Qantas management is clearly prepared to destroy the airline, as it now exists, in order to complete its non-unionised, cheapjack makeover of the once iconic, widely respected and publicly owned national carrier.
Joyce almost says as much: “I’m fighting for the survival of Qantas into the long term, and if we have to take short-term pain and to stand up to the unions, and resist these bully-boy tactics to make sure that the company survives, we will do that.”
The TUC’s call for a pay cut for workers earning the minimum wage has been accepted by the government. The TUC had requested that the National Minimum Wage be increased by 3%, far below inflation, whilst workers wait for economic growth ie. more profitable monopolies. Consequently the full rate of the NMW has been increased by 2.5%, the rate of 18-20 year olds has been increased by 1.2% and the rate for 16 & 17 year olds by just 1%.
Inflation for September 2011 stands at 5.6% and that is the minimum amount by which the cost of living has increased.
YCL Acting General Secretary, Mick Carty, said that “the least young workers can accept is a TUC that promotes their interests not one which ignores the fundamental class antagonism in society and continues to attempt to find a compromise with the monopolies”.
There has been recent controversy over the occupy Bristol event on College Green disrupting the Remembrance Day events in the next few weeks. The Occupy Bristol website has statements from members and lots of information.
Labour Theory of Value, variable capital, surplus value, profit, rate of surplus value, rate of profit, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall - all in 9 minutes! I'm sure some of you will have see it before, but this is an excellent video. If you can memorise this, you will never loose an argument to a Tory again. . .
It's not often that the
Morning Star will find itself allied with the Daily Mail, Daily
Telegraph and Daily Express. It is even less likely to see Bob Crow,
RMT General Secretary and John Foster, International Secretary of the
Communist Party share a platform with Zac Goldsmith, Conservative MP
and most of the membership of UKIP.
On Monday the House of
Commons will debate on whether to hold a referendum on Britain's
membership of the EU. Much of the media coverage has focussed on the
likely splits within the Conservative Party. This is hardly
surprising as Euroscepticism has often been seen as the preserve of
the right, while the left have been characterised as willing to “give
up our nationality” to the EU.
It is time to correct
that fallacy. Brian Denny of the RMT and NO2EU campaign sets out the
case of the left at the launch of the People's Pledge campaign in the
following video:
John Foster, in a
recent letter published in the Morning Star sets out the left's case
for withdrawal from the EU:
The primacy of market
competition and the free movement of capital lie at the heart of the
EU's founding treaties.
These principles are
not likely to be removed.
Nor, therefore, are the
legal judgements that place them before the collective rights of
labour.
They also take
precedence over the economic powers of national parliaments.
The left in Britain
calls for Parliament to nationalise endangered industrial plants,
renationalise utilities such as transport and energy and impose
controls over the movement of capital.
It isn't likely that EU
treaties will be amended to permit such intervention.
On the contrary - the
big business interests at the heart of the EU are seeking to end any
remaining freedom for national parliaments to allocate funding to
welfare, pensions, education and health, probably as early as this
autumn's EU summit.
The current EU crisis
is systemic.
It derives from its
combination of the legal fiction of free markets with the real
existence of monopoly power.
The EU unites the
developing economies of eastern and southern Europe with the advanced
monopolies of Germany, France and Britain.
British and
British-based US banks have seized control of finance, German
monopolies of industrial production and the French giants have mopped
up utilities.
This is the real origin
of the financial imbalances which now threaten the EU.
The right often talk
about wanting a trading union, but not a political union. The naivety
of this argument should be plain for all to see during the current
economic crisis.
Simply put, the EU is a
playground for big business. It is not the European Parliament that
takes away the national sovereignty of member states, it is the free
trade element that allows monopoly capital to run rough-shod over the
rights of working people within those member states.
Low paid workers will next week tell members of the Low Pay Commission visiting Cornwall they must be bolder and raise the National Minimum Wage (NMW).
The Low Pay Commission is an independent body set up to advise the government on the impact of the NMW and next week two commissioners are in Cornwall.
The South West TUC is leading a delegation of low paid workers from around Cornwall to meeting the Commission. It will include low paid workers from the tourist industry, agency workers, care assistants, young worker representatives and migrant support workers. They will tell the Commission the county is one of the most expensive places to live in Britain, with the average annual earnings sitting at £20,997 (compared to £25,277 in England) and the average house costing more than nine times that (£191,000), compared to seven times the average annual wage in England (£164,800).
It is apparent that
with government cuts to the public sector and cuts to the welfare
state, poverty is going to become even worse. According to UNICEF
statistical findings on child poverty, the UK, USA and Mexico have
the worst levels of relative child poverty, the UK hitting the 19.8%
mark and in terms of absolute child poverty 29.1% - we fall behind
countries such as the USA and Australia in terms of absolute poverty.
A recent study by the
Institute of Fiscal Studies has found that absolute child poverty is
to increase to 3.1 million and 3.3 million living in relative poverty
by 2020, combined this amounts to 6.4 million children living in some
kind of poverty. Also the study highlights the issues for the working
class claiming 13.7 million living in both relative and absolute
poverty by 2020.
Capitalism is an inherently unstable
system. It is cyclical in nature. Precariously balanced between
inflation and deflation, boom and bust, growth and depression.
