The Barclays ethos infects our culture - purge the entire board!

The bank's directors sit on so many institutions that banning them all would send a healthy shock wave through the City, writes Polly Toynbee

If this is culture change, it's glacially slow. Five years after Northern Rock signalled a banking collapse that impoverished nations, there is no reckoning. Citizens are impotently angry but business as usual prevails. David Cameron emits half-hearted indignation: the banks will be semi-split, and not until 2019. Meanwhile, testosterone-fuelled silverbacks eat what they kill in under-supervised dealing rooms, skimming fortunes from everyone else's endeavour. So far the remedies are cough drops for cancer.

The biggest beast strides off with £100m, plus another possible £20m goodbye money. He is not struck off, nor abashed, not a bit. Is that a master of the universe, that charmless prevaricator with less self-awareness than an ape? These princelings' characters are malformed by a lifetime of courtiers' flattery. Politicians face hourly reminders that they are mortal, but not the denizens of the high towers of finance. The FSA signalled unease about the cultural failings of Diamond's leadership four months ago, yet the board clung on to him even after that £290m fine.

The Financial Times writer John Gapper quotes one ex-banker's thinking: "It would be a very good thing if an awful lot of people lost their jobs in a lot of banks." A purge would indeed send out shock waves. Firebrand Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a major shareholder in easyJet, had the right idea this week in calling for Sir Michael Rake's ejection from the airline's chairmanship, for his role on the Barclays board. If the entire board of Barclays was sacked, not just from the bank but banished from all their multiple other posts and banned from future directorships, consider what a healthy fright would shudder through every complacent institution infected with the Barclays culture, with so many Barclays directors on the boards of regulators and standard-setters.

In the great Barclays purge, let's start with Rake. He loses his chairmanships of BT and easyJet, and his directorship of McGraw-Hill Inc. Away go his seats on the advisory boards of the CBI, Soas, Chatham House and Bupa. Off goes his seat on the board of the Guards Polo Club. He gets the bum's rush from regulatory authorities too: he loses chairmanship of the Guidelines Monitoring Group (overseer of private equity), along with his seat on the DTI's US/UK Regulatory Taskforce. Quis custodiet?

Sir Richard Broadbent, Barclays deputy chair, loses his chairmanship of Tesco. Out goes his place on the board of Relate, and his partnership at the improbable Centre for Compassionate Communication.

Non-executive director Reuben Jeffery III would be sacked as chief executive of Rockefeller & Co. This former George W Bush under-secretary loses his post at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: that derives from his time as special adviser to Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Someone wiser might not boast of that epic calamity on their CV. Look now at Sir Andrew Likierman. This Barclays director is sacked as chair of the National Audit Office. What kind of an auditor is he? But above all, he loses his post as highest paid vice-chancellor, dean of the London Business School, where he teaches the next generation the culture he oversaw at Barclays.

I will spare you the details of each Barclays panjandrum, but for these: Naguib Kheraj, vice-chair of the bank and chair of the Aga Khan Foundation, is sacked from the NHS Commissioning Board, where he oversees Andrew Lansley's redisorganisation. Marcus Agius, former Barclays chair, sits on the BBC Trust. Alison Carnwath, chair of Barclays remuneration committee, which set Diamond's pay, sits on 12 other boards. Thus the banking culture of hyper-excess spreads, suggesting it's what everyone does, the way of the world. So the BBC director general's pay span into the stratosphere, or the London Business School tells students how to feel entitled to mammoth rewards.

We need know nothing of these directors' individual talents or deficiencies: they are all responsible for a bank that went out of control. Whether they were all "physically sick" together with Diamond when they heard the news of Libor-cheating in their trading rooms that inflated bonuses, who knows. But here is an establishment web, a hard-wired network of interests intertwined with regulators and ethics-setters where a thorough sacking would send an electric culture-change signal.

