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

THE PRICE OF COAL

The emergence of China as a modern capitalist nation competing against more established nations has filled the media recently, but what is not so widely publicised is the cost levied on the Chinese working class. Most of the electricity produced there is from coal and the Chinese coal mines are amongst the most dangerous in the world. Production has more than doubled since 2000, but it has cost thousands of lives. This year alone we have 29 miners killed in Inner Mongolia, 24 killed in a fire in Henan and 26 killed in an explosion in the Yujialing coal mine. Now we have an even worse disaster. "Frantic relatives of 181 Chinese miners trapped by flash floods hundreds of metres underground scuffled with security force yesterday as they criticised rescue efforts.... Earlier, the chief rescue officer, Zhu Wenyu, was reported by state media as saying; "I'd guess that the miners down the shaft have no hope of survival." (Times, 20 August) RD

For those who have too much

Royal Bank of Scotland has awarded millions of potentially lucrative share options to top executives under a controversial new bonus plan a report in The Herald says .

Chief executive Sir Fred Goodwin, head of corporate markets Johnny Cameron, and Larry Fish, head of US subsidiary Citizens, are among the major beneficiaries. The scheme could see executives including Goodwin gain three times their basic salary - which in his case would amount to £3.6 million. Goodwin was granted options over nearly 700,000 shares. Cameron was granted options over 374,332 shares and Fish over 523,640 shares. Finance director Guy Whittaker and retail markets chief Gordon Pell also received big awards.

RBS announced to the stock market yesterday that it had granted options to 15 senior executives which will vest between 2010 and 2017 at an exercise price of 561p, a level which some might view as low by recent standards. RBS shares closed up 1.5p at 577p last night, but were until recently trading well above £6. RBS did not respond to a request for comment on how it had arrived at the apparently low exercise price.

AND THOSE WHO HAVE NOTHING

The contrast between those who have everything and those who have nothing is summed up by this news item. "For 15-year-old Issa, days of summer start when the sun rises over a northern Israeli hill, shining on a garbage dump, a thorny field and then the dirty mattress that is his bed. Issa is among hundreds of Palestinian child labourers who sneak into Israel from the West Bank, hawking or begging at traffic junctions. Israel's massive barrier of walls and fences separating it from the West Bank has made it harder for adult labourers to enter Israel, so families wracked by poverty are increasingly sending their children instead. Children as young as 3 stand at traffic lights for hours, in rain or baking sun. They beg for change or sell cigarette lighters and batteries. At night, they sleep in fields, cemeteries, mosques, drainage canals or on streets. Their earnings are often taken by thieves or shady middlemen, and some are sexually abused or forced to sell drugs." (Yahoo News, 18 August) RD