The Tories, CBI and Liberal Democrats have been quick to question and undermine the current PCS strike over civil service redundancy changes. Credit must go to the Welsh Government AMs from Labour and Plaid Cymru for backing the workers in their dispute with the UK Government. We are now entering a crucial political period in which issues of principle are more important than ever. A focus on process issues (like the delay in Assembly business) or on dividing public sector workers against private sector workers risks completely distracting peoples' attention from the wider issue at hand which is New Labour's ongoing war against civil servants. An FSB spokesperson tweeted that he was unhappy that the Western Mail had run a headline saying the FSB had 'no sympathy' with public sector workers over this dispute. The FSB do not support the strike (nor is it in their remit to do so) but they certainly wouldn't want to be dividing workers against each other or fuelling the myths that the public sector is some kind of gold-plated workers' paradise. It's an economic recession not a cattle auction. If too many salaries are lost from the public sector, it will have a knock-on effect on the wider economy and surely that won't be good for private business.
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Labels: CBI, civil servants, FSB, Labour, Lib Dems, PCS union, Plaid Cymru, strikes, Tories, Western Mail, workers
Ramblings has a long-standing interest in opposing the Severn Barrage which would be an ecological disaster and a monumental exploitation of Welsh natural resources by the London government. Peter Hain has come in for a grilling in particular on the Barrage, not because of any vendetta against him but because in openly supporting the proposed Cardiff-Weston Barrage over the other alternative options, he was pre-judging a supposedly neutral and arms-length consultation process. It is encouraging to read that environmental groups are now pulling Hain up on his colonial-governor style grandstanding over this issue.
After reading the Druid's blog about the 1st-3rd March ITV Wales/Yougov poll, you'd conclude that Plaid's support in the 'North Wales' region has declined from 17% in mid-January, to 10% now. This would not have Plaid winning Ynys Mon or Arfon.
Although there isn't an easy reference at hand, it's been said a couple of times in the comments of political blogs and on TV that there might be some kind of divide or friction between Plaid and the SNP over the Barnett formula. The background is that as part of their entry into the Welsh Government, Plaid secured a wide-ranging review into how Wales is funded. The review was backed by all the political parties, and confirmed Plaid's long-held suspicions that Wales is being funded less than it needs. Both Labour and the Tories have refused to take any concrete action on this, but the evidence is at least in the open.
The idea is that because Plaid's logical follow-up would be to demand an increase in funding from Westminster, there is a contradiction with their allies in Scotland, who might be aggrieved because the same Barnett formula that penalises Wales slightly rewards Scotland.
This seems like nonsense. Wales and Scotland are at different stages of their national development. Scotland is ready for independence and is pushing towards it. Wales is not and needs further nation-building, it's own legal system, and all kinds of other advances before we can get independence put on the table. Some nationalists believe that Wales shouldn't campaign for a better deal, because we should not be dependent on London for funding. That's a decent point and one Ramblings is sympathetic towards, but Welsh communities are owed that extra funding, and building the nation needs to be paid for. Until a case for Welsh independence has been developed and costed, we should squeeze the Treasury until the pips squeak. They have extracted huge amounts of natural resources from Wales in the past and continue to do so without the economic kickback we would enjoy were we a nation-state.
The solution is to abolish the outdated Barnett formula and give Wales a new deal, and for Scotland to be allowed self-determination and a referendum on independence, or if Westminster insists on denying the people of Scotland a say on their own future they might well grant Scotland fiscal autonomy as an alternative. They would then have no need for any formula from the Treasury, being quite capable of raising all the revenues they need from their own resources.
The BBC's John Simpson has come out with some very harrowing and disturbing reports of unusual rates of high birth defects amongst children born in Fallujah, Iraq. At the time of writing it was the top news story at the BBC's website, but has since been replaced by the story about Lord Ashcroft. The scenes are said to be extremely disturbing, with some defects being so severe (Simpson claimed to see a baby born with multiple heads) that they cannot be shown on television. Local doctors blame the weapons and munitions used by the United States in the heavy fighting around Fallujah six years ago. The city was an infamous hotbed of resistance to the illegal invasion of Iraq, until the influential Sunni "Awakening Councils" made a deal with the US to reject Al Qaeda, allegedly in return for generous financial backing from Western sources (according to the BBC approximately 100,000 Sunni fighters are getting their wages paid by the US to the tune of $360m, this doesn't include the cost of arms or training).
