COOL BUT AT A PRICE

"Wow, what do you think sweetheart, don't I look fabulous in this" some workers may say, but behind their delight lurks the awful exploitation of other workers. "More than two dozen global clothing brands on Tuesday pledged to investigate a spate of mass faintings among Cambodian garment workers, the UN's labour agency said. The retailers said they would provide resources and international expertise to find out why hundreds of their suppliers' employees have collapsed recently, the International Labour Organisation said after a meeting in Phnom Penh. Among the retailers who supported the initiative were Gap, H&M, Walmart and Target, a source who attended the gathering but wished to remain anonymous told AFP." (Yahoo News, 6 September) Who cares about fainting Cambodians, don't I look cool. That is capitalism for you. RD

THE CLASS DIVIDE

The severe economic slump in the USA has led to mounting unemployment and mortgage re-possessions but the billionaires are still doing very nicely. "Despite the stalled economy, the nation's wealthiest are worth a combined $1.53 trillion, nearly equivalent to the GDP of our neighbor Canada. Their total wealth is up 12% in the year through August 26, when we took a snapshot of everyone's net worth, meaning these affluent folks did slightly better than the markets; the S&P 500, for instance, was up 10% in that time." (Yahoo Finance, 21 September) The figures compiled by Forbes.com show that Bill Gates is worth $59 billion and Warren Beattie $39 billion. RD

AN EXPENSIVE TIPPLE

The press are fond of depicting large sections of the working class who go out on a Saturday night to have a drink as useless; work-shy lay bouts who drink to excess and behave in an anti-social fashion. It is unlikely that even the most debauched worker would consider spending this amount of money on a night out though. "The world's oldest yet still drinkable champagne has been sold at auction for 30,000 euros. The bottle of Veuve Cliquot, believed to be 170 years old, was discovered by divers uncovering a shipwreck in the Baltic sea in 2010. It was one of only 145 discovered, however only two will be sold as most wines which are that old have turned to vinegar. ....A 10-year wedding anniversary present, the recipient said: "My husband doesn't believe in keeping wines, he wants to open them and enjoy them with his friends." (Huffington Post, 23 September) RD

Food for thought

The staggering proportion of Africa's health and poverty problem never fails to horrify us. The New York Times reported (Sept. 25, 2011) that 750 000 Somalis are likely to starve to death without massive intervention. This, the newspaper reports is 1990s all over again. Like economic crises, it will continue to reoccur as long as the profit system is in place -- no profit, no effective demand, no production. (The Times didn't say that of course!)

The Toronto Star reported (Sept 24, 2011) that one million people die of malaria annually in sub-Saharan Africa, one child every 30 seconds. An Omani doctor whose sister succumbed to the disease, started a campaign to change this situation. Bill and Melinda Gates contributed to the campaign funding 44 research teams finding ways to wipe malaria out. Good effort, but the $450 million invested is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of money Big Pharma puts out to 'cure' acne' or spider veins on the legs. They could produce a cheap vaccine in no time for everyone as long as they could make the big profits they garner from fake medicine.

The same article tells us that 350 000 women died with pregnancy problems and 7.2 million children die annually before the age of five,  mainly in the developing world (anyone know when it will be developED?).
They claim we are likely to see a vaccine for HIV within ten years and a malaria vaccine is available and it will be commercialized by 2016. Too bad for those who need it in the next five to ten years. John Ayers

Highland lows

In a new report, the health board covering the Highlands and Argyll and Bute said poverty was the biggest issue in its fight to tackle inequality. About 53,000 people were in poverty in the health board area last year. Merkinch in Inverness and Dunoon were among the most deprived areas, according to the NHS Highland report. Alness, the south side of Wick and Campbeltown were also listed among the most deprived places in the health board's area.

NHS Highland's report said the average life expectancy of a man living in Merkinch was 66 years - about 14 years less than a man living in Lochardil.

