FOOD FOR THOUGHT

In the review of a book dealing with the mysteries of price, the Toronto Star (Jan 1, 2011) revealed that the amount the US government offered in compensation for lives lost on 9/11 ranged from $6.4 million for the families of the wealthiest victims to $250 000 for the families of the poorest people who died that day.
In the same review we are told that installing seat belts on US school buses would cost the equivalent of $40 million for each child's life likely to be saved (which probably explains why it has not been done). As we say, capitalists know the price of everything and the value of nothing. John Ayers

ALL RIGHT FOR SOME

"Andy Warhol once remarked that he liked "money on the wall". ...While economies crashed and governments slashed spending, an unprecedented number of incredibly wealthy people all over the world were effectively taking Warhol at his word. What they actually hung on their walls and stood in their rooms were Picassos, Modiglianis and Giacomettis, but at the mind-bending prices they paid for them, the effect was almost the same as if they had displayed a bunch of dollar bills or or more pertinently a bunch of Chinese yuan. Their spending spree meant that Christies, the world's largest auction house, announced yesterday sales of £3.3 billion ($5 billion) last year, a jump of 53 per cent on its 2009 performance and the highest total in the company's 245-year history." (Times, 28 January) RD

MINISKIRT MADNESS

"Russian Orthodox Church calls for dress code, says miniskirts cause 'madness'. A top official of the increasingly powerful Russian Orthodox Church has triggered a storm of outrage by calling for a "national dress code" that would force women to dress modestly in public and require businesses to throw out "indecently" clad customers. Women, said Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, can't be trusted to clothe themselves properly. "It is wrong to think that women should decide themselves what they can wear in public places or at work," he said Tuesday. "If a woman dresses like a prostitute, her colleagues must have the right to tell her that." "Moreover," Archpriest Chaplin added, "if a woman dresses and acts indecently, this is a direct route to unhappiness, one-night stands, brief marriages followed by rat-like divorces, ruined lives of children, and madness." (Christian Science Monitor, 20 January) RD

A SENSE OF VALUES

We live in a society where many are concerned about world hunger, homelessness and rising unemployment, but the British Government have much more important issues to concern themselves with - primogeniture. This deals with the perplexing problem of whether or not if Prince William has a daughter before a son she can become queen. "Luckily the Prime Minister has recognised that this a matter of the deepest seriousness ... It is, said his spokesman, " a complex and difficult matter that requires careful and thoughtful consideration..." (Observer, 23 January) A jobless father of several children might consider his unpaid mortgage a trifle more difficult a problem than primogeniture though. RD

UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE USA

"In California, former auto worker Maria Gregg was out of work five months last year before landing a new job - at a nearly 20% pay cut. In Massachusetts, Kevin Cronan, who lost his $150,000-a-year job as a money manager in early 2009, is now frothing cappuccinos at a Starbucks for $8.85 an hour. In Wisconsin, Dale Szabo, a former manufacturing manager with two master's degrees, has been searching years for a job comparable to the one he lost in 2003. He's now a school janitor. They are among the lucky. There are 14.5 million people on the unemployment rolls, including 6.4 million who have been jobless for more than six months." (Wall Street Journal, 11 January) RD

who owns the North Pole - Part 26

Canadians have adopted a confrontational stance. A new opinion poll finds that Canadians are generally far less receptive to negotiation and compromises on disputes than their American neighbours. More than 40 per cent of Canadians said the country should pursue a firm line in defending its sections of the North, compared to just 10 per cent of Americans.

The international survey – conducted by EKOS Research for the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation – found that a majority of Canadians see Arctic sovereignty as the country’s top foreign-policy priority; they also believe military resources should be shifted to the North, even if it means taking them away from global conflicts.

Harper has made the Arctic a major political platform, taking every opportunity to remind Canadians that his government is determined to defend this country’s sovereignty in the Far North. The poll’s findings would suggest that Canadians have embraced his rhetoric.

“It is something that allows him to play the nationalism card, particularly since it resonates with the population,” said Brian MacDonald, a senior defence analyst with the Conference of Defence Associations.

edinburgh-unequalled

The gap between rich and poor in Edinburgh is bigger than in most other UK cities. Centre for Cities analyst Paul Swinney said: "It shows that despite Edinburgh's very strong performance in the ten years before the recession, that prosperity was not necessarily shared equally."

It ranked eighth for earnings, with an average weekly wage of £516.70.

