Safe Motoring

Scottish towns and cities had the worst rates for major MoT failures in the UK last year, figures have shown. Motoring groups expressed alarm at the news, which they said suggested there were more unsafe cars on Scottish roads than elsewhere.

Dundee topped the test table for “major failures”, with 15.3 per cent of vehicles not getting an MoT certificate

Halfords Autocentres said the cost of repairs following failed tests had nearly doubled to an average of £143 compared with £82 some 18 months ago. The firm said that added up to a total bill of £1.44 billion for motorists. A survey found nearly a quarter of drivers just “keep their fingers crossed” and hope their car will pass.

Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association said: “It is of concern that a higher proportion of cars in Scotland are failing the MoT as this indicates that there are more unsafe cars on the roads in Scotland.” He said: “We have also found that 10 per cent of drivers are cutting back on servicing their cars as a result of record fuel prices at the pumps. This means that many safety faults will only be picked up at the annual test.”

Neil Greig, the Scotland-based policy and research director of the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said: “However, the garage trade as a whole has a poor reputation...Until drivers can be confident they are not being ripped off, many will continue to worry the MoT is a sales opportunity rather than a safety check.”

http://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/mot-failures-show-scotland-has-most-unsafe-cars-in-uk-1-2159169

Food for thought

The way of capitalism -- Resilient Technologies of Wassau, Wisconsin, have produced, after five years work, an automobile tire that won't go flat. Great, does that mean savings for all, less social labour expended? Not likely, it was developed for army humvees to transport troops and their necessities for war!
When the Honeywell plant closed in Scarborough, 250 people, many of whom had worked there for decades, were unemployed. That was through the early months of last year. Only 18 have found work. Most are chasing jobs that pay about half the $20 an hour, plus benefits,  that they earned on the assembly line. An all too familiar tale for far too long -- time to act.
Re the environment -- we have just had an incredible year – dust storms in Arizona, drought and fires in Texas, towns like Goderich, Ontario flattened, tornadoes, massive floods, yet, according to Dailyclimate.org (The Toronto Star, Jan 15 2010) mention of climate change in newspapers dropped 20% from 2010 and 40% from 2009. It asks is it climate change fatigue? I ask, is it a deliberate attempt to put it on the back-burner. John Ayers

THE DAY TO DAY STRUGGLE

Politicians like to paint a picture of Britain as a country of happy, contented citizens going about their day to day life in a carefree manner. The reality however is much grimmer."One in five Britons are borrowing money for groceries because of the soaring cost of living, research reveals. One in four said they have had to dip into their savings to buy food or other daily essentials, while 19 per cent have gone into debt to do this. Another 10 per cent said they could envisage borrowing money to buy food in the future. The survey by consumer group Which? found that only 43 per cent of consumers feel they can afford to live on their income, while 36 per cent admitted to finding things difficult - twice the proportion who were struggling in 2006." (Daily Mail, 5 March) Having to borrow money in order to buy the groceries is hardly a recipe for contentment. RD

A JUBILEE OF NONSENSE

The British press is going insane about the sixtieth year of Queen Betty's rule. Socialists are absolutely opposed to the privileged position of emperors, kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, lords, princes, princesses and all their useless and confused children. We are also opposed to the present owning class of capitalists who lord it over us. We want world socialism wherein every human being on earth works to the best of their ability and takes according to their needs. In such a society our children will learn of the awfulness of kings, queens, dictators and capitalism. Speed that day! RD

A BLEAK FUTURE

It is the constant hope of members of the working class that no matter how bad things may seem at present the future will somehow improve their economic and social position. "A generation of pensioners face lives of poverty and loneliness, without enough money even to heat their own homes, says the first report on life for the over-60s in austerity Britain. The future for many of the country's older people is bleak, according to the Age UK report Agenda for Later Life, to be published this week. Sixteen per cent, or 1.8 million, of people over state pension age are living in poverty; 3.3 million are unable to warm their homes (an increase of more than half a million in the past two years); and 800,000 are not receiving the care they need." (Independent on Sunday, 4 March) According to the experts on the subject the future looks far from bright! RD

Food for thought

Republican presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, got it right. He said,
"If we identify capitalism with rich guys looting companies, we're going to have a very hard time protecting it." (Toronto Star, Jan 21, 2012). If he just changed 'companies' to 'workers', he would be there.
The same article, though, shows just how dazed and confused the press is. Gingrich was defending himself against 'anti-capitalism charges'. That's because he attacked opponent, Mitt Romney for his leadership of a private equity firm known for plundering floundering companies and tossing workers into the streets and walking away with $250 million. Later on the article says, " Was Karl Marx correct? Is the boom and bust cycle about to go bust forever?" Something he never supported, of course. And this, "socialism is for tycoons and capitalism is for the rest of us." Go figure where that one came from. Dazed and confused!

