Beware of Greeks bearing votes

Beware of Greeks bearing votes

Greece gave us democracy, Europe and economics, in both concept and language.

While referendum is from a Latin route, Greeks also gave us chaos and catastrophe.

Also from Greek, Fathom Consulting's Yiannis Koutelidakis has today taught me a word that's going to weigh heavily on the Hellenic people - euthinophobia, meaning the fear of responsibility and duty.

All this is playing out in a global drama (another gift from the Greeks), with markets taking a deep dip on the news that the people could be about to have their say on the state of their nation's finances.


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Comment:

It is an delusion that 'we' can control or regulate a capitalist economy to do anything other than create the conditions of the next crisis.Capitalism comes with uncertainty, war,crisis as inbuilt inevitable concomitants of it.  It is a global system and can only be replaced by a revolutionary alternative.A free access society of common ownership and democratic control without markets.In other words, socialism. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15548435?postId=110757181#comment_110757181

SEX SLAVERY IN CAPITALISM

The journalist Rageh Omaar investigating the enslavement and trafficking of women from Moldova, the poorest country in Europe, to wealthier European countries, in particular to the red light district of Amsterdam, one of Europe's most profitable sex markets and a major international tourist attraction, came to this conclusion."There are an estimated 1.4 million sex slaves in the world today; most of them are women, although there are some men and many thousands of children. These women do not voluntarily enter prostitution, but have been forced under the threat of violence to have sex with men who pay their 'owners'. Sex slavery is present in every country of the world. In some cases, categorised as 'domestic', women are sold into brothels within their own country. But international sex trafficking of women and children is on the rise." (Al Aljazera TV, 13 October) The exploitation of the poor is the basis of capitalism and this is its indefensible outcome. RD

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

The recent economic downturn that has left many workers jobless and in some cases homeless has not affected everyone quite as harshly. "Egyptian pays £37m for a sliver of Knightsbridge. An Egyptian billionaire has splashed out £37 million on a London flat as the overseas goldrush for metropolitan property continues. ....Many foreign buyers have focused on flats at One Hyde Park, where prices of more than £7,500 per sq ft have been reached. More than £1.4 billion of flats have been sold at the estate since it opened last year" (Times, 29 October) So while you can be stopped in the streets of London by some poor desperate, homeless person asking "any change?", somewhere not far away some billionaire is luxuriating in a splendid flat. RD

Socialist Standard Vol.107 No. 1287 November 2011

• Editorial: Beyond the Cutbacks
• Pathfinders
• Letters
• Material World: This Land is Our Land
• Cooking the Books: Producers and Predators
• Halo Halo! - Rowan Williams v New (and old) Atheism
• Tiny Tips
• Greasy Pole: Djanogly – One Of The Family
• Where Will It End?
• Riot!
• Is 20 Years of the Big Issue Something To Shout About?
• What is Wrong With Using Parliament?
• Casino Capitalism: Inefficient and Irrational
• Cooking the Books: Ground Rents and Coronets
• Obituary: Margaret Hopwood
• Book Reviews: 'Why Marx Was Right', 'Speak for Britain!', 'The Political Economy of Development'
• Proper Gander: Stripped Blair
• Action Replay
• 50 Years Ago: Labour Conference
• Voice From the Back
• Cartoon: Free Lunch

Is this land your land?

Aristocrats and government bodies still dominate ownership of Scotland.

Half of Scotland is owned by just 500 people, few of whom are actually Scots.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/who-owns-scotland-1320933.html

Only 1 per cent of the 19 million acres of land in Scotland has passed into the control of local communities.
http://www.scotsman.com/news/so_who_owns_scotland_1_1153636

Currently, about half of Scotland is in the possession of 608 landowners and 10% of Scotland is owned by just eighteen of them. 6% of Scotland is currently owned overseas, primarily by private individuals. "Public" ownership of the land had reached a total of 16.8% of Scotland by 1998
http://www.cairngormsmoorlands.co.uk/moorland_land_ownership.htm

At present, of the rural land (94% of the total) 83.1% of this is privately held. Here, just 969 people, in a country of 5.2 million people, control 60% of it.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/07/24/the-inequality-rarely-mentioned-in-westminster-scotlands-land/

