NHS rationing

What is the value of a few precious extra months of life? It's a very difficult question to answer, but if Scottish Medicines Consortium's is to be believed then, it is not worth £2.5 million.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Scotland, with 2700 cases diagnosed every year. It kills two men every day. There are 19,000 Scottish men currently living with the disease.

Last October, Alex Salmond, the First Minister, signed up to a charter calling for better treatment for patients.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium has denied Scottish men a drug that prolongs life. It said the cost of abiraterone at £3000 a month did not justify the health benefits – even though it can extend lives by more that three months .

In a letter to the Scottish government, sufferer John Thomson writes "It is a disgraceful decision, cruel and unjust, that abiraterone is not available simply because of cost. How do you evaluate the cost of drugs against someone’s life?...This drug not only gives men an extra few months but also some quality to those last few months...It is unfair for some people to access the drug and not others. Money should not be an issue."

AN EXPENSIVE ROUND

The owning class are very concerned about the drinking habits of the working class. The government is attempting to put through legislation that would limit cut-rate drink offers at supermarkets and pubs. It would have little effect on the following boozers. "A businessman blew £125,000 on a single bottle of the world's most expensive champagne while buying a round of drinks for more than £200,000 in a night club. The financier ordered a 30-litre double Nebuchadnezzar-size bottle of Armand de Brignac Midas bubbly along with £60,408 on other beverages for his 10-man entourage." (Daily Mail, 5 March) RD

HUNGER IN THE USA

When world hunger is mentioned it is usually assumed that the problem is peculiar to Africa or Asia, but this is not the case. "Here in the United States, growing numbers of people can't afford that most basic of necessities: food. More Americans said they struggled to buy food in 2011 than in any year since the financial crisis, according to a recent report from the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit research group. About 18.6 percent of people -- almost one out of every five -- told Gallup pollsters that they couldn't always afford to feed everyone in their family in 2011." (Huffington Post, 29 February) The USA may well be the most powerful country in the world but that doesn't stop sections of its working class suffering hunger. RD

Reading Notes

As the mining industry gets set to blow the top off Blair Mountain, archaeologists and activists join together to stop it. Archaeologists are there to record the evidence of the 'Battle of Blair Mountain' in 1921. Some 10 000 miners, marched to the courthouse in Logan to protest martial law and heavy- handed treatment of strikers. They were opposed by 3 000 volunteers under anti-union sheriff, Don Chafin. The archaeologists, from the pattern of ammunition distribution, have determined that the miners fought cleverly in guerrilla fashion, not the undisciplined mob that they were thought to be. One million rounds were fired in five days and estimates of the dead range from twenty to one hundred. Now the archaeologists have been told to pack up and get off the land by the owners, the mining company, of course. It was a fairly major battle, probably bigger than some of the small skirmishes in the War of Independence, but, unlike them, remains almost completely forgotten. Another example of the manipulation of facts and the media to deny labour history.(Archaeology magazine, Jan/Feb, 2012) John Ayers

CAPITALISM IS INTERNATIONAL

The Daily Mail has a long history of fanatical nationalism but even by its standards it went over the top with this story. "How Qatar bought Britain: They own the Shard. They own the Olympic Village. And they don't care if their Lamborghinis get clamped when they shop at Harrods (which is theirs, too)". (Daily Mail, 10 March) So how come this backward Gulf state has become so powerful? The answer is simple. In the last two years Qatar has become Britain's biggest supplier of imported liquefied natural gas. When profits are to be made the owning class are truly international. Only mis-informed workers imagine they are British. Do you know the nationality of the people who own the company you work for? RD

OCEANIC POLLUTION

Changing something as fundamental as the pH of seawater - a measurement of how acid or alkaline it is - has profound effects. Ocean acidification threatens the corals and every other species that makes its living on the reefs. "According to a new research review by paleoceanographers at Columbia University, published in Science, the oceans may be turning acid far faster than at any time in the past 300 million years. .... The authors tried to determine which past acidification events offer the best comparison to what is happening now. The closest analogies are catastrophic events, often associated with intense volcanic activity resulting in major extinctions. The difference is that those events covered thousands of years. We have acidified the oceans in a matter of decades, with no signs that we have the political will to slow, much less halt, the process." (New York Times, 9 March) With its mad drive for profits the capitalist system is destroying the oceans and all its diverse life forms. RD

REGRETTABLE FOR SOME

Modern capitalism is a complicated system but it seems it has even complicated the English language. "UK Asset Resolution (UKAR), which is in charge of running the bad loans of failed lenders Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, repossessed 8,800 properties last year, an increase of 10pc on the 7,980 the state-backed body repossessed in 2010. Richard Banks, chief executive of UKAR, said the repossessions were "regrettable" and that "multiple forbearance assistance" was given to people before their properties were seized by the organisation. "Regrettably, repossession is the final answer,"said Mr Banks. Last year, UKAR's profits increased by 145pc to £1.09bn, from £444m in 2010, enabling the "bad bank" to hand a total of £2.8bn over to the government in the form of repaid loans, interest, fees and corporation tax." (Daily Telegraph, 2 March) So let us get this straight "regrettable" can mean losing your home or an increase of 145pc in profits. Confused? We are. RD

