Issue 2 Critical Mass out now

Brand new issue of Critical Mass out now

Links to all the articles can be found here

Not a blog post

 In the place of a regular blog post can I ask you to visit the Creating Socialism website where I have been publishing news stories this week

Today (Sunday) was on the farmers protests in India.

Saturday’s was on the Extinction Rebellion week of climate protests

Friday was on the bombing of Kabul airport

Thursday was on Sharon Graham’s election.

Could I also remind you that a brand new Socialist Hour is now live.

A whole new issue of Critical Mass magazine will be released on Friday and look in every day or watch my Twitter feed for the Critical Mass take on the biggest news stories of the day.

Critical Mass Issue 1

 I am no longer publishing in this blog. All my writing will now be in Critical Mass which you can find here. Please remember to subscribe.

And so, the end has come…

 

It is almost exactly 5 years to the day since I started this blog. Clearly a lot has happened in that five years including two U.K. General Elections, a Presidential election in USA, wars in Syria and Yemen, a global pandemic, and a worsening climate emergency. It’s hard to suggest that they have been a great five years.

This is my 124th post since I started which means I have probably written upwards of a quarter million words. In that time, according to my stats page, I’ve had almost 70,000 views, ranging from 19 to a record high of 2,546. 

I’ve covered a variety of topics from the Labour Party, the media, opinion polls, Brexit, Covid, morality, healthcare, poverty, trade unions, racism and many points in between. Since 2019 I’ve published a blog every week with the exception of the week I was undergoing heart surgery. 

The Last Post

This, however, is my final post in this format. As of next week this blog page will exist only as an archive whilst my new writing will appear under a new banner: Critical Mass.

One of the interesting things to come out of the Covid crisis and the lockdowns has been the use of Zoom to allow people to come together online. In February when I asked if anybody fancied meeting up to discuss politics I had no idea what I was starting. It turned into Creating Socialism, at first just a place for socialists disillusioned with Labour to come together and lick our wounds.

There have been a number of attempts to start new parties to the left of Labour, and I still think that many of those who joined the party when Jeremy Corbyn became leader are waiting for his announcement that he is ready to lead an alternative left-wing party. It is my honest opinion that even if he were to do so, which it is unlikely he will, that such a party would inevitably fail. If we learned anything at all from the experience of 2019 it is that there are no lengths the establishment will not go to in order to prevent a socialist ever getting into Number Ten.

Creating Socialism

So, when we started Creating Socialism it was definitely never the intention to become a party. Although that was the correct position, in my opinion, it also meant that since the start we have struggled to work out exactly what it was we were building. There is little doubt that the group of people who have coalesced around Creating Socialism have created a warm, inviting environment where socialists could gather. But, at the same time it lacked an identity of its own.

During this same period I initiated the Socialist Hour podcast with the intention of bringing grassroots activists stories to a wider audience. I have always believed that in many ways ordinary people are far more interesting than the egos that we usually hear from. People such as Julie Harrington, Tom Widdicombe, Ann Marcial, Tony Broomfield, Robert diBlasio, Shippo, Siobhan Aston, Relish Hendy, Mike Stanton, Jo Buchanan, Howard Thorp, Luke Andreski and so many others have more interesting stories to tell partly because we have not heard them a hundred times before. Most of these people have remained as Twitter friends, and some are now involved with Critical Mass which, like Socialist Hour, is a vehicle for the grassroots activists in all their various and wonderful guises.

Through these various creative endeavours I have been fortunate, at a time when I’ve barely been able to get outside my own home due to the pandemic, to meet so many activists. Some are working in local campaigns, some working in political parties, some kind of mulling around wondering what they can possibly do faced with the overwhelmingly negative odds stacked against us. I try to remain positive, even in the face of defeat, but what keeps me positive is not this or that leader, but the ordinary people fighting so hard for justice and refusing to be broken by a system that seems set up to do precisely that.

Labour and democracy

Politically the demise of Labour, the expulsion of Ken Loach being the latest example of their anti-Palestinian mania, has left many people in the U.K. politically homeless. Many are waiting for another party to emerge so that they can throw themselves, yet again, into an election campaign with little chance of real success. Over the past five years my position has changed. From being agnostic about Labour to supporting the party to leaving the party and eventually coming to the conclusion that it is the very nature of representative democracy that is the problem. Many have accompanied me on this journey, although many people still see electoral politics as the ultimate expression of the popular will, and got off the train at the station named PR, which for those still on the journey is barely worth looking up from our papers for.

