Issue 320

The Great Power Rip Off

By Ken Ferguson

PITY the poor power companies, that’s the almost daily message from the sharp suited spin doctors as they tearfully tell customers of their “deep regret” at the latest price hikes.
Of course there is no question, they assure us, of the power bosses actually wanting to increase prices - it is all forced on them by those mysterious creatures, market forces.
Sadly they point at rising prices for oil, coal, gas and other key factors in their production costs and patiently explain that such increases just have to be followed by a rise in the cost of energy.
The result is that, during January, over 9 million gas and electricity customers had massive price rises imposed showing the fairy tale that we live in a competitive market where the customer is king to be straight from the pages of Harry Potter.
Far from the fantasy market in which power companies strive to outdo each other with fierce price cutting and superb service, the customer is faced with the brutal reality that all sources of electricity are in the hands of profit hungry private firms.
And anybody who really believes that this handful of firms are in competition really does need to take more water with it.
Essentially almost all UK customers take their power from the so called “big six” energy firms, all of whom work hand in glove to make sure that their cosy cartel continues to milk the public to feed their profits.
In an elegant office just a stones throw from Trafalgar Square, the blandly titled Energy Retail Association is the spider at the centre of the profiteers web.
Bosses of the big firms meet at the ERA to discuss market conditions and strategy in what is in effect a thinly disguised process to rip off the public and safeguard their inflated profits and fat cat pay.
Gathered among the potted plants in their plush chairs for such highly secret gathering are top bosses such as David Threlfall, chief executive of Npower, Ian Peters, chief operating officer of British Gas, and EDF big cheese Eva Eisen-Schimmel, whose previous claim to fame was to oversee the launch of Häagen-Dazs ice cream in Europe.
ERA spokespeople underline the fact that these meetings never discuss prices as such discussion would be illegal. So, of course, we must conclude that when they put up prices one after the other it is purely a coincidence.
Further reassurance that all is well came from the so called “regulator” charged with keeping the power firms in line, the government’s toothless watchdog Ofgem, who soothingly told angry customers there was no evidence of anti-competitive behaviour and dismissed claims of price fixing.
However sceptical campaigners called for an official inquiry into the “obscene” profits being made by energy firms, claiming that consumers were being “ripped off.”
The National Right to Fuel Campaign and public service union Unison claimed increases in energy charges to consumers were almost £2.5billion more than the extra costs in producing and selling gas and electricity.
Even laid back Chancellor Alistair Darling was moved to action. In a move which will doubtless have the power bosses trembling he wrote to Sir John Mogg, chairman of Ofgem, asking him to explain why fuel prices were rising!
However the truth is that prices are still rising, and the entire machinery of so called regulation and advice on switching your supplier stands exposed for the hollow sham it is.
Well meaning calls to protect the poor are all very well but, twenty years since it was handed to the fat cats, the entire power supply industry is revealed as a dripping roast for the power bosses which prioritises profits over public need.
As we prepare to see a range of major changes in how power is generated, the time is now overdue to make sure that the planned wind farms and wave power don’t result in handing our natural resources to the profiteers.
If it was Scotland’s oil then it certainly is Scotland’s wind and waves. These developments need to be socially owned and the provision of such a vital service taken away from private profit into democratic public ownership.

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PCS Strikes Suspended -but workers keep up the pressure

By Richie Venton

THE strikes threatened by the PCS union in the two giant departments - Revenue and Customs and the Department of Work and Pensions - on 31 January have been suspended.
The central factor behind the union’s suspension of the action is that in both DWP and HMRC, talks have been conceded by management - which was one of the union’s main demands. The bosses have retreated in fear of the impact of industrial action - especially in the Revenue where 31 January was the deadline for tax self-assessment.
In HMRC, far-reaching promises of a moratorium on compulsory redundancies, unreasonable travel to work times and office closures have been given whilst talks are held.
Scottish Socialist Party members in the PCS, including leading branch officers in both departments, have met, discussed and welcomed the concession of talks and moratorium - won by the planned strikes and overtime bans.
However, they also think this is a decisive time to keep up the pressure on the bosses and the crisis-ridden Labour government who are dictating the cuts to pay, jobs, offices, flexi-time and public services.
In DWP there initially seemed to be no progress in response to the solid two-day December strikes, but now talks on pay have been conceded. Management doubtless feared the impact of the action planned - which would have clobbered them through a one-day strike followed by an overtime ban throughout the month of February.
Members in the big office factories especially are calling for an overtime ban as a powerful weapon, given the heavy reliance on overtime to get services delivered in understaffed offices in the aftermath of Labour’s job cuts of the past 3 years.
SSP members and other PCS activists are insistent that talks must now be held over a very short timescale - and that the union should warn of new strike dates and overtime ban should they be delayed or fail to win real concessions on pay.
In the case of HMRC, talks have been conceded and accompanied by a moratorium on compulsory redundancies, moves to unreasonable travel-to-work distances, and office closures.
The HMRC union Group Executive Committee called off the ballot the night before the closing deadline.
SSP members in HMRC have welcomed the talks and moratorium, and believe this is the result of the threat of united strike action and an overtime ban.
But they also feel strongly there is an urgent need for car park/office meetings of union members to explain the situation, and to move motions at every meeting that welcomes talks and the moratorium, but calls on the union to initiate an immediate ballot for strikes and overtime ban if there are any delays in talks and/or failure to make real gains on key issues, including vitally important questions like attacks on flexi working arrangements (as well as the central ones of jobs, office closures, privatisation).†
John Davidson, PCS branch vice-president at the East Kilbride Revenue site told me
“I have spoken at several members’ meetings over the past few days. Members are glad there are talks, but sceptical about how far they can trust management to make real progress, given our experience of them over issues like LEAN working practices.
“Members are vigilant and have agreed overwhelmingly at the meetings that the union negotiators and PCS Group Executive Committee must insist on a very tight, short timescale for talks, and that if management renege on their promises, cause the talks to break down, or fail to come up with the goods, then we should launch a programme of industrial action.”
PCS members need to keep up the pressure on bosses who have already begun to retreat in fear of strikes and overtime bans.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY DEATHS TOP 50 AS MPS WARNED OF SAFETY WATCHDOG “DUMBING DOWN”

AS experts from the Institute of Occupational Medicine warned MPs that the government’s safety watchdog has been seriously weakened news came of the 50th construction industry death in the past year.
The as yet unnamed man was killed at a luxury flats development at the Ferrera Quay complex, Swansea Marina, when he fell from scaffolding on 22 January. Despite emergency treatment he died in hospital several days later.
The construction union UCATT pointed out that a variety of factors have led to an increase in construction deaths in recent years, including cuts in the Health and Safety Executive, which has reduced the number of inspections and prosecutions.
The increasingly casualised nature of the industry has also reduced effective safety training of workers, it said.
Regional secretary for Wales and the southwest Nick Blundell, said: “This latest death underlines the dangerous nature of construction.
“While it is almost impossible to make the industry entirely safe, construction employers in general could be doing far more to make sites safer.”
The union’s concern over safety cuts was echoed by the IOM expert’s report to the Westminster parliament’s Work and Pensions Select Committee inquiry into the operations and work of the Health and Safety Commission (HSC) and HSE,
The IOM’s written evidence to the select committee notes that budget cuts combined with a “serious weakening of HSE’ s specialist expertise” and “an increased focus on sickness absence and incapacity, at the expense of the control of risks at work and the protection of workers from exposure to hazards... means that HSE is under-resourced to meet its core responsibilities.”
And the experts issued the grim warning to the MPs saying that “the low public and political profile of occupational health have, we believe contributed to a ‘dumbing down’ of occupational health and safety particularly health.
They also warn “HSE seems to be trying to do too much by co-operation and persuasion, at the expense of its role in giving strong and clear direction, and in strong enforcement.”
The reduced enforcement threat means “many companies think HSE is without teeth,” the submission says.

