And its jobs for the boys ( and girls ) . Ex-attorney general , Lord Goldsmith , starts a lucrative new career with a big American law firm called Debevoise & Plimpton LLP on a salary thought to be in the region of £1 million a year. As European chair of litigation, Lord Goldsmith will be part of a firm that prides itself on conflict resolution and anti-corruption investigations - it recently acted for a company in connection with a worldwide inquiry into possible corrupt payments to government officials. Lord Goldsmith , of course , possesses plenty of experience upon how to handle corruption cases as witnessed by his handling of the Saudi Arabian - BAE arms and bribery investigation . Never let the law and legal nicieties interfere with politics and business .

Other pigs with snouts in the trough as reported by the Guardian are :-

· Alan Milburn - The former health secretary is an adviser to Pepsi which brings him £25,000 a year. He also holds a £30,000-a-year role on Lloyds pharmacy's health advisory panel and draws another £35,000 as an adviser to the European board of Bridgepoint Capital Ltd, a finance company with an interest in healthcare.

· Stephen Byers - The former transport and trade secretary is a paid consultant to a Lebanese construction firm based in Athens. He is chairs the board of the Yalta European Strategy group.

· David Blunkett - The former home secretary, collected £385,000 from his memoirs, and up to £150,000 a year from his weekly Sun column. He is also an adviser to Entrust, a company which is bidding to run Britain's controversial identity cards programme.

· John Prescott - The former deputy prime minister signed a £300,000 deal to tell his story in Prezza: Pulling No Punches after stepping down this year.

· John Reid - The former home secretary who was famously labelled Labour's "attack dog" by Jeremy Paxman is expected to become chairman of Celtic Football Club.

· Alastair Campbell - Downing Street's former communications director is reported to have earned £1 million for his book, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries.

The poor and education

Socialist Courier has directed readers towards findings that have indicated a link between class and educational achievement here and here and the Herald reports further connections between poverty and educational success .

Figures from the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) show that Glasgow, Dundee, North Ayrshire and West Dunbartonshire are among the councils with the lowest attainment rates at Standard Grade and Higher - all are regions which have a much higher proportion of pupils on free school meals than the national average of 14.6% - a key indicator of deprivation. Glasgow , for instance , has 32% of pupils are on free meals .

The best performing councils, including East Renfrewshire, East Dunbartonshire, Stirling and the Western Isles all have much lower proportions of pupils on free school meals. In East Renfrewshire, the figure is 8.3%.

The latest figures to highlight the gulf in exam attainment between rich and poor will spark renewed concerns that not enough is being done to address the problem. Last year, HM Inspectorate of Education found the gap between the best and worst-performing pupils in Scotland was growing wider, despite a raft of government initiatives and £19 billion spent on education since devolution.
Isabel Hutton, education spokeswoman for Cosla, which represents local authorities, called for the "inequalities arising from deprivation" to be removed.
A Scottish Government spokesman said the focus by ministers of early intervention, cutting class sizes in deprived areas and ensuring teachers were retained in nurseries would all help to raise attainment across the board.

Socialist Courier doubts if such palliative will address the situation . After all , it has been an objective of all governments , of all shades of the political spectrum , to foster an educated work-force and here we are still facing the same problem .

The New Gold Rush

BHP Billiton will tomorrow announce that it estimates the reserves of gold at its Australian Olympic Dam mine are more than 50% bigger than previously thought, raising speculation that it is sitting on the largest gold mine in the world. Situated 330 miles north of Adelaide, South Australia, Olympic Dam contains deposits of several minerals and is already the home to the world's largest uranium mine.
BHP shares hit record levels with feverish expectations that a recent drilling programme had vastly exceeded expectations. BHP has grown in value on the back of the China-fuelled commodity boom. Its stock market value has reached $200 billion (£99 billion), compared with $30 billion five years ago. Yesterday the share price rose 81p to £17.37.

The price of gold neared a 28-year peak yesterday as investors continued to buy into the commodity as a hedge against a falling dollar and the potential for a serious economic downturn in the US. The precious metal hit $736.05 per troy ounce at one stage helped by a forecast from Goldman Sachs that prices could soon reach $775. Gold prices have been rising since 2000 when they were as low as $280 per oz.

BEHIND THE FINE WORDS

At the annual conferences of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Parties we hear fine words about full employment and prosperity but what is the reality? "Danny Wilde collected his last pay cheque from the Tulip pork factory in Norfolk on Friday before joining the dole queue. His wife, Melissa, was made redundant from her job at the same Thetford plant earlier this month. They both joined the meat processing lines from school and have put in 20 years at the company between them, taking turns on early and late shifts so that they could look after their two children. There have been jobs cuts here before: in 2003 more than 170 full-time employees were made redundant and replaced immediately with agency staff, most of them migrants on poorer terms - lower rates of pay, mostly just the minimum wage, less overtime money, less holiday, more antisocial shift patterns, uncertain hours. The full-time employees had no pay rise for three years and watched as their incomes were eroded by inflation. Now the rest of the work has gone, most of it relocated to another subsidiary of the trans-national Danish Crown group in Cornwall. The Wildes feel badly let down after years of loyal work. As Melissa puts it: "That's business today, isn't it. It doesn't care." Tulip has been Thetford's largest employer since Thermos closed its factory on the same industrial estate five years ago and shifted to China where the labour is cheaper. Up to 700 people who have worked at Tulip regularly will now have to look for jobs elsewhere." (Guardian, 25 September) RD

MILITARY PRECISION?

There is a much used phrase in the English language - "military precision". If something is carried out efficiently we use "military precision" to denote an extremely smooth operation. We may have to get rid of that phrase though in view of recent developments.
"Nuclear warheads capable of unleashing the equivalent of 10 Hiroshima bombs were mistakenly flown across the United States by a bomber crew who thought they were dummies, and the terrifying security lapse was not discovered for almost 36 hours, it has been revealed. The Pentagon is examining how so many vital checks and balances, painstakingly set out during the Cold War era, broke down causing an incident that military personnel are calling one of the biggest mistakes in US Air Force history.... The B-52 took off from the remote Minot air force base in North Dakota with 12 cruise missiles that were being taken out of commission and scheduled for burial in Louisiana. The warheads on the decommissioned missiles should have been replaced with dummies of the same weight, but personnel failed to notice that six of the 12 were fully operational nuclear warheads." (Independent, 25 September) RD

SPEED AND STUPIDITY

"The fastest driver ever caught in a routine speed check in the UK has been sentenced to 10 weeks in jail. Timothy Brady, 33, of Earls Crescent, Harrow, north-west London, pleaded guilty at Oxford Crown Court to dangerous driving. Brady was clocked at 172mph in a Porsche 911 Turbo in a 70mph zone on the A420 in Oxfordshire on 27 January. He was banned from driving for three years and will have to take an extended driving test to get another licence. He denied another charge of aggravated vehicle taking. The court heard Brady had taken the Porsche from luxury car hire firm Helphire, where he worked as a delivery driver. ... Judge David Morton Jack said to Brady in court: "Your driving was criminally self-indulgent and utterly thoughtless of the danger you might be creating for the innocent." Police have criticised Brady for travelling at such high speed." (BBC News, 24 September)
Brady was criticised by the judge, the police, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and the Safe Speed Safety Committee.
The manufacturers of this potential baby killing Porsche and the advertisers of this speed death trap escaped censure of course. After all, that's business, isn't it? RD

Health service rationing

According to the BBC , Doctor magazine asked readers about rationing.

16% - said patients had died early as a result.

Over 50% said patients had suffered as a result .

They reported not being allowed to prescribe drug treatments including smoking cessation drugs and anti-obesity treatment. They also reported that local NHS trusts had been placing restrictions on fertility treatments, obesity surgery and a host of minor operations, including those for varicose veins.

Many experts fear the situation will get worse with increasing demands on the health service made by the ageing population and expected advances in medicines.

Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee, said:
"The NHS could spend whatever you gave it, but it obviously works with a limited budget ...Rationing is the great unspoken reality. The only people who refuse to mention the 'r-word' are the media and the politicians, who continue to want to promise everything for everyone in order to win elections."

Malnourished old folk

A major survey is to try to establish how many people are malnourished when they enter hospitals and care homes. The three-day investigation by nutrition charity Bapen - assessing more than 500 institutions across the UK .

Based on studies carried out 10 years ago, an estimated 30% of patients in hospitals and care homes are clinically malnourished - a total of 3m people.

Charities such as Age Concern complain malnutrition remains prevalent .

As many as 10% of people aged over 65 are malnourished. That figure rises to 60% when it comes to elderly people in hospital.

"Weight loss and poor nutritional state is not a normal part of aging. And if it's happening we ought to address it and treat it." - The director of nutrition at King's College hospital , Rick Wilson said

More pay for company directors

It is reported that the typical salary increase of executive directors was 7 per cent last year, well above the UK average of 3.7 per cent.

Potential bonuses were an average 130 per cent of salary, up from 115 per cent the year before - but the actual bonus payout rocketed from 75 per cent to 94 per cent.

