The real reason behind austerity

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The real reason behind austerity is to erode hope, to increase inequality and to make people's lives so hard that they do not have a chance to demand better. Nay, not just that, but that they even do not dare to demand better for fear of falling every deeper into poverty.

It has nothing whatsoever to do with reducing the country's dept and all that jazz. Portugal did not follow that idea put forward by the EU and others and, erm, no, the country did not fall off a cliff; the economy grew.

Austerity is about putting people into poverty because poverty is the ultimate form of control. Because people who are poor are, more often than not, dependent on government or other agencies for help and thus are controllable.

The aim of the neo-liberals, on whose dung heap those ideas have grown, is to make the poor ever poorer and also put the middle class into the poor bracket, wherever possible, while the elite gets richer by the minute.

Also, people who are poor but are working will not risk taking industrial action, that is to say strike or such, for fear of losing their job, which in turn could lead to losing their home and even losing their children.

In this context we also have to and must see the attempt by the neo-liberal establishment to outlaw, basically, cash and the use of it. Without money in the form of cash people also have no chance to do any extra, unofficial work, or make a little money from hobby crafts, selling surplus garden produce and such. Neither can they be trading on craft and other markets as card terminals would not be within their scope.

The end of cash will also, to a great extent, mean the end of markets in villages, towns and cities, selling produce and other things, as the majority of the market traders would also not be able to afford the use of card terminals.

The entire reason for the neo-liberal idea of austerity is to make the poor poorer still, to make the middle class poor, and to make the rich ever richer and by privatizing every public service making increasing the values of the shares of the corporations and the dividends for their shareholders, mostly the already very rich. It has nothing to do with the economy not with the reduction of the public debt.

Austerity is the tool by means of which the neo-liberal elite is turning most of the people into obedient slaves, who dare not revolt for fear of becoming poorer still.

© 2018

Government council cuts are punishing the most vulnerable

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Mass scale cuts to council budgets will lead to the death of local government and heap punishment on the most vulnerable, as ministers announce a further 2.9 per cent cut in funding for 2014/15, warns Unite, Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union.

Many of the country’s most deprived councils will bear the brunt, with Liverpool city council facing a 62 per cent cut in funding between 2010 and 2017. Local government workers, who have already suffered a £3,544 cut in pay since 2010, will be pushed deeper into poverty as they are forced into a jobs versus wages tussle.

Unite, Britain’s biggest union, fears that by 2015 there will be little local government left after a 43 per cent real terms cut in funding in the five years since 2010. Cuts of this scale will lead to the complete demolition of services including care for the frail and elderly, children services, support for vulnerable families and youth services.

Despite the huge pressures faced by councils, Unite appeals to councils not to slash before thinking, but to work with unions to find savings and to protect service quality.

Responding to the government’s provisional local government financial settlement, published on December 18, 2013, Fiona Farmer, Unite national officer, said: “This government is presiding over the complete meltdown of local services. Ordinary hardworking people are, again, the ones being battered by the loss of the services they rely on to educate and care for their families.

“This is a shamelessly political settlement which rewards wealthy Tory councils and punishes the less well off.

“In some of the country’s most deprived areas, including the prime minister’s Oxfordshire constituency, services such as care for the frail and elderly, support for vulnerable families, children’s centres, sexual health services around teenage pregnancy and Connexions services, have already been shut or are threatened with closure. The wealthy Tory shires continue to escape relatively unscathed.

“The government will be gambling on the public blaming local councils for service cuts, but it is wrong; the public understand where the real blame lies - at the door of the communities and local government secretary, Eric Pickles.”

Unite is Britain and Ireland’s largest trade union with 1.4 million members working across all sectors of the economy. The general secretary is Len McCluskey.

In spite of warnings such as this by the leaders, so to speak, in the labor movement the British Labour Party has stated that it will continue, should it win the 2015 elections, which cannot come too soon, with the austerity measures and cuts.

While it is true that the finances of the United Kingdom are rather in disarray and the country is heavily indebted to the bankers of the world there are savings and cuts that can be made elsewhere and which would be real cuts in expenditure and not to vital services.

Alone abandoning the stupid idea of a nuclear deterrent which is laughable in the extreme would save billions upon billions which could be better used elsewhere and that is just for starters. Abandoning ideas of wars in countries where we have no business of being would be another great saving that could be made, not that the generals and warmongers would like this idea and neither the industries whose “vital interests” might be abandoned if we did.