POVERTY IN FLORIDA

"Nearly 1 million South Floridians need food stamps to get by - an increase of almost 200,000 in the last year alone. That jump is more than the entire population of Fort Lauderdale. "It's been a steady increase occurring every month for the last three, four years," said Florida Department of Children & Families spokesman Joe Follick. "It's obviously dramatic." Numbers released Friday show that in April 2007, before widespread layoffs and record unemployment levels, 422,233 people in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties received food stamps. By December 2010, that number more than doubled to 965,823." (Palm Beach Post, 8 January) RD

BOOZE BONANZA

"He made his fortune through musicals such as Cats and Phantom of the Opera. And now Andrew Lloyd Webber has added an extra £3.5 million to his bank balance with the sale of some choice bottles from his vast wine collection. The eagerly-anticipated sale, held at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong, featured 8,837 bottles of classic French wines, including what experts regard as the finest white Burgundies ever for sale in the region. Pre-sale estimates suggested that the 746 lots (mainly cases of 12 or six bottles, but also some individual bottles) would fetch £2.6 million but the salesroom was filled to capacity with what Sotheby's said was spirited and jovial bidding from all over Asia. Buyers bid in person, over the internet or by telephone." (Sunday Telegraph, 23 January) RD

On January 22 - Bloody Sunday

1905: "Bloody Sunday" occurred in St. Petersburg, when the Czar's troops killed 500 protesting workers

Bloody Sunday: The Revolution of 1905 On January 22, 1905, about 200,000 workers and their families approached the czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg.

They carried a petition asking for better working conditions, more personal freedom, and an elected national legislature. Nicholas II was not at the palace. His generals and police chiefs were. They ordered the soldiers to fire on the crowd. Between 500 and 1,000 unarmed people were killed.

Russians quickly named the event “Bloody Sunday.”

Lenin called the incident a “dress rehearsal” for the later revolution that would usher in the state capitalist Bolshevik regime.

Bloody Sunday provoked a wave of strikes and violence that spread across the country. Though Nicholas still opposed reform, in October 1905 he reluctantly promised more freedom. He approved the creation of the Duma —Russia’s first parliament.

The first Duma met in May 1906. Its leaders were moderates who wanted Russia to become a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain. Hesitant to share his power, the czar dissolved the Duma after ten weeks. Other Dumas would meet later. Yet none would have real power to make sweeping reforms.

WAR IS BIG BUSINESS

"Iraq will buy armaments worth $13 billion from the United States by 2013 and will spend another $13 bn on weapons later, a Baghdad newspaper reported citing an Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman. Al Ittihad quoted Major General Mohammed Al Askari as saying that Iraq has already concluded a contract worth more than $13 bn with the United States. The money will be used to buy aircraft, helicopters, tanks, other armored vehicles, warships and missiles, to enter service with the Iraqi defense and interior ministries." (RIA Novosti, 9 January) RD

A TALE OF ONE CITY

A trip through London is like a trip through two different cities. On the one hand you have the homeless, the desperate and the down-at-heel individuals that scuttle around the main railway stations like King's Cross asking for your spare change, and on the other you have the undoubted opulence of the extremely rich. Here is a particularly obvious example of the latter. "The £1 billion One Hyde Park building in Knightsbridge, overlooking the park and a stone's throw from Harrods, has become the most desirable address in the world. Each square foot with its polished Breccio Paradiso marble and European Oak woods, costs at least £6,000, a new high for residential property anywhere in the world that is expected to reframe global prices for the super-rich. The average UK salary of £26,000 would pay for only the space occupied by a fitted Gaggenau coffee maker - one of the many gadgets in the high-security residences, with their bomb-proofed windows and panic rooms. The success of the scheme - the four penthouses have already changed hands for as much as £135 million - confirms London as the favoured playground and tax haven of the international elite." (Times, 20 January) RD

one law for the rich ...

The millionaire owner of the House of Bruar retail complex escaped a driving ban and was allowed to stay on the road despite now having 14 points on his licence after persuading a court it would cause him exceptional hardship. Birkbeck claimed he would be forced to sack staff at the shopping complex if he was banned from the road as no-one else in the company was capable of buying the goods on display at the upmarket shopping centre. He was fined £300.

Birkbeck was driving a £70,000, 3.6 litre Range Rover Vogue TDV8 when he was detected by police speeding at 90mph on the M90 motorway.

