHS practice in their area, simply stopped going to the dentist altogether. As a result tooth decay, mouth cancer and other oral diseases rose sharply.
As I highlighted in the New Statesman in 2003, "A predominantly private dental service inevitably means a two-tier service: good mouths and gleaming smiles for the rich; disease, tooth decay and emergency extraction dentistry for the rest."
What we are heading for if the coalition gets its way is a predominantly private health service. As in dentistry, that will mean a two-tier service - good health and prompt treatment for the rich, longer waiting times and a second-class service for the rest.
How Nye Bevan must be turning in his grave.
Transport failure
Back in the 1980s, a group of fanatical neoliberals calling themselves the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) called for the deregulation of Britain's bus industry and the privatisation of the state-owned National Bus Company. The government listened to their advice and today Britain has the most expensive buses in Europe.
A decade later the same group of fanatical neoliberals called for the privatisation of British Rail. Despite the warnings of wise old anti-Thatcherite Tories such as Sir Ian Gilmour, who thought privatising the rail network was "crazy," John Major's government listened to their advice and sold off the railways.
The result? Britain has the most fragmented and expensive railway system in Europe, if not the entire world.
You'd have thought that given their disastrous track record - no pun intended - the ASI would by now have done the honourable thing and disappeared from public life.
Not a bit of it. The group is still active today - and still coming out with "free market" claptrap. Their latest proposal is for the TV licence fee to be abolished and the BBC to instead become a voluntary subscription service. Such a move would, the institute argues, encourage the BBC "to compete with the big US studios."
Well I don't know about you, dear reader, but I don't want the BBC to "compete with the big US studios." I only want the state-owned broadcaster to continue to produce the good-quality programmes it has done for years.
Implementation of the earlier "crazy" ASI ideas led to the destruction of the National Bus Company and British Rail. Let's make sure it doesn't claim a third scalp with the BBC.
Energy rip-off
"Why does NO-ONE step in and do something about these big companies robbing customers. I struggle with my gas especially when it's cold and it really at times has been a choice between being warm and buying food/paying other bills etc ... it's criminal and something really should be done about it," wrote a commenter on the Daily Mirror's website.
They were responding to news that British Gas had almost doubled its profits to £583m in the first six months of 2010.
Public anger with the corporate profiteers is certainly growing. It will continue to grow as living standards for the majority fall, due to the government's swingeing cuts in public spending. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the battle is not between the middle and working classes, but between a small gang of corporate profiteers and everyone else.
This gang of profiteers is screwing all of us and it will continue to do so until we make a clean break with neoliberalism and bring back into public ownership all the assets which have been privatised in the last 30 years.
NEIL CLARK examines the coalition government's plans to carry on the backdoor firesale of our assets.
July 6 2010 marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the great Welsh socialist Aneurin Bevan, the father of the NHS.
Just six days after the anniversary, Tory Health Minister Andrew Lansley announced radical government plans which, if carried out, will mark the end of Bevan's great, humane creation in all but name.
The extent of the reforms, which allow all hospitals to leave public ownership as well as scrapping primary health care trusts and the revenue cap on private patients, shocked many political observers. They were a clear breach of Lansley's own pre-election pledge not to introduce any major structural reform of the NHS.
But those who appreciate that the "progressive" Con-Dem government bats for capital and not for the ordinary British people would not have been surprised in the least.
In January, the Daily Telegraph revealed that Lansley, then shadow health secretary, had received £21,000 for the running of his private office from private equity tycoon John Nash, chairman of Care UK and several other health companies.
In company documents Nash, who also gave the Tories £60,000 in September 2009, enthused over "recent policy statements by the opposition Conservative Party in the UK which have substantially strengthened their commitment to more open market reform to allow new providers of NHS services and for greater freedom for patients to choose their GP and hospital provider."
For privateers like Nash the trouble with Labour was that after the fall of Tony Blair the "open market reform" of the NHS was proceeding too slowly.
Now Nash and his fellow private healthcare providers have got the fast-track "reforming" government they want. But for pro-privatisation politicians like Lansley there remains a problem.
Despite the relentless propaganda of neoliberal think tanks and NHS-bashing columns by right-wing writers such as Janet Daley, Simon Heffer and Richard Littlejohn, the NHS remains an enormously popular institution. It's loved not just by socialists and social democrats, but by Conservative voters too.
If the government announced that the NHS was to be privatised en bloc there'd be a huge public outcry. So Lansley needs to present his reforms as "liberating" the NHS and achieve privatisation through the backdoor.