The brief of our armed forces is the “defense of the realm” and the realm, last time I checked, does not include Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, or any other country. It also does not include Bosnia and such like. It ends with the territorial waters of the United Kingdom and may, if we so want, include Gibraltar and the Islas Malvinas and other so-called dependents.

Let's look at savings there and to creating a peaceful country that regards the sovereignty of other countries and to a green economy which could create masses of jobs and give us energy and food security and much more.

© 2013

Neighborhood policing not sustainable with imposed budget cuts

Local police patrols in danger of being 'eroded' by budget cuts, despite drop in crime

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

While overall crime in England and Wales down 9 per cent on last year, reported rapes are up 2 per cent. Budget cuts, however, could seriously undermine the safety and protection of the public, regardless of the complacency of government.

The police services across the UK face fundamental changes to the way they operate after a report that come out on July 18, 2013 revealing that five forces will struggle with further budget cuts after the anticipated loss of nearly 32,000 jobs across England and Wales by 2015.

A report by the police inspectorate said that forces had generally coped well with 20 per cent cuts over five years but warned that local patrolling was in danger of being “eroded” and could have an impact on crime prevention programs. The report also raised concerns that the response times to 999 calls were rising in some areas.

The study was released after the Office for National Statistics reported a 9% fall in recorded crime for the last year, despite a rise in rape offenses and a 27% increase in fraud. The Government said the figures were vindication of radical reforms that had seen budget cuts and the introduction of elected police and crime commissioners.

Recorded crime, though, is a very questionable figure for some crimes are not, in fact, being recorded. All too often controllers refuse to log something as a crime, such as vandalism or break-ins into empty properties, for example.

Despite the fall in some recorded crimes five of the 43 police forces in England and Wales will struggle to find further cuts after March 2015, according to the report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary. They include two of the smallest forces, Lincolnshire and Bedfordshire, which have fewer options to trim budgets and raises the prospect of police mergers in a radical change to the policing landscape. West and South Yorkshire and Northamptonshire also faces future problems.

The Government has opposed such changes and the election of 41 police and crime commissioners appeared to steer the debate away from senior police demands for fewer forces. But in a speech earlier this month, the policing minister Damian Green said he had nothing against mergers in principle where they are supported by PCCs and the local community.

The HMIC report said that the failure of forces to collaborate represented a major lost opportunity in cutting costs, but chief inspector Tom Winsor warned that mergers involved a “serious degree of disruption and expense”.

He highlighted some forces where there had been “mergers by osmosis” such as Kent and Essex which has a joint serious crime command. “Working smarter – doing things in different ways – will be necessary,” he said. “That will include greater measures of collaboration between forces and with the private sector and other parts of the public sector.”

And with private sector we can assume that the aim is to, more or less, privatize policing, and outsource it, including, despite that we are told otherwise, the patrolling of the streets, to companies such as G4S and security services that are operated by former military personnel, as are used for protection duties of many public officials on public events, including firearms carriers.

The report also raises concerns that in some areas, police community support officers and other community support officers (community wardens) – neither of who have the powers of arrest – have taken over the role of local patrolling. There is also evidence that volunteer specials are plugging gaps following the expected loss of 15,400 police officers by 2015.

In some areas, it would appear from the report, the neighborhood policing is all but done by PCSOs and community wardens already because of those cuts. It would appear that the British public are being conditioned to see fewer sworn officers on the streets and to accept policing by private companies. While, at the same time, being conditioned that they, the people, are not permitted to protect and defend themselves against crimes.

The Con-Dem coalition, led by the Conservatives, are hellbent on selling all of the family silver, so to speak, by privatizing all of the public services of the country wherever possible and even if it is not possible it is going to be done.

How did it go again on the ill-fated Apollo mission? Houston we have a problem. We indeed have a problem and it is the government.

© 2013

The living standards squeeze tightens as minimum cost of living soars by 25% since downturn

The minimum cost of living has soared by a quarter since the start of the economic downturn, according to a report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which details the true inflationary pressures facing low income households.

The research finds families are facing an "unprecedented erosion of household living standards" thanks to rapid inflation and flat-lining wages.

The findings are part of JRF’s annual Minimum Income Standard (MIS), which is based on the goods and services members of the public think people need in order to have a minimum acceptable standard of living.

Since the research was first published in 2008, the cost of the MIS basket has increased by 25 per cent, compared with 17 per cent for the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), the standard measure of inflation. The inflationary pressures facing low income households are far greater than official measures suggest.