“If he is disqualified for six months there will be a large number of redundancies at House of Bruar...He would have no option but to let people go – breadwinners who live in the local area." Solicitor David McKie, defending, said.

Actually, to Socialist Courier, that sounds very much like blackmail.

Hero no more..

Sheridan no socialist

“Sheridan told he faces years in prison for lies about sex and socialism”, so ran one newspaper headline the day after a jury found the former MSP guilty of perjury (Times, 24 December).

We don’t know, or care, if he told lies about his sex life to get at a scandal rag that was trying to entrap him. It’s only the political aspect of the case that interests us, and it’s true that, as a reformist politician, he had certainly told lies about socialism. But this is the first time we have heard of this being a crime punishable by imprisonment. If it was, the prisons would be full of journalists, politicians and academics. Of course the Times – like the News of the World, owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch – was merely trying to discredit socialism.

Sheridan was a Trotskyist, originally of the Militant Tendency variety, and although he could no doubt explain why the USSR had been a “degenerate workers state”, or why some common or garden reform was a “transitional demand” and so a stepping stone to “socialism”, he was not that kind of Trotskyist.

Trotskyists, being Leninists, hold that workers are incapable of evolving beyond a “trade union consciousness” (defined by Lenin as “the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc.”). So, according to them, putting the straight socialist case for common ownership, democratic control and production for use not profit to workers is to cast pearls before swine.

Instead, according to Trotskyists, what must be put before workers are demands that the government introduce this or that reform within capitalism. Getting workers to support such “transitional demands” is the only way they calculate they can get the mass support which, when the government fails to respond, can be used to catapult their vanguard party to power. But this requires people on the ground who are capable of winning a personal following. Normally, the Trotskyist gurus who direct their organisation from the shadows, are not up to this. They require front men. As it happens, Militant has been rather successful in this, with Derek Hatton in Liverpool, Joe Higgins at the moment in Dublin, and Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow.

Sheridan first came to prominence in the anti-Poll Tax campaign of the 1980s when he, along with the rest of the Militant Tendency, was still boring from within the Labour Party. Sheridan earned a reputation for being an indefatigable fighter, defending non-payers before the courts and himself getting a six-month sentence for contempt of court.

The trouble, from the point of view of the Trotskyist gurus in the background, is that such front men have, because of their following, a degree of independence and can prove difficult to control. Which is what happened in Sheridan’s case. When Kinnock clamped down on Militant – Sheridan himself was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 – the group’s leaders didn’t want to change their tactics. They wanted to continue boring from within the Labour Party, in accordance with the argument they had used for years, that when the workers began to move against capitalism this would begin as a swing to the left by the Labour Party, so that’s where the vanguard cadres should be. Sheridan and most others disagreed. They wanted to form an independent party, opposed to Labour. They won out and a new party called “Militant Labour” was formed (the minority are still somewhere in the Labour Party, so deeply buried as to be invisible). In Scotland this became, in 1998, the “Scottish Socialist Party” with Sheridan as leader. It departed from traditional Trotskyism by embracing the idea of Scottish independence which of course is quite irrelevant from a working class and socialist perspective.

In 1999 Sheridan was elected a member of the Scottish Parliament. He was re-elected in 2003 with 5 other SSP members. This was the heyday of “Scottish socialism” (more properly, Tartan leftwing reformism). Under other circumstances they might have held the balance of power and given parliamentary support in exchange for some reforms to an SNP government. But it was not to be. In 2004 the News of the World published allegations about Sheridan’s sex life. He (apparently) told the SSP executive that there was some truth in them but that he was going to deny them. A majority disagreed and he eventually resigned as leader and, after winning a libel case against the Murdoch scandal-rag, left the SSP to form a new party, “Solidarity Scotland’s Socialist Movement”. In the 2007 elections to the Scottish Parliament both parties were wiped out,

Neither of them stood for socialism, only for reforms of capitalism and an independent Scotland (i.e. an independent capitalist republic like southern Ireland). Solidarity’s founding statement, for instance, declared that it was “a socialist movement that fights for the redistribution of wealth from big business and the millionaires to working class people and their families.” It does do this, but this has nothing to do with socialism, which is not about the redistribution of wealth within capitalism but about the common ownership of the means of wealth production.