"Increases for executive directors are still significantly ahead of those received by the general workforce" the report by accountancy firm Deloitte said.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

"Tory defector Quentin Davies has urged other Conservative MPs to "take the plunge" at the Labour Party conference. He accused Tory leader David Cameron of having made a "Faustian pact with his own extremists" on Europe. He said he was proud of his new party and won a standing ovation from many delegates but others appeared to find the speech amusing. Deputy leader Harriet Harman welcomed other ex-Tories, including Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward. ..Mr Davies praised Gordon Brown as a man of "sound judgement" and "great competence" who had dealt with a series of trials since becoming prime minister. By contrast he accused Mr Cameron of saying and doing "such consistently foolish and superficial and transparently contradictory things" - on schools and tax and spending." (BBC News, 24 September)
Mr Davies was the former Tory MP for Grantham and Stamford who defected to the Labour Party in June. It shows that the differences between Labour and Conservative, never very great at any time, grow less and less as the Labour Party shows itself as an out and out supporter of capitalism. RD

DEMOS? NO BOTHER

"The ray gun has been a staple of science fiction since HG Wells’s The War of the Worlds, but fantasy is now reality as the first heat-ray weapon goes on display in London this week.
Raytheon, the American defence company, is hoping to find customers for its Silent Guardian system, developed as a form of non-lethal crowd control, which will be shown at the Defence Systems and Equipment International (DSEI) exhibition, the world’s largest arms fair, at the Excel centre in Docklands, East London. The weapon emits a wave of energy that vaporises skin moisture, causing an intense burning sensation. Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials will be invited to place their hands in front of the machine’s ray and experience what its maker describes as “intolerable” pain." (Times, 10 September)
Isn't capitalism wonderful? Think of the millions of pounds the owning class will save in policing demonstrations and protests, as for the "intolerable pain" who cares? RD

IT BEGGARS BELIEF

"Inside a tiny courtroom buzzing with flies, a police officer stands before a judge and carefully unfolds a white handkerchief. The damning evidence inside: 13 coins worth about 30 cents. He says he found them in the pockets of Shanni Ram Ganga, a hunched man standing next to him facing a sentence of one to three years. Ganga's alleged crime: begging. Beggars crowd every sidewalk in India, yet panhandling is illegal, so a separate judicial system exists just for those accused of pleading for coins in public. More than 1,400 people are serving sentences in beggars' homes — rundown facilities often little better than prisons, critics say — and that number is expected to rise as the government "cleans up" the Indian capital to host the Commonwealth Games, a major sports competition, in 2010....There are some 60,000 beggars in New Delhi, most earning 50-100 rupees a day, not much less than the working poor, according to a recent government-commissioned study on beggars. Many are handicapped." (Yahoo News, 15 September)
Yes this is New Delhi part of the new vibrant Indian capitalism that we are told about. RD

A WASTEFUL SOCIETY

Occasionally some workers might push the boat out and spend a little more than they intended on a night out, but it is doubtful if they could reach this sort of extravagance.
"Kobe beef can fetch up to $250,000 (£125,000) per animal. It comes from the black Tajimaushi breed of Wagyu cattle, which are raised according to strict tradition, including daily massages and supplies of sake, in Hyogo Prefecture, Japan. In 2004,
The London restaurant Zafferano bought an 850g white truffle for £28,000. It was accidentally left to rot." (Times, 10 September)
This sort of extravagance can be reported in a society where many are living on less than $2 a day. It makes us sick, how about you? RD

AN EXPENSIVE SOCIETY

Many workers get upset when the landlord ups their rent, but really they are getting upset about nothing when you consider the plight of members of the capitalist class. "A record has been set for the world’s most expensive office rents after Permal, a hedge fund group, committed to occupy two floors in the West End – in spite of the woes in financial markets. The group, an international fund of funds which is part of Legg Mason, agreed on Friday to pay £140 and £130 per sq ft for the fifth and sixth floors of 12 St James’s Square, a redevelopment by D2, a private Irish group." (Financial Times, 21 September) RD

Upstairs and Downstairs

This week, the socialite Tara Palmer-Tomkinson revealed that she had a "massive staff", mainly from Ukraine. "As I don't have a husband, I rather look forward to having people around me. I have half the Ukraine here every day. It's like the Russian army coming in to clean. I want to come back at night and feel like I'm in a five-star hotel," she said.

The British middle classes [sic] are looking for domestic help who can't easily pack up and leave, which means employing people from war-torn countries or from non-EU countries whose presence in Britain is dependent on their employment .

It is legal for a private householder to refuse to employ someone on the grounds of their colour, their nationality or their religion, and from our interviews with employers, it is clear that they do .

Sting's wife, Trudie Styler, was sued by her cook, Jane Martin, earlier this year.
Ms Martin claimed sexual discrimination after being forced to work 14-hour days while pregnant. The tribunal heard how Ms Styler, 52, abused her domestic staff to make her "feel royal".

Who owns the Atlantic Ocean - Part 1

Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields .

"The Russians may be claiming the Arctic but the UK is claiming a large chunk of the Atlantic. Some states might ask why a big power is entitled to huge stretches of the ocean's resources thousands of miles away from its land, but that's the way the law is." - Martin Pratt, director of research at Durham University's international boundaries research unit .

Britain is accelerating its process of submitting applications to the UN - which is fraught with diplomatic sensitivities, not least with Argentina - before an international deadline for registering interests. Relying on detailed geological and geophysical surveys by scientists and hydrographers, any state can delineate a new "continental shelf outer limit" that can extend up to 350 miles from its shoreline. According to the convention on the law of the sea, applicant states may register their rights by "establishing the foot of the continental slope, by meeting the requirements stated for the thickness of sedimentary rocks".
Once demarcated, the ocean floor may then be claimed up to 60 nautical miles from the bottom of the continental slope. When territorial rights have been obtained, states have the right to extract any minerals, natural gas or oil discovered in the annexed seabed.
There is a deadline of May 2009 for claims from the UK and other countries to be submitted, although states that ratified the treaty later have more time

Greenpeace has described the process as a "land grab".

The Falklands claim has the most potential for acrimonious political fallout. Britain and Argentina fought over the islands 25 years ago, and the value of the oil under the sea in the region is understood to be immense: seismic tests suggest there could be up to 60 million barrels under the ocean floor. Britain has been granted licences for exploratory drilling around the islands within the normal 200-mile exploration limit and any new claim to UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf would extend territorial rights further into the Atlantic.

A MOTHER SPEAKS

"There were around 600 deaths in custody in England and Wales last year, a third of them suicides, according to a report published today. The study, by the Forum for Preventing Deaths in Custody, found there were 500 to 600 deaths in custody each year, some of which were preventable. ...In 2004-05 - the most recent year with a full breakdown of the cause of deaths in custody - 127 of the 590 deaths in custody were suicides. ..The report also raised concerns about the number of mentally ill people in custody, and suggested they would be better looked after in psychiatric care... Pauline Campbell, whose daughter Sarah died in custody, told the BBC that prisons were being "overwhelmed" by high numbers of vulnerable people who needed care, not punishment "They're being used as social dustbins for people who are mentally ill, drug and alcohol dependents, the homeless and so on," she said. (BBC News, 21 September)
If you cannot produce surplus value for the owning class you are thrown into the social dustbin. Mrs Campbell has got it right. RD

Who owns the North Pole - Part 8

Continung our series of postings about the the competition to control the Artic and the North Pole ( last reported here ) , we can now declare that the North Pole belongs to the Russians - or so they have now claimed .

A Russian expedition has proved that a ridge of mountains below the Arctic Ocean is part of Russia's continental shelf . Russia's Natural Resources Ministry said early test results on the soil samples showed Russia is geologically linked to the Lomonosov Ridge.

"Results of an analysis of the Earth's crust show that the structure of the underwater Lomonosov mountain chain is similar to the world's other continental shelves, and the ridge is therefore part of Russia's land mass," a statement from the ministry said.

So now it is official , at least , for Russian interests .
Socialist Courier rather doubts that for Denmark , Norway , Canada and the USA , who all possess conflicting claims , will be seeing it Moscow's way .

ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN

It is the nature of capitalist politics that you must pander to your audience. Thus in one week the late President Kennedy could declare to a German audience "I am a Berliner", to an Irish audience boast of his Irish descent and finish off in the USA extolling his American patriotism.
Mitt Romney who is contesting the Republican primaries is using a similar ploy. "Whereas he once took on the powerful gun lobby, he more recently joined the National Rifle Association as a life member. Elected in Massachusetts as a strong supporter of gay rights, he now proclaims himself as a fierce opponent of same sex marriage." (Times, 20 September)
Obviously, a man of principles. The main principle being “does anything to get elected". RD

The Old School Tie

The school that a pupil attended remains a bigger factor in whether they get into a top university than having good A-level grades, research suggests.

The Sutton Trust charity, which analysed admissions from 2002-06, says state school youngsters are losing out. The trust found the number of pupils at the top 30 comprehensives who went to Oxbridge was just a third of what might be expected if based on ability. But at the top 30 independent schools, more than expected got Oxbridge places.

