We must resist 'Blue Labour'

I must express my sheer anger and disappointment with the recent 're-branding progress' the Labour Party is undergoing - specifically in the wrong hands of Peter Hain.

Again, the top brass of the party are conducting their 'listening exercises', but sadly not listening. 'Fresh Ideas', 'Refounding Labour'; call it what you will. Nothing is changing. We sold out our core vote, and we must try hard to reach them again. That is the working people of Britain, who want to pay tax fairly to create a fair and equal society, where every one has an equal start in life.

Ed Miliband can throw about cliched phrases like the 'squeezed-middle' but it just doesn't hold any weight. The squeezed middle? What about the squeezed poor? The people who are having their benefits slashed and are being savagely attacked by this ruthless Tory government?

I'm not proposing that I have all the answers, but we need to be honest with ourselves. The top tier of the party do not represent the core membership, and that is a severe problem. We are meant to be a Democratic Socialist party, yet we have a Social Democrat leader, who wants to appeal to the 'working-class Conservatives' out there.

Ed, we don't need Blue Labour. We've had that for the last 14 years. If you want to listen and learn, open your ears.

Tories talk tough but act soft on banker's bonuses

It is reported today that RBS Chief Executive, Stephen Hester, is set to pocket up to £7 million worth of bonuses and payments next month - even though Cameron called for RBS to set an example by paying 'smaller bonuses'. What makes it worse is that RBS is owned by the taxpayer at approximately 85%.

Next month, it is still expected that £7 billion worth of bonuses will be dished out to city bankers regardless of the amount of welfare cuts that have been issued to tackle the deficit. Surely they should be the ones setting an example as the ones who caused the financial crisis but are still being awarded obscene bonuses.

Alas its no great surprise that the Conservatives talked tough but acted soft on banker's bonuses. It is quite clear that we are not all in this together and it adds insult to injury when ordinary families are paying the cost of the economy instead of the people who wrecked it that are being rewarded.

A painful New Year ahead for local communities

Since its New Year, I would have hoped to talk about the prospects of a prosperous new year ahead of us. Unfortunately, this is the year that we will all feel the bite of the draconian cuts issued by the Coalition government. On Tuesday, we will see the regressive VAT rise go ahead - which will extinguish any signs of growth for businesses and hit the poorest families the hardest. However, what concerns me the most is the delivery of devastating cuts to local councils that are going to be implemented in the coming year.

Erick Pickles' Localism Bill is a big con like Cameron's plans for the 'Big Society'. The Localism Bill, introduced to Parliament on Monday, promises "a fundamental shift of power away from Westminster to councils, communities and homes across the nation". It all sounds well and good but the details are most displeasing.

In real terms, Government support to councils will be cut by 27% over the period of four years. We all agree that there needs to be efficiency savings made. But what I take issue with is that the poorest areas will be hit the hardest. Mr. Pickles says English spending power will fall by an average 4.4% and a maximum of 8.9% next year. If it is so 'fair' - the Coalition Government's favourite euphemism - then why isn't there a universal fixed number spending cut to all of the Councils in England?

Instead, what we have seen is grave injustices in the different amounts of cuts to Council funding. 12 of the 15 'winner' councils that are losing less than 2% of funding per year are Conservative Councils and these happen to be the wealthier areas such as Windsor and Buckinghamshire. Surprise, surprise. Whilst only 2 out of the 12 'loser' councils are under Conservative control, that are having a maximum of 8.9% of their funding slashed. The majority of the councils that are having the axe wielded the highest to them are Labour-run councils in some of the poorest areas in England.

This week leader of the council, Andrew De Freitas, promised that "all front line services will be protected". Well, that is a relief. And so is the welcoming news that we will look to make savings in the executive hierarchy of the council before making redundancies at the bottom of the services that people depend on. However, it appears our council will be hit with the maximum funding cut - so what will become of the leisure services, parks and libraries that will have to be slashed? Chalk one up for the 'Big Society'! According to Mr. Cable, he patronisingly thinks that libraries should be run by citizens in their free time. If that's the case, I'll welcome David Cameron down to run the local sports centres in Grimsby and Nick Clegg can run our local libraries. Get real.