Following the end of his career as an MSP Sheridan has only been involved in minor-league reformist politics, standing for Bob Crow’s petty nationalist “No2 Europe” list in the 2009 European elections and for the Militant/SWP TUSC in last year’s general election (the Militant and SWP Trotskyists, despite reservations about his views on Scottish independence, had followed him out of the SSP into Solidarity). On both occasions he stood on a reformist platform, a series of demands that the government must do this or not to do that which would have left capitalism, and its problems, intact.

ALB
From Socialist Standard January 2011

A bunch of cults the lot of 'em

The cult of leadership

In 1997 Britain emerged from the dark days of Tory rule, liberated by the Labour Party—their path to victory illuminated by the dazzling smile and radiant glow of sincerity from Tony Blair, who promised "Things Can Only Get Better!" If only the People would trust him to lead them. It was He, and He alone, with his charm and iron-willed leadership, that brought victory to the Labour Party. It was He, and He alone, who could save Britain. It was He, and He alone, who was fit to give us leadership.

The Cult of Tony was born!
And the members of the Labour Party, from the knockers-on-doors to the MPs in Westminster, to the people who owed their very jobs to Tony, saw how He and He alone brought them victory. And they believed. They believed it was Tony what won it, they believed that Tony could do it, they believed they owed it all to Leadership. And they looked out into the darkness in the world, the places where Tony's light—alas!—did not and could not shine, and they knew what was the one thing needful.

The Cult of Leadership was born!
MORE LEADERS! More leaders was the answer. Wherever the darkness of poverty, inefficiency, despair and degradation existed in the Land, leaders were the solution. Things can get better, things must get better, but only if the resolute will of a Leader can be brought to them. But, how to find these great leaders? How to bring the resolute will to bear? Then, the London Bells spoke, and all became clear: new elections were needed.

The Cult of Elected Mayors was born!
Don't quite buy it? Well, neither do we. It seems a nice idea—everything running smoothly, no hassles, no delays, no backroom haggling or party politicking, simply One Man charging through the wilderness solving problems at a stroke. It is, though, just a fantasy. Leaders spend a lot of time, money and effort, trying to persuade us that someone, someone at least, is in control, and that we have some real control in our own lives, through (of course) them.

The truth is that no elected politician can control the market—which operates for the private gain of a tiny number of owners. As long as the market exists we cannot have control of our own lives, run things in our own, and our own communities' interests, because that would threaten the profits of the tiny few. Leaders can't change that. Only we can, by acting together, without leaders, to end the whole profit-driven, market system.

From Socialist Standard Editorial October 1999

The Guardians of the Countryside ?

Eggs are crushed, chicks trampled, nests smashed, baits poisoned, birds trapped and shot – and all to line the pockets of the landowners. Birds of prey are being routinely killed to protect the sporting estates of landowners – and perpetrators have tried to cover up evidence of their crimes, according to the Herald.

An authoritative new report for Government advisers shows thousands of rare and beautiful hen harriers are being illegally persecuted across huge swathes of the country. But publication of the report has been blocked by the landowning lobby. Another expert study, due to be unveiled in the next few weeks, suggests as many as 50 golden eagles are being illegally poisoned, shot or trapped every year in Scotland. This is far higher than previously suspected.

"It is the grouse industry that is responsible. They simply won’t tolerate birds of prey on grouse moors.” said Mark Rafferty, a former police officer who now investigates wildlife crime for the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The birds of prey are being killed to protect lucrative grouse moors on estates owned by some of the country’s richest men and women. The owners of sporting estates are keen to control the numbers of birds of prey, because they eat or scare grouse. This leaves fewer to be shot by paying visitors, many of whom come from abroad. But environmentalists argue the birds can happily coexist with thriving grouse moors, if the land is well managed.

Labour MSP Peter Peacock says landowners are deliberately delaying "A Conservation Framework For Hen Harriers In The UK," by scientists for Government wildlife advisers Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), and was to have been published on December 17. But this was halted at the eleventh hour after the landowning lobby formally complained, claiming they were not properly consulted. to stop it from influencing the Wildlife and Natural Environment Bill.
“It is further damning evidence of what appears to be a group of serial offenders in the shooting fraternity, persisting in destroying iconic species,”

Andy Wightman, Scottish land expert, writes "Historically, Scotland’s landed gentry have secured their private interests because they effectively made the law. Even following the reform acts of the 19th century, they ruled in the House of Lords. Locally, they had control of county administration – police, roads, justice – as the Commissioners of Supply up until 1890, and their role was not abolished until 1930...Scotland’s landowners remained adept at spiking unhelpful legislation and promoting causes advantageous to their vested interests...Old habits die hard though, and some may have reverted to nobbling civil servants behind closed doors and trying to suppress inconvenient truths about sensitive topics such as wildlife crime...But this is not just about the power of elites, it is about land laws that vest so much power in the hands of an elite so few in number most of their names can fit on a few pages of a letter. With vast tracts given over to private hunting reserves, it is time to bring an end to the charade that our wildlife is best managed by this distorted form of landholding... "

Why Bother?