Simpson's report brings up memories of the birth defect problems in Vietnam which still persist to this day. In that country, chemical weapons used by the United States caused massive cancer rates and mental illness amongst American service personnel, and have had a lingering effect on children that are born in the areas targeted by the US forces during their war in Vietnam.
This episode reveals a very sinister and dark side to the illegal war against Iraq, and needs a full investigation. Hopefully there will not be a cover up, and Simpson's excellent work will get the full exposure it deserves. Imperialism is seriously bad for your health.
“I think everybody knows that Wales, like Scotland, is stronger within the Union, and the strength of Great Britain and the United Kingdom is important to developing the modern economy and international relations that we need.
“We’re able, through Britain’s leading role in the world, to influence the events in international development, in climate change, in economic restructuring."
Britain's role in "leading the world" arguably either does nothing for Wales, or does things that are deeply unpopular and alien to the values held by most people in Wales.
In international development, perhaps Brown means the UK's success in channeling more than £50m per year in arms (as far as we know) to the human rights-loving government of Uganda? There was principled outrage at the fact that the Welsh Government granted £50,000 to a coffee farming co-operative in Uganda at a time when the country's government was considering a bill that would confer the death penalty on homosexuals- but the British Government gives alot more than that, and not to co-ops but directly to their government and military.
On climate change, Brown might be promoting Britain's participation in refusing to confront neo-liberalism and rampant capitalism at the failed Copenhagen summit?
And on economic restructuring Brown is possibly promoting the spectacle of British MEPs trooping through the European Parliament to vote for the marketisation and full privatisation of postal services with only Jill Evans and a handful of others putting up resistance?
Ramblings for one would not mind Wales losing that kind of "influence". It's a poisonous kind of influence that ends up with Welsh men and women dying to protect a fraudulently elected group of warlords in Afghanistan. An independent Wales could opt out of imperialism entirely and play a more concilatory and less hated role in world events.
A few things in the past week or so have made it crystal clear that the BBC is failing in its duty to understand devolution or the simple fact that Britain is made up of several different nations. Most blatant is the vomit-inducing spectacle of three identikit and generic "mainstream party leaders" being presented across the TV networks as prospective leaders of the whole of the UK. Never mind that they all agree with public spending cuts, all support staying in Afghanistan and all want right-wing welfare reform. How ironic that the parties that support "choice" in public services are completely denying voters the choice of seeing all of the UK leaders on one programme.
The news that Plaid, despite being a Welsh party of government and a long-established UK Parliamentary party, is being excluded from the leaders' debates on the BBC, ITV and Sky, confirms that the London-based parties have stitched things up so that the General Election coverage will as always reflect the interests of people in England. You have to wonder at the fairness of this. These broadcasts are being sold (according to a news bulletin last night) as one of the main ways you will be helped to decide who to vote for. It can only be concluded that Plaid will not receive the kind of vote that fair and balanced coverage would provide, and that Plaid's vote may artificially be understated due to their deliberate exclusion from this debate.
More from the poll.
Ieuan Wyn Jones
We've concluded that the party-specific section of poll makes pleasing but not exciting reading for Plaid (they'll be far happier with the devolution headline). Ieuan Wyn Jones specifically should get some limited praise for how he has managed to grow the party's support. He has been criticised by this blog before over issues like nuclear power and St. Athan, but on economic policy this blog has recognised that he has done an honest job to try and contrast Wales with the failed economic policies supported by the British parties.
14% of voters back Ieuan and Elfyn to lead Wales out of recession, compared to 47% for Brown and Carwyn, 24% for Cameron and Bourne and 9% for the Lib Dems. Daran Hill argues that this is grim for Ieuan because he is Economy Minister. That doesn't really make sense, because voters quite clearly understand that only Westminster has the levers to lead the UK out of recession (even Ieuan Wyn Jones has acknowledged this fact in his speeches when most politicians would try and claim they would work miracles). The results bear this out. So the 14% is really Plaid's Westminster level of support, because 16% would want to see Ieuan as First Minister. Contrastingly, 47% of voters want Brown and Carwyn to lead the economic recovery, but only 38% actually want Carwyn Jones as First Minister. Quite a large deficit.