Don't hold your breath. The Bank of England has just shovelled another £50bn quantitative easing into the pockets of the banks, the bourne from which no cash returns, while the British Chambers of Commerce again this week called for the money to go instead to a national investment bank for small business.

Ed Miliband made sure Labour owns the turf on reforming capitalism: George Osborne's sneering smears only rebound as Labour pulled further ahead in polls. But to escape his past, Ed Balls needs to jump into the future. With the EU adopting a financial transaction tax by December, Labour should call for the UK to join, raising £30bn a year. Call for total bank separation now, not in seven years. Ban bonuses. Turn the UK from tax haven to safe haven of financial probity.

Financial writer John Kay reminds how cleaning up UK casinos, contrary to warnings, made London the most honest and popular city for high rollers. The Lloyd's scandal strengthened London insurance by cleaning up to flourish. Would finance flee? Broker Tullett Prebon warned it would leave, but couldn't get their traders to go. Call out Cameron for refusing to join EU regulation. Labour needs to jump ahead to where the voters are. Then Ed Balls can shed memories of Gordon Brown's City-worshipping days.

Written by Polly Toynbee  for The Guardian
Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

Construction industry fails to re-ignite the economy

The Office for National Statistics says the goods trade deficit has widened to £10.103 billion - the second-largest gap since records began in January 1998. That compared to a deficit of £8.734 billion in March. Exports to non-EU countries fell 10.3 percent on the month, driven by lower sales of chemicals and cars. 

Meanwhile, construction output has fallen at its fastest rate in three years, dropping 4.9% to £7.8bn in the first half of 2012. A recent report showed national construction levels will fall by by a further 3% during 2012 with 45,000 skilled workers and trades people expected to lose their jobs. Two more  established local firms have gone bust, Philip James Ltd of Leicester and Triangle Builders in Bootle, laying off workers and leaving suppliers looking to be paid.

Wasn't the construction sector supposed to stimulate growth in the economy? Britain's economy has now stagnated for a year and a half, confirming that this is the slowest rebound from recession in a generation. Last month, Alison Perry, managing director of Triangle Builders, was awarded an OBE in recognition of her contributions to the building trade in her role as chairman of the National Federation of Builders (NFB). In this post she advised David Cameron about how to boost the construction industry.

Today, sources at firms who are owed tens of thousands of pounds they are now unlikely to receive, said they were angry that 47-year-old Mrs Perry had accepted the honour when it must have been known that the business was at risk. Mrs Perry was unavailable for comment.

Ed Vaizey hails "thriving library service in England"

Despite a report earlier this week predicting that public libraries could disappear by the end of the decade, the culture minister, Ed Vaizey, has hailed the "thriving library service that we have in England" as he announced a series of initiatives at Thursday's Future of Library Services conference.

Unveiling plans to boost cultural activities in libraries, automatically enrol primary school pupils in their local libraries and an ambition to put Wi-Fi in libraries across England by 2015, Vaizey claimed that the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals' prediction of 600 library closures "regularly quoted in the media ... is very wide of the mark".

"A truer picture of building closures would be about a tenth of that," he said. "I remain resolutely optimistic about library services. I have never, even in opposition, depicted the library service as being in crisis." He added that "even while there have been closures, sometimes services merge or move to community management, and it's important that we are able to have an intelligent debate about this. And it's also important to remember that many libraries are also opening."

Library campaigner and award-winning children's author Alan Gibbons rejected Vaizey's positivity, calling it "a masterpiece of Life of Brian optimism, the massaging of reality and evasion".

"The reason this nightmarish scenario [of 600 library closures] has not occurred has been because local communities have mounted commendable resistance, reducing councils' room to manoeuvre. This has included legal actions, pickets, protests, read-ins and a lobby of parliament. None of this agitation is reflected in this blandest of speeches."

What would Rousseau make of our selfish age?