Whilst I no longer believe that socialism can be obtained through a ballot box within a social system whose main, and some might say only, function is commodity production and consumption, I respect those who are still trying to prove me wrong. This, the nature of democracy and the ability to use capitalist forms of democracy for socialist aims, seems to me a debate worth having. The last word has clearly not been written on this topic.

As I cast my critical eye around I see fires in Sicily where the air is so humid it is unbreathable, I see religious fundamentalism in Afghanistan (and that just from the departing American forces), I see the continued persecution of Palestinians armed only with sling shots up against a well resourced army sponsored by most Western governments but mainly America, and I see a pandemic being allowed to run amok by politicians who lack the courage to take the hard decisions that would protect us all. It is obvious that whether most people realise it or not, the World needs socialism more now than at any time in its history. Rosa Luxemburg may well have misquoted Engels when she remarked we stand on the verge of socialism or barbarism, but as we survey the damage wreaked by industrial capitalism it is hard not to think that she is as right now as she was then.

Petty feuds

Despite this obvious truth what I also see is people on the left spending so much time and energy on petty feuds rather than building the movements they know we need. On Twitter socialists who certainly should know better are engaging in bullying behaviour to other socialists, often on the flimsiest pretext. At a time when the World is literally dying we need to see beyond petty vindictiveness and “he said she said” politics to ensure that future generations actually have a planet on which they can do all the things most of us now take for granted. In 20 years time when the World is unliveable do you want to look back and say I spent a good part of 2021 on social media calling people names or do you want to say I did what I could to save the World?

This is where Critical Mass comes into the picture. I’ve long argued that there is an incredible amount of talent out there that is rarely heard. Critical Mass will be a place where talent can grow. It is an online magazine and like the best magazines will contain a range of voices saying interesting things. The thing is that is where you come in. If you’ve read this far then you are probably a socialist. Quite likely you’ve got a blog somewhere and if you haven’t you’ve considered that as a real possibility. I hope you’ll follow me to Critical Mass and read my articles. But I also hope you’ll say “I’ve been reading you, how about you reading me for a change.”

I can’t promise that Critical Mass will change the World, hopefully it will change a few minds. It’s a bold venture, but one that somehow feels like the natural culmination of the past 5 years. Those who have followed me will know that as well as writing my own thoughts and sharing them I have always sought to share the words of others. Critical Mass takes that to its logical conclusion, it is aimed at being a place where writers who adhere to an eco-socialist philosophy can come together to support one another and encourage others, particularly those from groups who are under-represented in our culture.

Critical Mass

Critical Mass is not setting itself up as a rival to any existing outlets, neither is it saying “we know better”. It is going to be a contribution to the debates that need to take place. It has only a broad over-arching philosophy and no editorial line beyond our broad agreement on certain political positions. We won’t, for example, be aligned closely to any political party but will engage with parties on the left in as much as they will engage with us. We will be supporting the Palestinian cause, all the writers who have joined us so far see that as a line that cannot be crossed. We will not offer a platform to those whose views on Covid are informed by various anti-science stances. We will not provide a platform for homophobia, transphobia, disablism, or for racism in any of its forms.

Critical Mass will be aligned only to Creating Socialism from where it emerged. And Creating Socialism is a collective of non-aligned (or partially aligned in some cases) socialists. We hope that you will sign up to Critical Mass when we actually work out how to get the sign up form working. We have built the website in a very short period of time so we are still having one or two irritating technical problems which will be sorted by Friday, which is our official launch day. Signing up will get you a weekly email reminding you of what is in that week’s edition. But Critical Mass is not just something for you to read. We want you to get involved. If you can write, write. If you can draw, draw. If you can take photos submit them. And, whilst Critical Mass is definitely “of the left” we think a good magazine should stimulate more than just your political conscience. We welcome writers on the arts, sport, travel, and anything else that takes your interest.

It has been an interesting experience writing this blog, and whilst it may well be a Chinese curse, these certainly have been interesting times. I have valued the many friends who have stuck with me and I feel that as I have worked through so many issues I feel you looking over my shoulder invoking me to find the evidence to support my assertions, and to find better ways of expressing some of the more complicated ideas that I’ve presented. I hope I’ve succeeded and that rather than seeing this as an end you regard it as a friend moving from one home to another but whose invitation to visit at any time you will take up. As Marx so correctly said, we have a World to win. If we can actually develop that Critical Mass perhaps we can win it together.