UK Land Owners:
Forestry Commission 1,600,000 acres
Duke of Buccleuch 270,000
Scottish Executive - Rural Affairs 260,000
National Trust for Scotland 175,000
Alcan Highlands 135,000
Blair Charitable Trust (Private Trust) 130,000
Captain Alwyn Farquharson 125,000
Duchess of Westminster 120,000
Earl of Seafield 105,000
Crown Estate Commission (MOD) 100,000
Edmund Vestey 100,000
South Uist Estate Ltd.92,000
Sir Donald Cameron 90,000
Countess of Sutherland 90,000
RSPB (52 estates) 87,000
Paul van Vlissengenowner of Calor Gas and the Makro cash-and-carry empire) 9 87,000
Scottish Natural Heritage 84,000
Robin Fleming 80,000
Hon. Chas Pearson 77,000
Lord Margadale 73,000

Foreign Land Owners:
Person Unknown Malaysian 1,600,000 acres
Mohammed bin Raschid al Maktoum Arab 270,000
Kjeld Kirk-Christiansen Danish 260,000
Joseph & Lisbet Koerner Swedish 175,000
Stanton Avery American 135,000
Mohammed al Fayed Egyptian 130,000
Urs Schwarzenburg Swiss 125,000
Count Knuth Danish 120,000
Mahdi Mohammed al Tajir Arab 105,000
Prof. Ian Macneil American 100,000
Lucan Ardenberg Danish 100,000
Eric Delwart Norwegian 92,000
http://www.highlandclearances.co.uk/clearances/postclearances_whoownsscotland.htm

LABOUR EXPOSED

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the Labour Party's support for capitalism gave the lie to their claim that they were a party of the working class. Labour supporters have always denied this but now one of their numbers has shown who they really support. "Ken McIntosh, the MSP for Eastwood, who yesterday launched his campaign for the leadership, said that he wanted to be the "business candidate", appealing to corporate Scotland for support." (Times, 29 October) RD

BANGED UP AND HUNGRY

Capitalism's legislators are always looking for ways to save money, so it is not surprising that prison officials in Texas have stopped serving lunch at the weekends in an attempt to trim $2.8 million in food expenses from the State's Department of Justice budget. "Inmates now get "brunch" between 5am and 7am and dinner between 4pm and 6.30pm. Prisoner advocate groups say the move penalises the poorest prisoners the most because they can least afford to buy snacks. But John Whitmire, a Democrat and chairman of the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee, told The New York Times, "If they don't like the menu, don't come here in the first place." (Times, 27 October) Whitmire's arrogant attempt at humour shows his contempt for workers too poor to afford a snack. RD

MILLION DOLLAR CONMEN

The recent economic downturn has led to millions of workers worldwide becoming unemployed, but for some members of the capitalist class it has led to an obscene growth in their wealth. "The average salary in the U.S. was $33,000 in 2008- and though that is the most recent data, it does not even account for the brunt of the recession. That is basically nothing when compared to the $604.9million made by the top ten earners last year. The elite one per cent group includes anyone making over $380,000 per year, and the top ten CEOs make well above that. The top spot is held by John Hammergren, 52, the CEO of pharmaceutical company McKesson who earned a salary of $131.2million and a net total income, which includes bonuses and profits from stock earnings, of $1.billion." (Daily Mail, 15 October) To use the term "earn" in relation to this group of parasites is of course completely false. RD

THE FAILURE OF CHARITY

Every day we can read about people starving while food production is curtailed if it isn't profitable enough. The latest example is in Yemen. "The World Food Programme (WFP) said Wednesday it is scaling up efforts to feed 3.5 million people who are facing hunger in strife-torn Yemen. 'Rising food prices and political instability have left millions of people in Yemen hungry and vulnerable,' Josette Sheeran, the executive director of the Rome-based UN agency, said in a statement." (Deutsche Presse, 12 October)Despite the efforts of well-meaning charities world-hunger is still endemic to capitalism. RD

THE BOTTOM LINE

In medieval times it is said that an important function performed by flunkies at the royal court was to wipe the King's arse after he moved his bowels, but modern rulers have now a much more high-tech way of dealing with the problem. "Earlier this year, the latest salvo was fired by the venerable bath fixtures manufacturer Kohler. It produced a new toilet, "The Numi Web site." The Numi features a touch-screen remote control. The Numi washes and dries its user. The Numi costs $6,400, or 81 times the price of the basic throne at Home Depot." (New York Times, 12 October) RD

What determines whether you kid goes to university? Their postcode?