Its authors said: "Poverty is the biggest issue facing the NHS Highland area in the fight against inequality. With impending welfare reform, rising fuel prices, public sector cuts and a fragile economy, the number of people affected by poverty and financial hardship is set to rise."

Dr Margaret Somerville, director of public health, said: "It is important to note that inequalities in health have worsened over the last 10 years...The worst off in society are likely to suffer most from the economic climate and consequent changes in public sector services..."

POLLUTION AND CAPITALISM

In their mad demand for profit the capitalist class are polluting our world more and more. "Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an "ozone hole" like the Antarctic one, scientists report. ...Ozone-destroying chemicals originate in substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that came into use late last century in appliances including refrigerators and fire extinguishers. ..... The ozone layer blocks ultraviolet-B rays from the Sun, which can cause skin cancer and other medical conditions. (BBC News, 3 October) On the face of it a scientific report on the BBC may not appear to mean that much to you, until your child develops skin cancer or some other awful medical condition. It will mean a lot then. RD

SURVIVING ON 33 PENCE A DAY

Under the heading of "33p a day is poverty line - and at least 308 million live below it" the Times newspaper outlined the perilous condition of many Indian workers. The Planning Commission of the Indian government recommended that this should be the poverty line and anyone above it would be denied subsidised rice, wheat, healthcare and housing. "But the claim that 35 rupees (33p) per day in rural areas and 32 rupees in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi was sufficient to provide "adequate private expenditure on food, education and health" has provoked outrage in India, where inflation of close to 10 per cent per year and widespread corruption is fuelling resentment against the ruling elite." (Times, 1 October) It is worth noting that India has emerged as one of the countries with more and more millionaires and a recent study by the UN found of the 645 million classed as poor 420 million of these were to be found in eight northern and eastern states of India. RD

Stalin bad, Lenin good???

A terrific article by Richard Montague in this month's Socialist Standard states:

"Josef Stalin, who by an ironic inversion of the ‘Great Man’ theory of history subsequently became the Lucifer of the Left and the architect of evil in the Russian empire, wrote a pamphlet called Socialism or Anarchism in 1905 in which he correctly summed up the Marxian view of socialism:".....and further."Many contemporary exponents of Leninism ascribe the awful saga of totalitarian rule that emerged from this sort of thinking to Stalin. Yes, Stalin did head the list of political gangsters that terrorised Russia following the Bolshevik Revolution, but it was the elitist nonsense promoted by Lenin, as evidenced above, and the undemocratic political structures established by the Bolshevik Party that created the pathway to the massive evils of Stalinism."

You can read it for yourselves on the new website being developed.

SOCIAL IMMOBILITY

One of the boasts of the present government is that we now live in a society of social mobility wherein someone from an impoverished background can still have access to a higher education. Like most of their boast it is nonsense. "A quarter of English universities failed to meet their targets to admit substantially more disadvantaged students last year, a government watchdog has revealed. Cambridge, Bristol, Exeter, Durham and University College London are among 23 institutions that admit making insufficient progress in widening their mix of applicants in 2009-10, leading to accusations that the intake of the most selective universities is "increasingly privileged". David Willetts, the universities minister, said the report was proof that social mobility had stalled." (Guardian, 29 September) RD

THE SICK SOCIETY

Inside capitalism everything has a price. If you can afford it you can get the best food, clothing, housing and entertainment. Conversely if you don't have the money you have to do with the cheap, the shoddy and the second-rate. Regretfully this applies to health-care too. "The lives of thousands of non-cardiac NHS emergency surgery patients are being risked by poor care and delays in treatment, leading surgeons say. The Royal College of Surgeons says poor access to facilities like operating theatres and scans means some abdominal emergencies are not spotted in time. The RCS also says not enough patients receive critical care after surgery. ....The RCS adds that junior staff are often left to deal with complications." (BBC News, 29 September) They call it the National Health Service, the national ill-health service would be more accurate. RD

pay-cut for bank staff

Scottish employees of Clydesdale Bank face a large cut in take-home pay after the Glasgow-based institution said it will ask them to put 9% of their salary into its previously non-contributory pension scheme. Clydesdale will phase in contributions, starting at 3% of salary in 2012 and going up to 9% by 2014