“Covid Is Over”

I was walking out of my house in Cardiff on a rainy Friday morning to take my dog for a walk. A neighbour was putting something in the back of their car. “What happened to summer?” I asked as I looked up to ever darkening skies. “Summer?” she replied “Covid is over tomorrow,” and she beamed with genuine pleasure. I wondered whether she was joking, but quickly remembered that last year she had complained about lockdown because “only 5% of the population were infected.” 

I wished in retrospect I had come up with a brilliant riposte rather than “if only we’d realised all it needed was a government decree, we could have skipped the last 18 months”. To be fair I was more intent on whether I was about to get soaked than thinking about engaging one of my misinformed neighbours. As I walked, the rain stopped (I knew you’d want to know) and I contemplated what my neighbour could possibly mean.

Freedom Day

The Welsh government has been less enthusiastic to remove the safety measures than their English counterparts, but have come under increasing pressure from the hospitality sector to follow the experiment being run by Johnson’s government. For all their talk of being different and even more left-wing than U.K. Labour, throughout the pandemic they have tended to follow England rather than the science.  

As of Saturday 7th August Wales, whilst not as cavalier as England, is removing many of the measures including allowing nightclubs to open. This at a time when infections are once again rising. I think what my neighbour was referring to was not Covid as such. At least not Covid the virus, but rather the personal inconvenience wrought on their normal lifestyle by social distancing, wearing a mask and not being able to visit friends and relatives. As far as I’m aware they have lost nobody to this awful virus and the notion that it affects only a small percentage of the population, and the elderly at that, makes them feel that they are giving up so much for others who mean nothing to them.

The idea that ‘Covid is over’ has been encouraged by the morally redundant backbone challenged politicians who have been found wanting so badly by the pandemic.  The fact is that no matter which party they belong to the majority of politicians are in no way equipped to deal with a pandemic. Where strong character and resolute decision making was needed what we got was prevarication and responsibility averse politicians trying desperately to appease those with the loudest voice. People have died needlessly because politicians would not act to save them as they were simply not important enough. In this tepid and inadequate response the lack of moral fibre has been encouraged by second rate journalism across the Fourth Estate.

Reliable misinformation

That politicians and journalists have allowed the biggest public health experiment in living memory to unfold in front of their eyes with barely a critical word is all the proof needed that the public - that seething mass of prejudice who need to be pandered to - have turned from what would once have been considered voices of authority to the cranks who populate the internet as sources of “reliable” information. To be clear, reliable only in that it is reliably unscientific and reliably distracting people from the true cause of their misery.

Nowhere is the lack of empathy more clear than in the treatment of our most vulnerable citizens. The political class have grown an industry around  looking after the most vulnerable, which suits the multimillion pound care industry but has turned social care into a lottery. Depending on the staff employed vulnerable people can be treated well or subject to humiliating and degrading treatment. The pandemic initially saw a situation where elderly hospital patients with the virus were returned to care homes allowing the virus to spread like wild fire. This error was not made just in the U.K., but in countries as diverse as Sweden, India, Brazil and the USA. It was predicated on a callous indifference to the lives of the elderly, particularly those with dementia.

How many times during the pandemic did we hear anti-lockdown advocates justifying their beliefs with the lines “it’s only the elderly who are dying” or “they’re old they were going to die anyway”? Apart from being ill informed the attitudes expressed show how as a society we have shifted our moral compass away from a duty of care to those most vulnerable to a selfish dog eat dog, winner takes all mentality. What strikes me about those that have wanted, and now achieved, their goal of removing what they term “restrictions” is that inevitably they are framed as an individual choice that everybody should be able to exercise in the name of freedom. 

Covid Fatigue

For many people, the lockdown has been seen as an inconvenience. As the pandemic has continued beyond what people thought was a “reasonable time” it is clear that Covid fatigue - “ a complex of emotions that include boredom, .. anger, and resentment” - has set in. But, lifting measures to stop the spread of a lethal virus on the basis that people are fed up with them must count as one of the biggest failures of our political class since their inability to take positive measures to lower carbon emissions.

The anti-lockdown advocates have shifted their ground, supported it must be said by a media that have kept people reliably misinformed. Whilst two billionaires are building playthings to take them into orbit, relatives of those in care homes have found access to dying elderly loved ones more and more restricted. Care home managers have prevented visits from family members citing government guidance. Campaigns such as John’s Campaign and the Rights for Residents Campaign have done far more to support care home residents and their families than the highly paid Older People’s Commissioner for Wales or the various Care Inspectorates who see their role as providing a protective shield for the inadequacies of the system they are supposed to monitor.