A senior consultant surgeon has spoken out against screening patients for bowel cancer in Scotland’s most deprived areas...because they are likely to suffer from other serious conditions which could kill them anyway.

Angus Macdonald, consultant colorectal surgeon at Monklands Hospital in Airdrie, said that in his experience in Lanarkshire, an area of high deprivation with one of the country’s lowest life expectancies, many patients with small tumours were more likely to die from other conditions before the cancer claims their life.

Health officials estimate that the NHS’s bowel cancer screening programme, for people between the ages of 50 and 74, could prevent 150 deaths annually. But Macdonald argues for some sections of the population it would not actually change the age at which a patient will die. “When you roll out a screening programme there is a very real possibility that you will identify cancers in the people who would normally have died from something else. We might operate on them and as a result we might actually shorten their lives.”

Research carried out by Macdonald, which is due to be published in the Journal of Colorectal Disease , adds weight to the principle of addressing the underlying determinants of ill-health such as socio-economic deprivation rather than of early detection and treatment of cancer as a principle health improvement strategy in such populations.

He said: “For the elderly time is precious. We’ll have some people coming up to their 50 years of marriage who have put together plans for over five or six years to save up for that once-in-a-lifetime holiday. When you tell them they have cancer they say they’ll cancel the cruise. I say, don’t. Go away and enjoy yourself if you can. It doesn’t matter if you have your operation just now or in two months, it is not going to make any difference at the end of the day.”

Who owns the North Pole - part 25

BP has signed a joint venture with Russian energy firm Rosneft to exploit potentially huge deposits of oil and gas in Russia's Arctic shelf.

As part of the deal Rosneft will take 5% of BP's shares in exchange for approximately 9.5% of Rosneft's shares. It is BP's first deal since the Deepwater Horizon spill last year, which cost it billions. The BP shares stake is worth just under $8bn (£5bn). Rosneft is 75% owned by the Russian government. So it will look to many as though the Russian government is taking a 5% stake in a company with strategically important oil reserves all over the world, including - of course - the US.

The firms will explore in three areas - known as EPNZ 1,2,3 - on the Russian Arctic continental shelf. The areas covers 125,000 square kilometres in an area of the South Kara Sea.BP gets access to resources, Rosneft gets access to expertise and knowledge. BP and Rosneft have agreed to set-up an Arctic technology centre in Russia which will work with Russian and international research institutes to develop technologies for the extraction of hydrocarbon resources from the Arctic shelf.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12195576

GG or GS

The leftist parties Solidarity and Respect seem to have had a falling out. Gail Sheridan is to stand for election to the Scottish Parliament which means that she will now compete with Mr Galloway for votes.

"I'm against the separation of the country and Tommy's group is for independence," Galloway explained. "I'm a Labour man and they're more of a far-left crew, but most importantly if Gail Sheridan runs as my number two my election campaign will become a referendum about Tommy Sheridan, about his trials and tribulations...a vote for Gail Sheridan would be vote for Tommy Sheridan - or not"

It is believed that Gail Sheridan will be going for the swing vote...

sticking plaster remedies

Thousands of people in Dumfries and Galloway are suffering from fuel poverty. Figures put before members of the housing sub-committee showed that 41 per cent of households are in fuel poverty – the third highest level of all local authorities in Scotland. The Scottish average is 28 per cent.

Dumfries councillor Ronnie Nicholson explained “Dumfries and Galloway has a problem with sub-standard housing which is why the figures for this area are so high compared to elsewhere in the country. There is a lot of social housing in the region with inadequate heating and insulation, there are also a lot of old farmhouses and cottages in rural areas suffering from the same problem.” He added: “Fuel poverty is a significant problem in the region and I fear that our solutions are only a sticking plaster as the Government do not have the funds to properly tackle the issue.”