We live in an ill-divided world, and country, where
the rich grow richer and as a result the poor become poorer. Those who produce
the wealth, and those wealth producers made redundant, are daily mugged by
financial and political elites who exude greed and evil, hardly break sweat and
could not care less.
Our pretentious ”leaders” are intent on ”tackling
the national debt” which is code for a naked attempt to reverse the historic
fall in profits through a slash and burn privateering assault on our much
admired and appreciated public services, despite the economic and political
reality that such blood-letting is neither required nor acceptable in a
civilised society.
We all accept that the debt has to be dealt with but
why should the general public carry the can when they neither desired nor
engineered the financial debacle.
Why is the neo-liberal onslaught so cruel and
insensitive to millions of people here and abroad?
We are arguably in the midst of the greatest
capitalist crisis on record, to which national elites have no answer, but are
hell bent on ensuring that the socialist alternative will not be promoted let
alone succeed.
To this end they weaken the trade unions, the
organised bulwark in the defence and advance of decent standards, divide the
working class along the most despicable of lines, between the skiver and the
worker, the benefit scrounger and the hard working, hard done by wage slave.
Who are the real scroungers and benefit spongers?
We, the taxpayers, shell out £7 billion of subsidy,
via working person tax credits, to rogue employers who pay miserly wages, £23
billion of housing benefit to “Rachmanite” private landlords, who charge
extortionate rents, and £1.3 trillion in bank welfare bail-outs despite their drug-money
laundering, insurance mis-selling, interest rate fixing and foreign exchange
scamming.
All this on top of £120 billion worth of tax
avoidance and evasion on an industrial scale by corporate Britain and “high net
worth” individuals.
There are alternative solutions which our
representatives and supposedly accountable media never mention.
According to figures released by the Office for
National Statistics, total wealth in the UK amounts to an incredible £9.1
trillion!
The ONS also stated that the richest 10% of the
population owns and controls 56% of this bonanza which equates to £5 trillion!
If this super rich strata of society had their
wealth taxed at a very reasonable rate of 5%, leaving them with 95%, instead of
the incredulous 0.5% which they actually pay, the exchequer would raise £250
billion every year, which is more than enough to draw down the debt and fund real,
actual improvements to our public services.
But why stop at 5%, when the rest of us, caught in
the iron grip of PAYE, forfeit 40% of our income, not to mention the rip-off of
VAT at a historic high of 20%.
Is this what the billionaires tremble at and does
this explain the deafening silence from the establishment on this issue?
For the first time in UK history the working poor
now outnumber the workless poor, the younger generation will be worse off than
their parents and half a million people rely on food banks.
Poverty is endemic in the UK and benefit claimants,
both working and non-working, live in fear of the next benefit cut and together
with those on or below the average wage live in fear of the next fuel bill, the
next rent demand or the next mortgage payment.
This reality of life in “democratic” Britain today
has left workers, students, the sick, the elderly and the disabled all feeling
totally powerless and helpless.
Yet in the midst of this mass of seething misery,
people are coming together, uniting and organising against these attacks,
proving once again that it is those with the least who produce the most by way
of mutual support, solidarity and community spirit.
Trade union, socialist and community activists the
length and breadth of Britain, including Scotland, are discussing, organising
and forming peoples’ assemblies to unite and mobilise all organisations
opposing the ruling class “full spectrum” assault on wages, public services and
civil and trade union rights.
These assemblies will carry an alternative manifesto
into the general election campaign in each locality, based on policies which
put people before profit, serve the interests of the millions instead of the
millionaires and call time on the undemocratic, anti-working class, time-servers
who pretend to represent the people.
Such a broad democratic alliance, with the organised
working class at its heart and drawing around itself all those involved in
struggle, has the potential to build a powerful force for change so much so that
the recent storms will be as nothing
compared to the wrath of a risen people.
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