SSP to stand in Cambuslang

THE Scottish Socialist Party is standing local community activist David McClemont as our candidate in the Cambuslang East council byelection (polling day 6 March).
David has stood in this seat several times before, and is determined to offer voters a genuine socialist alternative to the parties of poverty, poor housing, PFI/privatisation and the monstrosity of the M74 extension.
The poor condition of some local housing; the lack of affordable accommodation for young people; rising rents and mortgages; and the failure by South Lanarkshire council to tackle shortages through investment in building houses at affordable rent are all issues that the SSP will highlight. We are calling for cancellation of all social sector housing debts to the banks.
The SSP has a proud record of resisting the obscenity of between £500million and £1billion being squandered on an extension to the M74 that will stir up underground pollution in parts of the town, add to air pollution and asthma, and which displays both Labour and the SNP’s preference for this anti-people waste of money over investment in an extension of decent public transport. We will highlight the SSP’s demand for free public transport.
Privatisation of council services and energy suppliers has led to gross profiteering at public expense. The SSP will use the by-election to agitate against the horrendous price rises in gas and electricity, creating bills of over £1,000 a year - feeding the profit of Scottish Power, Scottish Gas and Shell, who have just amassed £13 billion in profits.
David and the SSP are calling for public ownership of gas, electricity and North Sea oil - to take the profiteering out of heating your home.
David added, “The SSP is the only party that has fought for 10 years to scrap the council tax, taxing the rich instead, and for free healthy school meals for all kids on a permanent basis - not just the short-term government experiment in some schools. I am proud to fight for a party that will shake up the complacent South Lanarkshire council bosses, who just take people for granted.”

What do Wall Street and The City have to do with me ?

Night after night the news is dominated by news of sliding stock exchanges, plummeting share values and dire predictions of recession and hard times to come.
One of the key ways by which capitalism maintains its dominance is by simply throwing up a veil of mystification around its work.
For example the vast majority of people have little knowledge of or probably interest in the workings of the FT index or the movements of stock markets from New York to Tokyo.
Nevertheless we are all surrounded with the consequences of the apparently obscure workings of those key components of the capitalist system.
That’s why almost everybody from high profile financiers to the Left is predicting the real prospect of a recession with the resulting cuts in living standards, job security, house repossessions and soaring prices.
So what has happened to the economy which only a few short months ago was supposed to be Prime Minister Brown’s ace card?
Stripping away the jargon the answer comes down to two very everyday items—houses and cars.
The crisis sweeping the stock exchanges started off in the so called “sub prime” housing loans market in the US which lent money to low paid and other economically insecure people and then lumped the loans in with more secure lending.
The idea was that by “bundling” good and dodgy loans together that everything would be ok and purchasers of the loans would have a steady income stream generated from the borrower’s repayments.
But the snag came when under pressure sub prime borrowers failed to make their payments and rendered their loans more or less worthless.
However the real problem is that the duff loans were bundled in what the dealers term Collaterised Debt Obligations with sound ones and the banks are keeping quiet on just what amount of problem loans they have.
In turn this means that since nobody knows how sound each bank is nobody is lending money but experts have estimated that the duff loans have cost the banks more that $1,000 billion.
It is the resulting block on lending that has sparked the Northern Rock crisis which has cost UK taxpayers £25 billion and looks like destroying the economic reputation of the Brown regime.
It will also mean that lack of investment will imperil jobs and uncertain house prices will force consumers to slash loan backed spending.
All this points to a recession in which unemployment is likely to rise and living standards fall.
Bad as this is, the other factor, cars, needs to be added to the pile. With oil at a record $100 a barrel the consequences for a heavily oil dependent economy is severe.
It should be remembered that high oil prices helped create the last two global recessions in the early 1990s and 1980s.
At the heart of it all is the fact--continually praised by New Labour—that the UK is an economy dominated by finance with an ever shrinking manufacturing base.
Behind the façade of highly slick computerised money making stands the reality that we live in an economy with more in common with the workings of Ladbrokes than one designed to meet human need.
In the short term their will no doubt be sharp battles ahead to defend living standards, combat rising prices and defend jobs.
However as long ago as the 1860s Marx described the crisis ridden nature of capitalism and despite all that has happened since the core truth of this view has been demonstrated time and time again.
That’s why, while it fights to defend jobs, working conditions and living standards and for houses and health the SSP also demands a new economy.
Such an economy would start the task of harnessing the stupendous technological and material resources which already exist to meet the needs of society rather than the greed of the few.

Arran victory on ‘notake’ fishing zone

By Colin Turbett

AFTER many years of lobbying and grass roots activity the Community of Arran Seabed Trust (COAST) have at last succeeded in winning official designation of a small area of Arran’s coastline around Lamlash Bay as a ‘no-take’ zone for fishing activity.
This campaign has won mass support on the Isle of Arran and was supported in the last Scottish Parliament by Frances Curran and Rosie Kane, SSP MSPs.
Years and years of over-fishing by increasingly sophisticated methods decimated stocks of commercial fish in the Clyde area (as in most other coastal areas of Scotland) some time ago.
Some members of the fishing community were able to continue to make a living through clam dredging – literally dragging the seabed for shell fish and raking up everything else there too.
Local divers noticed that this activity was destroying the seabed and began to argue that this was unsustainable – leading to COAST’s formation.
After initial resistance local “mobile” fishing boat owners have realised that there would be no future for them to build up shellfish stocks.
The same argument applies to other fish stocks and it is hoped that regeneration will lead to a revival of commercial fishing in the Clyde.
Leading COAST activist Tom Vella Boyle told the Voice:
“COAST is delighted with the announcement by the Cabinet Secretary.
“Without the help from our many friends, the Arran community and our local political parties we would never have got as far as we have.
“We are now looking forward to continue to work with the fishing community of the Clyde in this exciting project.”
What is important about this local campaign is that it shows how local communities have the capacity to determine their own future – this conservation initiative required no big brother legislation from Brussels, Westminster or Holyrood.
Hopefully other coastal communities will argue for similar schemes - the fishing industry does not have to die.

New Labour Racist On The Rampage

By Colin Turbett

SCOTTISH Gypsy Travellers have a hard enough time facing prejudice and discrimination without Members of Parliament jumping on the bandwagon in clear populist attempts to win local right wing votes. Central Ayrshire’s Brian Donohoe (Labour) has called, in the local Irvine press, for new laws to curb “travellers” and describes their lifestyle and behaviour as “anarchist”.
He then wonders why they will not meet with him stating: “How can these people be referred to as a community?”
Although examples are not given, it seems Donohoe is upset that Travellers who park their caravans on disused industrial sites and other waste ground leave a mess.
Well as we see in Naples, so would he and the rest of us if services like rubbish collections suddenly stopped.
In fact Gypsy Travellers are probably better at recycling than many other members of the wider community – this has been part of their way of life for centuries.
Where can Ayrshire’s Gypsy Travellers go when the two remaining official sites are full ? Donohoe suggests that the two local authorities “can do nothing about the problem”.
What he really means is that they can do nothing to harass people and move them on, and states his intention to pursue changes in the law to allow this.
In a clear attempt to inflame matters he states that “most of the travellers (in Ayrshire)…arrive in an area to trash other people’s property.” Such language is a gift to right wing racists and fascists.
There has been a suggestion from local activists that the Travellers Donohoe has long reviled should park outside his house.
Whilst we doubt they would want Donohoe as a neighbour, there is little doubt that Gypsy Travellers, long marginalised, need to renew campaigns to achieve acceptance and recognition.
This is a matter over which the SSP should offer every assistance.

Deforestation Growing In The Amazon

By Roz Paterson

DEFORESTATION of the Amazon rainforest is accelerating at an unprecedented rate, due to the rising price of beef and soya.
It has been officially estimated that, between August and December 2007, at least 3235 square kilometres were cleared, though the real figure is likely to be much higher. Possibly twice that.
This news comes as something of a shock given that, over the last three years, there had been a steady decline in the rate of Amazon deforestation.
This decline did not come about through any action of the Brazilian government, who have failed time and again to lay down any binding legislation to protect one of the world’s most precious assets.
The real cause, of course, was the market. Falling beef and soya prices simply made it less worthwhile to invade regions of rainforest and tear it all down to put in vast cash crops.
Thus, the government that lays such store by its supposedly green credentials, is in fact just sitting back and letting the world market call the tune.
Says Paulo Adario, Amazon coordinator of Greenpeace:
“If President Lula is serious about Brazil being a world leader in the fight against deforestation, then he must implement long-term solid measures to ensure the Amazon cannot fall victim to deforestation as a result of rising commodity prices.”
In truth, private companies and cartels are allowed free rein in the rainforest, where land, often just stolen, is cheap and labour even cheaper.
A 2006 Greenpeace investigation lifted the lid on soya cartel Cargill, Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), who act as bankers to Brazilian farmers. But instead of loans, they issue seed and fertilizer and collect the finished product at harvest time.
Thus, if soya is what they want, soya is what they get.
This single cartel controls nearly 60 per cent of soya production in Brazil.
Another big player is Blairo Maggi, the ‘Soya King’, and currently governor of Mato Grosso, the most deforested state in Brazil. Since his election in 2002, soya production on former rainforest has risen 30 per cent.
He has, naturally, a little help from his friends in the international finance sector, including the World Bank, who deemed his soya business a ‘low environmental risk’, and other major foreign banks, none of whom could be bothered to conduct an environmental impact assessment. No wonder, the returns on their investments are fantastic; what do they care if indigenous populations are made homeless, wildlife is driven to extinction and the planet burns?
An environmental impact assessment of the soya industry, whose product is shifted the 7000 miles to Europe and fed to chickens and cattle, before being churned into Chicken McNuggets and other such nutritionally marginal junk food, makes for grim reading.
Deforestation in the Amazon alone accounts for 20 per cent of total global greenhouse gas emissions.
When it has its roots in the ground, the rainforest is one of the planet’s most important carbon sinks - that is, it sucks up massive amounts of CO2, thus preventing it being released into the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming.
But when it’s burnt - the cheapest way to clear land - it belches vast quantities of stored up CO2 into the air and, ultimately, onto all of us.
Thus, Brazil is now the fourth largest contributor to global warming, and it’s a situation set to get worse if government fails to act, as the American push for biofuels sees land formerly devoted to soya being used for maize and other biofuel crops, which in turn pushes up the price of soya, which in turn makes it all the more profitable to tear down the Amazon.