300 years after Rousseau's birth, the great Enlightenment philosopher would surely be horrified by modern Europe, writes Terry Eagleton

Rousseau is the explorer of that dark continent, the modern self

Few thinkers have left their fingerprints on the modern age as indelibly as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the tricentenary of whose birth we celebrate on Thursday (28 June). He was a philosopher who helped shape the destiny of nations, which is more than can be said for Pythagoras or AC Grayling. He was also a political visionary of stunning originality, a potent influence on the French revolution and a source of inspiration for the Romantics. Those who like their fiction drenched in lofty moral sentiment can also claim him as a great novelist.

Much of what one might call the modern sensibility was this thinker's creation. It is in Rousseau's writing above all that history begins to turn from upper-class honour to middle-class humanitarianism. Pity, sympathy and compassion lie at the centre of his moral vision. Values associated with the feminine begin to infiltrate social existence as a whole, rather than being confined to the domestic sphere. Gentlemen begin to weep in public, while children are viewed as human beings in their own right rather than defective adults.

Above all, Rousseau is the explorer of that dark continent, the modern self. It is no surprise that he wrote one of the most magnificent autobiographies of all time, his Confessions. Personal experience starts to take on a significance it never had for Plato or Descartes. What matters now is less objective truth than truth-to-self – a passionate conviction that one's identity is uniquely precious, and that expressing it as freely and richly as possible is a sacred duty. In this belief, Rousseau is a forerunner not only of the Romantics, but of the liberals, existentialists and spiritual individualists of modern times.

It is true that he seems to have held the view that no identity was more uniquely precious than his own. For all his cult of tenderness and affection, Rousseau was not the kind of man with whom one would share one's picnic. He was the worst kind of hypochondriac – one who really is always ill – and that most dangerous of paranoiacs – one who really is persecuted. Even so, at the heart of an 18th-century Enlightenment devoted to reason and civilisation, this maverick intellectual spoke up for sentiment and nature. He was not, to be sure, as besotted by the notion of the noble savage as some have considered. But he was certainly a scourge of the idea of civilisation, which struck him for the most part as exploitative and corrupt.

In this, he was a notable precursor of Karl Marx. Private property, he wrote, brings war, poverty and class conflict in its wake. It converts "clever usurpation into inalienable right". Most social order is a fraud perpetrated by the rich on the poor to protect their privileges. The law, he considered, generally backs the strong over the weak; justice is largely a weapon of violence and domination, while culture, science, the arts and religion are harnessed to the task of preserving the status quo. The institution of the state has "bound new fetters on the poor and given new powers to the rich". For the benefit of a few ambitious men, he comments, "the human race has been subjected to labour, servitude and misery".

He was not, as it happens, opposed to private property as such. His outlook was that of the petty-bourgeois peasant, clinging to his hard-won independence in the face of power and privilege. He sometimes writes as though any form of dependence on others is despicable. Yet he was a radical egalitarian in an age when such thinkers were hard to find. Almost uniquely for his age, he also believed in the absolute sovereignty of the people. To bow to a law one did not have a hand in creating was a recipe for tyranny. Self-determination lay at the root of all ethics and politics. Human beings might misuse their freedom, but they were not truly human without it.

What would this giant of Geneva have thought of Europe 300 years on from his birth? He would no doubt have been appalled by the drastic shrinking of the public sphere. His greatest work, The Social Contract, speaks up for the rights of the citizenry in the teeth of private interests. He would also be struck by the way the democracy he cherished so dearly is under siege from corporate power and a manipulative media. Society, he taught, was a matter of common bonds, not just a commercial transaction. In true republican fashion, it was a place where men and women could flourish as ends in themselves, not as a set of devices for promoting their selfish interests.

The same, he thought, should be true of education. Rousseau ranks among the great educational theorists of the modern era, even if he was the last man to put in charge of a classroom. Young adults, he thought, should be allowed to develop their capabilities in their distinctive way. They should also delight in doing so as an end in itself. In the higher education systems of today's world, this outlandish idea is almost dead on its feet. It is nearly as alien as the notion that the purpose of education is to serve the empire. Universities are no longer educational in any sense of the word that Rousseau would have recognised. Instead, they have become unabashed instruments of capital. Confronted with this squalid betrayal, one imagines he would have felt sick and oppressed. As, indeed, he usually did.