The government is clearly using the destruction of NHS dentistry as its model.
From the 1990s onwards, private dental chains started buying up NHS practices and converting them to private-only practices. The value of private dentistry grew from £289m in 1994-95 to just under £2bn in 2001-2. And costs for treatments soared - on average private treatments are four times more expensive than those offered on the NHS.
Millions of Britons, unable to pay the higher costs and without an NHS practice in their area, simply stopped going to the dentist altogether. As a result tooth decay, mouth cancer and other oral diseases rose sharply.
As I highlighted in the New Statesman in 2003, "A predominantly private dental service inevitably means a two-tier service: good mouths and gleaming smiles for the rich; disease, tooth decay and emergency extraction dentistry for the rest."
What we are heading for if the coalition gets its way is a predominantly private health service. As in dentistry, that will mean a two-tier service - good health and prompt treatment for the rich, longer waiting times and a second-class service for the rest.
How Nye Bevan must be turning in his grave.
Transport failure
Back in the 1980s, a group of fanatical neoliberals calling themselves the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) called for the deregulation of Britain's bus industry and the privatisation of the state-owned National Bus Company. The government listened to their advice and today Britain has the most expensive buses in Europe.
A decade later the same group of fanatical neoliberals called for the privatisation of British Rail. Despite the warnings of wise old anti-Thatcherite Tories such as Sir Ian Gilmour, who thought privatising the rail network was "crazy," John Major's government listened to their advice and sold off the railways.
The result? Britain has the most fragmented and expensive railway system in Europe, if not the entire world.
You'd have thought that given their disastrous track record - no pun intended - the ASI would by now have done the honourable thing and disappeared from public life.
Not a bit of it. The group is still active today - and still coming out with "free market" claptrap. Their latest proposal is for the TV licence fee to be abolished and the BBC to instead become a voluntary subscription service. Such a move would, the institute argues, encourage the BBC "to compete with the big US studios."
Well I don't know about you, dear reader, but I don't want the BBC to "compete with the big US studios." I only want the state-owned broadcaster to continue to produce the good-quality programmes it has done for years.
Implementation of the earlier "crazy" ASI ideas led to the destruction of the National Bus Company and British Rail. Let's make sure it doesn't claim a third scalp with the BBC.
Energy rip-off
"Why does NO-ONE step in and do something about these big companies robbing customers. I struggle with my gas especially when it's cold and it really at times has been a choice between being warm and buying food/paying other bills etc ... it's criminal and something really should be done about it," wrote a commenter on the Daily Mirror's website.
They were responding to news that British Gas had almost doubled its profits to £583m in the first six months of 2010.
Public anger with the corporate profiteers is certainly growing. It will continue to grow as living standards for the majority fall, due to the government's swingeing cuts in public spending. More and more people are waking up to the fact that the battle is not between the middle and working classes, but between a small gang of corporate profiteers and everyone else.
This gang of profiteers is screwing all of us and it will continue to do so until we make a clean break with neoliberalism and bring back into public ownership all the assets which have been privatised in the last 30 years.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
How Privatisation-crazy Clegg and Cameron are pissing off Middle England
CPO co-founder Neil Clark writes:
The most interesting thing about British politics at present is the way that the ruling coalition's extreme neo-liberalism has put it on a collision course not just with the 'old' left, but with conservative Middle England. Aside from the Morning Star, there has been no daily newspaper more unrelentingly critical of the new government than the Daily Mail - the authentic voice of the country's small 'c' conservatives.
With the economic future so uncertain, Middle England wants security and reassurance, which they're certainly not getting from Cameron and Clegg. On the contrary, the coalition's ideological mission to privatise the British state, using as an excuse the need to cut the deficit, means four years of major upheavals. And it's the reforms to health care which are causing the most concern.
The whole of the article can be read here.
The most interesting thing about British politics at present is the way that the ruling coalition's extreme neo-liberalism has put it on a collision course not just with the 'old' left, but with conservative Middle England. Aside from the Morning Star, there has been no daily newspaper more unrelentingly critical of the new government than the Daily Mail - the authentic voice of the country's small 'c' conservatives.
With the economic future so uncertain, Middle England wants security and reassurance, which they're certainly not getting from Cameron and Clegg. On the contrary, the coalition's ideological mission to privatise the British state, using as an excuse the need to cut the deficit, means four years of major upheavals. And it's the reforms to health care which are causing the most concern.
The whole of the article can be read here.
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