The ratings for First Minister are more positive for Ieuan. The approval ratings for would be First Ministers are-
Carwyn Jones on 38%
Ieuan Wyn Jones on 16%
Nick Bourne on 10%
Kirsty Williams on 10%
This is great news for Ieuan Wyn Jones, that even though he is in government as Deputy First Minister he is still outstripping the leader of the opposition, Nick Bourne. Bourne should surely be the First-Minister-in-waiting, but the 2 Government party leaders both match or beat him. This is a failure of Nick Bourne's leadership of the Tory opposition who have been roundly exposed now as being inconsistent on every Welsh issue. In fact, the Lib Dems, true to their style, could even claim that Kirsty would actually make a more popular First Minister than Nick Bourne because she got 98 votes and Nick got 97!
Far from disappearing as you might expect from being the leader of the junior partner, Ieuan Wyn Jones is still seen as a more influential figure than the opposition leaders, and for the first time in his career has a modest amount of recognition and support from amongst all social classes and all geographic parts of Wales. Interestingly though, Ieuan's support is stronger (some 20% of the lowest social grade think he would be the best First Minister) amongst manual, unskilled workers and the working classes than it is amongst professionals and higher managers. Didn't expect that one.
Nick Bourne contrastingly does better than Ieuan by quite some distance amongst rich people, and amongst those who would vote 'No' in a referendum.
BBC Cymru/Wales has released the results of a new opinion poll which yet again makes great reading for those who support further devolution. Ramblings intends to post a few blogs pointing out interesting answers from the poll.
Support for a 'Yes' vote in the proposed referendum, when compared to previous opinion polls, appears not only to have solidified but to have grown. The 'Yes' camp, according to this poll, would command 56% of the vote, whereas 35% would vote 'No'. This means that since Assembly Members gave their unanimous thumbs up to a referendum, people have actually become slightly more inclined to vote 'Yes'. Shock horror, people might actually support what their AMs are doing and may even trust them with quicker access to legislative powers. Why is Peter Hain still not taking this work forward when it is there for the taking?
True Wales' response will surely be as interesting and reality-defying as ever- and we didn't have to wait long for it. Their spokesperson Len Gibbs has delivered a brief response over at Wales Home where, in an early response to the poll (before it was even published), he wrote-
"I can tell you the answer now 55% in favour of more powers. We had already made our own estimate of a poll based on the question that was used. It is more or less what we expected. The outcome of a poll is also determined by the question asked and how it is asked. We do not believe the question asked reflects the choice that the electorate will be required to decide on and will have increased a favourable vote by 8%."
Well Len underestimated the 'Yes' support by 1% but in seriousness, the True Wales response might well to be to complain about the question used. Expect them to use that tactic in the referendum as well as in reply to opinion polls. When they don't get the result they want they will blame the people that run the vote. In this case it does not work because the question put by the BBC was firm and based on real events, even though it used the misleading term "full law-making powers" which has turned voters off in the past-
You may have seen or heard that Assembly Members have voted in favour of holding a referendum on giving the National Assembly full law making powers. If there were to be a referendum, how would you vote?
Let's hope that whoever is in office at Westminster after their election does not sabotage proceedings with a difficult question; no talk of 'more powers', 'further powers' or God forbid 'full powers' please!
But that does hide the reality of Welsh public opinion- the people of Wales actually want even more than what is on offer. 40% of people, according to the poll, want to see the law-making powers (defined as 'full law-making powers' which might mean parity with Scotland) but also some fiscal powers as well. They want devolution to go even further than what the Government of Wales Act allows. This has been consistent now over several polls and needs to be addressed by the political parties for the future.
