The Guardian has a headline this morning that says:
How can these headlines be reconciled? That is easy. What they portray is a broken country where some are enjoying considerable wealth generated at cost to the majority in its population.
It is impossible for me to believe that this situation is now sustainable unless, of course, representative government is suppressed. I cannot see how most people will continue to put up with this. And nor should they.
We live in a broken, divided and profoundly unfair society. Any politician should now be saying so whilst laying out their programme to tackle the gross inequalities that now divide us.
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Your headline is accurate and succinct Richard. I would add “corrupt”
You have repeatedly offered alternative progressive policy solutions.
I believe that Electoral reform PR is the essential enabler to reforming our democracy. There has been a shift by the grass roots Labour Party but no commitment from Starmer as he and others believe that they can get back in and command a majority. Tories want to maintain the current unfair system which has been manipulated to favour them. They know that PR would mean there will never be another Tory controlled government. It’s a myth that PR produces weak government. The evidence shows the opposite to be true.My manifesto would include ;
Publicly funded parties
Elected Head of State
Elected upper house
Redistributive and progressive tax policy. Investment in recovering circa £100bn per annum in tax evasion and avoidance.
Government to take back BOE. It already has the power in law.
Strategic QE to rebuild infrastructure,invest in renewables and Public services without creating an asset bubble. Maybe a national investment bank.
All the above work elsewhere.
Thanks
“I believe that Electoral reform PR is the essential enabler to reforming our democracy. There has been a shift by the grass roots Labour Party but no commitment from Starmer….”
Yes, but let’s hope that the grass roots and the Trade Unions that voted for PR at the Labour Conference don’t conveniently forget it now that Labour are sitting pretty in the polls.
One thing is for certain. Labour will not offer a real radical alternative as long as we have FPTP and the key battleground is for the “blue wall” seats of Middle England. These seats may well punish the Tories in 24 or 25, but they will not be voting for Labour with any conviction. By the way, I live in one of the worst Blue Wall seats in the country. It puts the Great Wall of China in the shade.
I overlooked ;
Utilities and Rail to be brought under public control and the privatisation of the NHS to be stopped and reversed
And the right for devolved nations to secede from the UK if public support is demonstrable.
‘We live in a broken, divided and profoundly unfair society.’
That is ripe for Fascist exploitation.
Yes
Sunak likes to say he is standing up for the tax payer in refusing to find extra money.
I suspect the taxpayer he really cares about are those who pay taxes on capital rather than income. They would be the mostly likely source if we had a govt that was progressive. ( Not too much danger of that at the moment )
‘We live in a broken, divided and profoundly unfair society.’
And one that the current government will seek to make even more broken, even more divided and even more profoundly unfair. And that one the Opposition party is too scared to come out and say what actually needs to be done.
It’s a depressing situation – I hope things will improve but I can’t see when that will start to happen.
Craig
WE ACCEPT AS NORMAL A HARSH RICH-POOR DIVIDE
One in four UK households with children have experienced food insecurity in the past month. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/oct/18/millions-forced-to-skip-meals-as-uk-cost-of-living-crisis-deepens
We do indeed ‘live in a broken, divided and profoundly unfair society.’
“Most westerners scoff at the idea of *racial* hierarchy … But the hierarchy of rich and poor … seems perfectly sensible.” This “mandates that rich people live in separate and more luxurious neighbourhoods, study in separate and more prestigious schools and receive medical treatment in separate and better equipped facilities …” He goes on “most rich people are rich for the simple reason that they were born into a rich family, while most poor people remain poor throughout their lives simply because they were born into a poor family.” ‘Sapiens’ by Y N Harari Page 152
‘ACT NOW ON ENERGY BILLS’ SAYS MARTIN LEWIS …
Most UK political thinking confines itself to the neoliberal harbour of ‘competition’ in which … energy suppliers manipulate the system to maximise their profits. We need to get out of that harbour but Lewis restricts his solutions to stay within it.
FEW FULLY ACKNOWLEDGE – ‘WE ARE ON A HIGHWAY TO CLIMATE HELL …’
‘ … with our foot on the accelerator.’ Failure to ‘set the world on a low-carbon path’ will ‘bring climate breakdown and catastrophe’. António Guterres, UN Secretary General https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/07/cop27-climate-summit-un-secretary-general-antonio-guterres
BEYOND POVERTY, BURNING FOSSIL FUELS IS KILLING OUR CHILDREN’S CHANCES
Both poverty and carbon dioxide emissions can be effectively addressed. Our carbon dioxide emissions are destroying climate-dependent living space … perhaps for everyone … maybe for ever!
At present, energy-extravagant individuals and businesses pay the lowest rates per kilowatt-hour. There is little incentive to cut back. In contrast, the highest rates apply to those-who-use-least-energy by the cruel ruse of ‘standing charges’. You have pointed out Richard, that they should be abolished. Every household should be charged a low rate for consumption sufficient to meet basic energy needs. A steeply rising tariff would apply to subsequent consumption.