Leeds Festival Reviewed

I thought I'd divert from the usual political posts to bring you a review of Leeds Festival, held at Bramham Park - an event I attended over the Bank Holiday weekend. This year I seemed to take more 'stuff' than ever - a good thing in the sense that you're never hungry/thirsty/sober, but the obvious drawback being the extremely large amount of heavy lifting and carrying to be done. The weather was a significant plus-point - it being mild and dry for the majority of the Festival's time scale. I won't give reviews for every, or even most bands I saw - but I will for my top three. In no particular order these were: Blink-182, Weezer and Arcade Fire. Blink are there for the pure awesomeness of their music; Weezer for their brilliant set - the best of the weekend; and Arcade Fire for their technical excellence. Arcade Fire, in particular were a massive surprise for me. I've always been a bit of a fan but seeing them live made me realise how superb they actually are. The main arena was half empty when they were on due to Pendulum being scheduled at the same time on the NME stage so the experience felt quite personal, really. I was just hit by the pure majesty of their performance. On a side note, the BBC must be scolded for not showing ANY Leeds highlights, instead concentrating fully on the Reading Festival - hampered hugely by severe rains for most of the weekend. For events like The Libertines' reunion, that wouldn't have had the magic the second time at Reading, the BBC should have shown the Leeds version. Shame on you, BBC. All in all though, a brilliant weekend.

The REAL Source of the Deficit

Just a quick blog post to draw your attention to the 'Left Foot Forward' blog and its analysis of the real source of the UK's deficit. It proves the coalition's claim that the deficit arose because of consistent Labour over-spending is false - and uses the Treasury's own graph to do this. The conclusion the economist Michael Burke comes to, quite obviously, is that the deficit is a recession effect - attributable to plunging taxation receipts.

http://www.leftfootforward.org/2010/09/the-source-of-the-deficit/

Tax Avoider to Review Tax Spending.

The retail store mogul, Sir Philip Green has been asked by the Prime Minister to independently scrutinise all the past three years of government spending. He will conduct an external audit and report back to Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander. As well as being a well known entrepreneur, Green is also a well publicised tax avoider. His wife 'owns' Arcadia - the parent group of Topshop, BHS etc - and lives in the tax haven of Monaco. Asked on the Today Programme about his living situation, he claimed that his wife is "...not a tax exile. My family do not live in the United Kingdom". So it's okay to make billions from customers in the UK but not actually live in this country and pay your fair share - like all those millions of people who can't afford to decamp to Monaco have to do all their lives. It's been estimated that the Greens save themselves around £300 million a year by living out of reach of the Inland Revenue's grasp,Vince Cable, who quite rightly denounced the last Labour government for obtaining the advice of Green, stating that "having an adviser who is also a tax exile is completely incompatible and totally unacceptable" - has now strangely completely changed his mind on the issue and will stand idly by whilst Sir Philip uses his 'expertise' to go rifling through expenditure plans. It's incredibly hard to swallow the fact a man, so detached from the everyday lives of Britons, who doesn't even pay his own fair share to the tax coffers is now deciding how taxpayers' money is then spent!

Prezza for Treasurer.

Just a quick post to show my support for John Prescott in his aim to be Labour Treasurer. He wants to turn the Treasurer role into a role that really counts, not the non-job that it currently is.

John has four key aims that he believes the Labour Party should implement:

To proudly defend the record of the Labour Government
To promote Labour’s progressive policies
To actively encourage greater participation in the Labour Party
To hold the Lib-Con coalition effectively to account

Prescott and his 'battlebus' travelled 5000 miles during the election campaign, clearly showing we need his energy to remain in the day to day running of the party.