The National Post, the mouthpiece of laissez faire (unfair) capitalism Reported that the capsizing of the Costa Concordia would cost the owners $90 million US not counting the impact on bookings. Shares in the cruise company are down 16% reducing the company's value by $1.09 billion. Wow, the social good we could do with that kind of value!
The Toronto star reports that 297 000 UK firms folded in 2010 – 813 everyday. On the same page it is remarked that Ekaterina Ribolovlev, 22 year-old daughter of Russian billionaire. Dymitri, bought a New York apartment for $88 million -- 10 rooms, 6 744 square feet. The
differences in human fortunes are truly staggering. Surely there will be a call for the end of this nonsense.
Well, it seems there is one alternative -- 'System D', the black market, the lemonade stands, flea market vendors, etc. About 1.8 billion people are counted in this class with an economy as large as that of the US. It's all cash and no taxes. Apparently, System D outperformed the regular economy as the recession hit. John Ayers

dirty capitalism

he Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) has warned that revised targets to reduce air pollution – already postponed for up to a decade – will be breached because not enough is being done to curb vehicle exhaust emissions.

As a result, people in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee and other urban areas will keep breathing in toxic gases, which can damage their lungs, blood and immune systems. According to the Institute of Occupational Medicine, air pollution kills more than 600 people a year in the Scottish central belt.

An analysis by the Sunday Herald has revealed that European Union (EU) safety limits for nitrogen dioxide, one of the main vehicle exhaust fumes, were breached at 12 sites in urban areas across Scotland in 2011. As well as the four big cities, they included Perth, Paisley, Kirkintilloch, East Kilbride and Broxburn. By far the worst pollution was measured in the centre of Glasgow on Hope Street, followed by Corstorphine in Edinburgh and Atholl Street in Perth.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/environment/revealed-traffic-fumes-safety-limits-set-to-be-breached.1330830213

Food for thought

Alan Greenspan, former golden boy of the monetarist camp until that is, the recent financial meltdown, advises us in all his glorious wisdom that capitalism is not to blame for the growing and obscene income inequality. No, what is to blame is innovation and globalization (?). As if all the capitalist class, or any of them, were great innovators or workers. George Soros reputedly made $3 billion in a recent year, that's just $1.5 million per hour on the average forty-hour week, or about two minutes to earn the average worker's wage! That's some innovation! Some hard worker!

Our local country paper out in the sticks here reported on hospital CEO's Salaries. The CEO of Toronto Sunnybrook receives $750 000 per year including bonuses like, health club membership, parking, transit passes, and car allowances up to $1 500 per month. Meanwhile the average Joe, earning some $40 000 has to pay his own way for everything. Makes sense?

Of course, as we all know, don't expect capitalism to be fair or just. That's the big mistake of the Left Wing. The locking out of the workers at the Caterpillar plant in London, Ont. shows that. The workers held a rally on January 22nd . Prime Minister Harper was invited to show his support for the workers but was a no show. London mayor, Tom Fontana said, "We need you down here to support the workers. Get your ass down here!" (Toronto Star, Jan 22, 2012) Nice sentiment but it's going to take more than that. Caterpillar just reported record profits. John Ayers

EXPLOITATION IS INTERNATIONAL

The nature of capitalism is such that many mis-informed observers imagine that it is one of imperialists exploiting underdeveloped countries, but that view is due for a re-appraisal. "It used to be that European carmakers opened plants to assemble their cars in China. Now the Chinese have turned the tables with the opening of their first factory in Bulgaria, an EU country with low labor costs and taxes. Increasingly, Chinese carmakers are setting their sights on the European and American automobile markets." (Spiegel, 22 February) Irrespective of which section of the owning class gain in this competition - one thing is true the working class remain an exploited class. RD

No worker is illegal

Phil Taylor, regional director of the UK Border Agency in Scotland and Northern Ireland, said: "We will not tolerate illegal working which threatens to damage our communities - it undercuts wages and exploits vulnerable workers."

Simple solution - make them legal. Cracking down on illegal immigration only leads to the creation of an underclass of undocumented migrants

It is all too easy to blame immigrants for causing or at least aggravating problems such as unemployment and low wages. The socialist response to this is simply to point out that poverty and social disruption are caused by capitalism. All those people seeking migration, whether legal or illegal, are simply obeying the imperative that they must try to find a place to work; and no amount of government restrictions will change that fact.