JOURNALISTS AS WELL AS POLITICIANS CONFINE OUR THINKING
In the Observer, Will Hutton wrote of a construction company director saying “Housing policy is killing British civilisation” (which is a fair point) but he then advocates the need for “building a quarter of a million houses a year”. Hutton addresses this but ignores ‘climate breakdown and catastrophe’ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/05/exorbitant-house-prices-hurt-young-blight-on-all-our-lives. Housing space must be restricted. Housing carries unacknowledged implications for ever-more roads and transport-demanding services such as supermarkets.
DEMOCRACY REQUIRES A WELL INFORMED ELECTORATE BUT TELEVISION PROGRAMMES …
… such as ‘Grand Designs’ and ‘A Place in the Sun’ (unconsciously perhaps) encourage profligate use of energy and high-speed travel. For centuries, poor people could afford to heat no more than one small room. But in the 1950’s central heating (which was cheap then but is expensive now) and ‘open-plan’ homes became affordable. Mortgage income tax relief (later abolished by Gordam Brown) was a root cause of housing extravagance for those who could afford an extra or a bigger dwelling.
RADICAL CHANGE IMPLIES RATIONING
Climate professor, Kevin Anderson, has said “the Paris Agreement means that the wealthy parts of the world have about 6-9 years at current emissions left until we blow our budget for 2°C. That requires zero carbon by 2035.” … “There is *no non-radical alternative*. Either we have to deal with 3-5 degree of warming this century, which means chaotic radical change. Or we reduce emissions so rapidly, that this also means radical change, but only for 10% – 30% of the population.” … “We are in a rationing issue. We are not going to solve the climate crisis until we recognise (that) we have to stay within a certain amount of CO₂. Everything else is fluff and nonsense.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1281638116122656771.html
Anderson said that three years ago.
I don’t like posts with capitals in them but what you had to say was worth it
What is extremely sad is that PR, writ large in the Labour manifesto and backed across the mythical ‘broad church’, has been abandoned, along with so many sensible policies as mentioned above. The moment needed its Wilson or even Attlee, and it got Starmer (and his donors, backers and advisors) and a third-rank shadow group to rival the Tories barrel-scrapings. That is part of our tragedy.
I’m afraid that we get the politicians that we deserve.
Most people on the UK are apathetic towards politics and consequently we get the incompetents and no hopers that we currently have.
A large contributory factor towards this state of affairs is the British mantra that we don’t talk about sex, religion or politics.
I have been asked recently to a dinner party on condition that I didn’t talk about politics despite my hosts taunting me on politics repeatedly.
Until Britain grows up we will continue our downward slide.
Electricity market reform coupled to revisiting how gas from the North Sea is priced would have eliminated the need for the second headline. But, when your only tool is a hammer(markets) every problem is a nail(more market). It would be quite funny were not so many people suffering.
As it stands, those in power both in gov’ and in the civil service show, by their inability to see energy problems for what they are, that they are both blind (and unfit for gov or its bureacracy) and devoid of morals (and thus ditto). Even if there is a change of gov, the situation will not change.
Sadly true
The 2008 financial crisis was market failure writ large, but wholly denied by the Tory Right and their acolytes. We then have the bizarre situation of the Truss/KamiKhazi budget being utterly rejected by ‘the market’ and yet for them it’s all the fault of some leftie economic conspiracy.
Add to that the utter failure of ‘markets’ in rail, energy and water – we could add to the list. This is a cult that is way down the rabbit hole. It’s interesting to hear even someone like Martin Wolf of the FT, now seeing today’s form of capitalism and manipulated markets as a threat to democracy.
As an engineer I find it useful to consider the limits in an equation, what would be the end state for neo-liberalism? One person owning all the money and every one else as slaves.
To Ben: Unlikely. The nature of monopolistic capitalism constantly shifts towards concentration of ownership of the means of production in fewer and fewer hands, and sometimes they can work together, in cartels. Fortunately or unfortunately, rather like psychopaths, they cannot actually manage to work together long enough and well enough, which is why cartels – if not banned by governments usually working in the interests of other monopolies, but not always – don’t last forever. However the bugbear for capitalism is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. There are several reasons for this, but as an underlying reason I’ve never seen the theory of Organic Ratio of Capital bettered. Main point – it is possible politically to get a single leader, theoretically, I’d argue, but economically he, she it or collective hive brain they would probably be unable to control a single economic unit comprising everything. Before then anyway there is always rebellion, revolt, though not always one specific kind. But then, you don’t get revolutions when the working class don’t want to be ruled that way any more; you get them when the ruling class can’t manage to rule that way any more (Lenin, as I recall).