* www.greenpeace.org

Who wants a windmill?

RENEWABLE energy at any cost?
Perhaps not.
Though the British Wind Energy Association insist that the £500million, 181-turbine farm proposed for the farflung Hebridean island of Lewis must go ahead, or else the UK will fail to meet its EU renewables target, the people of Lewis, their MP and MSP, environmental organisations and even the Scottish Executive just aren’t buying it.
The developers - energy giant AMEC in tandem with British Energy Renewables, also a private firm - and the Lewis council plan to take the fight to Europe.
Too bad the proposed site, the 164,000 acre Lewis Peatlands, has been designated a Special Protection Area by.the EU.
This hugely important stretch of wetlands, which harbours substantial numbers of rare breeding birds, including greenshanks and golden eagles, would be irreversibly damaged by the project.
Windfarms have a benign image, but those turbines are not supported by modest tines that you stick in the ground like you would a For Sale sign. They require substantial concrete bases that, on a peatlands site like this, would necessitate a great deal of upheaval, including drainage.
Unfortunately, windfarm debates are generally characterised as between NIMBY homeowners who consider turbines to be blots on the landscape and earnest ecoentrepreneurs trying to save the world.
Yeah, right.
The ‘windrush’ is being conducted, thanks to our deregulated energy industry, by private companies who smell big money. Meanwhile, the people living on or near our last tracts of wilderness are being ignored, the areas they seek to protect trampled upon, and alternative sites bypassed.
Better surely to think small and local. Many energy experts, not in the pay of major corporations, suggest that microgeneration is key to a sustainable future, where energy is generated and used locally.
A four turbine development on the shores of the Moray Firth, built by the local community, is one such scheme. It’s not perfect. When there’s no wind, energy needs to be drafted in from the national grid, but it’s better than a giant project several hundred miles from the grid, which ensures that some 30 percent of energy produced on Lewis’s precious land is squandered in transit.
To meet our EU renewables target, we must provide 40 percent of total energy from renewable sources by 2020; roughly eight times the amount we do now.
It’s time to think smaller and more imaginatively. Trashing our landscape is no way to save the planet.

LETTERS

The recent increases in energy costs, coming on top of several years of double-digit, inflation busting rises, has made it clear that it’s time the Scottish Government conducted an urgent inquiry into the feasibility of nationalising Scotland’s domestic energy supply.
In the space of four or five years, the cost of energy has nearly doubled. Scotland, being the coldest part of the UK, is going to be affected most by these rises. Added to other rises, such as burgeoning food and housing costs, the cost of living for people, particularly the lower paid, is now spiralling out of control. It is clear that calls on the energy industry to curb these rises are going to prove toothless and ineffectual.
There is a window of opportunity here for the nationalisation of domestic energy supplies in Scotland. There is now a growing and urgent call beating within Scotland’s heart, that this vital public utility, an essential service and vital lynch pin in the health and welfare of the Scottish people, needs to be brought back into state ownership.
Scotland is a nation blessed with an abundance of natural and renewable energy.
The days of energy companies profiting out of the cold and misery of the Scottish people, particularly the poor and elderly, are numbered and needs to stop.
The decision by the Conservative administration of another country, several hundred miles away some two decades ago to sell out this vital pinnacle of Scotland’s nationhood to the international financial markets, is surely not one that the Scottish people should have to live with. Thatcher’s energy albatross is one that Scotland, today, can well live without.
The nationalisation of Scotland’s energy, run for the benefit of the Scottish people at a price they can afford, is an idea whose time has come.
Tam Graham, Glasgow

Red/Green
I wonder if any others have seen Justin Kenrick’s article in Scottish† Left Review this month in which he argues for a Red/Green ‘Transitional Alliance...to bring together a Green focus on the exploitation and destruction of human and other ecologies with a Socialist focus on the capitalist process’.
He argues for its operation both in and outside the electoral arena. In the context of advancing climate change, he claims the only reasonable route is to demand the impossible. Do readers of Scottish Socialist Voice think this strategy is reasonable, impossible, or both?

Soap Box
John Miller

The Need For Police Democracy

THERE are a number of problems that surround the relationship between the police and the working classes, but many working class people regard the police as uncaring and arrogant.
This is not helped by the new paramilitary style uniform code of the working police officer, but it is more than just that. Many working people in their experience of contact with police feel that in the eyes of the police there are only two classes of person. Police and others, and only police are deserving of respect.
Whether you are a perpetrator, a witness or a victim, the attitude of the police is equally offhand, supercilious and arrogant.
The result of this is that many people offer no co-operation to the police not because of fear of reprisal but because of the arrogant way the general public is treated by the officers of the force.
This means that although they might promote intelligence led policing, if they can get no information from the general public, the police are forced to rely on criminal informants.
The obvious paradox in this is that the crime fighting alliance then becomes an alliance between the police and the criminal!
In order to induce these criminals to give information it is necessary to overlook minor offences, but a minor offence in the eyes of the police might be a major offence in the eyes of the victim.
By trading away justice for the small people in their minor issues (and it is hard to commit a major fraud or theft against the poor since they have very little) the poorest are denied the right to see justice done and compensation orders awarded.
This is supposed to make it easier to secure convictions against major criminals, but the same arrogance which exists at lower levels also permeates the higher levels of the force, and how often have we seen major trials collapse because the police have not observed the rules of custody or evidence.
The police present these as trials which have had a perverse result because of a ‘technicality’ and use it to try to justify increased powers when in reality it is often the abuse of the powers which they already have which is the problem.
People are able to perceive daily the fact that if a poor person is the victim of a burglary then the police will try to suggest that the crime is due to the fact that they had inadequate security and will suggest new improved locks etc.
They will blame the victim instead of catching the criminal.
The fact that better locks only displace the burglary to another (poorer) household with less expensive security is ignored.
The rich already have better locks, alarm systems and often private security. Similarly if a car is broken into then often the police will not turn out at all but only give the victim a crime report number for insurance purposes.
The police will of course argue that they have a problem of manpower.
It is, however, not quite so obvious that they are undermanned when some homeless person shoplifts a packet of biscuits from a supermarket because her kids are hungry.
There always appear to be enough police to send two officers to deal with her.
We might speculate that poor people stealing from other powerless poor people is not a problem for the police, but if poor people are allowed to steal from the rich and powerful then it challenges the whole notion of legitimacy of property on which capitalist society is based, and cannot therefore be tolerated in any form, however small, by a police force controlled by the rich and powerful.
One of the problems of manpower is also attributable to the arrogance of the force. The fact that officers patrol in pairs in Scotland is not in case they get lonely.
Many of the public, as previously stated, will not be seen to co-operate with the police, and since the Sheriffs in Scotland will not accept uncorroborated police evidence (you may believe, wisely, but I wouldn’t comment) then two officers are always required to offer evidence.
The contention that officers are tied up on paperwork when they should be on the streets is possibly true, but that is because clear procedures and chains of custody must be fully documented because of a lack of confidence in police by the courts and the public, subsequent upon a number of high profile cases where evidence has been manufactured, manipulated or withheld from the defence resulting in gross miscarriages of justice.
Were police to be trusted by the courts then they would be able to double the number of locations where there is a police presence without a single additional officer.
If the public could be convinced that the police are on their side then the pressure for ever increasing police budgets could be massively reduced because corroboration would be easier to find and intelligence led policing would be able to obtain real untainted intelligence.
If the relationship between the police and the public were improved then the public would perhaps again be policed by consent instead of policed according to class interest.
Perhaps part of the solution might lie in direct recruitment into an officer grade.
The current top echelons of the police service came up through the ranks.
As in all bureaucracies personnel tend to rise by not rocking the boat and this can mean turning a blind eye to malpractice.
The memoirs of retired senior police officers are full of ‘comical’ anecdotes of malpractice in the cause of ‘justice’ as defined by the police on the hoof.
But it is not their job to decide justice, that is for the court, however flawed that might seem.
Although as previously stated they work always in pairs, when a police officer is convicted of an offence in connection with his position it is very rare for his partner to have observed his misconduct and to be called to give evidence.
I do not believe that this is a coincidence.
The bad apples cannot always be paired together and to believe that stretches naiveté too far. There is a closing of ranks and a culture of concealment.
An increase in democratic control of the police is an obvious necessity.
We should be appointing senior police officers by direct democratic means and have effective democratic mechanisms by which to hold them accountable and if appropriate remove them.
The current situation whereby the police investigate their own alleged misconduct is highly unsatisfactory. Everyone knows that self-regulation is usually self-serving in any sphere and they cannot continue to be a law unto themselves.
They are institutionally arrogant, and were they effective that might be excusable, but they are not.
Their arrogance has a direct effect on their effectiveness in terms of prevention and detection of crime and might account in some small part for the exceedingly high crime rates and exceedingly low rates of detection, and it has become so bad that many crimes go unreported because the public sees it as pointless.
The response of the police service to rising crime and falling detection rates will inevitably be to try to increase their budgets, increase their manpower, improve their equipment, and almost certainly to increase police salaries (ostensibly to attract a better quality of recruit, and if the quality of recruits is as we have seen on recent television documentaries it certainly wants improving), but all of this will be to no avail if the present regime cannot better control its public perception and performance at the grass roots street level.
If they continue to see the public as the enemy then they invite reciprocation.