The trust says the findings cannot be attributed to A-level results alone.

Sutton Trust chairman Sir Peter Lampl said :-

"We have a class structure, that is the very simple answer. We actually do have a class structure and that gets in the way of trying to do something about this."

The Blairs cash in

Cherie Blair has struck a deal to publish a "warts and all" autobiography in a deal reported to be worth £1 million . Her memoirs will be published in October next year .

Mrs Blair's £1 million advance will be paid in three stages – an upfront payment of £300,000, then £300,000 when her book is handed over and the rest when it is published.

Blair , himself , could earn £6 million from his own memoirs but for the moment he is in no hurry to write them.

IMMIGRATION IN THE USA

There is a great deal of dispute in the USA at the moment between capitalists who welcome immigrants as a source of cheap labour and those that oppose immigration on the grounds of taxation costs, but both groups will have to take in to consideration the immense costs of deportation. "It would cost at least $94 billion to find, detain and remove all 12 million people believed to be staying illegally in the United States, the federal government estimated Wednesday. Julie Myers, the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, gave the figure during a hearing before a Senate committee Wednesday. She acknowledged it was based on "very rough calculations." An ICE spokesman later said the $94 billion did not include the cost of finding illegal immigrants, nor court costs -- dollar amounts that are largely unknowable." (CNN.com., 12 September)
In view of those figures we suppose it is safe to assume despite the political posturing, the immigrants will stay. RD

WALL STREET SNOOPERS

The USA declares that it is opposed to dictatorships and is in favour of democracy, but when profits can be made it soon forgets such high principles.
"Li Runsen, the powerful technology director of China’s ministry of public security, is best known for leading Project Golden Shield, China’s intensive effort to strengthen police control over the Internet. But last month Mr. Li took an additional title: director for China Security and Surveillance Technology, a fast-growing company that installs and sometimes operates surveillance systems for Chinese police agencies, jails and banks, among other customers.
The company has just been approved for a listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s listing and Mr. Li’s membership on its board are just the latest signs of ever-closer ties among Wall Street, surveillance companies and the Chinese government’s security apparatus. Wall Street analysts now follow the growth of companies that install surveillance systems providing Chinese police stations with 24-hour video feeds from nearby Internet cafes. Hedge fund money from the United States has paid for the development of not just better video cameras, but face-recognition software and even newer behaviour-recognition software designed to spot the beginnings of a street protest and notify police." (New York Times, 11 September) RD

PROMISES, PROMISES

Politicians are notorious for making promises, and the further they are from power the more outrageous the promises. Thus the Scottish Socialist Party could promise to double the old age pension, safe in the knowledge that they were not going to get elected. We suspect the Liberal Democrats do not fancy their electoral chances either when this happens.
"Far-reaching proposals to transform Britain into a carbon-neutral economy within 40 years won overwhelming backing from the Liberal Democrat rank and file yesterday. Delegates at the party's annual conference in Brighton approved a series of measures, including plans to remove petrol-driven cars from the roads by 2040, invest billions in the railways and pour resources into renewable power to give Britain a network of non-carbon emitting electricity generators." (Independent, 18 September)
One of the few political promises ever kept was Winston Churchill's "Blood, Sweat and Tears". We certainly got those. RD

A CLUSTER OF LIES

"Humanitarian organisations accuse the Ministry of Defence today of reclassifying one of its newest weapons to escape an expected world ban on cluster bombs. The MoD last year described the Hydra CRV-7 system, which delivers a number of bomblets from a helicopter-mounted rocket pod, as a cluster weapon.
Later in the year, Margaret Beckett, then foreign secretary, said the government did not consider the weapon fell within the term "dumb", because virtually all the bomblets exploded on impact. . ...However, the MoD admitted trials in the US had revealed a 6% failure rate. .. The reclassification is attacked today by Oxfam, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Landmine Action, who also say that Britain has been the world's third largest user of lethal cluster bombs over the last 10 years. "Ten years after it championed a treaty banning landmines, the UK has a chance to do the same with cluster bombs - but instead it is spinning a cluster bomb con," said Simon Conway, Director of Landmine Action. ..Anna MacDonald of Oxfam said: "Current UK policy on cluster bombs makes no sense. They say they want an international treaty but they also want to keep using cluster bombs well known to kill and injure civilians." (Guardian, 18 September)
Ms MacDonald might think it "makes no sense", but from the standpoint of British capitalism, having the cheapest and most efficient weapons, it makes a great deal of sense. RD

SHAME IN IRAQ

"2,000-year-old Sumerian cities torn apart and plundered by robbers. The very walls of the mighty Ur of the Chaldees cracking under the strain of massive troop movements, the privatisation of looting as landlords buy up the remaining sites of ancient Mesopotamia to strip them of their artefacts and wealth. The near total destruction of Iraq's historic past – the very cradle of human civilisation – has emerged as one of the most shameful symbols of our disastrous occupation." (Independent, 17 September)
This touching article, displaying as it does a great concern for historical artefacts, is surely wide of the mark when it states "the most shameful symbols". What about the tens of thousands of deaths, injuries and misery suffered by the population? RD

HIGH SOCIETY, LOW INTELLIGENCE

In an article that describes the going on of "our betters" we can learn how they manage to pass away the weary hours between counting their money.
The co-owner of the nightclub Crystal, just off Oxford Street gives us an idea of the goings on. "The minimum spend for a table of ten on a weekend night is £8,000. But co-owner Raymond Bechara says that, recently, a punter arrived and blew £17,000 within 15 minutes. "It was his 25th birthday, so he bought four of our special bottles of Moet, which are covered in Swarovski crystals and cost £4,400 each - two to drink and two to spray on his friends."
(Times Magazine, 15 September) RD

PHARMACEUTICAL PROFITS

"Pharmaceutical companies are overstating the effectiveness of their drugs, and may be placing patients at greater risk, because animal laboratory studies they fund are biased, it was claimed yesterday. A survey of nearly 300 animal-test studies involving six different experimental drugs suggested that such flawed methodology is rampant in the drug-testing industry. About two-thirds of the studies, which were all aimed at testing drugs with the potential to treat stroke patients, did not use a proper "randomised blind" methodology, the British Association's Science Festival in York was told." (Independent, 15 September) Why would respectable pharmaceutical firms distort scientific data?
Only to make more money? Surely not. RD

DEBT-LADEN WORKERS

Behind all the advertiser's glib spiels about the consumer satisfaction of buy, buy, buy lurks the nasty reality that many workers find themselves in a nightmare of debt.
"Record numbers are visiting the Citizens Advice Bureau because their finances have spiralled out of control. Debt is the most common reason for attending a CAB, overtaking benefit problems. The charity said it had seen a 20 per cent rise in those struggling with borrowing, handling 1.7 million cases last year. Debt accounts for one in three of inquiries at the CAB, with advisers in England and Wales dealing with more than 6,600 such problems every working day." (Daily Telegraph, 12 September) RD

LOADS OF MONEY

Millions of workers survive on less than $5 a day. What a contrasts with these parasites. "What price exclusivity? If you ask Lamborghini, one million euros ($1.4 million) should do it -- before tax, of course. In a bid to add more prestige to what it already has, the Italian maker of super luxury sports car unveiled the Reventon at Frankfurt's international autoshow, a very limited edition car that looks more like an arrow than anything on four wheels. With the six-figure price tag, it is the most expensive car that it has ever built. Needless to say, Lamborghini has already sold the 20 cars that it plans to build. "As soon as the word got out, we sold out in four days," Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann told Reuters, adding that they could have easily sold another 20." (Yahoo News, 12 September) RD

A DOG'S LIFE

"When the New York socialite Leona Helmsley left much of her fortune to her poodle rather than her grandchildren, she was following in a long - if odd - tradition. But she did care about at least one living creature apart from herself: when her will was published this week, it was revealed that she had left more than $12m (€9m) to her white Maltese dog "Trouble". ..The most notorious heir of the dog variety is a German Shepherd called Gunther IV. ..the canine is reportedly worth $180m. He inherited the money from his father, the imaginatively-named Gunther III, who was given $60m when German countess Karlotta Libenstein died in 1992. ..Then there is the poodle Toby Rimes, a descendant of a dog that inherited £15m from New York owner Ella Wendel." (Independent. 31 August)
There has to be something screwy about a society where thousands of kids die from the lack of clean water or food and a dog lives in luxury. RD

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

We are always told that it is the richest city in the world in the richest country in the world but there are some homeless New Yorkers that would dispute that claim "A score of families gather daily in the courtyard of a city office in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. .. The scene is gentle. But it poses a growing challenge to Mayor Michael R Bloomberg’s strategy for reducing homelessness. Each of the families first came here to apply for a place in the city’s homeless shelters, a first step toward getting housing subsidies. They have all been evaluated and told they do not qualify because they have homes they can return to — most often the crowded apartments of relatives. . “The city is caught between publicly claiming everything is fine and the brutal realities of families and their children having nowhere else to go,” said Steven Banks, attorney in chief of the Legal Aid Society, who has filed a pending court complaint about the accuracy of the eligibility rulings. “It is a ticking time bomb.” (New York Times, 4 September)
A city that never sleeps according to the song but for some of its inhabitants a city where some have no where to sleep. RD

EXPERT WANTS REVOLUTION

"A revolution of society on a scale never witnessed in peacetime is needed if climate change is to be tackled successfully, the head of a major business grouping has warned.
Bjorn Stigson, the head of the Geneva-based World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), predicted governments would be unable to reach agreement on a framework for reducing carbon emissions at either a US-sponsored meeting in Washington later this month or at a United Nations climate summit in Indonesia in December." (Financial Times, 7 September)
Mr Stigson may be on to something important here. Because capitalism pollutes and destroys the planet maybe we need a revolution - a complete transformation of society. RD

WHAT'S IN A WORD?

