Vision

Not twenty-twenty, hindsight’s myopic,

Vision clouded by misapprehension,

Seeing things, whatever the intention,

That are similar to a conjurer’s trick.

Political sleight of hand deceives the eye,

Bouquets of promises plucked from thin air,

Only for each of them to disappear

In a moment. And today the same sly

Misdirection is still there to be seen;

How it fascinates, bamboozling all who

Suspend their disbelief and continue

Mesmerised by blue, red, yellow or green,

Dressing up blatant legerdemain

To dazzle the spectators once again.

D. A.

 The last 800 leaflets were distributed yesterday for the by-election a week on Thursday. Discarded leaflets from some of the candidates were found but nothing from the LibDems — seems they are giving Labour here a free run to garner anti-Tory votes. There is no socialist candidate. 

We talked to the owner of a house decked out with UKIP posters who turned out to be  a former Tory councillor who had defected to UKIP because they were replacing “white” local council candidates by Indians. True, as the three councillors for the ward are now all Indians, but so what? The Tories have in fact been cultivating the Hindu vote in north-west London, with some success.  

We met the Tory candidate himself, local councillor Steve Tuckwell. We had read in a Tory leaflet that the local Hindu temple handed out free fruit and vegetables at 2 o’clock on Tuesdays. Intrigued by this Tory support for free distribution we went along to see. It turned out to be just an ordinary food bank. 

But what we witnessed was a scene that bore some similarity to Dickens’s account of an election in his day. The Tory candidate and the Tory MP for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) forced the 20 or so destitute workers queuing for their bag of food to wait ten minutes to listen to their speeches which the workers dutifully applauded. What followed was even more obscene. The two suitably garlanded politicians were filmed, for an Asian TV channel, handing out food bags to the poor. This must come near to “treating” (giving gifts to voters to get them to vote for you) which since Dickens’s day has become illegal under electoral law. But professional politicians are known to have no shame when it comes to vote-catching. One reason why they are held in contempt, and rightly so.

One big issue in the election is ULEZ, the extension as from the end of August of the Ultra Low  Emission Zone from central London to the whole of Greater London. This will require owners of pre-2006 petrol vehicles and pre-2016 diesel vehicles to pay £12.50 a day to use their vehicles. As all vans are diesel, “white van man” is up in arms. One self-employed tradesman we met told us he had had to spend £10,000 of his own money to buy a new van and that all people like him who owned a pre-2016 van would have to do the same. Workers owning an old banger because they couldn’t afford anything better or a not that old diesel car will also be clobbered. There are two independent anti-ULEZ candidates and the Tories are playing it for all it’s worth (they can’t really play the anti-immigrant card here) saying “No to Labour’s £4,550 ULEZ expansion tax”.

No leaflets have been distributed in the Ruislip part of the constituency, so the workers there are going to have to work out for themselves that the problem is not  the Tories or Labour but Capitalism.

The words idiot and cretin are very similar in both English and French.

The English word for madman translates as le fou. When AI was asked to supply a definition of these three it came up with Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

Okay, that’s made up but the soubriquets surely apply to aforementioned French president given the latest decision to come out of Paris.

Several news outlets are reporting that France is going to more than annoy the Russians, poking the Bear as it’s known, with its decision to supply Ukraine with fifty SCALP long-range cruise missiles each having a range of one hundred and fifty five miles.

Reuters says that Macron said, “It rebalances things and enables Ukraine to hit deep into Russian lines and can penetrate tougher targets”.

A Russian source quotes a Kremlin spokesman, ‘Dmitry Peskov described it as a “mistake,” and one that was likely to have “consequences” for Ukraine. He warned that Moscow would take “countermeasures,” without specifying details.

Peskov expressed confidence that the delivery of French long-range missiles would not change the outcome of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.

Moscow has repeatedly warned Kiev’s Western backers that, by providing Ukraine with ever more advanced weapons systems, they are risking dragging themselves into direct military confrontation with Russia.’

Has Macron been ‘leaned on’ by state actors unknown? Guesses as to whom on a postcard. Or is he trying to impress his mates in NATO prior to the upcoming NATO meeting? Will the French take to the streets to demonstrate their displeasure at this dangerous racking up of international tensions?

Violence is not condoned but the so called ‘leaders’ of European states seem hell-bent on increasing the risk of unimaginable destructive upon the working class of those states.

The position of the SPGB (World Socialist Movement) remains the one it has always articulated, the only side we take in any conflict is that of the global working class.