The Market’s Money Madness

As global stock markets go through a roller coaster ride, there is talk of a recession and the sub-prime crisis is leading to billions of dollars of losses for the world’s major investment banks. Still there is no one to bail out Northern Rock and the US Federal Reserve suddenly cuts interest rates by 0.75 per cent while a rogue trader losses $7billion pounds.
Raphie de Santos tries to make sense of it all, drawing the strands together to show that yet another of capitalism’s ‘golden ages’ is over and the fight for a socialist economy remains firmly on the agenda.
THE major falls seen in all the world’s stock markets mark the end of a long period of capitalist expansion which started in early 1980s. Stock markets discount the future and they are discounting major falls in the earnings of corporations around the world. In other words they are forecasting recession - two quarters of successive negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth - and periods of stagnation across all the major economies.
The turbulence is far from over and stock markets hate uncertainty and there is so much of it around. In the weeks ahead we can expect more dramatic falls and partial recoveries. This is because nobody knows the full extent of the subprime crisis and its impact on the world financial system and economy.
While it widely held view that the US economy will go into recession in 2008, opinion is divided as to what will happen in the other major economies.
The most optimistic view is that the UK will enter a shallow recession at the end of 2008/start of 2009 and the rest of Europe’s economies will stagnate while there will be a slowing down of the emerging economies of China, India, Russia and Brasil.
At the roots of the crisis is the US Federal Reserve (akin to the UK Treasury) decision to cut interest rates aggressively in 2001 to avert a deep recession and help financial markets recover from the bursting of the dot boom bubble.
This led to an inflated housing market and cheap credit, leading to a big increase in credit in particular to those on lower incomes. From this policy flowed the sub-prime lending boom and repackaging of this debt and the seeds of inflation.
Capitalism is caught between a rock and hard place. On the one hand it needs to cut interest rates to increase the amount of money in circulation and ease credit repayments but on the other hand inflation is on the rise because of the demand that has been fuelled by years of cheap credit and growing demand from China and India in particular.
Cutting interest rates has a very limited shelf life as if they run with the policy for too long then the major developed economies will start importing inflation because their currencies will be weaker against the currencies of the countries they are importing from.
Already the bond markets are implying that interest rates will have to go back up within six months to a year to curb inflation.
All this is combined with end of the benefits of the technological boom that started in the 1980s - productivity gains are being offset with lower profit levels as more and more of the production process is carried out by technology and not humans meaning a reduction in new value or profits being produced.
In this article we will take a look at:

* the US housing boom and the Fed

* sub-prime lending

* shift the debt off my books (engineered financial products)

* the kings clothes

* impact of China, Russia, India and Brasil on the world’s economy

* the Soc Gen and market turbulence

* what it all means for ordinary people

And how they are all interrelated and could lead to biggest financial and economic crisis since the 1970s.

US Housing Boom and the FED

The boom in the US housing market has its roots in the US Federal Reserve (the FED) decision to reduce aggressively short-term interest rates during 2001/2002 to stem the crisis that arose through the bursting of dot.com bubble and the US economy sliding into recession.
This created a boom in housing construction, a big increase in the paper value of US residential property which spilled over into the rest of the economy.
With short-term interest rates at around 2 per cent banks went out looking for new potential clients.
Interest rates normally increase gradually the longer the loan is for. The idea is that the longer the time of the loan the more chance that someone will not be able to repay it.
The lender is paid a premium for the risk of not being fully repaid. The Fed cutting rates so aggressively for shortdated loans that this opened up many new transactions for banks and other financial institutions.
They could borrow from each other at low rates for short periods of time and roll the loans over when they matured. At the same time they could lend at higher rates for longer dated loans. There was a fat spread between where they could borrow and where they could lend.
As long as interest rates kept low for borrowing for short periods of time they could carry on making money.
All sorts of financial products - subprime loans, normal mortgages without offsetting customer deposits (Northern Rock) and Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) - were designed around this strategy.
It provided capitalism with new pools of credit to fuel its booms and soften its recessions. We were in a new ‘golden age’ of capitalism where all the old problems of boom and slump had been eliminated. But this market has, as we will see, has blown up.
It has brought the great credit boom, which stated after the Second World War to an end.
Capitalism will now find it difficult to find sources of credit to manage the fluctuations which are inherent in the system making more frequent and longer recessions likely.

Sub-prime Lending

In the US these fat spreads we have talked about meant banks and loan companies could even loan money out to the poorest sections of society - they could be compensated for even a significant minority of lenders not being able to repay their loans in full.
A new sub-prime market was created of heavily indebted individuals, low or middle-income households and even people on social security benefits.
This type of lending spread to other parts of the world - particularly the UK but not to the same extent.
With interest rates as low as 2 per cent lenders could still charge 6-8 per cent to sub-prime lenders to be compensated for extra risk and still make fat profits. The loans were typically mortgages or loans secured on homes.

Shift the Debt off My Books

Traditionally banks and other financial institutions have financed their loans and mortgages through the deposits they receive from their customers.
This limited the amount of credit they would offer.
At the start of this century they moved to a new model where they sell on mortgages and loans (personal, car and credit) onto the bond markets.
This meant a growth in credit. But at the same time the initial lenders no longer have the incentive to check if the borrower is able to repay the loans as they are offloading their risk onto someone else.
The business proved extremely profitable for the banks because of the fat spreads we talked about earlier and they used loan and mortgage brokers, who took a fee, to aggressively sell these products to the sub-prime market.
In the US up to 20 per cent of mortgages and loans are of the sub-prime type.

The Kings Clothes

The Investment Banks took these sub-prime loans and ‘engineered’ them into complex financial products.
Their value was not decided like traditionally shares by an open liquid market place with many buyers and sellers but by complex models.
They were valued by the investment banks themselves based on an assumption about how many people would default on the loan and the relationship between the borrowers.
The rate of defaults could be observed but were massively underestimated. The relationship between borrowers (correlation) could not be observed and was estimated quite liberally. As the number of defaults in sub-prime market increased quite rapidly the value of these instruments fell dramatically.
Defaults increased as the Fed pushed up short-term rates to curb inflation and the housing market.
They did not fully understand the link between property prices, interest rates, the sub-prime market, these structured financial products and the financial system.
The market for these products dried up in the summer of 2007 and rumours swept the market that major banks were in trouble that is the losses on these products could cause bankruptcies.
The inter-bank lending market - were Northern Rock borrowed its money - dried up as banks stopped lending to each other as no one knew who might go bankrupt.
So far the investment banks have reported $100 billion of loses and this is a conservative number.
As we mentioned earlier these instruments are based on an estimate of the relationship between borrowers. Some banks, only a minority, are using an independent estimate which has seen the value of these instruments fall by 80 per cent over a year.
If all banks were to move to this estimate the losses are likely to be in the region of $500billion to $1000billion with many likely bankruptcies causing a potential crisis in the world’s financial system.
Many of the banks have off loaded these products onto pension funds and insurance companies which mean the person on the street could be facing heavy losses as well.
Most of these write downs have occurred in the last quarter of 2007 and will be reported in the next couple of months.
The problem is that nobody knows who owns these products and where the next time bomb will explode.
For instance, the town of Cleveland in the US is virtually owned by a German bank. Of course all these properties are in the poor predominantly black areas.