The state of the parties is less important to Ramblings than the national question, but the poll shows some good news for Labour with Welsh public opinion departing quite remarkably from wider British public opinion polls which still generally show a narrow Tory lead. In contrast, the Tories simply aren't getting traction here and at 24% under Cameron are scoring just a few points ahead of their Michael Howard results. Ramblings is grown up enough to recognise that on this poll, Labour are heading for a clear victory in Wales, but if that result is dramatically different from in England where the Tories will probably still win, what does that say for the UK as a democracy? The Tories wouldn't have a mandate from the people of Wales, but they'd be exercising massive influence over us based on votes from swing seats in Middle England. Something just isn't right about that, and it demonstrates the need to press ahead with our referendum and with building our own democracy. All we ask for is for Welsh governance to be based on the wishes of Welsh voters.
Plaid and the Lib Dems are also in contrasting positions. Ieuan Wyn Jones and Elfyn Llwyd get 14% of the vote, representing growth from their previous Westminster result and showing how Jones has turned the party around, and skilfully asserting that being in government in Wales has enhanced rather than dented Plaid's appeal. It isn't a breakthrough, but realistic Plaid members will be very happy with what would be their best ever result.
The Welsh Lib Dems meanwhile have gone badly wrong somewhere along the lines, with Nick Clegg and Kirsty Williams' appeal plummeting to just 9% (from 18% at the last General Election). As a previous post acknowledged, they do far worse in Wales than in the rest of Britain. A conclusion might be that Plaid is already doing their job well enough and that there's no space and no point for the Lib Dems in Wales. This isn't so much an attack on them as an endorsement of their Westminster policies, most of which are already being taken up by Plaid Cymru.
In conclusion, the 'Yes' vote is growing and becoming more solid evenly across Wales, the General Election results show that it may as well be a different election in Wales than the rest of the UK, and that Plaid Cymru is making solid but slow progress.
Syniadau makes a prudent point about some comments Labour MP Wayne David made in a WalesHome article. Wayne David seems to go out of his way, in his pre-Conference piece, to make points about keeping Wales inside the UK. Syniadau is right to note that this is odd and that it's as if it isn't the Tories they are worried about, but a different party. Rather than simply copying Syniadau, we'll explore this point further and look at why alot of Labour's messages are flawed. Why don't they dismiss independence as an idea with little support in opinion polls, rather than allowing some MPs to strangely hype it up? It makes an actual mature debate on independence more difficult, which is even more strange because Ramblings would admit that at present the pro-independence homework has not been fully developed. Gordon Brown is also up to the same trick in the Western Mail.
Nationalism has undoubtedly gained ground in both Wales and Scotland during the last few years. But Labour are repeatedly telling people that while they might want to vote for Plaid or the SNP, it's only Labour and the Tories who can win and are relevant. Peter Hain has spoken along these lines, calling for 'progressive voters' to opt for Labour over the Tories. This is a strange one and sounds more like something Ramblings would come out with than Peter Hain on his usual form. Hain is referring to people that vote for the Lib Dems, Greens and Plaid as progressives (makes a change from calling us Welsh-speaking conservatives) and saying that we should vote for Labour "without signing up to Labour's entire record". This would make sense is Labour were looking to build some kind of broad progressive coalition to defeat the Tories, but they are not. If (putting aside the fact that Lib Dem voters are often quite different people to Green or Plaid voters) progressives decided to give Plaid a miss and opt for Labour, Hain wouldn't welcome this as ground to build a more pluralistic politics, he would simply claim we had endorsed Labour en masse. His record is in fact of speaking against coalitions of the left and acting in Labour's sole interest- quite different to the likes of Ieuan Wyn Jones who turned down self-interest in favour of his country's needs. It is deeply dishonest and makes Labour look desperate. That they cannot build a left-of-centre appeal on 13 years of Labour rule shows how deeply discredited they are as a supposedly progressive party. They are instead resorting to the usual cliches around the Tory bogeyman. But it's Labour who has widened inequality, Labour who has gone further than Thatcher dared on welfare reform (even recruiting actual Conservatives to work with James Purnell) and Labour who took us into two disastrous conflicts.