Food for thought

Surprise! The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that in Canada a small group of winners was reaping a disproportionate share of global wealth and noted that we were the country with the sharpest increase in income inequality. Wonder where these guys have been for the last one hundred and fifty years! There are other winners too. The Star article, "Yes, Virginia, You Can Contract Out Christmas reports that the owner of Emblem Florists put up a fourteen foot Christmas tree in his home on Toronto's prestigious Bridle Path and adorned it with three thousand lights at a cost of $7000. A client requested six trees done for $25 000. One has to think how many starving children could be fed with that money.

The banks, of course, are managing quite well. The Royal Bank of Canada reported fourth quarter profits of $1.6 billion, up 43% and the Bank of Nova Scotia did OK, too at $1.24 billion in profits. That's only about $15.5 million a day. Just wondering if they are among the 'small group of winners reaping a disproportionate share of global wealth?

Finally, the environment -- As expected, representatives of the Canadian and American capitalists clearly showed their disdain for the Kyoto Accord or any post-Kyoto Accord at the recent UN climate meetings in Durban. Any attempts to help poor countries of the Southern hemisphere to preserve their ecologically vital rain forests were snubbed. Presumably, any whiff of making a profit out of the resource would bring them running back. The drive for profit is merely a short term and blind point of view but thoroughly consistent with the needs of capitalism. When Canada and the US experience coastal flooding, desertification, and
massive crop losses, these people who ignore climate action might wonder if there is a better system after all. John Ayers

THE HUMAN NATURE ARGUMENT

One of the commonest arguments against world socialism is that it is against human nature. According to that view there is something intrinsically basic about human behaviour that makes it impossible for people to behave in a co-operative, social fashion. This old defense of capitalism has recently received a body blow from recent scientific research."Biological research is increasingly debunking the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish. "Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies," Frans de Waal, a biologist at Emory University in Atlanta, told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on Monday. New research on higher animals from primates and elephants to mice shows there is a biological basis for behavior such as co-operation, said de Waal, author of The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society. Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were "nasty" at the core but had developed a veneer of morality - albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries at the conference in Vancouver, Canada. But human children - and most higher animals - are "moral" in a scientific sense, because they need to co-operate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said." (Aljazeera, 21 February) RD

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIFE

The owning class inside capitalism lead lives completely divorced from that of the working class who produce all their wealth. The multi-millionaire Ted Turner is a case in point. "Turner and his third wife Jane Fonda divorced in 2001, after 10 years of marriage, and the Oscar-winning actress has been replaced in his personal life by a complicated arrangement involving a quartet of other women. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the media mogul and philanthropist, who owns 28 homes including 14 ranches, said a week per month for each girlfriend was "pretty much the general rule." (Daily Telegraph, 1 March) Not content with a different house every fortnight he swops wifes every week. RD

Bleak Times

One in ten working-age people in Scotland will be on the dole by the end of the year, according to a new report.

Professor Brian Ashcroft, the editor of the commentary, blames in part the UK government’s austerity measures for choking off growth, describing it as a “serious economic policy mistake” which will be remembered for “generations”.

The core problem, the commentary suggests, is that the supply of labour is rising too fast compared to the number of jobs on offer. This mis-match between people and available jobs is now “identical to the trough of the recession”.

ECONOMIC REALITY

Many workers may imagine in the present economic downturn all the news is bad, but it is not all doom and gloom. "The world's largest advertising group, WPP, has reported record profits, and says events such as the Olympics should boost business this year. Pre-tax profits were £1.008bn in 2011, up 18.5% on the previous year, with revenues topping £10bn." (BBC News, 1 March) The truth is that even in the worst economic times sections of the owning class keep coining it in. RD

COLD REALITY

The recent extremely cold spell in Eastern Europe left many workers in peril of their lives with many homeless workers dying of the cold. This was not the fate of the wealthy minority however. "Monaco-based potash tycoon Dmitry Rybolovlyev has bought the priciest piece of residential real estate in New York City, paying $88 million for a Manhattan penthouse, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Rybolovlyev purchased the apartment from a former head of Citigroup in the name of a trust for his daughter Yekaterina, a 22-year-old college student, the newspaper reported." (The MoscowTimes , 17 February) The demise of state capitalism in the former USSR has certainly ensured the warmth and comfort of the minority capitalist class in that country. RD