"A French police union is taking the respected Le Petit Robert dictionary to court for including a reference to police as "bloody pigs" in its latest edition, a spokesman said Friday.
The Unsa-police union is asking for a court order to force Le Petit Robert to remove the reference from a section of its 2008 edition that deals with French slang spoken by immigrant youth. The dictionary borrowed a quote from the French detective novel writer Jean-Claude Izzo to illustrate the language used by north African immigrants in the French suburbs.
A second union, Alliance, called for a boycott of the dictionary, saying it was "outraged" by the use of the term "connard de flic" (bloody pig). Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie sided with police unions, saying she too "deplored" such language and conveyed her disapproval to the dictionary's editors. (Yahoo News, 7 September)
As yet we have not heard from the Porcine Liberation Movement, but we imagine they too will be "outraged" at being compared to French policemen. We would. RD

Class-rooms and Class Divisions

According to new research Children from disadvantaged backgrounds need to do more than just attend a good school to boost their educational achievement . School quality accounted for a fraction of variations in achievement . Children's social background had much more of an impact.

Family disadvantage is passed on from one generation to the next in a cycle of underachievement . Parents who were making a choice between low income and long hours found it hard to give children good life chances . Children were highly aware of their social position and the limitations it placed upon them.

The research did not imply that poorer parents don't care about their children's education. Many parents on low incomes lack the resources that allow them to help out, to provide conducive environments or to access relevant services.

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO?

According to Roman Catholic tradition an applicant for sainthood needs two certified miracles. Mother Teresa has already cleared the first hurdle because Monica Besra claimed that by rubbing a medal of Mother Teresa on her cancerous tumour she was cured. The authorities were so convinced they granted Teresa the first step to sainthood that of being "beatified". "However several groups, including her doctors, have disputed that Mrs Besra was cured by a miracle, claiming instead that her tumour disappeared as a result of medical treatment at the local hospital. Mrs Besra has said that she visited hospital for treatment and taken prescribed medicines. In an interview with Time magazine in 2002, Mrs Besra's husband Seiku was among those to challenge the Vatican's claim. "It is much ado about nothing. My wife was cured by the doctors and not by any miracle," he said. Ranjan Mustafi, a doctor at the local state-run Balurghat Hospital who treated Mrs Besra, said that the tumour had been caught at an early stage and had "responded to our treatment steadily." (Daily Telegraph, 6 September)
Tricky business this miracle business, especially when doctors and witnesses display such scepticism. " Oh, ye of little faith", as the good book would have it.
RD

Enterprising for some

Further to our earlier post on generous retirement pensions for those who hold directorships , we read that Iain Carmichael, the former finance director at Scottish Enterprise had an extra £380,600 pumped into his pension fund .

The annual accounts of the economic and business development quango, which were made public yesterday, reveal that Carmichael retired in March with a golden goodbye worth £539,105 - nearly three times the £200,000 that had been previously estimated.
He received £106,765 in pay in lieu of notice, £5544 for accrued holiday pay, £46,196 for loss of office and £380,600, which was transferred into the Scottish Enterprise pension fund to bump up his retirement pay. Carmichael's pension pot has now swelled to £777,600 - taking the current cash equivalent transfer value of his pension of £397,000 which, according to Scottish Enterprise, in "very basic terms", could be added to the £380,600 paid into his fund in March when Carmichael left the agency.
Scottish Enterprise yesterday confirmed that Carmichael had taken early retirement at age 54 but, as part of his leaving agreement, he was given a full pension "as if he were retiring at 60"

And was it reward for efficiency . Not at all . Scottish Enterprise was accused by MSPs of "wholly dissatisfactory" financial controls in the wake of overspending on the budget by £33m during the 2005/06 financial year. Carmichael admitted mistakes were made in the allocation of public funds. Carmichael was removed from his finance director's position and was taken off the board of directors, and moved sideways into a new position.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION

We are all aware that many people are nervous about flying and have witnessed anxious passengers fingering St Christopher medals or even rosary beads during flights. It is doubtful though that many of us have experienced the following. "Nepal's state-run airline has sacrificed two goats to appease Akash Bhairab, the Hindu sky god, after technical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft. Nepal Airlines, which has two Boeing aircraft, has had to suspend some services in recent weeks because of the problem. The goats were sacrificed in front of the troublesome aircraft on Sunday at Nepal's only international airport, in Kathmandu, in accordance with Hindu traditions, a senior airline official said." (Times, 5 September) Before any of our readers rush out to cancel any bookings with Nepal Airlines we should assure you that the electrical fault has been rectified by scientific means. The goat sacrifice was only to placate the superstitious locals. A bit like the rosary beads really. RD

Gold-Plated Pensions for the Few

We have been hearing a lot about the pensions "blackhole" and how we are all living too long to receive an adequate pension , and how we have to work until we are even older before we retire and even then pay more into the pension schemes .

Yet , the average company executive can now retire at 60 on a final salary pension worth more than £3 million , says the TUC's latest annual PensionsWatch survey. This works out at £193,000 a year, says the study, more than 25 times the average UK pension of £7,500 a year. The biggest executive pensions are now worth £320,000 a year, more than 42 times average staff pensions . One pension was found to be worth more than £1 million a year.

Directors of the UK's top companies have amassed pensions worth £891 million.

"Top executive pay has already created a new group of the super-rich who float free from the rest of society," said TUC general secretary Brendan Barber. "This report shows that this does not stop with their retirement. Too many top directors have gone on closing or cutting schemes for their workforce, while keeping gold-plated pensions for themselves."

BIG BROTHER IN BRITAIN

When George Orwell wrote 1984 he based it on the totalitarian states of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia, but recent revelations show that he himself was closely monitored by the British state.
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment," wrote George Orwell in the opening pages of 1984. "How often, or on what system the Thought Police plugged in ... was guess work." ... What Orwell, the Eton-educated author and passionate socialist, could not have known, however, was the uncanny parallel between his nightmarish vision of an all-seeing dictatorship and his own status for more than a decade as a target for the close scrutiny of the British security services. The personal MI5 file of the literary standard bearer of the British Left, published today after being kept secret for nearly 60 years, reveals how Orwell was closely monitored for signs of treacherous or revolutionary political views by Scotland Yard's Special Branch from 1929 until the height of the Second World War." (Independent, 4 September) RD

THE INSECURE SOCIETY

When the plant was opened workers celebrated the prospect of secure employment, but capitalism doesn't work that way.
"US electronics giant Freescale Semiconductor last night finally admitted publicly its plans to quit production at East Kilbride, where it employs about 900 skilled manufacturing staff. Its admission, in the form of a statement confirming it had appointed international real estate consultancy Colliers to try to find a buyer for the plant, comes nearly three months after The Herald revealed it was poised to stop production at the site under a secret project named Claymore. Given the dearth of demand for other big vacant electronics sites at a time when companies have been shifting production to low-cost economies in Asia and Eastern Europe, workers at Freescale's East Kilbride plant fear that there is little chance of a buyer being found." (Herald, 5 September) RD

PATRIOTS AT A PRICE

"Bored with life on his family's South Carolina horse farm, Willard McCormick decided that military service was the right plan for his future. And when the Army dangled its new, $20,000 recruiting bonus in front of him, the decision got a lot easier.
"I wasn't going to go right away, but I heard about the bonus and decided to jump on it," McCormick, 19, said a couple of days after signing up.
... Since the bonus was unveiled in July, more than 6,200 recruits have signed up to begin basic training before Oct. 1, a move that boosts end-of-fiscal year recruiting numbers.
Army officials said. "People are calling here saying $20,000 is more than they've made in the past two years," said Staff Sgt. Brent Feltner, 27, commander of a strip-mall recruiting station in this central South Carolina town. .. The Army's offer stands out to many in a state where the unemployment level is fourth highest in the country, at 5.9 percent in July, up from 5.5 percent in June. It was 6.2 percent in July a year ago."
(Yahoo News, 1 September) Poverty is still capitalism's most successful recruiting agent. RD

NATIONALIST NONSENSE

It is difficult to imagine a more foolish scene than that of the last night of the Proms, when underpaid clerks and tradesmen sing with great gusto "Land of Hope and Glory". This is especially so when you consider what the economists have to say about ownership in Britain today.
"The portion of the country's wealth in the hands of the super-rich is on the rise, according to the country's leading economists. Runaway property and equity prices over the past five years have made the rich richer and widened the wealth gap across the UK. The most up-to-date figures from Revenue and Customs, compiled in 2003, show that the richest 1 per cent of Brits account for 21 per cent of the nation's wealth”
. However, top economists believe that figure will show a marked increase when the statistics are updated in October. Jonathan Said, senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said:
"It would be a surprise if the net worth of wealthy individuals had not risen substantially – even more so if you add in private equity returns, which give access to a faster rate of return to wealthy investors." (Independent, 2 September) RD

Houses for Some

Housing affordability has deteriorated to near record lows, with homes five times more expensive for first-time buyers than in 1996, new figures show.