INVISIBLE UNDER-CONSUMPTION

Whilst the owning class of capitalist society gorge themselves in every known form of over-indulgence millions of poor people suffer the horror of watching their children die from lack of food and clean water. Oxfam has recently been highlighting the latest African horror story. "The British charity said tens of thousands of people in the Sahel region of west and central Africa could die in the coming months if the international community did not distribute much needed aid immediately. The charity said western governments and aid agencies risked making the mistakes of last year in the Horn of Africa, where the famine may have been far less severe had there been a swifter response to the crisis as it developed. In parts of Chad, Mali and Niger, the malnutrition rates have exceeded 15 per cent, with more than one million children at risk of starvation." (Daily Telegraph, 9 March) RD

glasgow public meeting

8-00 pm Maryhill community central halls 304 Maryhill Road

In the red, Whyte and blue

A "large number" of players at struggling football club Rangers have agreed pay cuts of between 25% to 75% to save the jobs of non-playing staff, administrators have said. It is understood senior players like captain Steven Davis and Scotland internationals Allan McGregor, Steven Naismith and Steven Whittaker have accepted the largest wage cuts.

In a statement, joint administrator Paul Clark said: “The agreement on very substantial wage reductions and voluntary departures from the club represents a major sacrifice by the Rangers players."

Socialist Courier takes this opportunity to clarify why footballers earn so much.

Footballers at least start from the same position as the rest of us: not owning any wealth from which to obtain an unearned income, to obtain what they need to live they have to go out on to the labour market and offer their mental and physical energies for sale. Most professional footballers, working for clubs in the lower divisions or for non-league clubs, never earn anything more than the average worker.

But some, those who play for the top clubs, are paid fabulous amounts of money, by working class standards. What is their income? Is it wages? Not really. It’s more like rent. Rent is paid whenever there is a natural monopoly in something that cannot be increased, normally land, mineral deposits and other natural features that can be employed in production. The rent of land and natural resources is essentially fixed by the paying demand for it. The higher the demand, the higher the rent.

As Arsène Wenger pointed out, “you normally need special qualities to be a strong footballer”. It is these “special qualities – which are a sort of natural resource that cannot be increased – that enable the best footballers to command so high an income, but as rent rather than as the price for the mere sale of their labour power. Their income is so high because the demand for their talents is so high.

MORE BANGS FOR YOUR BUCKS

While more and more manufacturers find it difficult to increase sales of their products there is one branch of manufacture that is experiencing a boom. "Sales of weapons and services by the world's biggest arms companies have continued to rise during the downturn and now exceed $400bn (£250bn), a leading independent research body has reported. Though the increase has slowed, just 1% year-on-year in 2010, the rise in sales has been 60% in real terms since 2002, figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) showed. The total sales, including military services, of the top 100 arms companies, reached $ 411.1bn (£257.6bn) in 2010, Sipri said." (Guardian, 29 February) It is difficult at present to make profitable the sale of food, clothing, shelter and medicines but selling weapons of destruction has never been easier. That is capitalism for you! RD

Rangers Blues

The woes of Rangers grows by the day. The insolvency firm Duff and Phelps have set a 48-hour deadline over the sale of the club after cost-cutting talks involving slashing players' salaries to prevent redundancies broke down and are already considering the possibility of liquidation if they cannot reach a deal. They also said Rangers may not be able to fulfil their remaining SPL fixtures without the promise of new income or drastic measures to reduce costs while also confirming Rangers had no chance of competing in Europe next season as they would not be able to submit fully audited accounts by a March 31 deadline. .

Asked if Rangers was in a state to be sold, an administrators source admitted: "There's an awful lot still to be resolved. It is all about who owns what. It doesn't matter whether you are selling a house, or a football club, or a company, you have to know what you're buying."

Scottish Football Association chief executive Stewart Regan has described the prospect of Rangers going into liquidation as "a disaster...[and] the news that the club is running out of cash and may be unable to fulfil their fixtures is the final piece of news that will send Rangers fans into despair."

The popularity of football inside capitalism made it an activity much adored by workers often too unfit to play it themselves, but keen to follow the efforts of their local sporting heroes. With the development of capitalism football has just become another business opportunity. Its development more likely to be followed by financial journalists rather than football ones. Football used to be about watching the match, buying a greasy pie and a cup of bovril. But now stadiums are like shopping malls. It is a truism - if not a cliché - that football today is big business.

Every activity that capitalism touches it turns into commodities.

As Rangers football club ails, vultures circle. In a society where common and shared identity count for little when there is a quick buck to be made, it can be no surprise that football has become infested by the sort of parasites whose idea of of a pastime is making money, especially at other people's expense. The market economy creates the conditions in which they can prosper and seize control of assets that communities often mistakenly think are theirs already.

It is time to take the money out of football altogether. And that means abolishing money in all other areas of life.

We live in a world of inequality. That is a natural consequence of the workings of capitalism. Socialists want a world of equality where everybody would have an equal say in the way things are run including our local sporting associations and where there would still be football, but no bankers or stockbrokers dealing in a football club's future, that being determined solely by the players skills on the field.

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION

The press have recently made great play of how a rich woman, former beauty queen Kirsty Bertarelli and her husband Swiss-Italian pharmaceutical tycoon Ernesto Bertarelli have purchased a yacht for £100 million. "Britain's richest woman may have set a new benchmark in floating status symbols with a new boat that costs £250,000 just to fill up with fuel." (Metro, 5 March) The yacht is 315 foot long - an improvement on their old 154 foot one, but it is dwarfed by Roman Abramovich's 538 foot yacht. Such reports of conspicuous consumption are circulating at a time while millions of people are starving. RD

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