Rising costs have implications for the earnings people now need to get by. In 2008, a single person earning £13,000 would have reached the minimum. If their wage had risen in line with average wage increases, they would now earn £14,000 - well short of the £17,000 salary needed to cover higher living costs in 2013, according to today’s report.

In 2013, to reach an adequate standard of living:

• A single person needs to earn £16,850.

• A working couple with two children need to earn £19,400 each.

• A lone parent requires earnings of £25,600.

The cost of essentials has driven up the earnings required by families. Over the past five years:

• Childcare costs have risen over twice as fast as inflation at 37%

• Rent in social housing has gone up by 26%

• Food costs have increased by 24%

• Energy costs are 39% more and;

• Public transport is up by 30%.

Cuts to benefits and tax credits have exacerbated the problem over the past 12 months. The Coalition’s flagship policy of raising the personal tax allowance to £9,440 in April has helped - but is cancelled out by the cuts and the rising cost of essentials.

The freeze in child benefit, the decision to uprate tax credits by just 1% and the increase in the cost of essentials faster than inflation mean that a working couple with two children will be £230 worse off a year; a working lone parent has £223 less disposable income and a single person is worse off by £49 per year.

Katie Schmuecker, Policy and Research Manager at JRF, said: “Our research shows that the spiralling cost of essentials is hurting low income families and damaging living standards. The public have told us their everyday costs have soared above wage levels, driving up the amount they need to make ends meet.

“Inflation has impacts for us all, but is most keenly felt by the poorest. Balancing weekly budgets has become an unenviable task for those who are worse off. Help for families in paying for essentials at more affordable prices can be just as important as improving household income - a precarious combination of rising costs and falling incomes leaves families in a risky position.

“Cuts to benefits and tax credits – especially cuts to support for childcare – combined with stagnant wages and the rising cost of essentials is resulting in an unprecedented erosion of living standards. The government has introduced measures like raising the personal tax allowance to try and help, but any positive effect is more than cancelled out. If the government wants to help these struggling families, they have to make sure that different policies join up rather than contradict each other.”

Donald Hirsch, author of the report, said: “From this April, for the first time since the 1930s, benefits are being cut in real terms by not being linked to inflation. This combined with falling real wages means that the next election is likely to be the first since 1931 when living standards are lower than at the last one.

“This year’s MIS tells us working parents with children need to earn £19,400 each at a time when wages are flat. There is a growing gulf between public expectations of the living standard everyone should be able to afford and their ability to earn enough to achieve it. About a quarter of households in the UK fall short of the income required to reach an adequate standard of living - for them a 25% increase in costs intensifies the everyday struggle to make ends meet.

“This year’s report demonstrates how the price of a basket of goods needed for an acceptable living standard has risen far faster than average inflation. This has combined with low pay increases to create a widening gap between income and needs.”

Source: Joseph Rowntree Foundation

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

Recession good for profits

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Corporate profits as a share of national income continue to break records, not despite unemployment and wage stagnation, but because of them.

Recession is always good for the capitalists and capitalism as it guarantees them a labor force that is scared of losing their jobs and thus will accept lower wages and bad working conditions just to be able to have some sort of an income.

In the US corporations, aided and abetted by government, has now gone so far to make people work overtime at no pay. Instead people are told that they can take the time, as normal hours, off in lieu. In other words no time-and-a-half, as it was, and double time for weekends. And, guess what? People have to accept those conditions or else they are out of a job.

Workers, in the private and public sectors alike, see their wages stagnate or even, in real terms go down, while, that the same time, the bosses, including in the public sector, get salary increases and big bonuses. And let's not even talk about the bankers who have caused the grief in the first place.

While the workers are made to pay for the crimes of the bankers the latter are getting away unmolested and are even rewarded for said crimes by having the banks bailed out at taxpayers expense and still receive millions in bonuses each.

The system is corrupt as are the corporations and governments and a change is needed but it is not a new government. It is a new system that is required. One that is not built on continuous economic growth, which is not possible anyway in a world with finite non-renewable resources. The economy must be a resource-based one and a system one that puts people and the Planet before profits.

© 2013

British MPs to get up to £20,000 pay increase, possibly

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

With the country under severe austerity measures and workers, especially those in the public sector, having their wages frozen and having to accept pay cuts, at least in real terms, the greedy Members of Parliament are prepared to vote themselves a pay increase of up to £20,000.

Such an increase in their pay is equal to or more than what many a worker, and especially here those in the public sector such as nurses, council workers and such, makes in a year – before tax and other deductions are made.