Inflation
Inflation is commonly portrayed as a
“rise in the cost of living”. It is measured by the government in
two ways: the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Retail Price Index
(RPI). These measures track the prices of commodities.
On one level, inflation is the result
of supply and demand. Recent fires in Russia have led the Russian
government to stop exporting grain. This shortage of grain will
increase the value of grain in world markets, causing the price, and
that of other products such as bread, to be inflated. Conversely,
were there to be an increase in the supply of grain, its value would
fall, and the price would be deflated.
But this supply and demand can only
partially account for inflation and deflation. Were grain to be as
common as grains of sand, it would not become worthless. There is
still labour invested in the sowing and harvesting of grain, still
labour invested in the grinding of grain into flour, and the baking
of flour into bread. The absolute value of an item is determined by
the labour power invested in its production.
However, with industrialisation, the
amount of labour needed to make bread has fallen. Whereas in the
past, bakers would spend ten minutes kneading dough to make a single
loaf of bread, now vast machines can knead hundreds of loaves of
bread at once. Bread can be made without being touched by a human
hand. This increase in the supply of bread will at first make the
capitalist more money – he has more bread to sell. But as the
market becomes flooded with mechanical bread its value will fall, its
price is deflated. We then have very cheap bread, but less people
employed to make it, and less people employed means a reduction in
the ability of our workers to buy the commodities!
So what else can determine the changing
price of a commodity?
Humans have for years claimed that for
reasons of ‘selfishness’, Communism could never work. It seems to
be at the core of any argument against Marx’s work. However, if you
were to trace back the origins of this argument you will find that in
fact this idea is nothing but western propaganda. It is true that
humans have a survivalist instinct, but this survivalist instinct
does not overt the means of greed and selfishness. Surviving has
forever been intertwined within a community or a family. For
instance: primitive man would forage and hunt in groups, fish work in
shoals, apes live and work in collections, lions live in prides etc.
In fact Marx argued that in the Ancient stage of society reflected a
‘primitive type of communism’ where there was shared division of
labour and the modes of production were shared.
Development Aid has to be one of the
most misconceived and ill composed terms. We believe aid to be a
donation to an individual or collective that will help support their
needs. However development aid is in fact a term coined by Western
enthusiasts to try and dampen the disgusting truth, that is aid (in
the western context) is in fact a loan that carries an unfixed
interest.
To put into example the truth of aid we
need not look any further than the DFID (The Department of
International Development), in a report DFID made it clear of their
intentions that aid was going to be directed into the most important
areas of developing countries. Of course by important they mean
‘areas that suit capitalist interest’. Furthermore they stressed
the matter of D.R of Congo’s failure to facilitate a comparable
amount of paved roads to Britain, according to the DFID the need to
construct more paved roads lies in the interest of the poor and the
vulnerable of the sub-Saharan countries. First and foremost roads
cannot allow greater geographical or social mobility if the civilians
cannot afford cars and if there is no public transport to allow it
(which in the D.R.C there isn’t just as many other sub-Saharan
countries). Secondly the word ‘paved’ really stands out to me,
why is it that to alleviate the poverty of a country they must have
paved roads? Apparently this creation of paved roads will benefit the
economy, whatever way you look at it; it will ultimately benefit the
capitalist world and in fact under develop the periphery countries as
the GDP mostly spent on paying back the debt amounted from ‘Aid’.
News & Views - South West and Channel Islands October 2011
A new edition of News and Views has just been released with all of the latest news from the South West District. It includes all of the details of the Speaking Tour in Exeter, Somerset, Dorset and Bristol
In to action against the ConDems Get involved - come and join us!
Speaking Tour: South West dates announced
The nationwide CP speaking tour is to make four stops in the South West of England [see Events right].
Launching the new edition of Britain's Road to Socialism, the open public meetings will discuss why Britain needs socialism more than ever. As well as promoting the new edition of the party programme, the meetings coincide with the launch of a new district website and the unveiling of a new district banner and a growing membership and increasing branch activity across the region.
New Website
The South West of England and Cornwall District of the CPB is pleased to announce the launch of its new website. For details of events in the region and information on the party's local campaigns, visit and bookmark.
National Speaking Tour
The national speaking tour is making four stops in the South West. For your nearest location go here.
Celebrating the Bolshevik Revolution
A celebration and meal in Taunton on November the 12th. With Guest speaker Jean Turner, Honorary Secretary of the Society for Co-operation in Russian & Soviet Studies. Visit the event section for details
North Devon film night
North Devon are showing the film “Sylvia Pankhurst - Everything is Possible” on the 22nd of November, with guest speaker Mary Davis. Go here for details.
A western country
prides itself around its privately owned media enterprises, it’s
‘freedom of speech’ and sees other countries practising state
owned media as ‘un-democratic’ or ‘having no freedom’ - this
can be no further from the truth.
Our freedom of speech
is in fact the words of a corrupt business man whose enterprises
intend to win over and manipulate public opinion. For example, in the
1980’s the Daily Mail reported an increase in black stabbings in
order to try and get the peoples' backing for changes to our
immigration control. The Sun 2002-onwards supported all efforts of
the US and UK government in their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
2011 London riots are passed off as a result of ‘a sick pocket of
our society’ rather than investigating the real issue of social and
material deprivation and absolute poverty.