BABY ITS COLD INSIDE

One of the illusions that supporters of capitalism like to foster is that although capitalism may not be perfect it is improving. This seems like an idle boast when we consider the absolute necessity of staying warm. "More than nine million households will be living in fuel poverty within four years unless the Government directs £4bn a year from carbon taxes to families in greatest need, campaigners warn. More Britons die every year from living in a cold home than on the roads, they said, with the situation expected to worsen sharply because of soaring utility bills. A new study has revealed that there are a million more households already living in fuel poverty compared with previous estimates, taking the total to 6.4 million. The study, by energy efficiency experts Camco, suggests that the total will hit 9.1 million by 2016." (Independent, 27 February) The old pop song used to declare in order to stay a little longer with a girl friend "Baby Its Cold Outside", but now it seems with "improving" capitalism it is cold inside too! RD

The last volunteer

The last Scottish veteran of Spanish Civil War has died. Thomas Watters was a Glasgow Corporation bus driver who took his first-aid skills to Spain in the Scottish Ambulance Unit. He said the people who made up the International Brigades were not fighting men, but individuals who felt strongly about the need to combat the spread of fascism. "They went out there in ones and twos and the whole body was formed from all sorts of nationalities and languages. It was a huge job but they became very effective."

Socialist Courier takes the opportunity of his passing away to remind its readers of the Socialist Party's attitude to The Spanish Civil War.

Socialists are on the side of the exploited in their struggles against the landed and monied classes. This is true whether the workers concerned are socialist or not, organised or unorganised, and whether the struggle is a strike or a lock-out, or whether it is concerned with gaining "elbow room" for the working class movement, i. e., the right to organise, to carry on propaganda, to secure the franchise and parliamentary government. If there is no democracy, how could socialist ideas be spread? These struggles are all expressions of the class struggle and are in the line of development towards socialism. It is the plain duty of the organised workers in the more advanced countries to support and encourage such struggles, both at home and in the less advanced countries. While our members individually take part in struggles for objects other than Socialism the SPGB as a party does not. It exists and seeks support solely for Socialism, i.e. for activities which the non-Socialist organisations, including the reformist political parties, do not and cannot undertake. Therefore the SPGB only gives material support to socialist organisations.

Whether the Spanish workers were wise in participating in a struggle so costly in human lives may be debatable, but as they have decided to take the plunge, and as they have the most violent partisans of capitalism against them, socialists are, of course, on their side. It must be assumed that the Spanish workers weighed up the situation and counted the cost before deciding their course of action. That is a matter upon which their judgement should be better than that of people outside the country. It is difficult to blame anarchists who took up arms to defend themselves and their unions from murderous bosses; but we can perhaps look to the rejection of political democracy that preceded the civil war and gave the armed authoritarians the support they needed to break cover and launch their assault.

One thing shown is that is the difficulty or the impossibility of achieving real unity by merging together in a Popular Front parties and individuals who differ fundamentally in aim, outlook, and method. It was obvious in 1936 that it would be an enormous task to secure unity between long standing opponents like the Spanish Labourites, Anarchist-Syndicalists, Communists, Trotskyists, Liberal Republicans, Catholic Basque Separatists, etc. The frequent inability to secure effective and loyal co-operation, show that, even the stress of war will not make men who think differently work to a common programme. Neither in war nor revolution has anti-fascist Spain had a worse enemy than Stalinism. The Communist Party can best be summed up by the slogan "Better lose the war than allow the Revolution".

The simple truth was that at the time there never existed the basis for unity on the Republican side.

A war within capitalism could only be fought on capitalist terms. You can't have a democratic army, as the anarchists in the CNT found out. Party rivalries made it impossible to build up an efficient army. There was not one view of what kind of army to build, but three incompatible views—a revolutionary popular army like that of the French after the revolution, a "political" army like that of Russia, or a non-political army like the British. The Anarchists favoured the first, the Communists the second, and the army officers and Liberal-Republicans the third.

"Arming of the people is meaningless. The nature of military warfare is determined by the class directing it. An army fighting in defence of a bourgeois state, even if it should be antifascist, is an army in the service of capitalism . . . War between a fascist state and an antifascist state is not a revolutionary class war. The proletariat's intervention on one side is an indication that it has already been defeated. Insuperable technical and professional inferiority on the part of the popular or militia-based army was implicit in military struggle on a military front" - Agustin Guillamon, Friends of Durruti.