In January it was revealed that as a result of staff shortages care home workers who tested positive were being encouraged to report for work. The biggest danger to vulnerable elderly people in the twilight of their lives is now the staff who care for them. That is a direct function of anti-lockdown advocates getting their own way and measures such as social distancing and mask wearing at social events removed. Carers are predominantly young women, we cannot chain them down, but it is clear that in giving in to those who have been inconvenienced the governments of England (Tory), Scotland (Scottish Nationalist) and Wales (Labour) have put the interests of the hospitality sector above the interests of the rest of the population.

Young now more likely to test positive than old

Whilst the anti-lockdowners have shown a callous disregard for the elderly, they have also helped perpetuate a myth that Covid does not affect the young. Certainly deaths from Covid have disproportionately affected the over 70’s, but how they caught the virus is less clear. Given that the elderly have, on the whole, isolated very effectively they are, as is the case in care homes, coming into contact with the virus from younger people. According to the Office For National Statistics the percentages of people testing positive in younger age groups have increased since June from, for example, 0.52% to 3.21% in school years 7-11. These are still small percentages but every child who tests positive will come into contact with school friends, parents, siblings and other older relatives, meaning that the virus has an ideal breeding ground. They are now the highest positive group. For the group 70+ it is now just 0.3%. In other words, that younger group are 10 times more likely to test positive than those over 70.

Removing “restrictions” would make sense if the virus was under control, but since so-called “Freedom Day” in England on July 19th there have been 1,335 deaths from Covid in the U.K., the majority in England. But these are being widely ignored as the “Freedom Fighters” have now turned their attention to the last line of defence - vaccinations. In the U.K. there is no doubt the mass vaccination campaign has seen the NHS at its very best. Nearly 46 million people across the U.K. have received at least one vaccination. It is not true that the vaccination is 100% safe. Nothing is. Many people have some minor discomfort and in very rare cases deaths have been reported. In both America and the U.K. there is a duty to report deaths within 28 days of the vaccine.  A reason not to do things is when the risks outweigh the benefits. Out of one million people who test positive for Covid over 21,000 die. Out of every million people who have a Covid vaccine 18 people die. Out of every million elective surgeries 6,700 die. 

All the evidence so far indicates that the vaccines reduce the risk of hospitalisation and death. In other words, based on the available evidence you are more likely to die by coming into contact with the virus if you have not had a vaccine, than by having the vaccine. But this has not stopped anti-vaccination campaigners from spreading the dangerously misleading view that the Covid vaccine has a high chance of killing you.

Statistics don’t lie

Now, of course, there is another line of attack being used by anti-vaccination campaigners. In a nutshell it is this: governments always lie, so we cannot believe anything they tell us. I think it is important to differentiate between politicians for whom lying is an art form to be perfected and the many people who work for the state compiling statistics. I have worked in local government compiling statistics. At no point did I ever come under pressure to alter the results to suit any political agenda. Indeed all the people I met doing similar work were obsessive about accuracy. Statistics do not lie, the people who use them might.

To conclude, Covid is not over. Indeed, the removal of social distancing and mask wearing and the reliance on vaccinations to provide ‘herd immunity’ was always the end game for a Tory Party elite who are willing in Johnson’s terms to “see the bodies pile high” rather than interfere with the ability of businesses to make profits. We are at a critical point in the life of our planet which the pandemic has turned from amber to red. To allow ordinary people to spread the virus will inevitably mean the number of hospitalisations will grow, the number of people with long Covid will increase, and the number of deaths will increase. That is what freedom means and it is what those declaring Covid is over are foolishly walking into because those simple measures which protect us all are just too much of an inconvenience. 

Whilst I do not support forced vaccination, neither do I support those spreading alarmist and misleading information. That there are people on the left providing a platform for some of these beliefs is a cause of dismay to me. The left should be the genuine freedom fighters.  That means looking at the situation not from an individual viewpoint but from how it affects the wider community. The freedom that is being heralded by some as they throw their masks away is a forced imprisonment for others who are not in a position to take the risk of contracting a disease that an already compromised immune system will not survive. As socialists we have to start by protecting the most vulnerable not by siding with the entitled majority.