Peter Hain has a chance to help insulate Wales from Tory rule and to strengthen a progressive coalition here in Wales. He could do that by granting us the primary powers that a consistent majority of Welsh voters appear to support. He has instead chosen to stall the advance of devolution. He has chosen to ignore the case for fair funding. On St. Athan and the Severn Barrage he has been dishonest, putting deceptions and blunders in the press to try and hype up big vanity projects so beloved of a certain breed of Westminster politician.
Most 'progressive voters' rightly believe there is little difference now between Labour and the Tories. It will not be a surprise if this election demonstrates the highest ever percentage of votes going to parties other than the big two or even the big three. Wales can do better than endorsing Labour's horrific centre-right record, a record that has left us even poorer than before, compared to the rest of the UK. They've had their chance.
It's easy to fall into the 'Labour MPs are regressive and obstructive' trap but there's some clear evidence this week that they are making mischief over the Severn estuary tidal power consultation.
Peter Hain was exposed last week expressing support for the "privately-financed Cardiff-Weston Barrage". There is no such thing. Ramblings pointed out that Labour have already confirmed that that particular option would have to be publicly financed; not only the construction but the electricity generation too. Hain's advisors made a blunder.
This week the Secretary of State has added his voice to anonymous Labour MPs who are fighting for a specific commitment to the Barrage (rather than to the energy consultation as a whole) to go into the Labour manifesto for the next Westminster election. Luckily, Tomos Livingstone in his article reminds readers that such a project would be publicly financed. It is surely a matter of concern that Labour are pre-judging a supposedly neutral consultation exercise by giving clear preference to the most flawed and controversial option. They are undermining the efforts of their own Department of Energy and Climate Change, and the efforts of the Welsh Government who should be having a final say on this. The Welsh Government should be ready to challenge the results of the consultation if they do not reflect the widely-reported concerns from amongst our own communities and our own AMs.
The Severn Barrage represents a horrific exploitation of Wales' natural resources. Our resources must be harnessed but this should be done for the benefit of Welsh communities. Revenues from the Cardiff-Weston option would revert to London.
The journalists still haven't picked up on the fact Hain either lied about the Barrage being privately-financed, or is being fed inaccurate information on the biggest national issues of the day. Hopefully they will pick up on this and ask some questions.
Some good points in this very short article from Indymedia, points that deserve to be kept in mind if you want to debate immigration or asylum.
"The vast majority of people who make it to the UK, seeking asylum come from former British Colonies. Countries that the UK plundered of natural resources and when forced to depart, left most of the countries in political turmoil the ramifications of which still bedevil these countries today. It is vital that we emphasize this when discussing immigration and asylum."
Britain with brutal and violent oppression colonized over 57 countries mostly in the 16th/17th centuries. None of the countries asked to be colonized and most of them had to resort to bloody and violent insurgency to drive the British out and gain their freedom/independence back.
To the majority of those colonized the Union Jack was known as the 'Butchers Apron'. Though Britain boasted the sun never set on the British Empire, it would be more true to say, 'the sun never set and the blood of innocents never dried.'
Most of the countries after throwing of the shackles of Britain became part of the British Commonwealth; now an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states, all but two of which were formerly part of the British Empire.
Did the 'CommonWealth' bring peace/prosperity, to these nations, not at all, the Wealth was only Common to the rich and all that changed for the working classes of these countries; was the color of the flags that flew over them and the accents of their 'bosses'.
Comment:
It is assumed that once formal independence was achieved for these countries, the countries were entirely responsible for their own fate which ignores the constraints imposed on them by patterns of ownership and trade in raw materials as a part of colonial legacy and then subsequent developments after WWII when intricate financial regulation through the world bank, IMF strangulated them into indebtedness and dependency. Neo-liberal ascendancy finally devastated most of them since the 1990s.
The colonization of Africa took place largely during the 19th century. For some odd reason , South Africa is missing. The British took charge of Palestine after the dissolution of the Ottoman Turk empire post WWI. Iraq and Jordan were created and colonized in the same period. Israel did not exist until 1948. I find that there is rewriting of history going on. I have found this in many sources in wiki.
