The road to Hell

It's virtually impossible not to sympathise with the road hauliers who are threatening to re-start fuel price protests, and I - along with countless other motorists - wish them luck. Caught between the taxman bleeding me dry, and the capitalist petrol companies forever hiking the fuel prices (and their profits), I certainly feel more badly stung than someone who's had a naked romp in an ongaonga tree!

As if the petrol price hikes aren't bad enough, the ever increasing car tax and the threatened road-pricing plans are also igniting considerable anger. What's more, the new structure of car tax discriminates against older cars, driven predominantly by working class people who can't afford newer models - my car is a 1.9 litre Renault Laguna diesel, in a high tax bracket because it's over 1.5 litre. and was made before 2002. (OK, maybe it's a "chavmobile", but 1.9 litre for a diesel car is hardly a "gas guzzler" is it ?!?)

All, officially, in the name of cutting CO2 emissions from cars and protecting the planet. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting the planet and stopping the greenhouse effect, and on a selfish level I'd like to see less traffic on the roads - it's no fun at all being stood for ages in traffic jams (or, to be politically correct, "congestion") when you're already late for work.

However, I'm extremely sceptical about whether the increasing costs of motoring are going to have much - if any - impact on car use. Any motorist who's run into debt paying for fuel, taken out an IVA to pay for the car tax and insurance, and auctioned their organs on ebay to pay for repairs, will tell you that motoring ain't cheap!

So what is the solution? To answer that, we must look at what is causing the problem...

Many of us (myself included) must commute long distances to work. This can be traced to the decimation of local jobs, notably the closure of coal mines and steelworks in the 1980s and early 1990s, and there have been several factory closures and cutbacks in public sector jobs since. Not just under the Tories, but also under the current Labour government which is now laying the belt into those of us who now have to travel much longer distances (50 miles in my case) to work.

It's not just to work we have to travel. Local shops are being replaced by out-of-town shopping centres, so we must travel to do shopping. And the "school run" has been aggravated by the increasing selection in schools, gathering pace as a result of the government's obsession with new PFI schools and "specialist" acedemies, leading many kids to travel larger distances to school.

At the same time, public transport has seen cutbacks in services and/or fare hikes as a result in privatisation, and the profit motive now takes priority over the welfare of commuters, let alone the environment.

The closure of local workplaces and the centralisation of production in a few large workplaces (often abroad) has at the same time increased the number of lorries on the road, as goods must be transported further than when they were producd locally. What's more, back in the 1980s, we saw a massive increase in the number of lorries as a result of Thatcherite moves to weaken the railway unions, by encouraging the use of road transport. So it is sweet and fitting that the lorry drivers are now turning against the same capitalist Establishment which gave them that power (but has so long denied them the wages and working conditions they are entitled to).

So any bogus solution based on attacking motorists in the wallet, or any other underhand method (such as making it harder for young drivers to get driving licences and easier to lose their licences, or charging disabled drivers for parking), ain't gonna have much effect. Just as taxing cigarettes heavily is not going to deal with the nicoting addiction, so taxing road transport more heavily is not going to deal with society's addiction to the motor car.

The answers lie in:

• creating more local jobs and services, to reduce commuting by workers and excessive transportation of manufactured goods
  
• renationalising public transport to provide affordable, regular and frequent services (including off-peak services, to accommodate shift workers)
  
• central planning of the distribution of goods and services - it is wasteful when two lorries carrying the same product pass each other on the motorway, going in opposite directions!

Only these measures can properly protect both the planet, and the living wages of ordinary working class commuters.

Who will face the music over missing disks?

In a category 5 blunder, 2 computer disks containing the details of 25 million people - children included - have been lost. These disks contained sensitive data relating to child benefit claims, and the blunder was by HM Revenue & Customs. (BBC News: UK families put on fraud alert).

The immediate fall guy for this fiasco seems likely to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling. Not that I have any sympathy at all for Ali D; he is a horrible right wing Blairite, who was responsible in 2001 for the government's first wave of attacks on Incapacity Benefit claimants. But the buck certainly does not stop there ...

Catastrophic mistakes like this are made much more likely as a result of overworked civil servants due to an understaffed civil service. For this, Gordon Brown himself must shoulder a heavy responsibility - even before he became Prime Minister, as far back as the early 2000s, he moved to decimate the number of civil service jobs in the name of a "war on bureaucracy". (Yeah, I know that sounds good coming from a government which has brought in more petty legislation than it's possible to keep track of, but that's the phrase I seem to remember them using!)

