The News Line: Editorial
Monday, 21 July 2008
Labour squeezing poor and cutting services to prop up the banks
CHANCELLOR Darling has told his cabinet colleagues there will be no
more money made available for schools, hospitals or trans****t.
These vital services face cuts, more cuts and yet more cuts, and
privatisation at the hands of the Labour government.
His Work and Pensions Secretary colleague, Purnell, yesterday spelt
out the same message to the sick and the lame. Incapacity Benefit is
to be abolished and its previous recipients will have to work.
This is a continuation of the =91good work=92 that the government has
carried out by closing down 30 Remploy factories, where the disabled
were at work, on the grounds that the costs of maintaining the plants
for them to work in was too great.
Clearly the disabled are about to be dumped!
Darling and Purnell are seeking to bring in vast cuts, privatisations
and very hard times for the working class, the middle class, the
elderly, the sick and the youth.
Yet at the same time, Darling and Prime Minister Brown have publicly
abandoned their =91golden rule=92 and have let it be known that the
government is going to go much deeper into debt, borrowing vast sums
of money, so that government debt will amount to as much as 48 per
cent or even 50 per cent of the country=92s Gross Domestic Product.
To whom will all this borrowed money go? It is earmarked for the
bankers, whose banks are currently halfway over the edge of the abyss,
and who are demanding rescue by the capitalist state and the
capitalist government of the day.
They are now demanding that the Treasury and Bank of England extend
their mortgage sup****t scheme to cover home loans issued since the
start of the year =96 this is how broke the banks are.
When Darling says that people are feeling =91squeezed=92 by rising prices
and will not tolerate higher taxes he means that he is frightened of a
working class revolt, sup****ted by millions of middle class people, so
he intends to greatly expand government debt, and savage the Welfare
State.
However, a vast increase in government debt will create the conditions
for a major run on the pound that will dwarf earlier runs, such as
those under the Wilson and Major governments, that led to a collapse
and sky-high interest rates.
Meanwhile, the recession is deepening with the Ernst and Young Item
Club warning that the number of people seeking work will reach two
million during 2009, and that house prices will continue to plunge.
These trends will push millions of mortgage holders into negative
equity, having homes whose selling price will not meet their mortgage
debt, which they are no longer able to service.
Such homeowners face repossession by the tens of thousands.
It is in this crisis situation that Minister Purnell intends to
=91transform lives=92 by taking away vital benefits =96 to try to cut the
cost of the banks being propped up by the government.
He also plans to force long-term unemployed people to work for
benefits. He called this service of providing near slave labour for
the employers a =91revolutionary=92 one, =91right at the heart of the
welfare state=92.
Speaking like a real Ramsay MacDonald national government man, Purnell
stated that he welcomed Tory sup****t for his measures, because it
meant doing =91the right thing for the country=92, ie the bankers.
In February, his government welfare adviser, David Freud, suggested
that two million people were getting incapacity benefits that they
were not entitled to and should be made to work.
It is one law for the disabled and quite another one for the bankers.
The working class must now take action to prevent the threatening
catastrophe of the capitalist crisis. It must purge the trade unions
of leaders who will not fight and organise a general strike to bring
down the Brown government and bring in a workers government.
This will expropriate the bosses and the bankers and abolish the
bourgeois market by bringing in a socialist planned economy.
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