Time to save our NHS

It will probably not surprise anybody who reads me regularly to know that I am not a supporter of the Royal Family. In 2019, the latest figures available, it is estimated that the Royal Family cost the British taxpayer £67 million.  As a comparison you could provide around 16.75 million school kids with a breakfast for that amount. The National Association for Primary Education, estimates there are nearly 800,000 children who do not eat breakfast every day.

So, by defunding the Royal family we could feed all of them for approximately 3 weeks. For the Royalists amongst you the Windsors would not need Universal Credit to survive their net worth is around £88 billion according to one source. In other words if they lost their public subsidy it would amount to about 0.076% of their income. A person on the highest rate of Universal Credit losing £20 (obviously I’m just plucking numbers out of the air here) would lose 3.5% of their income. So, if there was a proposal to opt out of paying taxes toward their lavish lifestyles I would probably say that was fair. After all, why should I pay taxes for things I don’t support?

Similarly you might wonder why, as a pacifist, you are contributing your taxes to pay for nuclear weapons which we have a commitment never to use. It is estimated that the cost of Trident will be £140 billion over 30 years, that is over £4.5 billion per year, every year. That is approximately £167 per household. What could your household do with an additional £167 each year? The answer might be pay the increase in gas and electric that the main companies have just been given the go-ahead to hike by Ofgen. 

Is it just choice?

It seems, on the face of it, fairly obvious that it is unfair to force you to pay for things which you either don’t need or have a moral objection to. Imagine if you were being forced to buy spinach every week, which you then threw away because you simply can’t stand it. Now, of course, some people might say spinach is good for you. Apparently, according to fruitsandvegetablesbenefits.com it is rich in nutrients, helps prevent a number of diseases, and promotes healthy skin. It did Popeye no harm either. But, would it be right, even if all that is true, to force you to eat it? Of course not, it should be a personal choice. Now for some people, let’s call them libertarians, taxes are much like spinach. They might be ultimately good for you but the things they fund, particularly welfare, health and education, should be your personal responsibility.

The current Conservative Party in the U.K. have, since the 1970’s set about reducing public spending on the things they don’t like, such as providing health and education free at the point of use, so that they can spend your taxes on things they do like, such as making them and their friends richer. It’s a neat trick because the party which claims to dislike public spending is very keen on using the public purse for their own ends. When they say, for example, things like “The NHS is safe in our hands” what they mean is “the NHS budget is safe in our hands” though the word ‘safe’ is probably superfluous. 

You do not need to have much interaction with the NHS to realise that it is being run down. I’ve mentioned before I spent time in a heart ward last year and I was very grateful for the care I received. They literally saved my life. But, what was clear was that the service itself was being put under enormous stress through its financing. As a very small example, I spent about 40 nights in hospital and I never once had a sheet that did not have holes in it. It’s a small example of the way in which the NHS is struggling to maintain a service. When there are cuts to be made you start with the smaller things and move upwards.

Campaigning

I know many people who are campaigning on the NHS. My friend and comrade Ann Marcial is part of a Save Our NHS group in Eastbourne where she regularly stands on a stall trying to bring the plight of the service to the public. This is what she told me: “I have belonged to a campaign group to ‘Save the NHS’ for about 4 years. We get shouted at in the street ‘Fake News’. We can’t get people to join the fight even if they are aware of the destruction.  There is an element of ‘others are fighting we don’t need to’.  Average age of campaigners is 70+ what does that tell people?  By the way people have told us they ‘don’t care’.  Currently they don’t see the shift towards the US style Health Insurance health model.”

Unfortunately, the pandemic which should have cemented the NHS in people’s consciousness as their saviour has seen a counter narrative in which a far right nutcase could address an anti-lockdown rally in Trafalgar Square and call for nurses and doctors to be hanging from lampposts. How did we go from clapping our NHS workers to demonising them in this way? 

In 2017 the Kings Fund commissioned research ahead of the NHS’s 70th anniversary (for some reason they called it a birthday but the pedant in me says you can’t have a birthday unless you were actually born), and what they found was widespread support for the NHS. Seventy-seven per cent of the public believed the NHS should be maintained in its current form. Around 90 per cent of people supported the founding principles of the NHS, whilst a clear majority (66 per cent) of adults said they were willing to pay more of their own taxes to fund the NHS, “underlining growing support among the public for tax rises to increase NHS funding.”

Is tax fair?