Buyers in the southeast and southwest of England have to save over 100 percent of their annual earnings for a deposit to get a foothold on the property ladder, according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' (RICS) accessibility index. This compares with the low point of just 20 percent of annual earnings required in 1996 .

The cost of becoming a homeowner rose by 8.4 percent alone in the year to the second quarter of 2007.

Even if prospective first time buyers make it onto the market, they face mortgage payments which take up a higher percentage of their take-home pay than at any time since 1990.

No longer is the Thatcherite dream of a house-owning nation achievable . For many simply acquiring a roof over ones head is proving a nightmare .

The belfast poor

Up to 80% of children in west Belfast's most deprived areas are living in poverty, an academic has claimed.



Workless Protestant households are closing the gap with their Catholic counterparts - but it is a levelling downwards .



No gains for the catholic working-class community except for those government jobs for those so-called and mis-named freedom fighters now in Stormont and certainly no improvements for the protestant workers who shed their blood for the Establishment .

Now is the time to recognise class loyalty - not loyalism

No mourning here

One of Scotland's biggest landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch, has died .

As recently as 2005, the duke was believed to be Britain's biggest private landowner, owning 270,000 acres, mostly in the Borders.

The Sunday Times Rich List estimated his wealth at £85 million .

Born in 1923, the oldest son of the eighth duke - whom he succeeded in 1973 - Johnnie Buccleuch was educated at Eton and Oxford and became director of the Buccleuch Estates in 1949. He later became a Tory councillor in Roxburghshire and subsequently Tory MP for North Edinburgh. In 1978 he was appointed a Knight of the Order of the Thistle - the highest honour in Scotland.

He is succeeded by his eldest son, the Earl of Dalkeith.

Socialist Courier will definitely not be wearing black

THE HORROR OF CAPITALISM

Over the years we have reported on many of the horrors of capitalism, but for sheer brutality and cruelty this takes some beating. "A woman suspected of running a fake employment agency that organised the rape of young women and sale of their subsequent babies to childless couples has been arrested for kidnapping and wrongful confinement. Preeti and her husband Vinod, who both go by one name, ran a job agency in the Indian capital, New Delhi, offering maids to families, said a police spokesman. The couple allegedly lured women and girls by promising agency work, but instead confined them to a room where they were raped to make them pregnant. Their children were then sold to childless couples, the spokesman said." (Herald, 3 September) RD

BITTER MEDICINE

A recent review of the business world and ethics was somewhat critical of the pharmaceutical industry. "There have been a number of scandals including the disastrous "Elephant Men" trial for new drug TGN 1412, which caused massive immune reactions in six healthy volunteers. TeGenero, the firm that developed the drug, went bust after the catastrophe. GlaxoSmithKline has been embroiled in a scandal over anti-depressant Seroxat: it has been accused of hiding critical data showing the drug is linked to suicide in teenagers. GSK has also seen millions of sales wiped out after its Avandia diabetes treatment was linked to increased risk of heart attack and strokes." (Observer, 2 September) The truth is of course that capitalist business practice has nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with profits. RD

AINT SCIENCE WONDERFUL?

"Benefit claimants and job seekers could be forced to take lie detector tests as early as next year after an early review of a pilot scheme exposed 126 benefit cheats in just three months, saving one local authority £110,000. ..The technology is being tested on people claiming housing or council tax benefit but will be extended at Harrow Jobcentre for other benefits this year. ..Experts in America, where the most comprehensive scrutiny of the technology has taken place, warn that the technology is far from failsafe. David Ashe, chief deputy of the Virginia Board for Professional and Occupational Regulation, said, 'The experience of being tested, or of claiming a benefit and being told that your voice is being checked for lies, is inherently stressful. 'Lie detector tests have a tendency to pass people for whom deception is a way of life and fail those who are scrupulously honest.' (Observer, 2 September)
We wonder if it would be possible to ask members of the capitalist class if they think they deserve their immense wealth while others starve, but what would be the point as the expert said there is a tendency to pass those "for whom deception is a way of life". RD

INDIAN EXPLOITATION

"Two of Britain's major high street retailers launched inquiries last night into allegations that factory workers who make their clothes in India are being paid as little as 13p per hour for a 48-hour week, wages so low the workers claim they sometimes have to rely on government food parcels. Primark, the UK's second biggest clothing retailer, and the Mothercare, the mother and baby shop, were responding to a Guardian investigation into the pay and conditions of workers in Bangalore, India, who supply several high-profile UK and US fashion brands. The investigation, which follows our report in July in which Primark, Asda and Tesco were accused of breaching international labour standards in Bangladesh, has uncovered a catalogue of allegations of Dickensian pay and conditions in factories owned by exporters who supply clothes to the UK. India's largest ready-made clothing exporter, Gokaldas Export, which supplies brands including Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and H&M, confirmed that wages paid to garment workers were as low as £1.13 for a nine-hour day." (Guardian, 3 September)
That is what lies behind that Saturday morning shopping bargain - Dickensian-like exploitation. RD

THE BITERS BITTEN

The British police force was used to break the miner's strike of the 1980s. Some of them boasted about the amount of overtime money they got and held up a bunch of five pound notes to strikers. Things are a little different today. "Rank and file police officers demanded last night that their right to strike be reinstated as relations with the government fell to a 30-year low. The move highlights mounting unrest in the public sector over pay as unions threaten an 'autumn of discontent' for Gordon Brown. ...The Police Federation, with 140,000 members, the Fire Brigades Union and the prison officers' union are to meet to discuss a joint campaign to highlight grievances over what they say are below-inflation rises. ..Last night the federation said its members wanted the right to take industrial action unless the Home Office agreed to a more favourable pay deal. 'You can only bite people so much before they want to bite back,' said Alan Gordon, the federation's vice-chairman." (Observer, 2 September)
Perhaps the government could recruit miners to break the police strike. Oh, we forgot there are not enough miners left! RD

The inequalities of the UK

From The Independent :-

Britain may appear to be a richer country than a decade ago but the gap between the rich and poor has reached levels not seen for more than 40 years. The highest earners are being dubbed "the new Victorians" as they take an ever-greater slice of the wealth pie, leaving mere employees and white-collar workers sharing the crumbs.

Government statistics show that the richest 10 % of the population control 53 % of the wealth of the country, with the 1 % jet-set elite controlling no less than 21 % .

In the City, fat-cat pay awards, with top executives earning 100 times more than their employees, are merely the most obvious examples of where the balance has become skewed. The kingpins of Britain's opaque private equity and hedge funds are earning considerably more while simultaneously paying "less tax than a cleaner", according to Nicholas Ferguson, chairman of private-equity and fund management group SVG Capital. In the UK, Peter Taylor, chief executive of Duke Street Capital, has admitted that the tax paid by private equity companies such as his is "unnecessarily low". The number of billionaires born, living or making their money in the UK has trebled in the past four years, and the number of millionaires is expected to quadruple to 1.7 million by 2020. Sir Ronald Cohen, one of the UK's richest men, founder of private equity group Apax, whose non-domiciled status has caused controversy, has said the wealth gap could lead to rioting in the streets.

In the US a report from the Institute for Policy Studies last week showed that the average chief executive of a Fortune 500 company now earns 364 times the pay of a typical US worker, while four hedge fund and private equity bosses took home more than $1bn (£500m) in the past year. The investment guru Warren Buffett, the third richest man in the world, has criticised the US tax system that allows him to pay less tax than his secretary.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the social policy research organisation, says that society is becoming polarised. Its latest report states that "wealthy households in already wealthy areas are becoming disproportionately richer compared with society as a whole."

The level of social mobility in the UK – the ease with which the next generation can expect to become more affluent than their parents – is among the lowest of any developed nation.