Saleh Mamon
Afghanistan was high on the agenda for Plaid this weekend and it looks like they will make it part of their General Election campaign. Wales has made a proportionally high "contribution" to Afghanistan's occupation since 2001 in terms of Welsh men and women being killed, wounded or mentally scarred by deployment there. It's a conflict that is currently being talked about alot more than Iraq is, and Plaid is right to take a lead on it. It was very promising to hear leading Plaid figures (rather than just the usual suspects) echoing some of the arguments that his blog has used in opposing the war in Afghanistan. Particularly, Helen Mary Jones was impressive and not at all weak or soft on Afghanistan as some centre-left politicians have been (the Lib Dems being a key example).
Plaid are on the ball because this week the Dutch politics has been paralysed by their own involvement in Afghanistan. The Dutch coalition government collapsed over the issue, after Labour thought their conservative coalition partner was backtracking on its previous commitment to end the Dutch deployment in 2010. They previously should have gotten the troops home by 2008, but Nato failed to find replacements. It does now look like the Dutch Government will be honouring their 2010 commitment and will be withdrawing from Afghanistan. Netherlands isn't too dissimilar to Wales in terms of size and potential international influence. Clearly, being involved in Afghanistan hasn't made Wales or the Netherlands any safer, as Islamist terrorists can organise in any number of alternative countries (this is without even mentioning the reality that extremist terror in the UK has been mostly home-grown rather than trained in Afghanistan or anywhere else), including in a number of states that are purportedly allies of the UK, the USA and the European Union.
But is the war in Afghanistan winnable? In modern history there has never been a government in Afghanistan that has been able to control all of its own territory. There has never been a democracy there. The Karzai regime, as Helen Mary Jones pointed out, was elected in a fraudulent election. It would be more honest in Afghanistan not to have Western-style elections until there is more stability, and to recognise that European-style democracy won't work there. Karzai's government is not liberal in any way (insofar as any kind of liberal politics is conceivable in a country like Afghanistan) and in some provinces operates in a similar style to the Taliban, based on tribal warlords with private armies. And that's without saying that eventually the most moderate parts of the Taliban will inevitably be embraced by Karzai (to us, even the moderate Taliban will still look exceptionally cruel and regressive). This sends out the message that we will allow extremists to be in power as long as we're the ones funding, training and arming them. Elfyn is bang on the money in saying that Britain cannot win there.
Much hay was made over giving aid to Uganda, which was threatening to execute people for being gay. Yet where are these voices on Afghanistan? Where are the Lib Dems? After all, in Afghanistan it is already illegal to be homosexual, and this is punishable by death. It is an outrage that Welsh and British troops are being used to prop up such a regime.
Although Plaid is quite responsibly shielding its anti-war stance with a desire to see some kind of UN force take over, they were obviously right that we should never have gone there in the first place. Unlike certain UK governments, the left has never supported the Taliban or its predecessors in the region, and a basic point should be that Welsh people have nothing to gain from being in such a hostile and ungovernable state.
Putting aside the soundbites and election platforms, the most important thing to happen at Plaid's Pre-Election Conference was that the recently re-elected General Secretary of the PCS Union, Mark Serwotka, addressed a group of party activists at the UNDEB (Plaid's trade union section) meeting with Leanne Wood AM and Carmarthen East candidate Jonathan Edwards. Importantly, the leading economist Dr. Eurfyl Ap Gwilym was also present for a different perspective.
And what a breath of fresh air Mark was. Pointing out that he would never get such a hearing and reception from any of the other mainstream political parties, Serwotka exploded some myths about the public sector. The vast majority of public sector workers in Wales as in the UK are low-paid and in some cases on the minimum wage. He explained that when the minimum wage legislation was brought in, a number of Westminster departments immediately found themselves in contravention of their own law, such was their record of underpaying their workers! Mark went on to explain that the human cost of the recession should be valued as much as the public finance cost of the crisis. The human cost will have economic implications such as long-term unemployment, a larger risk of mental health and social problems (including crime) and a lack of civil service wages being spent in private shops and in the private sector. To huge applause, Mark said that the PCS is completely different to the pro-Labour unions who have given over £70million of their members' money to the same Government that has unleashed wave after wave of Thatcher-style attacks on pay and conditions.
