Daily Headline – 01/05/13

UK local elections 2nd May 2013 – Update

Tomorrow is the UK’s local election day, full listings of which local seats and councils are up for grabs can be found here.

The Conservatives will make losses which is not in doubt, the question is, how big will their losses be and who will be the beneficiaries?

Predictions are that Labour and UKIP will be the main two winners with the Greens potentially being the 3rd highest beneficiary.

TUSC (The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) will be fielding 120 candidates (TUSC was formed in 2010 so didn’t stand any candidates in the last June 2009 local elections).

The Green Party are standing over 900 candidates (in June 2009 they stood 781 candidates).

Generally Labour and the smaller parties (both left and right wing) are expecting to do well while the Lib Dems and Tories are hoping to minimise their losses.

Good luck to the left and happy workers day everyone!

Daily Headline – 26/04/13

UK local elections 2nd May 2013

The predictions are CON 29, LAB 38, LD 16, UKIP 11 and Others 6 according to Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings. However the latest national polls are CON 32%, LAB 40%, LDEM 11%, UKIP 12% and Others 5% according to YouGov.

Currently the local political landscape is a Tory wet dream with them controlling 30 out of 34 councils, 1 being held by the Lib Dems and 3 with no overall control (NOC) at the last elections held on the 4th June 2009.

Whatever happens on Thursday right-wingers will be happy with UKIP on the rise and the Conservatives remaining (at a local level) in first place, albeit with a reduced amount of councils and councillors.

Do not forget that the left is standing in various forms, from Green Socialism to regular Socialism to Communism!
Don’t let the rich dictate the lives of the working class!

Daily Headline – 17/04/13

Corporations to continue stifling free speech

The House of Lords amendment to the UK’s ‘defamation bill’ has been removed by the Conservatives in the House of Commons.

The bill would have prevented large companies ranging from McDonald’s to Tesco from suing their critics unless they could prove financial losses.

The Tories (Conservatives) won the vote 298 to 230 showing that it is not just Thatcher that was divisive but rather that it is being a Conservative that is divisive.

The Tories will always put big business before the people.

Daily Headline – 23/03/13

UK outlook ‘negative’

Credit rating agency Fitch has changed the UK’s outlook to negative, setting up a future downgrade.

The Conservatives came to power on the grounds of reducing public debt…

“Fitch said Britain’s lack of growth and growing debt mountain meant there was a “heightened probability of a downgrade in the near term”.”

Failed again tories!

Instead the Conservative/Liberal coalition has blindly followed ideologically driven policies that have no possibility of working out for the country.

Not that they care of course! Their policies are aimed, as they always have been, at making the rich wealthier and the poor poorer.

“Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow Treasury minister, said: “This is yet another blow to a downgraded chancellor who made keeping the confidence of the credit rating agencies the number one test of his economic policy. What really matters are the economic realities which Fitch are responding to including, as their statement says, ‘the persistently weak performance of UK growth’.””

Indeed Chris but don’t forget it was your party that got us into this mess!

If you are going to go down the party politics route then the top four parties (Con, Lab, Lib, UKIP) can be instantly dismissed.
Though real change is not with party politics, it’s with the people, it’s with dissent.

Daily Headline – 16/03/13

Leveson; UK press regulation

In December I wrote about The Leveson Report.

In regards to the setting up of a regulatory body…

‘The body should consider encouraging the press to be as transparent as possible in relation to sources for its stories, if the information is in the public domain.’ – BBC

Now David Cameron and the tories (Conservatives) are trying to push through an amendment to give the press a veto over who sits on the ‘independent’ panel to oversee compliance with the regulations.

All sides agree that no serving editor or politician can be on the committee but if the press has a veto the keep on vetoing until they get someone who suits their agenda.

Not very independent now is that Dave!

Rupert Murdoch

In perfect timing as a reminder why the Leveson inquiry came to be there have been around 600 new claims of phone hacking against Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, part of News International.

Further details are set to be released on Monday.

LEVESON INQUIRY: CULTURE, PRACTICE AND ETHICS OF THE PRESS

Daily Headline – 04/03/13

UK; ditch human rights

Once again the Conservative party, currently in government in the UK are attacking the vulnerable in society.

This time they say they want to repeal the Human Rights laws and the European Court for Human Rights if the get elected at the next General election.

While election for the tories is unlikely (at least out-rightly) this attitude should have alarm bells ringing in the UK electorates ears. Their callous behaviour and complete disregard for the vulnerable in society and the working class, those who are more likely to be victims of human rights abuse.