SCHOOL pupils can be nearly 18 times more likely to go to university than children educated just seven minutes away, a Sunday Herald investigation has found.

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Reply:

It can confidently be said that in recent years education has been more often and more widely discussed than at any time since the public education system began.There is the perennial question of the clamour for “equality of opportunity”; there are the recurrent alarms about illiteracy, delinquency and blackboard jungles. At the same time, springing up in every city were the great glass- walled hives which were the new schools of the nineteen-fifties, visible symbols of changes which have taken and are taking place.

The granting of education and facilities for learning to the working class, even though it is for someone else's reasons, is of immense value. Within the framework of elementary education there have been many improvements and additional benefits over the years.

These, however, have resulted from the increased complexity of capitalism that has demanded more knowledge and more economic participation from even the least skilled worker, and so necessitated a widening of this education.True education, the developing of each individual towards his own well-being and that of society, has not yet been attempted. What is necessary for it is the re-organization not of schools, but of society.

The aim of socialists (not 'left-wing' or Labour nonsense but genuine revolutionary free access socialism) is to bring into being a society in which not only will the problems and privations of the present-day world be absent, but every person will lead a free and satisfying life.

What is wrong with our society is its basic condition of ownership by a class; the answer, therefore, is to establish a new social system based on the ownership by everybody of all the means of production. Can a society like this be achieved? Indeed it can.

The conditions needed for its establishment are with us now: the development of the means and methods of production that could create abundance if the profit motive did not stand in the way. All that is lacking is people to bring it to being.

Thus, the concern of Socialists under capitalism is education of a different kind - showing the facts about capitalism, and the only answer to the problems which it causes. The beginning of this kind of education is the realization that capitalism's educational systems must, because of what they are, hide the facts and direct attention away from the answer.

Here, then, is the great need of today: people to make a different world. People, that is, who have looked at capitalism critically - as one aspect of it has been looked at critically here - and seen that it has long ceased to be useful to man, and that Socialism is wanted now.

M.C.

making cancer victims suffer

New research by a leading charity reveals that hundreds of cancer patients are living close to the breadline due to their illness, with 73% experiencing a loss of income and increased costs such as hospital travel and higher utility bills. Cancer patients in Scotland are skipping meals and worrying about losing their homes because of a drop in income and higher living costs.

Around 30,000 people in Scotland are diagnosed with cancer each year, costing many of them thousands of pounds.

Elspeth Atkinson, director of Macmillan Scotland said: “Cancer is an expensive disease to live with, but this research shows just how close to the breadline many cancer patients really are."

Research has shown that more than half of all terminally ill cancer patients do not claim benefits they are entitled to. Complicated benefits forms, a lack of awareness of entitlements, embarrassment or simply feeling too ill or emotionally drained, prevents many people accessing welfare benefits.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/health/cancer-patients-forced-to-live-in-poverty-1.1130821

OLD, COLD AND DEAD

"Two hundred people, most of them elderly, will die in Britain of cold-related diseases every day this winter, according to calculations by Britain's leading advocacy group for old people, Age UK. "The fact that these 'excess' deaths occur in winter makes it clear that they are due directly to cold," the organisation's research manager, Philip Rossall, said. "And the fact that other, colder countries have lower excess winter deaths means that there is no reason that they are not preventable." Age UK's special adviser for policy, Mervyn Kohler, asked: "Why is this not a national scandal?" There were 26,156 excess winter deaths during 2009-10, with figures for 2010-11 to be published next month." (Observer, 23 October) RD

Home-lands

Home is where the heart is; the place with overtones of permanence, belonging, security, comfort, childhood memories, bonds between people, familiarity with how things are done, habits and customs taken for granted, the familiar streets, smells, sounds, all the things that framed them and in doing so strengthen the impressions of who they are and what they stand for.