“In common with many other organisations, it has been affected by reduced investment returns as a result of the downturn, the expectation of lower returns in future as well as improvements in life expectancy rates generally.” a spokesman for the bank said

Those who do not want to contribute will be offered a lower benefit based on 1/80 of salary rather than 1/60 for those who put in money. The bank has also cut the annual increases for benefits accrued after April 2012, switching to the lower Consumer Prices Index rather than the Retail Prices Index. This measure will be capped at 5%.

And for the bank executives? Unite union said the people being hit by the latest "substantial" changes "are not wealthy bankers, but frontline banking staff who serve customers in call centres and bank branches". Unite's national officer David Fleming said the move would "trigger hardship for employees" and was a "real blow". He said it was wrong "to introduce changes that will require staff at National Australia Bank to ultimately make a 9 per cent contribution, over three years, when household budgets are already extremely stretched."

POVERTY IN THE USA

The United States of America is the richest country in the world today. Many other capitalist countries envy its vast productive capacity, but the working class of the USA don't share in this abundance. "The ranks of America's poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work. The number of uninsured edged up to 49.9 million, the biggest in more than two decades. The Census Bureau's annual report released Tuesday offers a snapshot of the economic well-being of U.S. households for 2010, when joblessness hovered above 9 percent for a second year. ....The overall poverty rate climbed to 15.1 percent, or 46.2 million, up from 14.3 percent in 2009. The official poverty level is an annual income of $22,314 for a family of four." (Associated Press, 13 September) RD

Oily capitalists

Ian Suttie is currently ranked at 13th on Scotland's Rich List with an estimated fortune of £340 million. But the Aberdeen-based tycoon might overtake both metals magnate Mahdi al Tajir, worth about £1.55bn, and Sir Ian Wood, head of the Wood Group and worth £1.119bn, as a result of his company's stake in a significant oil find. Suttie is head of First Oil & Gas, an independent company which has a 30 per cent stake in the Kraken Field discovery. His firm's potential share is estimated at about £3.2bn. Even after development and tax costs, First Oil and Mr Suttie stand to gain more than £1bn once the field begins producing oil in 2015.

Suttie, a director of 40 companies, has had a chequered career since he started out as a chartered accountant. Nine years ago, he took over the Richards textile factory in Aberdeen after the Broadford plant, once one of the city's leading employers, went bust, leaving hundreds of workers without a pension. As part of the deal, the sprawling 8.5-acre site was sold for £5m to a company called Hawkrow, of which Mr Suttie was the sole director. Mr Suttie moved the company's operations to the Northfield area of the city. But the textile firm he created went into receivership in November 2004, leaving the 196 remaining workers without a job. Union leaders accused him of asset-stripping after it was revealed that First Construction, the successor company to Hawkrow, was behind ambitious plans for a £50m urban village development at the Broadford site.

In November 2005, he was cleared of cheating the Inland Revenue out of thousands of pounds in tax which should have been paid on the interest on one of his bank accounts. He had been charged with four counts of fraud in connection with his tax returns over a four-year period, but walked free after he told his trial at the Sheriff Court in Aberdeen he was unaware that his £1m Bank of Scotland account at the centre of the case was an interest- bearing account because he never looked at his statements!

From http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/scotland/Slick-oilman-surges-to-billionaire.6843883.jp

BUSINESS AND POLITICS

One of the illusions that most reformist political parties are keen to foster is that they stand for "the national Interests", "the British way of life" or some such nonsense. They pretend that they represent the interests of the refuse collectors and the shop assistants just as much as the rich business man. This recent piece of legislation gives the lie to that notion. "Britain's top 50 companies are to be given unprecedented access to government ministers in an attempt to spark life into the economy. Bosses of companies including BP GlaxoSmithKline will be able to telephone directly to the top of Whitehall departments in new individually tailored relationships with senior ministers who will act as "buddies"." (Times, 23 September) RD

A living wage or no wages?