THE JAPANESE MIRACLE

If The American Dream is a politician's catchphrase then The Japanese Miracle is a political economist's equivalent, but like the USA example the truth behind the Japanese illusion is startling. "Japan estimated Tuesday that it has more than 5,000 "net cafe refugees," a new class of working poor who live in all-night lounges and are seen as a sign of a growing rich-poor gap. Internet cafes and "manga" comic cafes are omnipresent in urban Japan, offering couches, computers, soft drinks and comic books to stressed businessmen or commuters who missed their train home. But a government survey found that an estimated 5,400 people have virtually moved in to the 24-hour cafes. It said some 80 percent of Japan's "net cafe refugees" are men and that 52.7 percent said they decided to live in the lounges because they lost their jobs." (Yahoo News, 28 August) RD

THE AMERICAN DREAM

"More than one in ten Americans, or 36.5 million people, live in poverty in the United States, with children and blacks the worst hit, an annual report by the US Census Bureau showed Tuesday. According to the report, around 12.8 million children under the age of 18, or around one-third of the poor, existed in 2006 on incomes below the threshold used by the Census Bureau to determine who lives in poverty. The number of children without health insurance swelled by 700,000 in 2006 compared with the previous year, according to the report, which also showed that the total number of Americans without health coverage had risen by three million to 47 million." (Yahoo News, 28 August) The USA is the richest country in the world, but even there the so-called American Dream for many of its citizens is more like a nightmare. RD

65% pay rise

Further to our previous posts on the pay rises that company executives generously award themselves , we read that directors at Dawn Group, one of Scotland's largest privately-owned construction and property companies, gave themselves a 65% pay hike in a year in which profits fell.

The remuneration of its highest-paid director, assumed to be Macdonald, climbed to £228,830, from £219,341.

MISPLACED ADMIRATION

It’s 10 since Diana Spencer’s death and my attention has been drawn to an article printed in the Socialist Standard October 1997, it’s appropriate given the hype recently displayed on TV and newspapers.

Do I care that Diana Spencer was killed in a car crash in Paris? I do, but not to order and never in the way I am expected to care. In almost all cases we humans are saddened by death. We know that without any doubt we must all come to an end and to not know how this will take place or where or when is probably at the back of most of our minds. But I find it incomprehensible that I should be expected to grieve to distraction over a woman I have never met, was never likely to meet and had no desire to meet. Not only that but I now find that an assumption is made that I will automatically become involved in some of the sickening hypocrisy that we have all witnessed in the wake of her death, and I must say I find this deeply insulting to my intelligence.
If Diana preached that we should not discriminate against people with AIDS, so what? If she told us land mines should not be used to kill civilians, so what? Is there something intrinsically clever or wise about this? So many of us have said the same. But Diana was listened to and admired because like everything else under capitalism she had been "packaged", her money and her position entitling her to be "right" in the eyes of those people who are impressed by such things. She was a princess and princesses, unlike other people, apparently, KNOW these things. Wealth had made her attractive and interesting, ensuring therefore, that when she spoke about AIDS victims, the homeless, children, then she would be taken much more seriously than when we lesser mortals give voice on similar subjects. So only the successful and the wealthy have that priority of wisdom, while the rest of us are seldom consulted except for one day every five years when we have the dubious honour of being invited to put a cross against the name of some remote person who knows and understands less than we do.
So what is it about human beings that they often cannot differentiate between what is real and matters and what is cosmetic, contrived and overly-sentimental? Centuries of conditioning must be one of the reasons why the human race resorts to adulation of the rich and the powerful, the sages, the clever ones, those who know what is best for us, whom we allow to enslave us, resulting in an almost innate inferiority. The media and the system under which we all live encourages this; it is to their advantage.
Many of us will have worked all our lives to change this system of society, while others believe that belonging to a trade union or joining the Labour Party will increase the chances of a better life for the working class. Believing that reform will bring about change and benefit us all. Socialists know that only by eradicating capitalism can we begin to redress injustice and poverty and look cowards a sensible and rational life for us and our children and their children.Meanwhile, my heart aches for those who do not dare to trust their own judgment, who fawn on the shallow figures in our society and make gods and goddesses of them because they have never considered that the power to change what is sick in this world lies in their own hands
HEATHER BALL

PUTIN REWRITES HISTORY

"Critics are accusing President Vladimir Putin's government of a Soviet-style rewriting of Russian history with a series of new "patriotic" textbooks to be unveiled in the new school year. New laws passed this summer have given the government sweeping powers over which textbooks will be used in schools.
Mr Putin has complained that the negative view of the Soviet past in current history textbooks is down to the fact that the authors received foreign grants to write them. Now, the Kremlin claims it wants to change that situation and a re-commissioning of Russia's history textbooks is under way. A handbook for teachers, on the basis of which a future textbook for students could be written, is called The Modern History of Russia, 1945-2006. ... The book calls Joseph Stalin a "contradictory" figure, and states that while some people consider him evil, others recognise him as a "hero" for his role in the Great Patriotic War (the Second World War) and his territorial expansion. ..Officially, little attention has been paid to the darker aspects of Russia's Soviet past, such as the Stalinist purges or the deportation in appalling conditions of 3 million of its own citizens during the Second World War, with the focus instead on the strength of Stalin's Soviet Union and the victory over Germany." (Independent, 30 August)
In forcing kids to learn patriotic lies about history Putin is only doing what every capitalist government does. RD

IT'S A DOG'S LIFE

"Leona Helmsley's dog will continue to live an opulent life, and then be buried alongside her in a mausoleum. But two of Helmsley's grandchildren got nothing from the late luxury hotelier and real estate billionaire's estate. Helmsley left her beloved white Maltese, named Trouble, a $12 million trust fund, according to her will, which was made public Tuesday in surrogate court. She also left millions for her brother, Alvin Rosenthal, who was named to care for Trouble in her absence, as well as two of four grandchildren from her late son Jay Panzirer — so long as they visit their father's grave site once each calendar year. Otherwise, she wrote, neither will get a penny of the $5 million she left for each." (Yahoo News, 29 August)
£152,150 for a legless hero. $12 million for a pet dog. Capitalism has some strange priorities. RD

WOUNDED BY CAPITALISM

The contempt and disregard with which the capitalist class treat members of the working class was illustrated by the following news item. Lance Bombardier Ben Parkinson, who served in southern Afghanistan with the British Army suffered horrendous injuries. "Diane Dernie, his mother, said yesterday that she was planning to take the MoD to the High Court because her son was awarded £152,150 in compensation for his three worst injuries but the assessment did not take account of all his other wounds. She told The Times: "They assessed his compensation on the basis of losing both legs, his head injuries and a broken elbow. But he also lost his spleen, lost his voice and had shattered ribs." His other injuries included a fractured cheekbone, nose, jaw, pelvis and vertebrae. He is believed to be one of the worst wounded serviceman ever to survive, but his mother said that he would need care and special help for the rest of his life." (Times, 29 August) RD

Tax sharks

Almost a third of the UK’s 700 biggest businesses paid no corporation tax in the 2005-06 financial year as reported here .

Another 30 per cent paid less than £10m each, an official study has found.

According to a National Audit Office analysis of the tax raised from the 700 companies handled by the large business service of Revenue & Customs 50 businesses, or 7 per cent of the 700, paid 67 per cent of the tax while about 220 paid none and another 210 each paid less than £10m.

Some tax experts were taken aback by the small amount of tax many of the companies paid. Michael Devereux of the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation, said: ”It is certainly surprising.”

NOT so to the Socialist Courier , it isn't .

We reported in the Socialist Standard way back in June 99 that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp protected their profits by a series of complex financial arrangements involving off-shore tax havens—arrangements that have seen News Corp pay no net British corporation tax in 11 years, despite profits here of £1.4 billion.

Capitalism -Good for a very few - Bad for the many

THE average pay for directors of the UK's biggest firms has soared to £2.87 million after seeing their salary packages rise by over a third in the last year, as reported in the Edinburgh Evening News .

The 37 % rise outstrips average inflation of 2.3 % and is 11 times the increase in average employee pay of 4 % .

The total pay packages of the 1389 FTSE 100 company directors last year broke through the £1 billion barrier for the first time, totalling £1.01billion - enough for 15 hospitals or 50,000 nurses.

The top-paid UK executive was Bob Diamond, head of the investment banking arm of Barclays Bank, who earned £23 million. Although his basic salary was only £250,000, Mr Diamond was awarded a performance bonus of more than £10 million and over £12 million in share awards.

Bart Becht, chief executive of household cleaning company Reckitt Benckiser, was not far behind with a total package worth £22 million , nearly 80 per cent of the firm's total executive wage bill.

Among the other biggest earners were Giles Thorley, who heads the Punch Taverns pub group, which owns one in eight of all pubs in the UK and has more than 160 pubs in and around the Lothians. He took home a salary package of £11 million .

The highest paid woman, with a package worth £2.1million , was Dame Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Financial Times publisher Pearson

Jann Brown, finance director at Edinburgh-based oil and gas explorer Cairn Energy, was the UK's third highest earning female executive, with a total salary package of £1.7 million.

Two Royal Bank of Scotland heavyweights also made the top ten in terms of the biggest cash bonuses paid out, with chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin bagging £2.8million and Johnny Cameron, chief executive of the RBS global banking and markets division, raking in £2.3 million.

Meanwhile the paper also reports :-

THE number of people declared bankrupt in Edinburgh has soared to almost ten a week, as rising interest rates start to bite. The number of people declared bankrupt in the Capital has nearly doubled in two years. Most cases involved people struggling with credit card or loan debts .