It begs the question, why would anyone want to do this? When other countries ignore human rights we think of dictatorships and brutal regimes, is that what the UK has coming under a Conservative future?

If you’re not wealthy, the coalition doesn’t care about you, so stop voting for them!

Daily Headline – 28/02/13

Bankers bonuses

Once again the UK is out of step with the EU’s progressive stances, this time with bankers bonuses.

The European Union has provisionally agreed to cap bankers bonuses as part of a new financial rules package.

The agreement means that bonuses will be capped at a year’s salary, and provided shareholders agree that can rise to two year’s pay.

This of course has majorly pissed off the UK’s ruling conservative party who have well-known links to banks and the finance sector (over a quarter of Conservative MP’s have had jobs in banking and/or finance).

The provisionally agreed cap is yet to be finalised and the UK will fight the agreement and continue to support bankers multi-million bonuses when European finance ministers meet next week.

David Cameron and the Conservatives will eternally squeeze incomes for the majority, the everyday workers and fight for the wealthy so they can get wealthier at our expense and when things go wrong, we the majority will pay for it.

Don’t give the Conservatives the option, vote them out!

Daily Headline – 23/02/13

Capitalism in decay; UK loses AAA credit rating

The UK has lost its triple A credit rating after it was downgraded by Moody’s.

The list of countries with a AAA credit rating is ever shrinking as the global capitalist economy continues to struggle.

All of Scandinavia continues to rate as AAA with the 3 main credit rating agencies (S&P, Moody’s & Fitch), here’s a sample of how some other counties are faring:

Standards & Poor’s

AAA – Australia, Canada, some of Europe
AA+ – UK, US, Austria, France
AA – New Zealand, Belgium
AA- – China, Japan, Czech Rep
A+ – South Korea, Israel
BBB – Brazil, Russia

United Kingdom

In the UK Shadow chancellor Ed Balls (Labour Party) said the decision was a “humiliating blow to a prime minister and chancellor who said keeping our AAA rating was the test of their economic and political credibility”

While Labour’s contribution to the economic situation we find ourselves in the UK should not be forgotten (selling of gold reserves at a very low point, keeping essential services in private hands and introducing private finance initiatives in the National Health Service etc) the Conservatives (tory) and their coalition partners the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) are making a bad situation worse.

The British public must wake up and and ditch the main 3 parties who have continually ruled and screwed over the country, we need change and we need it now!

British government denying the poor education

By Leon J Williams

The knock on effect of increased tuition fees (up to £9,000/€11,000) by the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition is (as expected) a fall in applications from UK candidates.

The price hike has meant that the poorest members of society have been priced out of education which has been reflected in the 6.3% fall in applications up to 17th December compared to the same period last year.
Earlier figures from November 2011-November 2012 were down a whopping 8.4%, all signs that the government (predominantly white, male millionaires) are deliberately and consciously targeting the poor, they want the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer.

For more on this click here.

The UK & the rise of the far-right

By Leon J Williams

Opinion polls are showing the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) at an all time high, according to Opinium/Observer with 15%.

As clearly shown by UK Polling Report in their article ‘The ups and downs of UKIP‘ all of the major pollsters have shown UKIP increasing in the ratings, mostly at the cost of the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) and reasons for this and their ‘successes’ in a couple of local polls.

So the current polls show:

Labour – 39
Conservatives – 29
UKIP – 15
Lib Dems – 8

So a coalition could be on the cards for the 2015 General Election though a Conservative/LibDem one is looking increasingly unlikely.

Why UKIP?

Why were UKIP the party to profit from the demise of the Lib Dems and the Anti-Labour vote?
The Lib Dems have lost most of their vote due to going against everything they stood for in the last election and labour lost the election because of bad financial management and warmongering. Labour have regained some of their losses but not all of them.
There are many parties in the UK and outside of the old main three parties there remains three in the ‘second tier’ two far-right parties, the BNP and UKIP and one left-wing party, the Green Party of England & Wales.

I suspect that the BNP failed to capitalise due to the extremeness of their policies and blatant fascism and the Green Party failed to capitalise because they didn’t criticise the European Union (EU) enough.

UKIP must be opposed at all times and on all fronts, they do not and should not be allowed to get into a position of representing the working class of the UK.

Only the progressive left fight for the interests of the working class and even though the choice of representatives for the progressive left are very limited in the UK there is still the Green Party.