Those self-same parliamentarians, who tell workers that for the sake of the country they have to make sacrifices and tighten their belts, will quite happily vote themselves an increase in their own salaries equal to or above the annual before tax salary of many a worker.

“We are all in this together” was the slogan with regards to the recession and austerity and it is true; they are all in it together to take the people for a ride and bleed them dry.

It does not matter what political color they are either. Blue, yellow, red and the rest will all give themselves a nice pay raise while cutting the wages of those who really do the work on the frontline.

We must demand from our politicians that they learn to live on the same amount of money as the average skilled worker, which is a little more than that increase they wish to vote themselves, so that they learn what it is like to live in the real world.

Proof that we don't need a new government but that we need a new system.

© 2013

Top pay rises continue apace while real wages fall for ordinary families

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Commenting on a report published in early Spring 2013 by the Chartered Institute of Management which says that UK chief executives saw a 15.8 per cent increase in their salaries in the past year - mostly made up of bonuses, TUC General Secretary Frances O'Grady said: “Ordinary people are suffering the biggest squeeze on their incomes in almost a century, but families' financial pain is not being shared by their top bosses who have huge bonuses to cushion them against any drop in their living standards.

“While real wages continue to fall for working people, the cosy pay clubs setting salary and bonus payouts for top executives are awarding payouts that bear little relation to company performance and that only serve to widen the gap between the richest and the poorest in the UK.

“With the AGM season almost upon us, our new share owner group aims to inject a long overdue dose of reality into British boardrooms and will use the power of our pension funds to encourage a new and more responsible corporate Britain.”

But the leadership of the very Trade Unions also should take a leaf out of their book of good advice and take less pay themselves. They have a big mouth, and rightly so, when it comes to the salaries of those chief executives and bankers but their own salaries and bonuses also are not without, that is for sure.

It is also those high salaries of chief executives, including those of trade unions, councils and civil service, that distort the so-called “average” wages and salaries in Britain.

If those CEOs, and also ministers and member of parliament, were to receive but the same pay as a skilled worker than they all soon would begin to live in the real world and come down to earth rather quickly, and that salary would be around the £25,000 to £30,000 per year; the kind of salary most people have to live on, and some on a great deal less.

Parliamentarians have continuously voted themselves rather high annual pay increases why the froze the public sector workers one for three years and now give about a 1% increase – well below the rate of inflation – and which is immediately negated by increase in contributions to pensions and national insurance and taxes, such as the council tax, not to speak from the rising costs of living. This means that, in reality, the ordinary worker, especially those in the public sector have not just had a pay freeze and now a measly and miserly increase in pay but had to take a serious pay cut. At the same time CEOs and MPs get more and more money and even more so those in the private sector.

We do not need a new government; we need a new system...

© 2013

Austerity bites hard in Europe

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In many member states of European Union (and Euro) land austerity measures are biting and are hitting the poorest hardest.

While dumpster diving and the Freegan lifestyle is a good green option in many cities of the European Union all kinds of people are no forced to check the dumpsters outside the back of stores for food (and other items).

No one, bar Freegans, some other greens, and some of the welfare recipients, would have, until recently, thought about checking through the dumpsters outside stores for still edible foods for their dinner but it now is becoming a very common sight.

In the UK, on the other hand, with many store dumpsters, it is not a very good option as many stores are pouring bleach over the food that gets thrown into the dumpsters to prevent people from taking it.

Much of that food that stores throw out nightly is still perfectly safe to eat but they rather destroy it so that the poor, and those who wish to help reduce the waste of food, cannot make use of it. They claim that is is being done in order to prevent anyone picking up food that may be off and, more importantly, then turn round and try to sue the company.

The truth, however, is that they do not want to enable people who cannot even afford to buy their food to have it for free. It is greed; pure and simple, and I am sure that we could also find some other, stronger, words for that.

However, as said, in mainland Europe people are now scavenging in dumpsters of food stores (and stores in general) for anything usable out of necessity as the austerity measures of the governments are biting very hard indeed.

We have not seen this, in most countries of the European Union, especially not the old founding countries, ever since the end of the Second World War, and it falls, definitely, under the disgraceful category.

The governments have, in the good times, squandered money left, right and center, and many are involved in foreign conflicts where they have no business in being, and invested in ponzi schemes in often foreign banks, such as local governments in the UK, which then collapsed and they were left holding the baby. Now it is the poor that have to carry the can for the incompetence of their actions.

We need a new system, not a new government.

© 2012