The solution to this threat to the safety of us all, the only solution, remains the same; abolish capitalism and replace it with the only sane alternative -socialism.

 According to Hedges’, ‘the purging of Corbyn and his supporters effectively emasculated the left within the Labour Party.‘  Questions Hedges and Asa Winstanley fail to answer in their discussion include whether or not Corbyn is so different from others of Labour’s left, past & presentt.  What of Michael Foot, honest John Smith, and the former darling of the Left and current Lord Neil Kinnock? James Callaghan was also of the Left and as Prime Minister presided over the winter of discontent.   And, more importantly, why given Labour’s predictable and lamentable track record, would Corbyn have been any different?

A fable. A scorpion wishes to get to the other side of the river but is a non-swimmer. The scorpion asks a passing frog to carry him cross. The frog is highly suspicious and says how do I know you’re not going to sting me? Because if I do then I’ll drown as well says the scorpion. In mid-stream the scorpion stings the frog. The dying frog gasps Why? No choice, says the scorpion.’ It’s in my nature’.

‘Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey has denounced domestic retailers for being engaged in ‘greedflation,’ claiming that some of them have been taking advantage of rampant inflation by raising prices.

In an interview with the BBC Newsnight 5 July, Bailey said certain retailers were “overcharging customers” as millions of families struggle to make ends meet.

“If you look at petrol prices, some sellers of petrol have possibly been charging too much for it,” the BoE head suggested.

According to the top economist, “moves by regulators on retail prices will help to lower inflation,” particularly in the fuel market.

The BoE believes UK inflation will fall back to the 2% target towards the end of next year.

Asked when a fall in interest rates might be seen, Bailey responded: “I can’t give you a date as to when interest rates start to come down because that really depends upon what happens over the period of time ahead, but getting inflation down is the most important thing that we have to do.”

Meanwhile, economists at JPMorgan projected this week that BoE may have to further hike interest rates to 7% from the current 5% to bring inflation under control, hitting household budgets even harder.

Earlier this year, the BoE warned that British households and businesses needed to accept that they were worse off and should stop asking for wage increases and pushing prices higher. The regulator’s chief economist, Huw Pill, said at the time that “a series of inflationary shocks” generated by the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, and crop shortages have sent prices in the UK to a 40-year high. He claimed that in response to surging bills and other rising costs, workers and businesses were attempting to transfer the impact of inflation onto each other.’

 “The 500 richest people on the planet collectively added $852 billion to their fortunes in the first half of 2023 due in large part to a record-breaking rally in the U.S. stock market.

According to a Bloomberg analysis of its Billionaires Index the world’s richest people added an average of $14 million per day to their wealth over the past six months, “the best half-year for billionaires since the back half of 2020, when the economy rebounded from a Covid-induced slump.”

Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk saw the largest net worth boost of any global billionaire, adding nearly $97 billion in the first half of the year. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, saw his wealth grow by close to $59 billion, the second-largest gain of any billionaire.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/billionaire-wealth-2023

The rest of the above piece berates the fact that they are not paying their fair share of taxes. The cry often is heard that ‘fair taxes’ or excess profits should be used to solve some crisis of hunger, poverty, or whatever ills are currently attracting attention.

From the piece below: ‘The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.’

Any amelioration of these blights on a civilised world is to be welcomed but it is not a lasting solution. It is, in fact, not the only solution that removes once and for all the ever growing gap between the asset owning class and the vast exploited majority.

The solution is a money-free, class-free society where goods and services are produced for free use, not for profit.

This solution is not one that will come about without the active participation of a majority who understand that the underlying features of capitalism and the economic exploitative mechanism which is inbuilt into that system.

Those who have an interest in the continuation of their power and control are not likely to easily acquiesce in the removal of those things from their grasp.

As a poet articulated, we are many, they are few. So, with whom does the power lie?

From the same site comes this:

“An analysis released Thursday shows that 722 of the world’s top corporations made combined windfall profits of $1 trillion per year in 2021 and 2022 as people across the planet struggled to meet basic needs due to the price hikes that businesses have used to pad their bottom lines.

The humanitarian groups Oxfam and ActionAid found that the companies raked in $1.09 trillion in windfall profits—defined as profits significantly above a given corporation’s average—in 2021 and $1.1 trillion last year.