Debt management experts today warned the problem will worsen as homeowners come to the end of fixed-rate mortgages and house prices stabilise. Lenders are also being blamed for "exercising their muscle" by forcing people into court to be declared bankrupt, rather than letting them pursue voluntary insolvency.

SKIVERS?

In an article by Gareth Rose, printed in Scotland on Sunday august 26th employees are finding more and more imaginative illnesses for staying at home. Why? Well Professor Michael Linden, a clinical Psychologist in Berlin who has led the research claims they fear the work place, the people in it and the problems that arise there.
Should workers fear the workplace? The Stockline plastics factory mentioned in SAFETY AND OVER HEADS in one of the recent postings here in the Socialist Courier certainly justifies any apprehension in that area. In the CONSTRUTION SAFETY CAMPAIGN NEWS, the summer edition 2007 it leads with an article on the devastating increases in incidents involving cranes, deaths in Battersea and Liverpool , narrow escapes, repairs not carried out, etc. I could go on quoting from it but I’m sure you know other industries have similar problems, it’s a class thing and workers welfare will always be dismissed when profits are threatened.
The professor says, “Anxiety can lead to avoidance. Job anxiety can, therefore, be one explanation for sick leave, work absenteeism or early retirement.”
Is the professor showing sympathy for workers? Apparently not, the article is headed “Skivers suffer from phobia of workplace” I wonder if the professor could research a possible fear of profits loss, it could be the reason funds are really being provided for his research.

The red white and blue of Larkhall

The Scotsman describes the religious bigotry of the Central Scotland town of Larkhall where the colour green and the connotations lead to vandalism and the only "safe" colours is the red and white and blue of Glasgow Rangers and the Union Jack .

"...historians believe anti-Catholicism to have been greater in mining towns such as Larkhall, where Irish Catholics were used by pit owners to break strikes. So the fuel was as much economic fear as it was cultural dilution of Protestant stock, the idea which found support in sections of the Church of Scotland in the 1920s and 1930s..."

By playing the "orange card" the bosses employed the divide and rule tactic to weaken the Scottish workers and the consequences linger on to this day .

Isn't it time to discover class loyalty rather than loyalty to the crown ?

UNCLE SAM IS WATCHING YOU

"The Pentagon said Tuesday that it would shut down a database that had been criticized for including information on antiwar protesters and others whose actions posed no threat to military facilities and personnel. A Pentagon spokesman, Col. Gary Keck of the Army, said the database was being shut down Sept. 17 because “the analytical value had declined,” but not because of public criticism. Last year, a Pentagon review found that as many as 260 reports in the database, known as Talon, were improperly collected or kept there. ....Eventually the Pentagon hopes to create a system — not necessarily a database — to “streamline such threat reporting,” a brief statement issued Tuesday said." (New York Times, 22 August) George Orwell's dystopia 1984 had Big Brother is watching you. So look out you so-called peaceniks - Uncle Sam is watching you now. RD

SAFETY AND OVERHEADS

"A factory blast which killed nine people and injured 40 in May 2004 would have been avoided if £405 had been spent on replacing a gas pipe, Glasgow high court heard yesterday. A hearing into the causes of the explosion which destroyed the Stockline plastics factory in Maryhill, Glasgow, was told the corroded pipe from a propane gas cylinder had not been inspected since being buried during renovation work. ..Over the years, bosses of the two companies involved had ordered risk assessments at the Stockline plastics factory but these had not specifically investigated the condition of the underground pipe work. It also emerged that one risk assessment had been carried out by a college student doing vacation work." (Guardian, 28 August) The constant drive of capitalism is to increase profits, one of the ways to do this is to cut overheads. In this case it led to the deaths of nine workers, that is how capitalism operates. RD

TOUGH AT THE TOP

"City bonuses have increased by 30% to a record £14bn this year. The rise is twice as big as in 2006 and likely to exacerbate the widening gap between executive and shop-floor pay. The bonuses come against a background of record debt, rising bankruptcies and home repossessions. Analysis by the Guardian of preliminary data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that bonuses across the economy rose 24% this spring to £26.4bn, comfortably is exceeding the country's entire transport budget. More than half, £14.1bn was earned by the 1 million people in the financial services sector. The figure for 2006 bonuses was £10.9bn. The bonuses have fuelled unprecedented demand for luxury goods and high-end property. Bonuses are regularly cited by estate agents as a key factor in pushing up property prices in London. ..The waiting list for a new Rolls-Royce is now five years and there is a shortage of crew members for super yachts." (Guardian, 28 August) Spare a thought for the position of our "betters"; they have to wait five years for a new Roller and have difficulty getting a crew for their yacht. It is certainly tough at the top! RD

CENSORSHIP AND SALESMANSHIP

"A human rights group in the US is suing Yahoo for alleged complicity in rights abuses and acts of torture in China. The World Organization for Human Rights says Yahoo's sharing of information with the Chinese government has led to the arrests of writers and dissidents. One journalist cited in the case was tracked down and jailed for 10 years for subversion after Yahoo passed on his email and IP address to officials. ... Shi Tao was jailed for posting comments critical of government corruption on the web. Yahoo is not the only internet company accused of collaborating with Chinese authorities. Rivals Google freely admit to blocking politically sensitive items on their China website. ..The internet firms argue it is better to offer Chinese users some information than none at all." (BBC News, 28 August) On the face of it these gigantic companies seem to be faced with a major ethical dilemma, but what they do not mention is that the Chinese market is huge and the potential profits are immense. When that is the case moral dilemmas mean little to capitalist firms. RD

Money goes to money

The Guardian is reporting that City bonuses have increased by 30% to a record £14 billion this year. The rise is twice as big as in 2006 and likely to exacerbate the widening gap between executive and shop-floor pay. The majority of the £14.1 billion will have been earned by a few at the top of the City tree pulling in hundreds of thousands or even millions in spring bonuses at the end of a year .

The bonuses have fuelled unprecedented demand for luxury goods and high-end property. City buyers were behind a 20% surge in farmland prices last year as the high-rollers moved to buy up a chunk of the countryside, often surrounding a weekend retreat. The waiting list for a new Rolls-Royce is now five years and there is a shortage of crew members for superyachts. Worldwide, 688 yachts measuring more than 80ft were launched and there will be 250 more this year.

BSkyB chief executive James Murdoch has pocketed a cash bonus worth almost £4 million on top of the near-£3 million remuneration package Mr Murdoch received for the year to the end of June.

Elsewhere , Office for National Statistics figures released in June showed Britons were saving proportionately less of their income than at any time for 50 years.

A quarter of people fail to save any money at all , and a quarter of those said they had too many debts to pay .

CHINESE COLONALISM

British capitalism built up its power on the exploitation of British workers but it also exploited Indian and African workers. The new emerging capitalist class in China are following that example."The courtyard in front of the Zambia China Mulungushi Textiles factory is so quiet, even at midday, that the fluttering of the ragged Chinese and Zambian flags is the only sound hanging in the air. The factory used to roar. .. Today, only the cotton gin still runs, with the company’s Chinese managers buying raw cotton for export to China’s humming textile industry. Nobody can say when or even if the factory here will reopen. “We are back where we started,” said Wilfred Collins Wonani, who leads the Chamber of Commerce here, sighing at the loss of one of the city’s biggest employers. “Sending raw materials out, bringing cheap manufactured goods in. This isn’t progress. It is colonialism.” (New York Times, 21 August) RD

The price of a life

Certain capitalist economists accuse the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence of valueing the quality of human life too high . NICE judged "value for money" at a cost far higher than the NHS could afford.

The effectiveness of the drug, and its side-effects, are balanced with its cost to give a price per extra year of good health - called a Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY).
In approximate terms, if the new treatment can deliver one QALY for £20,000 or less, then it is deemed cost-effective and heading for NHS approval. If the QALY costs up to £30,000, it may still be approved for NHS use by NICE.

The think tank The Kings Fund and City University, suggested that this £30,000 threshold was far too high when compared with how the rest of the NHS worked out which treatments to fund.
Some primary care trusts simply just pay £12000 in key areas such as circulatory disease per QALY .

Professor Nancy Devlin, from City University said "It's all about value for money... in the current NHS, where there is far less money to spend..."

