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And now the backlash

Mike Phipps
19th September 2014 at 22:08
4 comments
The panic is over. The neck and neck opinion polls that led the Westminster party leaders to make uncosted promises of greater devolution to Scotland and guarantees of bigger grant funding from the centre have unravelled within hours of the result. The “vow” to which party leaders committed offering extensive new powers to the Scottish parliament suddenly seems to be without a timetable - and locked in to a Cameron commitment to guarantee English votes on English-only issues. [continue/comment...]

“Fear is changing sides”

Mike Phipps
15th September 2014 at 20:12
0 comments
Hundreds attended a meeting packed to overflowing - mainly young people, many Spanish - on September 14th to hear a three-way debate between Owen Jones, Ken Loach and leaders of the new Spanish organisation Podemos, which took five seats in the European Parliament in May just three months after being formed. One of the new MEPs, Tania González Peñas, spoke from the platform. [continue/comment...]

Hope for The Super- Exploited Young Generation

Barry Ewart
9th September 2014 at 14:42
0 comments
A very moving piece on the BBC website today,“As many as three quarters of a million young people feel they have nothing to live for.”  But young people can empower themselves and become critical citizens by organising politically - they don’t have to put up with things and colectively they have a voice.  They are the super-expoited younger generation who may end up (if poor) in cheap labour jobs and having to work until they are 70 for minimal pensions.  I would hope young people would join trade unions and find democratic socialist solutions; I would further hope they would join Labour and radicalise it.  But of course as the better off and predominantly m class pour out to vote Tory we have the occasional imbecilic but sadly apparently influential celeb encouraging them not to vote which only helps the rich and powerful laugh all the way with the bankers; taking a away at a stroke of the writers pen at least one of the few powers that they colectively may possess. We need policies for young people and just imagine how many jobs a shorter working week and earlier retirement could create (as well as benefitting older employees). Labour’s idea of critical HE degrees and Technical HE degrees are a very good step but we also need to bring back the weekly allowances for attending FE Colleges and perhaps bring these in for 16-18 year olds still at School. It would also be good to fund community workers to follow the ideas of Paulo Freire to try to empower the most disaffected youth. We further need to reverse the Tory and Lib Dem rules and allow young people to rent social housing etc. again as single tenants. Young people shoudn’t despair, collectively they have potential power - to paraphrase Joe Hill- DON’T MOAN, ORGANISE! Yours in hope and solidarity!  [continue/comment...]

A Federal Britain?

Barry Ewart
9th September 2014 at 11:58
1 comment
As a Labour and LRC member I wonder if it is time to consider a Federal Britain? With England being 80% of the UK perhaps we could have Regional Parliaments here and some are already caling for a Northern Parliament (Salveson et al) and perhaps the South, East and West could have them too? But I do not think there is a public appetite for a new tier of regional English MPs so we could perhaps have existing MPs sitting one week in the region and 3 weeks in London per month? They could also meet in local authority council chambers so new new expensive new build!  To an extent the civil service is already decentralised but what we really need is decentralised budgets to the regions. Labour has already said it will devolve £30b of Govt. spending which is a good start but perhaps to make it more effective you would need more. What could also make it interesting is if we also had regional democratic public ownership (with staff electing qualified boards and communities having a say)of say mail, rail, some banks (like Germany) and public utilities.  Throw in free public transport (democratically owned and controlled) and we could have a radical, progressive, and decentralised agenda for change.  Food for thought. With best wishes, Barry  [continue/comment...]

Act Local & Think Global

Barry Ewart
7th September 2014 at 16:26
0 comments
Read John McDonnell’s excellent piece on trade unions and wouldn’t it be great if all left parties around the World were making similar demands.  Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism are international but at times it could be argued that some on the left can sometimes be parochial.  It breaks my heart to hear about the victims of the bedroom tax (and we should be calling for compensation for all those who have suffered under this) and to hear about absolute poverty and conditions in less developed countries. But the left shouldn’t be downhearted as Streeck in the latest New Left Review argues the rich and powerful haven’t a clue what to do about the financial crisis and quantitive easing has only put off the crisis for a few years.  Labour is bang on the money about the cost of living crisis and Neo-Liberalism’s Achilles Heel is it’s drive for cheap labour which restricts the ability of working people to purchase commodities.  I can almost hear the capitalist preachers saying, “Praise The Lord for the credit card!” Perhaps an old saying is good advice after all, ACT LOCAL, THINK GLOBAL.
Yours in solidarity!  [continue/comment...]

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