Campaign news archive - December 2016

EU Scrooges Spoil Greeks’ Christmas

EU Scrooges Spoil Greeks’ Christmas By Mick Brooks The Syriza government in Greece decided recently that they had a little money available to take the sharp edge off never-ending austerity. They decided to:
• Hand out €617m (less than 0.5% of Greek Gross Domestic Product or GDP) to I.6 million pensioners surviving on less than €800 per month.
• Relieve the Aegean islands from VAT. Apart from their remoteness, the eastern islands have borne a terrific burden of supporting thousands of refugees, without support from the EU.
• Promise a grand total of €11.5m on free school meals for poor children. [continue...]

Local government funding in crisis

By Martin Wicks Local Government is facing an unprecedented financial crisis resulting from the austerity programme and changes in the funding system. The allocations for funding for 2014-15 and 2015-16 were set on the basis of reductions in 2013-14 funding. The coalition government then abandoned the uprating of grants in line with an annual assessment of local needs. A new assessment is not due until 2020. Although councils will eventually be able to keep all their business rates this will be at the expense of declining government grant. By 2020 many authorities will receive no grant at all. [continue...]

OPINION - Time for a 20 hour working week

By Barry Ewart Susan Watkins in a piece in the New Left Review (September/October 2016) makes the excellent point that capital seems to want everything for free.  If you think about it we pay our taxes for education and health and capital is presented with educated and healthy workers for free!  And it is mainly state-led public investment supported R&D that is delivered to capital for free (including the computer) and we even subsidise our employers by paying our own fares to work or in buying cars and paying for petrol to get there, so perhaps a left wing democratic socialist alternative should offer some things for free too such as free public transport (and another member at a branch meeting recently suggested we could have congestion charges to also help to pay for this?).   [continue...]

Rail Dispute; what is Peter Wilkinson up to?

Rail Dispute; what is Peter Wilkinson up to? “Over the next three years we’re going to be having punch ups and we will see industrial action and I want your support,” Peter Wilkinson told residents in Croydon Town Hall last February, people who are also the hapless ‘customers’ of Southern Rail. [continue...]

New Labour dissected

New Labour dissected Mike Phipps reviews New Labour: Was the Gain Worth the Continuing Pain?, by Dr Gaye Johnston, published on Kindle (ref: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01LYD2JK2 ), by Edition Publishing. [continue...]

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