Friday, May 8th we woke to the depressing news that the Conservative party led by David Cameron had been re-elected as the UK national government. Depressing unless you’re living in a house worth £2 million or more – and didn’t want to pay higher property tax that is! The Conservatives took 37% of the vote and won a staggering 331 seats (650 seats make up the House of Commons): around 50 more than opinion polls had consistently suggested.
Apportioning blame. Listen to my gravamen wherein I indict post-industrial austerity polices as the cause of the May 12 Amtrak Northeast Regional train derailment. But instead our media will blame the tragedy solely, solely on engineer error and negligence. He was driving the train too fast. That’s it. Nothing to see here. Move on.
My heart bleeds, my soul is sick and my land is broken and dying. How else can I describe how I felt when I learnt that the dis-United Kingdom was back in the greedy and unfeeling grasp of the ‘nasty’ party, the Conservatives. I was not alone.
“I was quite happy this morning – until I saw a newspaper on my way to work… I hope to God my children end up living abroad,” was one acquaintance’s reaction, her face still shocked hours later.
And the political fare on offer is all manufactured and presented to placate big business, to court corporate approval and to ensure that the ways in which we vent our dissatisfaction is safely-boundaried by QuestionTime-type 'participation'.
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When the banking system becomes too big to bail, the moral hazard trade that started it all becomes systemic “immoral hazard”—an extortion racket aided and abetted by the very politicians elected to serve our interests. When that trade takes place in a set of institutions that is incapable of resolving the crisis it faces, the result is permanent austerity.
The post Eurozone Minister Comes Clean About Austerity appeared first on BSNEWS.
RT | March 9, 2015 The government believes strategic threats posed to Britain are not serious enough to merit insulating military spending from budget cuts, according to a report by a top defense think-tank. The paper by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) centers on the economics of defense under austerity. It concludes: “The government […]
Given Western civilization’s debt to Greek society, you might think haughty Berlin, itself not long removed from the days of marauding hordes descending on urbane Rome from the thicket of the Black Forest, might have it in them to declare a debt jubilee for the long-suffering Greeks. Sorry, say the neoliberal ideologues that peer down from the commanding heights of the world’s second largest economic zone. We forgave 100 billion euros in 2012 and look where it got us: nowhere.
The Brussels agreement to extend the EU programme for Greece means a humiliating defeat for the Sýriza government. Their attempts to rally support within the union’s governments miserably failed. The German imposition uncompromisingly defending the narrow interests of the financial oligarchy prevailed bearing witness of the impossibility of a social turn within the power structures of the EU. Game over? We believe that there remains a possibility to thwart the EU starvation programme.
The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union. If the ruling Syriza government capitulates to the demands of the EU bankers and agrees to continue the austerity programs, Greece will be condemned to decades of regression, destitution, and colonial rule.
At a time when governments are failing abysmally to mitigate climate change, reduce inequality or end poverty, the key to creating a more equal and sustainable world is establishing participative forms of political engagement at all levels of society – from the local to the global.
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