Written by Terry Eagleton & published by the Guardian

Cameron's attack on the ‘feckless poor’ has a very long history

The government's planned welfare cuts are the latest attempt by authorities to root out the idle and inactive and set them to work, writes Jeremy Seabrook

David Cameron's latest attack on the poor has a longer history than he seems to know. "We" have not created a culture of dependency; the animus against the poor, and the remedies proposed, go back at least to the consolidation of the Elizabethan poor law in 1601, and even further: one of the post hoc justifications for the destruction of the monasteries was that these had offered alms and relief to the idle and undeserving, who had dissimulated themselves among the widows and orphans fed and sheltered by religious houses.

One of the principal aims of the Elizabethan poor law, apart from the relief of the "aged and impotent" was "to set the poor on work". Houses of industry, provided with supplies of hemp, flax and other materials, were to train to habits of industry the idle and inactive who were sound in body and mind.

This project has haunted the rulers of Britain ever since, despite having repeatedly proved impracticable. In the late 17th century, the idea seized the imagination of administrators of the poor laws that a profit could be made out of the labour of the poor. Commentaries on the shamelessness of valiant beggars and idle rogues were accompanied by practical schemes for using their labour for useful ends. John Locke thought the increase in numbers of the poor a consequence of "the relaxation of discipline and the corruption of manners", a diagnosis eagerly repeated down the generations ever since. Parishes combined their resources to construct "houses of industry" and, if some briefly made a profit, the impossibility of co-ordinating the highly variable skills of the poor to spin, weave and produce lace or linen for the market soon became clear.

That did not prevent a stream of ingenious devices for keeping the noses of the idle poor to the grindstone. The idea of contracting the poor out to private entities became all the rage in the 18th century, anticipating the extensive privatisations of today. The maintenance of the poor of a parish could be contracted out for a lump sum, or on a per capita basis, in the workhouse of the parish or in premises of the contractor's own choosing. Contracts were made with the owners of carts for the forcible repatriation of the poor to their legal place of settlement, with clothiers for paupers' uniforms and shrouds, and with carpenters for coffins. As a result, conditions in workhouses deteriorated. Filthy and overcrowded, they were described as "receptacles of misery". A majority of parish infants died before their sixth birthdays.

As part of the alternating process throughout our history of severity and leniency, towards the end of the 18th century, a more humanitarian spirit prevailed, and out-relief was more usual. In fact, topping up wages became the norm in the counties of the south of England, a system whereby the parish made up the wages of labourers according to the size of the family and the price of bread. This meant that, no matter how little work was done, income was assured, and however little a farmer paid his labourers, the deficit would always be made good by the parish. This gave rise to what can only be described, in Cameron's words as "a culture of entitlement"; at the same time, women were blamed for giving birth to bastards, for the maintenance of each of whom the parish rewarded her with 1s 6d a week. Observers continued to fulminate against the poor, claiming that hunger was the best goad to make them work.

The Poor Law Amendment Act was passed in 1834. This made relief available to the able-bodied only within the workhouse, in conditions "less eligible" (that is, worse) than those enjoyed by the poorest labourer who earned a living by his own efforts. Despite mitigation of its worst rigours, this system remained in place until the 1948 National Assistance Act, with its preamble, "The poor law shall cease to exist," which lifted the shadow of punitive detention, which for over a century had threatened the poor in times of sickness, incapacity, old age and bereavement.

No sooner had the welfare state come into existence than the clamour against it was heard: it sapped character, reduced independence, feather-bedded and cosseted people. And this, as they say, is where we come in. The profligate and improvident have been sheltered by the welfare state; the opportunists and idlers have used the deserving poor as human shields against the asperity designed to banish welfare cheats and raiders of the public purse.