China, Russia, India and Brasil

Many economic commentators believe that the existence of these markets and the restoration of capitalism in the former so called ‘socialist states’ will lead to a softening of the recession and even the possibility that most countries outside the US and UK will escape it.
There is a double-edged sword with this argument.
One, these countries demand for raw materials and food have pushed inflation up globally which limits the scope for interest rate cuts in the US, the UK and Europe.
Two, banks and financial institutions in these countries are exposed to subprime products - nobody knows by how much of course ñ and this will limit lending and credit and slow their economies.
Three, a lot of the wealth in these countries is based on the paper profits of private individuals investing in the local stock markets. Much of this has been wiped out by recent market falls and this will reduce consumer confidence and dampen the economies. Four, recessions in the west will reduce demand for their products and slow their economies down further.
Finally, the US, the UK and Europe will try and gain back some of the ground lost in competition with these countries forcing an inter-capitalist protectionist trade war.
All these factors could combine with what is happening in the west to create a truly global slump of 1930s proportions.

Soc Gen and Market Turbulence

Some parts of the financial markets have tried to blame the market falls on the rogue trader at Soc Gen. This is just wish full thinking, trying to deflect attention away from the real fundamental problems we have discussed.
The Fed has stated they had no knowledge of the near $7billion trading loss at Soc Gen when they made the decision last week to cut rates by 0.75 per cent.
The losses meant that the trader had open positions (investments) worth about $80billion.
It points to gross ineptitude by the bank’s internal risk management. They must have had to post $1billion to $4billion a day to the financial markets (margin payments).
They to would have been a large percentage of the positions on several European markets (open interest).
How this was not picked up was not down to a trader hacking into internal accounting systems but gross ineptitude as the margin payments and open interest are derived from each local financial system and the trader would not have had the skill and the knowledge to hack into these systems.
Unwinding the investments may have accounted for some of the losses in Europe where Soc Gen had the positions but cannot account for the big falls in US and Far Easter stock markets where they had no positions.

What it All Means for Ordinary People - Capitalism’s Reaction

Falling profit levels, recession and the credit crunch will see an all out assault by capitalism on ordinary people in 2008.
We can expect to see attempted wage cuts, productivity increases, layoffs and workplace closures. Credit will be harder to come by and banks will be very tough in dealing with defaults.
We are likely to see a much higher rate of house repossessions and personal bankruptcies in 2008. This together with inflation edging higher, which is lagging the decline in demand, will mean real cut in living standards and hardship for many working people in 2008.
We will also see cuts in public services and rises in council tax particularly from fiscal year 2008/2009 as government revenues come in way below government estimates with a declining GDP.
During 2003-2005 in the developing world the world’s major financial institutions have passed up the opportunity to ease the grip of their suffocating loans.
As these institutions seek to put their own houses in order they will likely tighten the grip on the poor south, leading to more poverty and death.
Unlike capitalism’s last major offensive against the poor in the late 1970s, working people’s organisations are much weaker and the demographics of capitalism have changed dramatically.
But it does not mean there will not be a fight back.
In 2008 Socialists will have plenty of opportunities to stand alongside working people and continue the fight for a rationale economy based on the democratic decided needs of the majority as they stand up against capitalism’s onslaught.

[1] Raphie de Santos is a former head of equity derivatives research and strategy at Goldman Sachs International and now works in fund management

Scottish Activists Gather For Palestinian Solidarity

By Allan Armstrong

OVER 120 people attended the very successful day school organised by the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, in the Augustine Church in Edinburgh, on Saturday 26 January.
Even as the speakers were addressing the conference, historic events were taking place. Palestinians in Gaza are being deprived of adequate water, food, fuel or medical supplies.
Ever since the Palestinians had the temerity to elect a Hamas government, in democratic elections in 2006, every effort has been made to negate this by an alliance of Olmert, Mubarak, Bush and Blair/Brown.
They have turned Gaza into the world’s largest concentration camp.
The comparison, made by one of the day’s speakers, is that of the Warsaw Ghetto under the Nazis.
Now Palestinians were pulling down the walls and breaking free into Egypt. The burning question is, which 1989 precedent will the ongoing events follow - the pulling down of the Berlin Wall, or the bloody suppression in Peking’s Tienanmen Square?
Egyptian armed forces, urged on by the Israeli and U.S. governments, were positioned to crush the Palestinian show of defiance.
However, as Moshe Machover, one of the day’s speakers pointed out, the protesters were involved in nonviolent mass action, but many were also armed.
So, if Mubarak unleashed his much superior armed forces, there would still be consequences, not least in the seething slums of Cairo, where his U.S.-backed government is detested.
Moshe Machover is a former member of the Mazpen, an Israeli socialist party. He used the example of the current ‘spillover’ of the Palestinian cause into an adjacent state, to put forward an interesting proposition.
This challenges both those who look to a future two-state (Israel and Palestine) solution, and those who advocate a single democratic secular Palestine. He pointed how all the state boundaries, originally imposed by British and French imperialism, were artificial.
They broke up a much larger area, which had long been jointly inhabited by a wide variety of peoples, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Druze and others. He looked to this much broader area to provide the only territory that could offer the land and resources for a real solution to the conflicts.
Joel Kovel, an American anti- Zionist and ecosocialist, outlined the historical origins of Judaeophobia in Europe.
Although Zionism grew in response to this threat, it never challenged its existence. It has frequently cooperated with the most rabid Judaeophobes, and always looked for an imperialist sponsor, first the U.K. and now the U.S.A..
Zionism maintains that ‘anti- Semitism’ (in which it does not include non-Jewish Semitic peoples like the Arabs) is hardwired into the make-up of all non-Jews, so that the only defence is to create an exclusively Jewish state - Israel.
In the process, Israel has internalised many of the oppressive features of Judaeophobes.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the Israeli state itself should already have developed marked Apartheid features, whilst the position of Palestinians, living in the occupied territories, resembles that of Jews who once lived, in the ghettoes of eastern Europe, before the Holocaust.
Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian writer living in England, pointed out the unique position that Israeli state enjoys in the world.
It does what it does, knowing it will not be condemned or criticised by the global power holders. The 30 year occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem in defiance of the U.N., the production of nuclear weapons, the building of the Wall, and innumerable attacks on civilians, have all been largely ignored by the Western powers.
Nevertheless, Israel remains the unsafest place on Earth for Jews to live and, despite decades of ethnic cleansing, many Palestinians still remain stoically and heroically on the lands wanted exclusively for the Israeli state.

Israel is a failed state.

Ronit Kardishay is a member of New Profile, a feminist organisation, which gives support to those young Israelis wishing to avoid the military draft.
She outlined the extent of militarization of Israeli society, which is in a state of permanent war and constant fear-mongering.

The Western media likes to portray the schooling of young Palestinians as ‘jihad orientated’.
Ronit showed the influence of the military penetrates deep into the Israeli education system, right down to primary level.
Plenty of time was given to questions and contributions from the floor.
A wide range of viewpoints was expressed.
The whole day was very well organised, with excellent food provided. A financial appeal was made to win support for a number of events to show solidarity with the Palestinian people at this crucial time.