Simple and easy to understand as always Richard. Thank you for that.
At present in the country, those who rule us at national and local level enjoy the privilige of power without accountability. That must change. I doubt Labour, or any other other party will address this profoundly important matter; which is by degree moving us towards a more authoritarian society.
Thank you Richard, and previous “commenters” . I agree with all the analysis, on inequality, climate crisis and rationing, but today I am mainly tired and sad.
I have been a global justice since my 20’s and then climate justice campaigner for many years. But right now I feel the impact of injustice on me personally.
The gig economy, insecure employment,lack of training and support for the vulnerable, is requiring me to share my home, and my small pension with the younger generation. Together with inflation on basic foodstuffs and energy bill injustice this is eating away my few savings.
If it was part of an equalisation with the global south’s poor I wouldn’t mind, but it couldn’t be further from that. It’s an accelerating ratchet of obscene inequality which has now reached me personally, whilst also making the poorest destitute. Yes, enough is enough, but will we muster the energy to resist?
I hope so
And I am sorry for your situation
There is no cavalry to ride in and rescue us, so as usual we will ‘put up with it’ until ‘it’ ceases, probably quite soon. While still fashionable in some quarters to declaim “The End Is Nigh” there are some neo-iconoclasts declaiming “Maybe”, predicting that most of us will perish in fire, flood, famine and pestilence, thereby extinguishing global warming before all prospects of life are blown off into space. What the minority who remain within a much diminished Nature can make of it remains to be seen.
The headline says : “Inflation and recession fears ease”
That sounds like good news for everyone, unless you think there’s two types of recession going on, one for the little people and one for those in 300k+ houses owner-occupied.
There are two types of recession going on
That was my whole point
Why do people put up with this?
Because the rich blame the weakest and most marginalised for the result of their (the rich) own action of greed and suppression. It is a greed that is never satisfied. It is a greed that seems not merely to always want more but seems to need to see others have ever less. It is a greed that is as stupid as it is self-consuming – concentrate all wealth with those who already have more than enough to cover their spending and the businesses through which they exploit others find themselves devoid of customers or clients. Rampant market capitalism requires ever-growing consumption, blind to the effects on climate or society. It encourages a greed and aspiration to wealth in to order to ensure people act contrary to their own interests by spending money they haven’t got on things they don’t need. In fact, in the UK’s case, as we have become a nation of renters, the wealth is following beyond our borders to faceless offshore companies pwned and funded by sovereign debt funds, which are themselves often based on the wealth created by overpricing currently essential commodities provided by geography, not merit.
Yet the 4 decades ‘con trick’ of telling people that taxation is theft, think only of yourself and your nearest family (but not deeply enough to realise the damage being done to both) and decent health care, education and infrastructure should only be for those with money mean that Governments do get away with policies based on stirring hatred of the ‘other’ and hoarding things for ourselveswhile having no choice but to transfer popualr ‘wealth’ to the offshore owners of vital commodities like shelter, power and food, whilst bleeding the opportunity for real growth or improvement by totalling failing to do what Government should do of providing the necessary environment (pun intended) for growth – those core services of health, education and infrastructure.
A seemingly hopeless situation, with agendas driven by the media barons of apocalypse, who will always seek to protect the greedy rich and cause division and hatred of each other amongst their victims.
Are there any signs of hope? Personally, I am struck by your words ‘we live in a broken, divided and profoundly unfair society’. It is the sort of wording I often read and hear in theology. It is the sort of wording that, no matter how appalling badly the Church acts in supposedly seeking to be the solution and not part of the problem, underpins any description of the ‘Gospel’ and the plans of the Almighty – and, perhaps crucially, is frequently on the lips of the doubters who ask ‘how come this God of yours allows this sort of thing?’ It is also a summary of the world described by the latter Prophets in their condemnations prior to exile.
Whatever ones beliefs (and lack of belief is a belief!), perhaps the solutions in terms of the Biblical vision of a broken world being mended and reconciled are worthy of examination, not condemning wealth as such but stressing the responsibility of all for each other, but especially the wealthier for the poorer and those of advantage for those on the margins. ‘Attend to the needs of the poor, the widow and the orphan, the marginalised and the foreigner in the land’ is actually one of the most constant calls in Scripture and whatever you believe about the divine source of this or not, it seems to me to stand as totalluy locgical and vital foundation for a functioning society – and a pretty damning signpost of what has been lost in Britain over the last 40 years, leading to this ‘broken, divided and profoundly divided nation. we have today.
Somebody brave enough to take Shell on.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2023/02/09/activist-investors-sue-shell-bosses-over-climate-risks/
Climate activists can take heart.
Is “follow the money” the only sound advice there’s ever been in financial circles?
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/02/credit-suisse-tanks-yesterday-to-3-02-its-lost-over-90-percent-of-its-market-value-since-2007-its-not-alone/