In a broader context home may be perceived as a wider geographical area, a country, a homeland standing for something more than a family’s local community. The "one-world" home, in common to all of the human species, has 200 or so artificially created entities called "nations"

What is it a nation offers its individual inhabitants and what is their offering to it? What do they require from their country and it from them? The country is a geographical, physical place; large, small, populous or sparse, barren or lush, mountainous, coastal, frozen, temperate, fertile or harsh, requiring nurture, husbandry, protection. Physically it can offer minerals and crops depending on its situation and in proportion to the care given it. The shared identity of the inhabitants of the nation will be as has developed over generations – history, customs, religion, community relations, occupations, way of thinking – something impossible to enforce as empire builders and nation creators have been reluctant to accept. A shared identity with universal, mutual respect and acceptance cannot be enforced. It is surely the shared identity, that elusive quality, love of one’s birthplace, hopes, dreams, aspirations, that people feel when they talk of "their country", the tangible and intangible connections.

Confusion of the country with its institutions brings the problems of nationalism and patriotism. Nationalism manifests itself like a sophisticated tribalism, with pride, tradition, attitudes of superiority, patriotism and flag-draped buildings. Ill-considered rhetoric needs to be confronted, contested at any and every opportunity. Self-replicating, regurgitated mantras built on lies, fears and hatred need overturning without hesitation. Chop up society into more and more pieces, more separate entities, create more divisions, more fears and suspicions and when the globe is totally criss-crossed with walls and border posts shall we allow ourselves to become so paranoid, afraid and suspicious of each other that we finally close the door to our minds? The challenge is to dismantle the barriers which deafen, blindfold, shackle and dehumanise us. One of the last things the world needs at the moment is more states, with their own armed forces and divisive nationalist ideologies.

To promote the notion that the area of our birth (‘our’ country) transcends or neutralises our class status or gives us a common cause with a class that socially deprives and demeans us, that imposes either mere want or grave poverty on our lives and the lives of our families, is to be cruelly deceived by the political machinations of capitalism. We are all part of one globalised exploited mass with more in common with each other than with our supposed fellow-countrymen bosses. Workers do not share a common interest with our masters.

The inexorable process of globalisation has increasingly made redundant the question of "national sovereignty". Yet many Scottish nationalists imagine they can buck the trend without even being against capitalism. The growth of multinational corporations, some with a turnover exceeding the GDP of most states, has dramatically transformed the role of government as the locus of economic decision-making. Many of the most important decisions are now made, not by politicians, but in the boardrooms of these multinationals. Likewise, the proliferation of trading links between different states has effectively blurred the lines of demarcation between nominally separate national economies. It would be more realistic now to speak of there being a single global economy. Even so, many locally-based businesses are indirectly tied into this economy as subcontractors to multinationals. Not only that, the ever-deepening nexus of international linkages means they cannot escape recessionary perturbations emanating from elsewhere when these impact upon the local economy. At the same time, the limited leeway of governments to ameliorate such localised effects has been correspondingly reduced.

Supporters of Scottish independence who talk about “democracy” always mean only political democracy since economic democracy - where people would democratically run the places where they work -is out of the question under capitalism, based as it is on these workplaces being owned and controlled by and for the benefit of a privileged minority. You can have the most democratic constitution imaginable but this won’t make any difference to the fact that profits have to come before meeting needs under capitalism. The people’s will to have their needs met properly is frustrated all the time by the operation of the economic laws of the capitalist system which no political structure, however democratic, can control.

The interests of workers who live in Scotland are not opposed to the interests of those who live in England - or France or Germany or anywhere else in the world. Nationalists like the SNP who preach the opposite are spreading a divisive poison amongst people who socialists say should unite to establish a frontierless world community, based on the world’s resources becoming the common heritage of all humanity, as the only framework within which the social problems which workers wherever they live face today. This is why the Socialist Party and nationalists are implacably opposed to each other. We are working in opposite directions. Us to unite workers. Them to divide them. We don’t support the Union. We just put up with it. Socialists oppose both the separatist Scottish nationalism and the unionist British nationalism and support only working-class unity to establish a socialist world.