Whether or not Brown, or Ali D for that matter, end up resigning, there will be repercussions. For starters, they'll find it virtually impossible (I hope!) to force through their "pet project" of ID cards, since nobody trusts the government to hold information about us now. And the fact that a private courier, TNT, were responsible for the loss, will hit the government's plans to privatise the Post Office.

Ah well, you can tell when the government are in deep $#!t. Because they always try to take people's minds off it, by dredging up the threat from the bogeyman of the week. This week it's the turn of under-age drinkers (BBC News: PM urges action on alcohol sales).

So, if you're under 21 years old or look it, you'd best have some ID, to avoid being given the Spanish Inquisistion by the sales staff when you go to buy alcohol. Of course, you could apply for a government/police approved proof of age card, by giving your details to whoever is in charge of issuing these cards.

You never know, maybe these details will end up on the follow up disk to HMRC's current smash hit :-P

Shove Trident up Brown's ass!

Although the political scene seems bloody depressing at the moment, there is a rare ray of light shining through the hurricane. And it's from a rather unusual source - namely the Liberal Democrats.

One of the main contenders for the Liberal Democrat leadership, Chris Huhne, has pledged to scrap Trident if he is elected (BBC News: Trident divides Huhne and Clegg). For a number of years, I've considered the Lib Dems as the best of the 3 main parties, if only for their support for Proportional Representation and the lowering of the voting age to 16. But if Huhne is elected, I will be very glad because, for first time since the 1980s, we will have a party opposed to the lethally dangerous, squanderously wasteful, abhorrent monstrosity that is the Trident nuclear weapons system - which the government have committed themselves to squandering £76 billion of taxpayers money on replacing.

I have been anti-nuclear weapons for a very long time. In fact, I left the Labour Party (OK, I admit, I used to be a Labour Party member, how embarrassing) back in 1988 when they sold out on nuclear disarmament.

To read the truth about nuclear weapons and the threat they pose to world peace, and how to campaign against them, you could do far worse than visit the CND website or the Stop The War website.

Hitting a sour note

Probably the most frustrating (depressing, even) aspect of the current disunity among the left in general, and the troubles within Respect in particular, is that it is happening at a time when we need an alternative to the Establishment parties more than ever. While we are fighting amongst ourselves, the Establishment in general, and the government in particular, are at their most able to piss on working class people with impunity. And that's exactly what they are doing...

The latest example is the government's continuing refusal to ban the smacking of kids - completely ignoring advice from Children's Commissioners from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the NSPCC (none of whom are exactly radical!) The continuing legality of physical child abuse would be bad enough anyway, and is made worse by the sheer hypocrisy of it all - the same government and Establishment which refuses to ban smacking, has often hypocritically used the excuse of "protecting children from abuse" to draft legislation and other measures which curtail our civil liberties.

Needless to Say, the Tories are behind New Labour on this one. just as New Labour have become like the Tories, so the reverse also applies. Meanwhile, the real left opposition (as opposed to the nakedly capitalist, pro-Establishment governing party which masquerades as a "workers' party" when it suits them) are at each others' throats.

We desperately need to stop fighting each other, and unite to give the Establishment the good belting it deserves. The sooner the better.

Otherwise not only young people, but the working class in general, certainly won't "thank us later" :-(

Black police showing out for the white cop?

The outgoing (good riddance!) president of the National Black Police Association has called for an increase in the stop-and-search of young people by Police (BBC News: Call to increase stop and search). Such a move would not only alienate young people, who have already seen their rights eroded by dispersal orders, ASBOs, increasingly strict age restrictions, etc. Even some senior black police officers have warned that it would, in effect, lead to more black kids being targeted, as a result of racial profiling - already, black youth are 6 times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites.

Before I go any further, I'd like to point out two points.

First, I have no sympathy for gang members who engage in criminal activity, or carry weapons such as guns and knives - one only has to look at America to see the horrendous results of guns being in common use (freely available in the USA), namely an appallingly high murder rate, including the horrendous school campus shootings which are becoming increasinly common.

Secondly, I have no animosity towards individual Police officers - many joined the Police with the laudable aim of making their communities safer, many are from working class backgrounds (it should be noted that crime disproportionately affects working class communities).