This last finding is interesting because it brings us back to how much say you should have in the way in which your taxes are spent. This is predicated on a very simple notion. The tax system has to be seen to be fair. It is likely that if I felt that the public sector was properly provided for, I would not care very much about money going to the Royal Family or being spent on nuclear weapons. Not that I would suddenly support these things but my critique would be on a moral or democratic basis not a fiscal one. To put that another way, royalty is wrong because it cements a status and prestige system based on birthright not because it is too expensive. Similarly nuclear weapons are wrong because they are indiscriminate and impossible to contain which they would remain even if they came at a fraction of their cost.

The Institute For Fiscal Studies ran an interesting experiment on taxation in 2017. They asked a group of people whether they thought the tax system in the U.K. was unfair because the rich paid too little tax. Over half (51%) thought it unfair. But a second group were given two ‘facts’ before being given the question. Those facts were:

• The point at which income tax starts to be paid has increased in recent years. 4 in 10 adults now pay no income tax.

• The income tax system is top-heavy. The top 10% of income taxpayers pay 60% of all income tax. 

Amongst this group only 33% thought it unfair. But, a third group were given two alternative ‘facts’:

• The richest 10% of income taxpayers earn more income than the entire bottom 50%.

• Someone earning £45,000 faces the same income tax on an extra £1 of earnings as someone earning £145,000.

Amongst this group 72% thought it unfair because the rich paid too little tax. Whilst the IFS are quick to point out that this was a small poll of only 129 people so hardly scientific their conclusion seems to me to be correct: “small amounts of information can radically shape people’s stated views.”

Kill The Bill

When Ann and her friends Judy and Lucette take to the streets to engage the public they are running across a wide spectrum of issues which prevent their message getting across. One thing is that, taking childbirth out of the equation, hospital admissions have increased with over 16 million admissions in England in 2016. However, and this rather supports Ann’s point, nearly 10 million of those admissions were from the over 65’s. Of course, people’s interactions with the NHS are not simply to be counted in hospital admissions, but this is illustrative of a point which I made last week, people do not tend to take seriously issues until they are directly affected by them. Younger people are far less concerned about health matters than older people, for whom health is, let’s face it, their major pre-occupation. In the same way that telling people that unless they act they won’t have a planet in 30 years tends to fall on deaf ears so telling younger people that their NHS is disappearing before their eyes tends to be largely ignored.

The alternative to the NHS and the one favoured by the Conservatives is private health insurance, largely run by large American companies. Those with good memories may recall in the 2019 General Election campaign Jeremy Corbyn produced a document which he claimed showed that the Tories were planning to sell the NHS to American healthcare companies. The newspapers worried that their American owners might not be able to cherry pick the NHS were united in their view as expressed by the Daily Express ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s leaked documents with Russia links are FAKE, readers say in shock poll’ or as The Sun put it ‘RED JEZ ALERT Leaked NHS papers used by Jeremy Corbyn to smear the Tories linked to Kremlin fake news campaign’. Last week the Government brought forward legislation that will, according to one campaign group mean that: “American health insurance and digital technology companies are poised to take up near-monopoly positions running the NHS, once its fragmentation into up to 42 so-called Integrated Care Systems is cemented by proposed legislation that would take effect from April 2022.” Fake news from Moscow? No, a truth the rich proprietors of our mass media, abetted by the so-called public service broadcaster BBC, just did not want people to be aware of.

Now we should be clear here that running the NHS is not quite the same as replacing it. We should also be clear that these proposals only apply to NHS England for health is devolved in Scotland and Wales and neither the SNP or Welsh Labour are as hostile to a publicly owned NHS as the Westminster-based Tories. The NHS budget will remain at around £129.9 billion a year. But, that budget will, in future, be expected to provide a dividend for the shareholders of the multinational companies who will, bit by bit, take over the running of this vital public service. How will this additional money be found? I’ll guess. Pay freezes, reductions in some services with some departments being removed from the NHS altogether, longer waiting lists, more small fees for non-essential items, such as food and toiletries during hospital stays? For the enterprising management accountant there are numerous ways in which dividends can be filtered out of already underfunded services.

More tax is not the answer

Would you pay additional tax to help fund the NHS? For most of us the answer is easy and it is ‘of course’. A few would not on the basis that they don’t need the NHS as they can afford private healthcare. The fact is that the majority of clinical staff working in the private sector are either former or current NHS staff. And, the problem with paying more tax to fund the NHS is that it simply disappears to private consultancies rather than on the services people want to improve. So, what should we do?