Without departing from basic socialist positions, Mark argued that New Labour had in fact done even worse than the Tories on welfare reform and inequality. On welfare reform, Mark was warmly received when he stated that benefit cheating is wrong but is caused by the social circumstances that people find themselves in, and also that tax fraud, evasion and avoidance (some of which is perfectly legal) costs the taxpayer far more money than benefit fraud does. He argued that the banking sector has effectively defrauded the taxpayer.
Dr. Eurfyl ap Gwilym also made a hugely positive contribution to the meeting. Eurfyl has for some time been Plaid's economics advisor, and is well known as one of the most presitigious financial minds in the Welsh banking industry. We might have expected Eurfyl to go head to head with Serwotka but he in fact supported much of Mark's analysis and reminded Plaid's members that 3 out of 4 workers in Wales are in fact private sector workers. Eurfyl pointed out that there were some very highly paid positions in the civil service which New Labour has set up, that are non-essential during a time of economic crisis. Mark Serwotka agreed with Eurfyl that these massively paid positions should be cut in order to safeguard the £14k a year worker at the tax office in Porth.
It was very refreshing to see the public sector cuts agenda being approached from a worker perspective. Public sector wages aren't money flushed down the drain, they get spent in shops, on train tickets, on car insurance, in retail and on all kinds of consumer goods. It's money that circulates into the wealth-creating enterprises. Mark said that no parties other than Plaid and the SNP were prepared to listen to him speak on behalf of his members. He made it clear that party politics however was not as high a priority as is gearing up PCS' membership to fight against the unjust attacks from the London parties that are looming on the horizon. He expects Plaid's support (paying tribute to Elfyn Llwyd's work at Westminster for the PCS, and Leanne Wood's chairing of the Assembly PCS cross-party group) and we must be ready to help with that. It's important to realise that although the PCS is a British, not Welsh, trade union, it organises workers without regard to borders within the UK. This is fine because PCS recognises devolution and recognises Plaid Cymru as being different in principle and in practice to the disastrous centre-right parties.
Yet after a blistering attack on Labour, the Tories and even the Lib Dems (who themselves coined the term 'savage cuts'), Serwotka indicated that after the next General Election the PCS will be organising union-supported independent candidates to stand in seats where there is no left alternative.
To Leanne's quite obvious relief, Mark confirmed that he saw no need for any PCS candidates in Wales- Plaid is doing already the job.
A full week after Ramblings blogged giving tentative support to the 'Robin Hood Tax' campaign, the Secretary of State for Wales Peter Hain has spoken out in support of it. It's good (seriously) that he or his staff are following the blogosphere and engaging with it. In supporting the campaign we said "hopefully it won't be hijacked by the parties that helped cause the economic crash". Disappointingly it looks like this has happened, with Hain echoing Gordon Brown's warm words about the idea but not pointing to anything that could be implemented ahead of the UK election. Labour has been trying to shift to the left on some aspects of the economy in the run up to the Westminster election, without actually delivering the progressive economic policies that most people want. Like Darling's non-existent 'tax on bonuses', they'll talk a good fight about social justice but will refrain from actually delivering on it. In many ways, this is the whole basis of New Labour, and Hain's warm words towards Robin Hood are entirely consistent with the centre-right New Labour project.
Admittedly Brown and Hain's alleged support for the Robin Hood Tax is better than it being flatly rejected, but it ultimately means little until a proposal is on the table for implementing this tax. Along with the tax on transactions, Ramblings believes a justifiable and popular policy for the banks would be an Obama-style levy on profits and bonuses (it needn't exceed the levels set by his administration) and some kind of People's Contract to regulate the behaviour of the bailed out banks and ensure that we don't need to step in to correct them again. Simply put, the banks that owe their continued existence to the people should have to meet a number of sensible and mutually beneficial obligations set by the people. Couple that with setting up an alternative banking model, and you'd have a solution that would result in economic fairness. New Labour, despite Hain's support for a transactions tax, is not bringing forward anything that will meet that criteria. Again, cuts are not morally justifiable until the UK Government has carried out actions along those lines.
The more it's examined, the more the Robin Hood campaign seems like a weak liberal cause a bit like 'Make Poverty History'. Unless you find a cure, you're just treating the symptoms, and at some point we'll all get sick again.