If you have an overwhelming majority, you don't need any army anyway. No amount of oppression can be made to work against it, as the Communist Party found out in Moscow in 1989. But that overwhelming majority has to know what it is about. And that is what the Friends of Durruti concluded:
"What happened was what had to happen. The CNT was utterly devoid of revolutionary theory. We did not have a concrete programme. We had no idea where we were going . . . By not knowing what to do we handed the revolution on a platter to the bourgeoisie and the Communists who support the farce of yesterday."

Murray Bookchin also writes "Not only did the CNT lack the support of a majority of the Spanish people, they argued, but it lacked the support of the majority of the Spanish working class. Anarchosyndicalists were a minority within a minority. Even within the CNT membership, a large number of workers and peasants shared only a nominal allegiance to libertarian ideals. They were members of the CNT because the union was strong in their localities and work places. If these people, and the Spaniards generally, were not educated in Anarchist principles, warned the moderates, the revolution would simply degenerate into an abhorrent dictatorship of ideologues." - Spanish Anarchists.

The International Brigades to this day hold a place of honour for many, who revere them as defenders of democracy and anti-fascists leading the way in a war that could have stopped fascism before the great slaughter of world war two. Many died, bravely; and their defence of Madrid reads like something from an epic poem. Their enthusiasm was not enough to actually save political democracy in Spain. Heroism is not enough, although there was plenty of that. We, in the Socialist Party, nevertheless, hold that it was not in the best interests of the socialist movement, or democracy, or of the conditions of the workers, to participate in wars such as the Spanish Civil, taking into account the consequences of these wars, participation could not be justified either by the hope of achieving socialism, the safeguarding of democracy or the improvement in the conditions of the working class. We could make the World Socialist Movement very much more popular by not constantly challenging popular working class thinking. We could adopt popular concerns as or own and jump on any number of bandwagons. We could quickly grow in numbers by lying and deceiving our fellow workers. But it almost goes without saying that by doing so we would abandon the struggle for socialism.

The "anarchist revolution" was first stopped by the Republican government with the Stalinist "Communists" in the lead and then savagely crushed by the Franco fascists. The losers, as always, were the common people, pawns in a struggle between power brokers. Those who weren't killed were crammed into Franco's concentration camps, penal labour battalions, or settled down to a hungry future. The country swarmed with 57 varieties of police. The Spanish Civil War cost 600,000 lives, ended with a Franco victory in March 1939, and the fascist dictatorship lasted until his death in 1975. Rubble doesn't make a good basis for building socialism.

The World Bank

Glasgow branch is at present conducting a series of meetings on British banking so it maybe useful to add an international dimension.

The World Bank was established in 1944 to promote economic development and virtually every country is now a member. This spring the bank's 187 member countries choose a new president to succeed Robert Zoellick, whose term ends in July.

Until now, the unwritten rule has been that the US government simply designates each new president: all 11 have been Americans, and not one has been an expert in economic development, the bank's core responsibility, or had a career in fighting poverty or promoting environmental sustainability. Instead, the US has selected Wall Street bankers and politicians, presumably to ensure that the bank's policies are suitably friendly to US interests. US officials have traditionally viewed the World Bank as an extension of US foreign policy and commercial interests. With the bank just two blocks away from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, it has been all too easy for the US to dominate the institution.

For too long, its leadership has imposed US concepts that are often utterly inappropriate for the poorest countries and their poorest people. It completely fumbled the exploding pandemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria during the 1990's, failing to get help to where it was needed to save millions of lives. Even worse, the bank advocated user fees and "cost recovery" for health services, thereby putting life-saving health care beyond the reach of the poorest of the poor - precisely those most in need of it. In 2000, at the Durban AIDS Summit, [it was] recommended a new "Global Fund" to fight these diseases, precisely on the grounds that the World Bank was not doing its job. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria emerged, and has since saved millions of lives, with malaria deaths in Africa alone falling by at least 30 per cent.

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/industry-insights/economics/resource-wars-and-other-crises-await-if-global-cooperation-fails

A GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND?

One of the great illusions shared by nut case nationalists and religious freaks alike is that England unlike the rest of the world is something special and is in the words of William Blake " a green and pleasant land"."New data has revealed the number of people sleeping rough in England has risen by 23 per cent in a year. The figures were gathered by local authorities in a single night last autumn, and compared with an assessment 12 months earlier. The statistics show that on one night in 2011 there were 2,181 rough sleepers in England, up 413 from 1,768 on the same night the previous year. London and the South East had the highest number of rough sleepers with more than 400 in each region." (Independent, 23 February) Surely the concept of "pleasant" should at least include a pillow, a blanket and a mattress? RD