According to research by Citizens Advice Scotland workers in Scotland are routinely being exploited by employers who are refusing to pay the minimum wage. The problem is particularly prevalent among young employees, while hotels, restaurants and cafes are the worst offenders.

Susan McPhee, head of policy at CAS, said: “The minimum wage has been law for more than 10 years, but a significant number of employers are refusing to pay it, and as a result workers are exploited on illegal wages. All political parties* accept the principle of a minimum wage, but it seems some employers believe the law is optional. Our experience shows many workers are unaware of their rights or lack confidence in how to fight for them.”

The National Minimum Wage was made UK law in April 1999 and is currently £6.08 an hour for those aged over 21. It lowers to £4.98 for those between the ages of 18 and 21. For 16 and 17-year-olds, the threshold is £3.68. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has the powers to issue a notice of underpayment if an employer is found to be flouting the legal threshold, and employers face a fine to HMRC of 50% of the total underpayment that has occurred since April 2009. The minimum penalty is £100 and the maximum £5000.

* Not all. The Socialist Party doesn't.

We have nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage" and even if we think that ideally this should be tied to struggling to abolish the wages system altogether. What we criticise is to increase the present legal minimum wage and call the result a “living wage”.

First Minister Alex Salmond has spoken in favour of a “living wage” of £7.15 per hour for Holyrood employees. Presumably Salmond has in mind is a wage that would allow a worker to afford decent housing, enough proper food, new clothes, to go on holiday and run a car. Getting employers to increase the wages of anyone paid less £ 7.15 is easier said than done. The unions haven’t been able to do it. Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. However even by comparison with previous capitalist reforms this piece of legislation has proved woefully unsuccessful. We pointed out that this was just another empty vote-catching promise which, even if implemented, wouldn’t have had the expected effects.

But let’s assume for a moment that a law forcing employers to pay a higher minimum wage was passed. What would happen?

First, some employers would go bankrupt. Others would withdraw their capital from producing certain goods or services, so their price would rise. Eventually this would stabilise at a new, higher level at which employers would be able to make a profit even when paying the increased minimum wage. So the cost of living would go up, including for workers on the minimum wage. Second, given the increased labour costs, the introduction of previously unused labour-saving machinery would become cheaper vis-à-vis employing living labour. It is generally accepted that higher wages does lead employers to introduce machinery. Employers would do this. So there’d be job losses and unemployment, particularly amongst the unskilled, would grow.

Nor did Marx think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.' "

Like all reforms of capitalism the minimum wage legislation leaves intact the basic mechanism wherein a small handful live of the surplus value produced by the working class. Socialism is not about redistributing income and wealth from the rich to the poor, but about establishing a society that would not be divided into rich and poor. To adapt Marx, workers should replace the demand for a “Living Wage” by the revolutionary demand for the “Abolition of the Wages System”.

Labour is crap,too

Tom Harris, Labour MP, and aspiring Labour Party leader for Scotland bared the truth to The Herald.

"The only thing keeping us in contention is that all the alternatives are crap. That’s not much of a standard to go by: Vote for Labour because everyone else is crap.”

The Labour Party has no horizons beyond those of capitalism. Throughout its existence, the Labour Party has done everything but what need doing most and said everything but what most needed saying. Although from time to time they paid lip-service by using socialist sounding phrases when it met their purpose of deluding the workers, nothing they have ever said or done has advanced the workers one inch. While certain of their reforms might have helped in keeping workers contented and in staving off unrest, they have had the desired effect of giving the boss class a new lease of life. What would the capitalist class do without a Labour Party to patch up their vile system for them? The past record of the Labour Party in supporting wars, freezing wages, breaking strikes, and forming coalitions, with Tories and Liberals, should be enough to finish them with the working class for keeps; the tragedy is that it won’t.