Helen and Georgina: Power to the peaceful

By Morag Balfour

THE story is not a new one.
Rampant, bolshy peace women landing up in a Scottish Courtroom has somehow become a bit ‘everyday’ for us now.
Helen John is 69 and Georgina Smith is 77 and they ought to know better.
These are powerful women who channel their rage and commit criminal acts motivated by love.
These are serious women, kind women and, occasionally, scary women.
They spent a good 15 minutes painting Edinburgh’s High Court building before their arrests.
They had a wide-ranging rant about Britain’s militarism by all accounts, and caused £3600 of ‘damage’.
They presented an unrelenting and thoroughly unrepentant brick wall of defiance during their trial.
I bet that Sheriff has never encountered such stubborn folk in a courtroom.
What kind of people do that sort of thing though?
These women are pensioners and their behaviour is far from the norm.
I first met Helen John when she was held on remand at Cornton Vale. I was one of many visitors.
A good few peacenik women were in Cornton Vale at that time and they’d organised a protest - a silent one - and the authorities had clearly overreacted to it.
A new Trident Sub had been launched on the world and the occasion had to be marked somehow.
I was led, unusually, into a wee room with a perspex divider in its centre. Helen was brought in via another door and was seated on the other side of the plastic divider.
She was no threat to anyone but the prison had a point to make, and we spent a lot of time pouring derision on it during that visit. I attended the trial that followed in Helensburgh District Court.
It was a small thing for me to go and support; yet Helen seemed moved deeply by the gesture.
I saw her some months later in Yorkshire at a ºTrident Ploughshares reps meeting and she invited me to stay overnight at her place. I have never again experienced that level of spoiling!
There was a luxurious deep filled bath, and we had warmed croissants for breakfast. On home territory she is the warmest of people.
If on the other hand you meet her in court she is a fearsome character. This woman is amazing and inspiring.
Georgina Smith is gentler and more mischievous than Helen.
Her love of giving false names to the police when under arrest is legendary. I remember clearly the ‘Laura Norder’ incident.
The police knew this to be a false name and she was detained overnight for a court appearance the next day. She stuck to her guns and maintained that Laura Norder was her name, and in the end the JP hadn’t the stomach to punish her for it and threw out the case.
It lead to the fantastic headline in the following day’s newspapers - “No room for Laura Norder in Helensburgh District Court”.
When I think of Georgina personally the stories are a bit more mundane.
We’d sit having a blether over a cup of tea at Peaton Glen Wood. Most Trident Ploughshares camps north of the border have been based there.
Georgina bought the land direct from the Ministry of Defence. They weren’t to know of her Greenham history.
It’s pretty funny really and has caused the MOD so much grief over the years.
Both Georgina and I are decrepit - with creaky bones and an interesting gait.
I suspect she enjoys painting actions because there is a lower impact on her body.
There’s also something seriously cathartic about that form of expression.
Georgina and Helen are great people who’ve spent decades working for peace. If they teach one thing it’s that we don’t have to be dull when we age.
The nerve of them though - plodding on up to the High Court of a Sunday morning with paint, a point and an attitude - you have to love them for that.
The law matters and breaches of it must be exposed and railed against.

Who’s Choice ?

Juno (12A),
Directed by Jason Reitman
Out 8 February 2008

by Wullie McGartland

I must admit I approached this movie with a great deal of apprehension.
Every review I had read had claimed the film was putting forward an antiabortion message.
However after watching Juno, I couldn’t disagree more.
Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is a sixteen year old high school student who discovers she is pregnant after she decides it’s time to lose her virginity to her friend Bleeker (Michael Cera) - and take his while she’s at it.
I say, she decided, because Juno is a strong, independent, sarcastic, funny, opinionated young woman who takes charge of the world around her.
She finally accepts that she is pregnant after three separate test on a pregnancy “piss stick” - with the help of a gallon of Sunny Delight - and sets out to deal with the situation on her own terms.
She contacts the local woman’s clinic for an appointment to see about an abortion. While at the clinic she decides that this is not what she wants to do, instead she wants to have the child and put it up for adoption.
This is were I differ from other critics, who claim her refusal to have an abortion is from a political pro-life position. It’s definitely not how I interpreted it, Juno is a strong character, who weighs up her options and chooses adoption, this being the important part she chooses.
Juno then sets out to find a couple to adopt her baby, she duly finds Mark and Vanessa - a yuppie couple unable to have a child themselves - in the classifieds of the Penny Saver.
She starts a friendship with Mark, who she discovers is a musician with equally leftfield music and movie tastes as herself.
As the months pass by Juno becomes closer to Marl and Vanessa, and realises that she still has feelings for Bleeker - especially after he asks another girl to the prom.
As you can imagine various trials and tribulations are sent to challenge the heroine, all of which she resolve in her own way and under her conditions.
In all the movie is funny, intelligent and at times moving. Ellen Page is outstanding as Juno, with all the other main actors - especially Cera - giving top notch support.
Add to that a brilliant soundtrack including Kimya Dawson, The Mouldy Peaches and Scotland’s own Belle and Sebastian , and you’ve got a very worthwhile trip to the pictures.

Festival Time In Weeg

THE Glasgow Film Festival returns this month for it’s fourth outing, promising around 100 films in 11 days.
Featured is work by directors like Woody Allen, Wong Kar-wai, Ermanno Olmi and George A Romero.
The festival has grown over the years and is now the third largest in Britain, after London and Edinburgh.
The festival opens on Thursday 14 February with a gala UK premiere of Woody Allen’s dark comedy Cassandra’s Dream co-starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell as debt-ridden Cockney brothers confronted with an offer they cannot refuse.
The festival closes on Sunday 24 February with another premiere, Lars And The Real Girl is the story of a lonely young man who finds himself the perfect girlfriend.
The fact that he met her on the internet and she’s a doll, makes his friends and family a little anxious.
Add to this George A Romero’s latest zombie movie Diary of the Dead, La Sconoscuita (The Unknown) the new film from Cinema Paradiso director Giuseppe Tornatore, and even a bit more acting from Eric Cantona in Le Deuxieme Souffle (The Second Wind) and you’ve got quite an interesting line-up of movies.
There will also be a festival of short films running at the same time in Glasgow’s CCA The CCA will also be the venue for the featival club. so you can sit and sip cocktails to the early hours debating the merits of a good zombie.

[1] For full listing and ticket details see: www.glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

The Wild Brunch
Keef Tomkinson

Keef casts his eye across life’s more leisurely pursuits in order to put a wee bit of CULTure into our lives.

My advice? Generally try and avoid the frustratingly anger inducing politics of the mainstream media.
But the other week I got a little mad. First of there was news that the Countryside Alliance were marching again.
Although to be fair the reports of 22,500 pigs wandering through London turned out to be misleading.
The second culprit was Channel 4 news. It wasn’t their jolly liberal meanderings into global political relations but a report on the economic crisis threatening America.
The question was how you and me, and everyone one we know, would be affected by the USA’s slide towards recession. Most of it flew by me. International financiers have a way of boring me.
A problem in Britland seemed to be that those folk whose wealth generation and bonuses fuel our property values, purchases etc blah, blah, were facing hard times and therefore I would be havin’ it worse.
The answer from a few of experts was tighter wage controls. Only then could these city slickers garner the wealth to stimulate my economy. In other words I get less so they can make more.
In some more other words. The better of I get at the moment the worse it is for the economy and for me. God Damn Momma Fornicators.
We really do get totally shafted don’t we?
I despise this myth of the entrepreneur, the banker, the share monkey, and the financial adviser who are the big brains behind our economy and fuel our living standards.
Capitalism is just a bunch of ideas, opportunities and risks which create profit and debt, Debt that is profited on. Behind that is me, you and a whole load of people making these ideas a reality, making them fit for human consumption.
We’re working unpaid overtime, busting our ass, set a series of inhumane target and deadlines. Our reward is stress, uncertainty and a level recognition which barely beats being shat on.
A whole host of faceless suits would be nothing without us but we must feel the pain so they live comfortably enough to imagine news ways to make me work a 25-hour day.
Am I being too harsh? Should the Class War not just grow up? Taking inspiration from my newest political idol, the Vanilla Ice of Black Politics, Barrack Obama, Should we learn to look to a better tomorrow but not at the expense of wealth creators (or donors as he calls them)?
We could hang out with these people to shed the suit and see the child or money hungry demon within. Obese teenagers could have dinner with Douglas Ballantyne in a Wimpy and learn how to make enough money to join his clubs.
Clinically stressed out office workers could spend a day with their directors playing Tetris and Solitaire. Nurses and hospital cleaners could visit healthboard consultants’ homes to view the slide shows of the latest skiing trip to Colorado.
Manufacturing workers made redundant by the vultures of Venture Capital could go on an adventure weekend with share stories how much money each made from company one left and one bought.
Tommae Sheridan made a cool £200,000 out of the Edinburgh legal sector and speculation in renewable hot air technology. Surely the staff made redundant on the back of this would cheer up, if they could only enjoy a naturist tandem ride with him down to Largs.
The possibilities, and the sheer horror of that scenario, are endless. Let’s learn to love our masters. That way we might get more crumbs from the table. That way we might not send them all to Fife salt mines after the revolution (imagine that...Fife!).