Most importantly is to support campaigns to support the NHS and NHS staff. You can start by supporting Andrew Godsell who founded the FBNHS campaign. His Twitter handle is @AndrewGodsell.You can also tell people about the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill. As Keep Our NHS Public point out: “Abolition of competitive tendering and the public contracts regulations will mean that NHS contracts will no longer have to be tendered but can just be handed out to any contractor, regardless of their track record or reliability, as we saw with the billions of pounds worth of contracts dished out to incompetent and wasteful companies, without competition, during the Covid pandemic.” Well worth a visit to their website (by following the link).

Many of us grew up with the NHS literally from the cradle to the grave. Whenever we have needed it, the NHS has been there for us. Now is the time to return the favour, whilst there is still a public, as opposed to just a publicly funded, health service to defend.

Post publication addition:

This petition has been brought to my attention https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/581077

There are a number of resources on this page:

https://allysonpollock.com/?page_id=1860

Are we finally on the ‘eve of destruction’?

In this week’s Socialist Hour I started by using a song by Barry McGuire called the “Eve of Destruction” to discuss the current political situation. It probably reveals something of my current state of mind because if the past 16 months have taught us anything at all it is that the political classes almost without exception across the globe have failed miserably when it comes to confronting a crisis. When the situation called for leadership what we got from London to Washington, from New Delhi to Rio de Janeiro was prevarication.

During the show my guest Luke Andreski makes the point that it is no use blaming individuals for the crisis it is necessary to blame the conceptual framework they are working with. In short, when given a choice between saving the lives of ordinary citizens who remain largely nameless and faceless or ensuring that business can continue to make a small percentage of the World’s population ever more wealthy, they chose the latter.

Conspiracy?

Hence, my assertion that we are on the eve of destruction. Of course, the pandemic has been hard to ignore, although there are plenty of people out there who are happy to deny that it exists, or if it does exist to see it as some giant conspiracy to remove your civil liberties. I have to say that wearing a mask to stop the spread of a lethal virus does not seem to me a major incursion on your rights, whereas being told you cannot protest does. Perhaps the two are linked somehow but if so I can’t see it because as far as the U.K. is concerned the enactment of legislation to curtail what you thought of as rights was always going to happen under a Tory Party whose MPs were selected precisely for their right wing views.

The catastrophic handling of the pandemic across the globe leading to over 4 million deaths gives us an insight of the inability of national governments to put narrow, nationalistic, agendas to one side. It reveals why as the global climate catastrophe looms over us the decisive actions needed to save our species are not being taken. Just so that we are clear on what we are talking about here, the World Population Review defines a greenhouse gas:

“A greenhouse gas (GHG) is a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases let sunlight pass through the atmosphere but prevent heat from leaving the atmosphere, also known as the greenhouse effect.”

Since 1970, global carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 90%, with emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes contributing to about 78% of the total greenhouse gas emissions increase. In other words, the Earth’s temperature is increasing and this is leading to changes in the planet that could lead to it being unable to sustain human life. Let’s make this simple if your house was on fire would you douse it with water or pour oil on it? Or, perhaps you would stand back and say “houses catch fire we just have to learn to live with it”. I’m betting that most people would do what they could to stop their house catching fire in the first place, but were it to catch fire they would do all they could to stop the fire spreading to save their house.

Pouring oil on a burning house

Governments are doing the equivalent of pouring oil on a burning house by constantly putting off taking the measures needed to reduce greenhouse gases to an acceptable level. China, which is the World’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases has not pledged to reduce its emissions, neither has India who are second on the list. The USA withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord under Trump but Biden has now affirmed his commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions but without a definite plan of how to do so. In short, most governments are putting off doing too much, if anything, in the short term and making in many cases ambitious targets with no idea of how to meet them.

What we are seeing is that governments, much like those they govern, are fixated on the here and now (especially the pandemic but always their economy) and less concerned to save the future, especially a future which is beyond the next electoral cycle. The Pew Research Centre reported in 2019 that whilst there was a shift in attitudes toward seeing climate change as a threat the picture was very mixed. Whilst overall 68% of those surveyed saw climate change as a major threat to their country, this varied from 90% in Greece to 38% in Israel. In the USA it was 59% but a worrying 16% saw it as no threat at all. The largest percentage seeing it as no threat was 21% in Nigeria, followed by 18% in both Russia and Israel.

According to World Atlas in July 2020 the issues Americans care most about are poverty, healthcare and climate change in that order. Ahead of the General Election in 2019 The Independent reported that despite being at its highest level ever as an important issue the environment was still 4th behind Brexit, health and crime. In India, according to Pew Research, climate change hardly registers as an issue with unemployment, rising prices, crime, corruption, and inequality all more important than pollution, the only tangible reference to the environment.