The miserable failure of the Labour governments has led in Scotland to growing support for nationalist party, the Scottish National Party. The Socialist Party no more supports Scottish nationalism than it does British nationalism.

You can vote for candidates who support all the crap of the capitalist system. For them the only way out is through deception, at times to the extent that they begin to believe their own
lies. Or you can use your vote to show you want to overturn it and end the problems capitalism causes once and for all.

The African "Clearances"

An Oxfam report blames land deals for forcing people off land and destroying homes and livelihoods. It says land deals often have no benefit to the country itself, and instead are aimed at using arable land to grow food for developed nations, to produce biofuels, or simply to speculate for profit.

Dundee West MSP Joe Fitzpatrick “The Oxfam report evokes grave echoes from Scotland’s past, namely the Highland Clearances, when, throughout the Highlands and Islands many thousands of people left their ancestral lands, many after being forcibly evicted.”

Oxfam details that more than 20,000 people forcibly evicted from their land to make way for a British timber company, The New Forests Company, and Fitzpatrick described it as an example of “a new modern-day clearance” in operation.

Oxfam Scotland head Judith Robertson said: “Many of the world’s poorest people are being left worse off by the unprecedented pace of land deals and the frantic competition for land. Global action is crucial if we are to protect local people all around the world from losing what little they have for the profits of a few.”

Cancer of Capitalism

Professor David Cameron, an expert in breast cancer from Edinburgh University, said new treatments were increasingly being developed which targeted specific subtypes of cancer, helping make them more effective.

"These drugs are expensive. Some of that is the real cost of developing them and some of that is if you are only going for a subset of cancer then your total predicted sales will be less," Prof Cameron told The Scotsman. "The business model of the company will be that in order to develop the money to develop the drug your subsequent sales in the patent lifetime have to be sufficient to cover all your costs. So actually, the cost for rarer cancer is likely to be higher and not lower."

A wee butt and ben?

Hailed as "one of the finest sporting estates in Scotland" and will become the most expensive estate sold on the open market if it meets its extravagant guide price, Millden, a vast estate situated in the heart of the Angus glens, long famed for their grouse moors, has been put on the market for an eye-catching £17.5 million.

Stretching to nearly 20,000 acres, the estate has entertained kings and prime ministers over the years and is described by CKD Galbraith, property agents to the gentry, as the "Holy Grail" of grouse shooting. Located near the village of Edzell, Millden was the first of the sporting lodges built for the Earls of Dalhousie on their Glen Esk estate in the Regency period. Shortly before the beginning of the Second World War King George VI and then prime minister Neville Chamberlain enjoyed a week's shooting.

Along with three recently-improved moors spanning more than 10,000 acres, fishing rights to eight miles of the River North Esk, and extensive woodland, prospective buyers of the estate in Glen Esk will acquire a considerable property portfolio. The centrepiece is the grand Millden Lodge, a 19th-century shooting lodge that includes ten bedrooms, a gun room, a bar, a billiard room, and various cottages for gardeners and gamekeepers. Along with two other lodges, Millden, bought by investment banker Richard Hanson in 2004, boasts a dizzying array of more modest accommodation, from cottages to farmhouses. In all, there are upwards of 30 properties included in the guide price, plus numerous lunch huts, sheds, and outbuildings, plus a staff of 16 to help with maintenance.

Chinese Capitalism

http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/features/Anna-Burnside-The-Commie-consumers.6842233.jp

The national average income is 50,000 yuan (£5,000), less than Angola and Albania. Only 24 million of the population's earnings are above the tax threshold.

But the rich spend spend spend...Conspicuous consumption must become less conspicuous so the Party outlawed billboard advertisements that promoted "hedonism, lavishness and the worship of foreign things".

The new Hurun Rich List, of Chinese individuals with a net worth of over 10 billion yuan (£1 billion), numbers 127.