That’s an 89% increase in total profits compared to the average between 2017 and 2020, according to Oxfam and ActionAid’s analysis of Forbes’ “Global 2000” ranking of the world’s largest companies—a major windfall during a period in which extreme poverty and global hunger surged. 

The two groups found that “45 energy corporations made on average $237 billion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022” while “food and beverage corporations, banks, Big Pharma, and major retailers also cashed in on the cost-of-living crisis that has seen more than a quarter of a billion people in 58 countries hit by acute food insecurity in 2022.”

The windfall profits of leading food and beverage companies in 2021 and 2022 would be “enough to cover the $6.4 billion funding gap needed to deliver life-saving food assistance in East Africa more than twice over,” Oxfam and ActionAid noted.

“People are sick and tired of corporate greed,” Amitabh Behar, Oxfam’s interim executive director, said in a statement. “It’s obscene that corporations have raked in billions of dollars in extraordinary windfall profits while people everywhere are struggling to afford enough food or basics like medicine and heating.”

“Big business is gaslighting us all—they’re hiking prices to make monster profits, plundering people under the cover of a polycrisis,” Behar added.

“Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain.”

Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently conceded that corporate profiteering has been a major contributor to price increases that have fuelled cost-of-living crises worldwide. Last month, IMF economists estimated that “rising corporate profits account for almost half the increase in Europe’s inflation over the past two years as companies increased prices by more than spiking costs of imported energy.”

Oxfam and ActionAid argued that governments should “claw back gains driven by profiteering” by imposing a 50-90% windfall tax on the profits of major corporations. 

The groups said such a tax would generate hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue that could be used to lift people out of poverty, reduce hunger, slash energy bills, and support Global South nations on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

“Enough is enough,” said Arthur Larok, secretary-general of ActionAid. “Government policy should not allow mega-corporations and billionaires to profiteer from people’s pain. Governments must tax windfall profits of corporations across all sectors—and invest that money back in helping people and deterring future profiteering. They must put the interests of their great majorities ahead of the greed of a privileged few.” “

https://www.commondreams.org/news/corporate-windfall-profits

 ‘A Labour government would focus on ending poverty just as strongly as Tony Blair’s 1997 administration, Keir Starmer has said, as he set out the last of five self-declared missions, based around education and opportunity’ (The Guardian, 6 July).

There’s a by-election in Uxbridge on 20 July due to Boris jumping before he was pushed. The Socialist Party will not be standing but we will be leafletting the constituency.

The first socialist leaflets were distributed door-to-door on a Wednesday in Yiewsley in the south of the constituency.  This was also a chance to pick up discarded leaflets from the candidates (Labour, Tory, SDP and Rejoin the EU, but there are 13 other candidates).

After stating that “since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, real wages have fallen so far that we are now worse off by £1373 a year”, the Labour candidate Danny Beales, stated that “Labour has a plan to put money into the pockets of local people”.

Who (if you believed them) wouldn’t vote for someone who promised that? Actually, when you analyse what’s being promised, it’s not so much putting money into people’s pockets as not taking it out.

“A Labour government”, the promise reads, “would bring your energy bills down by £1400”. Which, if carried out, would just take people back to the position they were in when the Tories came to power 13 years ago.

The whole Labour campaign nationally is based on blaming the Tory government rather than capitalism. According to Labour, the fall in real wages is all down to Tory “mismanagement” as if a government is in a position to control the way the capitalist economy works.

We are being asked to believe that, if there had been a Labour government, this wouldn’t have happened. But experience shows that no government can control the way capitalism works. All they can do is react  to whatever the vagaries of the capitalist economy throw at them,  a reaction that is limited by the need to accept that capitalism is a profit-driven system and so to give priority to profits over everything else, including people’s standard of living.

As the leaflet we are distributing puts it, IT’S NOT THE TORIES OR LABOUR THAT’S THE PROBLEM. IT’S CAPITALISM.

 Friday 7 July 19.30 GMT + 1 (Zoom)

Speaker: Richard Botterill

https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Hands That Make the Arms

Benighted hands employed through industry

To manufacture such grim munitions

That make possible bellicose missions,

Whereby martialled workers deliberately

Seek to slaughter martialled workers they see

As holding enemy positions.

Such tragic results of these attritions

Doing naught to increase their liberty.

Most surely those hands are able to grasp

That the ever mounting loses of war

Mean mounting profits continue to soar

For those few with industry in their clasp.

Rather than following, fulfilling orders,

Hands can chose to reach out across borders.

D. A.