A DISABLED SOCIETY

The government is hoping to save £600m a year by cutting welfare payments by the year 2013. "Many disabled people risk losing essential payments under planned benefits changes, a charity has warned. Scope says the proposed test of claimants' need is flawed for focusing on the disability but ignoring relevant factors like housing and transport. Thousands could be left with little or no financial support, Scope warns." (BBC News, 21 October) Just another example of capitalism's priorities in action. RD

AN EASY TARGET

In the pursuit of making British capitalism more competitive cuts of government spending must be made. So the government of the day, whether it be Conservative, Liberal, Labour or any amalgamation of any of them look for easy targets. Here's one - they haven't even got a vote - children."The government shakeup of the tax and benefits system will result in a further 400,000 children falling into relative poverty during this parliament, leaving Britain on course to miss legally binding targets to reduce child poverty by 2020, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In a bleak assessment of changes in the government's new social contract, the IFS said the number of children in absolute poverty in 2015 will rise by 500,000 to 3 million. Even worse, by 2020 3.3 million young people, almost one in four children, will find themselves in relative child poverty." (Guardian, 11 October) Doesn't capitalism make you sick? RD

Class in the class room

In 1999, just over 83% of pupils at independent schools went to university, while only 31% of children in the state sector made the same choice. Between 1999 and 2010, the number of state school pupils who attended university increased from 31% to 35.7%, an average rise of around 1% for every three years of devolution. But a new comparison of school-leaver destinations has revealed the goal of overhauling university access in the poorest areas has failed in many cases.

Only 5% of pupils from Govan High School went on to higher education in 1999. In 2010, the figure was 5.1%. At Drumchapel High 9% of school leavers attended university last year, up just 3% on 1999. A pupil leaving Drumchapel High is three times more likely to be unemployed than at university. By contrast, the university entrance rate for Jordanhill – a seven-minute car ride from Govan High – is 82.4%. Only 1% of pupils at Drumchapel High achieved five or more Highers in S5 in 2009, compared with 39% at Jordanhill. At the High School of Glasgow a private school is only a few minutes’ drive from Govan High 98% of its pupils end up in higher education.

In Edinburgh the Wester Hailes Education Centre, which serves one of the most deprived areas in the city, 8.4% of pupils left for university in 2010. This was up from a maximum of 5% 11 years preciously. At Firhill High in the adjacent catchment area, the figure is 49.5%. Only 8% of pupils entered higher education last year after attending Craigroyston Community High. But at the nearby Royal High, it was 46.8%. Edinburgh’s fee-paying Fettes College is just two miles from the state school at Craigroyston the figure for Fettes is 97%.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/what-determines-whether-you-kid-goes-to-university-their-postcode-1.1130731

CAN'T BE BOTHERED?

Arrogant plonkers like Gallagher can't explain the rise and fall of markets and employment by their "can't be bothered" classification. "Last week, the latest figures showed the jobless total had hit a 17-year high of 2.57m. City forecasters think it will climb to nearly 3m. Citigroup, the American bank, predicts "close to" 9% unemployment, or 3m out of work, by the end of next year." (Sunday Times, 16 October) It is strange, is it not that the "can't be bothered" segment of the population was higher in the 1930s than in the 1960s? RD

HEY, LOOK AT ME

One of the aspects of capitalism that socialists detest is the arrogance of the owning class, but even more obnoxious is the attitude of members of the working class who have recently become members of the owning class. Unlike capitalists through inheritance, they have become capitalists by robbing a bank, exploiting workers, winning a lottery or, in the case of the next braggart, recording a couple of successful popular songs. "We were working class, and we were the lowest. There's a level underneath that now: the can't be bothered working class." (Sunday Times, 16 October) That comes from Noel Gallagher, formerly of Oasis, who has now adopted the dismissive capitalist class attitude that says the unemployed workers are unemployed because they can't be bothered. What a plonker! RD

A BRIGHT FUTURE?

One of the defenses of capitalism that we often hear is - "Ah, you are talking about the old days. Wake up, things are gradually getting better". This is a widely held illusion, but now even the official spokesmen of the owning class have to confess such a claim is nonsense. "The average income for middle-earning families will have fallen by 7% by the end of the next financial year compared with 2009-10. It will be the biggest drop for such families since the 1970s, said the Institute for Fiscal Studies. In ten years time one in four children will live below the poverty line." (Sunday Times, 16 October) The truth is that capitalism is not gradually getting better, in fact more and more workers are living in worse and worse poverty. RD