Britain

Wasn’t it good of
Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, not to accept a pay rise of
£100,000? What a model/example of restraint to us all! Instead he would only
take 2.5% pay increase each year for the next five years, out of his annual
salary of £289,551. We must feel sorry for him. That means he will only get a
bit more than £7,000 pay increase this year. How did anyone work out that he
should get such a pay rise in the first place? The way the economy has been going
over the last year, it can’t be.

Readers of Socialist Appeal would have heard the
headlines this week about the delay in supplying the SATs results for schools
and the damage that this is causing. Apart from the late delivery, and the
whole issue that SATs as a form of assessment are not good education in the
first place, one of the critical issues about the current situation has largely
been missing from these headline reports.

The second World on Your
Doorstep (WOYD) festival took place in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, over the
weekend of the 19th and 20th July. WOYD is a world music festival, celebrating
the diverse cultures, music and traditions of West Yorkshire and the long
history of migration into the area from all parts of the world.

The
judicial House of Lords has recently ruled that pleural plaque (scarring of the
lung – a condition caused by breathing in asbestos) is not an industrial
illness for which compensation can be claimed. This reverses twenty years of
common law practice. What do the Law Lords know about it? Asbestosis related
conditions are not exactly an occupational hazard for judicial bigwigs.
 

Even the bourgeois press has admitted that
the sudden shift in world economic fortunes has brought Marxism ‘back from the
dead’ – the Sunday Times ran an article last week under the title ‘The credit
crunch is bringing Marxism back into fashion’. From our perspective, Marxism is
not a fashion or a strange breed of animal, as the bourgeoisie like to kid
themselves, but the only answer to today’s problems. And as the deep crisis of
world capitalism comes more and more to the surface, more and more people will
seek our ideas. This was shown by the turnout of more than 30 at ULU Marxist
Society and Socialist Appeal’s Marxist
Day School on Saturday 12th
July.

A government Report has confirmed what everybody already knew. The
‘liberalisation’ of the postal service has benefited big business, but
not ordinary people. This is no surprise. The Post Office works on a ‘one price goes
everywhere’ principle. The monopoly on letters enables the huge volume
of business to business mail from and to central London head offices to
in effect subsidise highland crofters and little old ladies who live on
remote Scottish islands keeping in touch with their loved ones. Does
anyone have a problem with that?

Pressures
have been building up in British society. High house prices, fuel and food
price increases and pay restraint and cuts particularly in the public sector
are all having a huge effect on workers. It’s obvious that there’s going to be
a change and the longer it is delayed the worse the storm is when it eventually
breaks.

At present gas prices are going up by 13.6%
in Britain. They’re rising by just 2% in the Netherlands. Prices are 25% higher
here than on the continent. By the end of the year household bills will be
£1,323 a year. This is twice as high as when Labour was elected in 1997. Some
estimate household bills could hit £1,500 next winter.

Public
sector pay is big news this summer. In fact, contrary to what the weather
forecasters might tell you, it could be a decidedly warm one. It doesn’t take a
lot to work out why either. Public sector workers are being made to pay for the
New Labour meltdown. Pay restraint is intimately tied into the government’s
finances and that means dinner ladies and civil servants footing the bill not
only for the ongoing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan but also for the black hole
in public spending courtesy of the ex board members of Northern Rock. Alistair
Darling’s plea that the need to keep inflation under control "applies to each
and every one of us" will ring hollow in the ears of the civil servants
and other workers on the minimum wage or a marginally better pittance.

The bosses
are over the moon. “Boris Johnson’s London
will be a Tory laboratory” trumpets the Daily Telegraph (May 4th).  That makes David Cameron their Doctor
Frankenstein. Don’t let anybody
fall for the line that it can’t get worse after Blair and Brown. Already one of Johnson’s top aide’s has had to
resign for saying about immigrants who don’t like Tory policies "Well,
let them go (back) if they don’t like it here."

Brief as it was woeful, Wendy Alexander’s
leadership of the Labour Party in Scotland has come to an end.
Alexander was forced to resign after being given a one day ban from parliament
for breaking rules regarding donations for her campaign to become Labour Party
leader. Her actions were illegal – no doubt about it. No one is quite sure why
such large sums of cash were needed for what in effect became a coronation,
given the lack of an opposition candidate.