My argument is with the Police as an institution - an arm of the state, which is run by the capitalist Establishment, the Police's job is to do the bidding of said Establishment. Indeed, the same capitalist Establishment, and its puppet political parties, are responsible for the increasingly unjust and repressive laws which the Police's job is to enforce.

In addition, the alienated (in the Marxist sense) nature of policing tends to make police officers see people as either victims or criminals, rather than as people. This can encourage stereotyping of groups of people (eg racial profiling), and is exacerbated by the "canteen culture" which is notably strong in the Police.

It is these factors which have led not only to the call for more stop and search, and for increasing Police powers in the form of ASBOs etc, but also to horrific mistakes such as the killing of Brazilian "terror suspect" Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, and the botched hunt for the murderers of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in the early 1990s.

At the same time, the Police are not immune from the pressures affecting other public sector (and most private sector) workers, to meet targets. The resulting need to "keep the numbers up" on arrests etc runs the risk of Police anding up chasing easy targets, often petty criminals, rather than the real scumbags whose arrest and conviction takes more time, effort and resources. The need to meet targets may also lead to the increasing use of police informants (a practice which is locally nick-named the "green giro"), which can sometimes do more harm than good to the community when these informants abuse their near-immunity from arrest and prosecution.

So what is the answer? We don't agree with vigilanteism, which leads to self-appointed vigilantes meting out their own definition of "justice". The dangers of vigilante "justice" were epitomised by the "anti-paedophile" mobs of the early 200s, which led to innocent people being killed due to hearsay, and even a paediatrician (child doctor, for any News of the World readers out there!) being hounded out of his home by threats.

What I would like to see, is the laws being made by working class people for working class people, to protect us and our community rather than the Establishment and the capitalist system. The enforcement of these laws could not be carried out by the existing state - it would necessitate the creation of a workers' militia, run by and for workers.

For this to happen, workers would first need a revolution to overthrow the capitalist Establishment and smash the capitalist system.

New Labour on borrowed time?

Alistair Darling, the chancellor, has issued a warning on consumer debt (BBC News: Chancellor warns on consumer debt). Since he daren't attack the rich bankers (typo?) and had said he has no plans for tighter regulation, he has resorted to hectoring those who borrow money.

But why are so many people borrowing so much, and running into debt. Darling, along with many in the capitalist Establishment of which he is a part, is implying that if we run into debt we are either greedy or feckless.

Surely the rising level of debt has nothing to do with low wages, increased living costs, Brown's attacks on public sector pay, the increases in tax for the less well off while reducing the taxes on the rich, and the increasing struggle of many people and their families to make ends meet - has it?

Besides, what right has Mr Darling to lecture us on debt, when his own New Labour party is in debt to the tune of over £20 million, despite its donations from rich tycoons (BBC News: Labour gets most cash from donors). Then again, maybe they were hoping to consolidate their debts into an easy-to-afford Lordship ...

Of course, when politicians run up debts to rich capitalists, it's not their car, house or possessions which get sold.

It's their principles that get sold out. And their voters that get sold down the river :-(

Striking a blow for the working class

I'm very glad to see the TUC have voted for co-ordinated industrial action this autumn, against this government's attacks on public sector wages (BBC News report: Unions back 'co-ordinated' action)

So far, we've already seen a number of strikes; the Prison Officer's strike (backed by Respect), the London Underground RMT strike (likewise), Post strikes (Socialist Worker report), NHS disputes, need I go on? And this is just the beginning ...

Brown has proved just as bad as Bliar when it comes to trade union support, threatening the prison officers' union with legal action and dismissing union demands for an above-inflation wage increase (BBC News: Brown rejects unions' pay demands). Hardly surprising New Labore (mis-spelling) are as bad as the Tories; like the Tories, they are getting an increasing percentage of their money from rich capitalists and not from working class people (most recently, Lord Sainsbury chucked £2 million in their direction).

Trade union industrial action is most welcome, and I support it utterly.

In addition, there are other ways in which the unions could kick New Labour's Brown eye. For starters, W-H-Y-? are so many trade unions still using their Political Funds to prop up a government which does nothing but kick them, and their members, in the teeth??? I think all unions should democratise their political funds, and follow the lead of the RMT and PCS by no longer giving their money to Labour.

True, Trade Unions do need the support of a political party, which can complement industrial action in the workplace by fighting for their members in Parliament and councils. And we need a party which will listen to our demands and represent our class, not the bosses and capitalists.

But New Labour ain't that party!!!