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Indonesian Dictator Dies

President Suharto finally goes to hell

By Bill Bonnar

THE West this week said good-bye to one of its favourite sons as President Suharto, the Butcher of Jakarta, was buried and despatched to whatever hell would take him.
Suharto was everything capitalism wanted from a third world leader; brutal, corrupt, dependent and completely loyal to the system which rewarded him well for services rendered.
Suharto’s rise to power began in 1965 when he became head of Indonesia’s armed forces after the murder of six leading army generals; murders which many consider he was involved in.
However, it was what happened next which propelled Suharto to national prominence and confirmed his status as one of the most vile dictators of the 20th century.
Suharto staged a military coup, actively supported by the USA and overthrew the mildly reformist government of President Suharno.
The coup was one of the most brutal and violent in history with upwards of one million people killed.
The target was the powerful left opposition centred on the Indonesian Communist Party.
While the slaughter was going on a secret conference was being held in Jakarta involving representatives of some of the largest multi-national corporations in the world.
At that meeting Indonesia was literally carved up and handed over to these companies with generous handouts given in return to the new regime.
These two events went on to characterise Suharto rule for the next 32 years.
On the one hand a regime of unrelenting brutality and violence which systematically smashed any opposition no matter from which source.
On the other, a regime mired in corruption which treated the country as a personal fiefdom and looted just about everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Suharto himself is said to have had a personal fortune of $15billion tucked away in foreign bank accounts.
Even the World Bank, used to financing dictators all over the world, had to confess that that as much as a quarter of Indonesia’s multi-billion pound Development Budget was looted by the regime over the years.
Suharto also played the role of regional strongman on behalf of his American paymasters regularly intervening in the affairs of neighbouring countries.
Most notorious was the invasion and annexation of East Timor in 1974 and a campaign of mass terror against the Timorese people which bordered on genocide.
Suharto was eventually swept from power in 1998 through a combination of mass protests and economic crisis although made sure first that he secured immunity from prosecution for his many crimes.
Despite a track record of forced economic growth he left a country ruined by the economic blizzard which swept the region in 1997/98 and mired by corruption and scandal at every turn.
Even today half of all Indonesians live on less than $2 a day while the gap between rich and poor has never been wider.
No doubt a glass will be raised in his memory in the boardrooms of multinational companies and in the White House whose interests he served so well.
For the rest of humanity and for all those millions who suffered so much under his rule the only regret is that he died before being held accountable for his crimes.

German left make advance

JUBILANT members of the German Left Party are celebrating important advances in elections for two state parliaments.
In Hesse the party won seats in the state legislature after crossing the 5 per cent level of support. The elections also saw a big swing away from state governor Roland Koch of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Koch lost his majority in Sunday’s election after running a divisive campaign targeting youth crime, particularly that committed by immigrants.
The right wing CDU won 36.8 per cent compared with the 36.7 per cent for the Social Democrats (SPD), leaving them tied on 42 seats each but Hesse’s SPD leader Andrea Ypsilanti ruled out working with the Left.
In Lower Saxony, CDU governor Christian Wulff comfortably won re-election in coalition with the Free Democrats.
The SPD emerged with only 30.3 per cent of the vote, which was their worst showing in the state since World War II.
The CDU won 68 seats, the SPD 48, the Free Democrats 13, the Greens 12, and the Left 11 with 7.1 per cent of the vote. And a further boost for the Left came in Leipzig, where voters in a referendum on whether to privatise the local electricity utility backed the party’s call for the sell-off to be rejected.
The gains fulfilled Left party hopes of making a significant impact outside the party’s heartland, which lies in the former German Democratic Republic.
“That we have achieved this now is a remarkable advance and the other parties will now have to come to terms with a five-party system,” party leader Gregor Gysi said. “It is confusing them already.”

Pakistan: Can Musharraf Survive ?

by Farooq Tariq, Lahore

IT seems that the reign of General Pervez Musharraf is on its last legs. Musharraf has become the most detested president in the history of Pakistan. No longer are there progressives, liberals or moderates in his camp.
Musharraf is unloved even by most religious extremists. His policies have given them space into which they have moved aggressively. But Washington demanded that he suppress them to prove his usefulness to US imperialism and he did. However, he failed to please either Washington or the extremists.
The economic crisis has isolated him from the vast majority of ordinary Pakistanis, including formerly close associates. His traditional supporters among the Chamber of Commerce has evaporated.
Musharraf’s comments about democracy during his nine-day European tour that began on January 20 has annoyed democrats inside and outside Pakistan. The comment that the ‘West is obsessed about democracy’ was a direct insult to the people of Pakistan, but neither did his sarcastic taunting please his European friends. Gone are the days when he could talk nonsense and get away with it!
The brutal assassination of former prime minister and leader of the opposition Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Benazir Bhutto, was a shock to many European governments friendly to Musharraf. The unprecedented reaction to Benazir’s murder is shattering his image at home and abroad.
The US and British governments’ Plan A for maintaining stability in Pakistan was built on an unholy governing combination of Benazir and Musharraf. This has come undone and there seems to be no Plan B.
Has Musharraf outlived his usefulness to his imperialist masters?
Musharraf’s repeated assurances that nuclear weapons are in safe hands and the army cannot be defeated by religious fundamentalists illustrates the concerns of European countries.
His trip is to address these worries. However, his justification for imposing a state of emergency, deposing and arresting the country’s top judges, arresting thousands and curbing the media will satisfy none.
In the face of the proposed 18 February general elections there are two political camps: those participating and those boycotting.
The massive turnout at the boycott meeting by All Parties Democratic Movement on 22 January in Loralai, Baluchistan indicates that the boycott campaign is picking up steam. This was the fourth successive APDM mass rally in Baluchistan.
The Pakistan Muslim league-Q (PML-Q), Musharraf’s favourite, is in absolute crisis after the recent shortages of food items, electricity and gas. The PML-Q candidates are the target of anti-Mascara anger.
The general perception is that if you are against Mascara, do not vote for the PML-Q.
Unless there is an all-out rigging of the election, there is no guarantee that Musharraf’s supported candidates will win. If PPP and Pakistan Muslim league- Nawaz (PML-N) candidates gain a majority in the next parliament, Musharraf will find it very difficult to repeat what he did following the 2002 election, when he bribed many PML-N and PPP parliamentarians to join hands with the PML-Q to form a majority government.
At the time, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Musharraf’s military regime was supported by both US and European governments. But in 2008 he is isolated. It will be difficult for any parliamentarian elected on anti- Musharaf feeling to cross over to his camp.
Boycott or no boycott, the future scenario seems more and more problematic for Musharraf. His departure seems written on the front door of every home. Only another 9/11-like situation could alter his fate. Students are awakening and so is the trade union movement. That, combined with the pressure from the lawyers’ movement and growing participation by civil society, may succeed in pushing Musharraf from power.
Pakistan may take a page from their Nepalese brothers and sisters who recently brought down the monarchy. ‘If they can get rid of the King, why can not we do it here with the military dictatorship?’ is the question many activists ask.
Lets do it the Nepalese way: with a peaceful massive movement everyone can get out into the street to insist: ‘Go Musharaf go!’