CARNIVALS AND CAPITALISM

There is a common view supported by the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and other newspapers that men and women of the working class cannot enjoy themselves without the constant monitoring of the owning class police forces. Here is an example. "A massive police operation is under way for the two-day event with officers serving an estimated 11,000 shifts throughout the (Notting Hill) carnival. The event is the world's second largest street party, after the Rio Carnival held in Brazil. ..Ross Bacon, a 54-year-old Londoner said: "I have never been before. I was scared because of the bad publicity but my friend's son is a DJ and he is here, so she convinced me to come. ..Finnish tourist Jukka Myllyniemi said: "I had heard lots of bad stories about it before but I think it's a very positive carnival, with so many people from different cultures." (BBC News, 26 August) Men and women of the working class can enjoy themselves without the assistance of the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph or the police force. Amazing, isn't it. RD

ALIENATION AND CHILD DEATH

Wow, it must have been wonderful for this particularly foolish person as he zoomed across the road. Marvellous just like the manufacturers and advertisers promised."A motorist has admitted driving at a speed of 172mph on a road in Oxfordshire with a 70mph speed limit. Timothy Brady was driving a Porsche 911 along the A420 near Kingston Bypass when he was caught in a routine speed check, Oxford Crown Court heard. Brady, 33, of Harrow in north-west London, will be sentenced in September." (BBC News, 24 August) Lucky for Mr Porche owner he didn't kill my kid or yours, I think our sentence might be just a bit more severe. The manufacturer and advertiser are beyond our contempt. RD

Declining Wages

There is a maxim often espoused by apologists of Capitalism - that a rising tide lifts all boats , meaning that a bountiful capitalism will benefit all sectors of society , not just the capitalist class .

But where is the proof of the pudding.

Profits at British companies are growing at their fastest pace in nearly 13 years while wages of ordinary workers are rising at their slowest pace since 2002, official data showed today.

Office for National Statistics said profits increased by 16.2% in the second quarter of the year compared with a year earlier. That was the best figure since the final quarter of 1994, the profit rise was widespread across different types of company.

Meantime

Wages rose by a meagre 3.6%, the worst pace of growth since the first quarter of 2002.

And inflation - rose to 3.8%, the highest in more than a decade .

So in real terms we are 0.2% worse off

Darren Winder, chief economist at stockbrokers Cazenove said that the cash position and balance sheet of British business was stronger than ever.

"But with household debt now higher than annual GDP, workers may be showing more flexibility over pay rises because they need to keep their job and pay the mortgage."

ARE WORKERS STUPID?

Make up your own mind. Here is a recent reply to a criticism of capitalism on our website. Have a look and make up your own mind. "It's not necessary to understand Marx in order to be a socialist. In other words, you can want to see an end to capitalism without having studied Marx. However, Marx did analyse for us the economics of capitalism, in the same way that Darwin analysed evolution. There are lots of 'intellectuals' out there, who think that they understand Marx, or Darwin, but they don't really. I think it's a good thing if people look at these ideas for themselves, reach an understanding, and are then in a position to rebut the 'intellectuals'.
That was a worker speaking on our website. Let’s hear from you. RD

you bet !

Labour's gambling reforms - which come into effect next week - will make it easier for children to bet online, experts warned . The Royal College of Psychiatrists issued a last-minute plea for ministers to reconsider letting foreign gambling websites advertise on television here.
Addiction experts fear the supposedly tight restrictions on such sites will be "unenforceable". They say children will take advantage of security loopholes to pose as adults and bet on-line. Hundreds of foreign-based gaming websites are expected to start advertising on British TV and radio channels from next Saturday - even though they are not regulated in the UK . With online casinos mostly based in places such as Gibraltar, critics fear many will perform only the most cursory checks on players' ages and identities - making it far too easy for UK children to gamble illegally on-line.

He who pays the piper calls the tune !

Labour has accepted a donation of £150,000 from the online betting company Bet 365

someone with too much to even care much

It emerged that a 39-year-old hedge-fund tycoon took three months to collect his £80,000 Maserati Cambiocorsa after it was towed away for not having a valid tax disc.

Despite repeated calls from the DVLA to reach him Mr Des Pallieres said that he was "too busy" setting up a new business to fetch his car. " ..I only ever use the car in the summer and this summer I have hardly been in London."

Mr Des Pallieres left Deutsche Bank with two colleagues in April to set up his own company, the SPQR hedge fund. Now worth £170 million, his fund manages investments in debt markets. Yesterday, he claimed that the stress and workload involved in setting up his own firm were to blame for his forgetfulness.

Uh-huh , and i wonder how many of us could let our £80,000 car slip our mind - if of course we had such a car , in the first place .

The trickle-down theory

The Crystal nightclub in London's West End made the news recently when one businessmen spent £105,000 in one night. The club's general manager says it is becoming more common for bills to reach these eye-watering figures. Many of Crystal's party-goers can be found in their suits and at their desks inside the glass skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. But is it actually good for London? "Yes," says Howard Wheeldon, a city analyst with BGC Partners based in Canary Wharf, "there's a massive trickle-down effect."


In the shadow of Canary Wharf's towers, a charity called Toynbee Hall is holding an open day for under-privileged East End kids. The children here - often from Somali or Bengali families - are among the poorest in the country.

Toynbee Hall's director, believes there is not much evidence of the "trickle-down effect" for them. I ask him if the rich and poor in the area ever mix. He tells me to go and sit in the designer shopping mall underneath Canary Wharf. "No matter how long sit there, you never see anybody from the Bengali community..."

"These are two worlds that occupy the same space, but never actually intersect."

The very rich and the very poor living together in the centre of the capital. Side by side - yet still in their own very separate worlds. The trickle-down theory is a euphemism for being pissed on by the rich .

Scotland's Slaves

Some migrant workers in Scotland are being treated like "modern day slaves", according to campaigners being reported by the BBC . Promises of good accommodation and pay quickly disappear when they arrive in Scotland.

Two Polish workers told BBC Scotland that after two weeks of labour they actually owed the farmer money.

The Prague Post reports that the life many migrant workers find in Scotland is not what they had envisioned. They are frequently abused and coerced into accepting illegal working conditions, said Beth Herzfeld of Anti-Slavery International.

The most common form of abuse is debt-bondage. This is the illegal practice of paying an employer up-front for work, rent and food . Sometimes said, it takes workers six weeks to repay these debts, and then they are fired. This is a common “trick” employers use to leech money from vulnerable workers explains Paul Millar , the Czech honorary consul in Scotland .

According to Herzfeld, debt-bondage is one of the tactics used to traffic people. Trafficking is when someone is taken to, or freely goes, from one place to another by means of deception, coercion or violence. Often, as in the case of many Czech workers in Scotland, their passports are confiscated, they have a debt to repay and, being unsure of their legal right to work, they are controlled by threats.

Dangerous housing and miserable pay are often the hallmarks of foreign workers’ lives in Scotland, according to Ian Tusker, assistant secretary of the Scottish Trade Union Congress .
“You could work all day for a pittance, basically... " Tusker said.

See a related article , Borders Crossed , in this month's Socialist Standard

WAR ZONE VICTIMS

We are all aware of the horrors of modern war with its suicide bombers and roadside booby traps, but there is another horror that is less well publicised. "Active-duty soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, with nearly one-third of those taking their lives doing so while deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, the Pentagon said Thursday. ...Critics said the report underscored the military's failure to meet the mental health needs of soldiers who are serving multiple and longer deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, often with shorter breaks. ... In all, the report said that there had been 99 suicides confirmed among active-duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 in 2005. Of those, 70 percent were under the age of 25, and 51 percent were never married. Another 948 attempted suicide in 2006, the report found. ...In May, the Pentagon released a study that found that one-third of soldiers and Marines had reported mental health problems, including anxiety and depression, after returning from combat." (Yahoo News, 16 August) This is the sad reality behind all that army machismo bullshit that recruits are fed. RD

CHILD ABUSE

Revelations about child abuse by priests may have shocked the faithful, but now comes evidence that it is not just in Christian places of worship that this occurs. "Ali Khan was sitting at a meeting in a Glasgow mosque, discussing a paedophile assault in a house of God, when he realised he had to take matters into his own hands. A Koranic teacher had been accused of sexually assaulting a young girl under his charge, and Khan, a 47-year-old property tycoon, was sitting alongside a handful of other senior Muslim figures in the community discussing what should or should not be done with the man."Horror of horrors," says Khan, ... "what was suggested was that the alleged abuser should be allowed to remain in the mosque." ...Proof of this "hushing up" of the alleged abuse of children from ethnic backgrounds was what prompted Khan to set up Roshni, a new charity based in Glasgow. The word Roshni means light in Urdu, and the charity has as its motto the phrase No More Secrets. ...To compound Khan's belief that ethnic communities needed a wake-up call on child protection issues, a child abuse scandal broke at Glasgow's central mosque. Taher Din was jailed for a year after sexually molesting two young boys at the iconic building near the Clyde. ..During the trial, there were suggestions that officials from the mosque may have tried to cover up the attacks." (Sunday Herald, 19 August) RD

THE WOMAN WHO HAD EVERYTHING

We are often led to believe that there is something admirable about the extremely rich, the following obituary makes that highly debateable. "Leona Helmsley, who died yesterday aged 87, was popularly known as the "Queen of Mean" and famous for her dictum that "only little people pay taxes". ...In the 1980s she was as much of a celebrity as Donald Trump. However, stories about her private life began to surface. She was cast as a spiteful woman who, after her only son died intestate in 1982 sued to claim most of his estate, leaving her four grandchildren with just $432 apiece. ...On her husband's death in 1997 she inherited $1.7 billion and a property empire that still controlled much of the Manhattan skyline." (Daily Telegraph,21 August) RD