Short termism

In the U.K. as my Socialist Hour guest Relish Hendy told me it is hard for poor working class families to think of much else when the loss of £20 per week can have a devastating impact on your chances of survival. Whilst Karl Smith on the same show described the brutal life of being homeless. When you are, literally, just trying to survive thinking about a global catastrophe that might not happen for another 30 or 40 years is a big stretch. But, this is the point, politicians have short term goals that are not conducive to long term problems.

In the last U.K. election the Conservatives successfully made it about Brexit. In the US Presidential election Biden, according to The Atlantic: “won because he was a reaction to Trump, but also because he was a white guy who could connect with white guys even as his association with Barack Obama helped legitimize him with Black voters. He updated some of his policy positions to fit where his party had moved—and to respond to the pandemic. But he didn’t swing hard left, or hard right.”

These were not victories motivated by a desire for change, well not progressive change at any rate, but by people’s who wanted a return to a mythical normal. In Biden’s case it wasn’t the bombastic ‘make America great again’ but rather a reassuring ‘make America unassuming again but restored to its position as the World’s leader’. For Johnson there was no big idea just a simple message ‘taking back control’ which was code for ‘get rid of foreigners’. They are not unique but neither Johnson nor Biden are what anybody could realistically describe as visionaries.

World leadership?

What this means is a narrow focus on national capitalism at a time when we need to work on a global scale. It is always true that there is more that unites us than divides us. We have all been inconvenienced by the global pandemic rather than denying it or ignoring it we needed the World’s leaders to get together and to agree a set of actions. Disease is not ideological and although the poor always suffer more than the rich a highly contagious virus is a threat to all of us. It needed, but did not get, a global strategy of suppression where the entire human race united in their common opposition to the virus and where keeping deaths and long term illness to a minimum should have been the goal. The Worlds political elites failed us.

If they were unable to tackle the, relatively, simple task of suppressing a virus because they were too concerned to maintain a competitive advantage over each other, then what chance they can bring about the changes necessary to take on global climate change? Make no mistake business as usual will destroy the planet as a safe habitat for humanity. For it is business, specifically industrialisation, that is adding to the poisonous gases that are changing our environment. It is as if there was a small fire on your living room floor and instead of smothering it you decided to go to the pub and deal with it when you got back, at which point you are shocked to find your house and those of your neighbours ablaze. We are, it seems, on the eve of destruction.

Pockets of hope

But amidst this doom and gloom there are pockets of hope. They are not to be found in an MP calling Boris Johnson a liar, or in winning court cases against the Jewish Chronicle as welcome as they are. They are not even to be found in the brilliant and inspirational work of Extinction Rebellion, but are to be found in a realisation that if business as usual is a large part of the problem so is what we have come to regard as ‘normal life’. The problem is with a political system that wants to secure our future whilst denying our past and refusing to change our present. We had to change for the pandemic, but the fact that people began hankering after normal so quickly should give us pause for thought. Saving the planet won’t be achieved by turning off light bulbs when you leave a room or cycling to work (though those won’t harm either), but by major changes in our social system. 

Capitalism achieved marvellous things in terms of improving the living conditions of many. But, it did so at an, at the time, unforeseen consequence. It gave us a political system - parliamentary democracy - that provided the illusion of control. For a while we probably never had had it so good. But, if something is too good to be true, it’s usually got a serious downside. Capitalism survives on consumerism, the constant production of commodities for sale on the market. That means industrialisation on a global scale to satisfy global markets. It also means massive inequalities. Moreover, it has given us a political class that by any subjective measure is entirely unsuited for its position and ensures that most of us have no say in the decisions that affect us. If we are to survive as a species we need to move from our current state of stasis to evolve to a higher state.

Some people tell me that we shouldn’t use the word socialism because of its negative connotations. But whatever you call it a system where we produce for need rather than profit, a system of direct democracy where everybody (including our youngest citizens) have a say in the things that affect them, a system where we don’t pursue goods for the sake of esteem or because our neighbours have them and a system where we prioritise compassion and kindness over greed and acquisitiveness, community over individualism and nurturing the planet rather than abusing it, is what I think of as socialist. If you prefer to call it something else feel free but the point is that if we don’t change, and change soon, then it really won’t matter what you call anything because we won’t be here to disagree.