LPP leader killed in suicide attack

by Farooq Tariq

COMRADE Abdullah Qureshi (72) is no longer with us. A member of North West Frontier Province (NWFP) provincial council of LPP died in a suicidal attack in Swat valley. He was one the best-known senior Left leaders of the valley.
At present, a military operation is going on in the valley against religious fundamentalists and the majority of the valley is under the control of the religious fundamentalists.
One of the main reasons given by Musharaf dictatorship for the imposition of emergency on 3 November 2007 was to free the valley from the religious fanatics.
Abdullah Qureshi was the pioneer of Left politics in the Swat valley. Born in 1935, he came from a working class background in the valley. He organized the first organization Swat Rorwali (Swat goodwill) in early Fifties. The organization spoke out against the Nawab of Swat and he was arrested several times for organizing the people’s resistance against the king. He was deported from the valley in the early Sixties and his nationality was revoked. The Nawab of valley had the ultimate powers in the valley.
He settled in Gojaranwala in Punjab. He was a close friend of Ajmal Khatak and Sikander Khan Khalil, the leaders of National Awami Party (NAP), the main Left party in the Sixties.
In 1968, the Swat valley formally joined Pakistan. Comrade Abdullah Qureshi went back to Swat to organize NAP. He was elected as general secretary of the NAP Swat. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto banned the party in 1974 and Abdullah Qureshi was one of those arrested at the time. He then went on to join Awami National Party (ANP), the new name of the banned party. He was not satisfied with the ideological confusion within the party and wanted more Socialism as part of the ANP.
Later he joined Pakistan National Party of Bazinjo. He left politics after the fall of Soviet Union. He was very disappointed by these developments.
He joined the Labour Party Pakistan after it organized the largest May Day rally in 2006. Over 600 had joined the rally and they all came from different small industrial units of the valley. The red flags all over the valley inspired him to take a decision to join the party even at this age. During the second NWFP provincial conference in June 2007, he was elected as one of the 21 member of NWFP LPP Council. Within the year, he had organized the party in different parts of the valley and LPP became the main party of the Left in the valley. Most of the Left activists joined the party after his decision to join the party.
Hakim Bahudar, Peasant secretary of the LPP and member of LPP national committee was a close friend of Abdullah Qureshi.
He tells us more about Abdullah Qureshi:
“He had been very much inspired by LPP activities for some time. He was a regular reader of the Weekly Mazdoor Jeddojuhd (workers Struggle). After his decision to join LPP, party became very respected and prestigious in the completely valley. He was the symbol of Left politics in the valley.”
Abdullah Qureshi was killed in the suicidal attack near the NangoLai area check post. He was passing through the area when the attacker blew himself up resulting in the killing of several other civilians.
The incident happened on 9 December 2007. It was the day when the LPP fourth conference was taking place in Lahore. He and other delegates from the valley could not attend because of roadblocks and military operation. Only comrade Hakim Bahadur was able to escape from the valley to attend the conference organized on urgent basis.
The family did not want to disclose the news earlier because of fear of more attacks.
They did not want the news to be public. The family fears that it was a targeted attack on him because of his Left ideas. The family is investigating this aspect and has asked the LPP NWFP to help in the matter.
Now, with the permission of the family, LPP is announcing his death with great pain.
Although comrade Abdullah Qureshi was only for 16 months in the LPP, but his whole life was devoted to Left ideas. He worked in the most difficult circumstances.
He joined LPP while there was an upsurge of religious fundamentalist ideas in the valley. He did not care about his life but more of ideas.
The LPP will hold memorial meetings all over Pakistan for comrade Abdullah Qureshi.

Climate Of Corruption

By Ken Ferguson

AS a hard up and bemused public looks on, the list of politicians with their names linked to sleaze allegations grows ever longer and takes in each of the so called major parties.
The variety of politicians involved is only topped by the range of imaginative explanations that they offer when caught.
From poor administration and bad memory (Hain) through “inadvertently” breaking the law (Wendy} to making an “administrative error” {Tory Derek Conway} they do anything but plead guilty.
Small wonder that voter turnout plummets and a cynical public grows weary of the parade of lame excuses and dodgy donations and takes the view that “they’re all the same”.
How did we get here?
Corruption, power and money are never far way from the world of politics whether it is large scale bribery such as that used to ensure multi-billion pound arms deals or employing relatives in non-jobs from parliamentary allowances.
It is now fashionable to worship money, markets and greed and we are bombarded daily with messages praising the values and achievements of the so called business “community”.
This surely reached a new low this week with the news that the supposedly Presbyterian pure Prime Minister Brown was giving his personal blessing to the high priests of fast food McDonalds apparently issuing educational qualifications.
So for New Labour a process which began by junking the ideas of pioneers such as Keir Hardie, then saw the Blair government crawl to big business and their displays dominate Labour conferences has now put them knee deep in the shady dealings so familiar among speculators and business sharks.
A government which cannot deal with pensioner poverty, despite describing itself as “Labour” effortlessly finds a massive £55billion to bale out a grossly mismanaged bank while fending off demands to nationalise it.
The Brown regime has rapidly put to the sword any illusions that they would differ from Blair.
Indeed if anything they have been even more craven in bending to business with their tax cave in last week just the latest example.
Indeed it is some achievement that so bad is the current crew in Downing Street that they have brought the long dead Tories back to life and made their vacuous leader Cameron look like a contender for power.
Small wonder in the midst of this culture of corruption that a politician like Hain can preside over a menacing campaign threatening benefit claimants with the jail while “forgetting:” to declare £150,000 in donations.
And it goes some way to explain why Wendy ‘superbrain’ Alexander and her overpaid team of underachievers thought that a donation of £950 - even if illegal - was small beer.
While supposed servants of the people from the “mainstream” parties maintain their cosy relationships with big business and tycoons like Donald Trump it should be no surprise if a suspicious public looks at their claims of innocence and concludes, Victor Meldrew style,
“I don’t believe it!”

Perthshire Incinerator Plan Draws Local Fire

PLANS by Sita UK for a waste incinerator at the Binn Farm landfill site, a few hundred metres upwind of the village of Abernethy sparked a packed public meeting of concerned residents last week.
Organised by the Tayside Environmental Action Group, the meeting heard concerns from a panel including Green Party leader Robin Harper and a range experts.
Despite an open invitation, the Perth and Kinross councillors responsible for the decision were noted only for their poor turnout.
Robin Harper outlined government priorities for waste management and advised the audience not to accept that the only solution to the mountain of waste produced by modern societies is to burn it. Duncan Oswald of Newburgh based environmental consultancy Ecodyn explained that under forthcoming legislation, communities like Abernethy may be able to hold the regulator, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, to account if environmental regulations are not strictly enforced.
Iain Gulland of Community Recycling Scotland presented ten reasons why incineration is a poor solution to waste management problems.
As a former manager of such a plant he spoke authoritatively about why incinerators are an outdated technology, causing pollution and ill health, while encouraging overproduction. Christopher Maltin, an authority on sustainable energy and waste management strategies underlined the absurdities of burning waste.
Tony Hitchens of Premier Waste Management gave a presentation on one of the alternatives to incineration, aerobic digestion. This process takes unsegregated household waste and converts the organic waste component into compost which in one example was used to help turn a brown field site into a coppice woodland for fuel. This alternative approach has led to a reduction of 85 per cent in waste going to local landfill. Tayside Environmental Action Group are aware of several such alternatives, some with even better results.
Finally toxicologist Peter Rossington, who has campaigned against other incinerators in the UK, spoke about the inherent difficulties in monitoring emissions from incinerators, explaining that the health effects are still poorly understood and probably won’t become clear until it is too late.
The meeting took place just before the publication of the Scottish Government’ s latest policy on waste which now looks likely to be unfavourable to incineration.

Campaign fights council’s Pollok Park tree top sell off

EVER since Glasgow’s city fathers cleaved Pollok Park in two by ploughing the M77 motorway extension through it, it’s little wonder local people are protective of what’s left.
Now a City Council plan to bring in a private company, called Go Ape, to run a tree top adventure course in the park’s North Wood is causing fury across Glasgow’s southside.
At a public meeting on 22 January, the Save Pollok Park group pulled together somewhere around 1000 people in Pollokshaws Burgh Hall to discuss the plans. People queued on a bleak night in the car park, waiting to squeeze in to the last remaining spaces in the building.
And after that, they were not in the mood to be fobbed off by council officials or their elected representatives. The audience was feisty, noisy, and at times just plain angry.
The council claims to have run an adequate consultation on the proposal - local opinion says otherwise. Regular park users insist they just didn’t know about the plan until the consultation period was over.
Overwhelmingly, people at the meeting said that they don’t believe the £25 a shot - £20 for kids - private playground is what they want in one of the last quiet, green spaces in the city.
The council’s claim that Go Ape in some way fits in with their plans to tackle childhood obesity has also been ridiculed.
Green councillor and local activist Danny Alderslowe told Go Ape’s owner Tristram Mayhew, who had at least turned up for the massive public meeting:
“In all fairness, I don’t think you’ve been told what you’re coming to. You’re coming to a city where recreation and green space has been sold off.”
However, despite pleas for the council to re-run the consultation, it looks unlikely so far that they’ll put the brakes on the Go Ape development.
Councillors who have supported the plan were bullish at the meeting.
Local representatives Stephen Curran, Labour, and Colin Deans, SNP, refused to answer questions put to them.
Council Executive member for Land and Environment Cllr Ruth Simpson, on the other hand, was confident enough to heckle the whole crowd.
“We have run a full consultation,” she insisted, then shouted over the jeers, “and you did not respond!”
Mayhew had left the meeting saying to the audience that he would go away and think about Go Ape’s application - but a day later he was telling the Herald that he wished to “let this planning application go forward and see what the elected representatives think of it.”
Campaigners, however, are preparing for a battle. The proposal is due to go to committee in the next stage of the planning process, although the timescale is not yet confirmed.
Save Pollok Park are assembling for another public meeting at Pollokshaws Burgh Halls on Tuesday 5 February, and plan a massive leafleting and petition campaign.

[1] More info at: www.savepollokpark.com