The wasteful and wanton poor have always been in the sights of authority, because it is through them that more general campaigns against the poor can be waged. The improvident are obviously culpable: they give poverty a bad name, and are responsible for their own condition. Unfortunately, they are never removed, no matter how punishing the legislation or intensive the effort to flush them out of their hiding places. They remain, a frieze of incontinent and picaresque humanity, wenching and pilfering their way through the 18th century, standing shamelessly before the parish pay-table in the 19th, living behind closed curtains in overheated front rooms watching television from dawn to dusk in our time.

The feckless poor have been neither legislated out of existence nor drowned in prosperity. They have not been set to work, because the labour they perform profits no one. They continue their relentless march through time, unabashed and indifferent to the fury of politicians and the odium of the public. All efforts to bring them into the fold of respectable society have failed, and the only ones to suffer from the continuing efforts to set them to work are the timid and the helpless. The words of David Cameron and the rest of them are truly conservative, for they have been formulated by every generation for at least half a millennium.

Written by Jeremy Seabrook & published by The Guardian

#CarersWeek (18 -24 June) highlights how unpaid carers are being let down by a failing social care system

Eight charities, including Age UK and Carers UK, have joined together under the umbrella of #CarersWeek to highlight the plight they face – please share

The UK's ‘leading army of unpaid carers’ is being ‘let down’ by the failing social care system, campaigners warn. Feedback from 3,400 carers showed those providing the most intensive care often ended up with health problems themselves. The government said there was now extra funding to allow carers' breaks.

It is estimated that one in six carers either give up work or reduce their hours to look after elderly friends and relatives or younger adults with disabilities. The charities said it demonstrated the hidden effect of the squeeze on council-run social care support. The numbers of elderly and younger adults getting help from councils has fallen in recent years. And the coalition of charities said it was the 6.4m unpaid carers who were being left to take up the strain.

#CarersWeek asked carers what impact caring and the lack of support had on their health. Most of the responses were from those heavily involved in caring for someone, often providing support on a daily basis. Eight in 10 said their responsibilities had caused them health problems, including everything from back pain to insomnia. And two fifths said they had delayed seeking medical help with some reporting that had had serious consequences, such as delayed cancer diagnoses and damage to lungs.

#CarersWeek said carers should be offered regular health checks and there needed to be better information and support available. Manager Helen Clarke said: "It's a scandal that carers can't get the time or support they need to look after themselves which could be jeopardising their health as a result. Carers are feeling the strain of a woefully underfunded system and still we're seeing more cuts. Unpaid carers save the Government a fortune - £119 billion a year - yet they're let down in return. It is time for urgent action to tackle the crisis in social care."

Small comfort for Greece as Europe teeters on the brink

Greek supporters celebrate knocking Russia out of Euro 2012 and qualifying for the next round, against the odds. Meanwhile, their country goes to the polls for the second time in six weeks in a vote that may well affect the future of the European Union.

Greece prepares for election: 'we are going to the wall … things must change' Observer

Video: 'Cameron's Ecocide' by Pete Bearder

Who's sari now?

Butter wouldn't melt in the mouth of failed Conservative parliamentary candidate turned Baroness, Sayeeda Warsi, in this picture from September 2011 outside the Sikh Shrine Golden Temple in Amritsar, India. Warsi is currently in Indonesia to see how the country has recovered from the devastation of the Asian tsunami in December 2004. May I respectfully suggest they were doing fine until you came along, love.

The trip comes only days after it was alleged that Warsi claimed up to £2,000 in expenses while staying rent-free with a friend. She denies the claims and has referred the case to the Lords Commissioner for Standards, Paul Kernaghan, who has begun a 'parliamentary assessment' before what is expected to be a major investigation - the result of which will undoubtedly be 'no further action'. 

An Alternative to Austerity by Stephen Lee Hodgkins

Graphicking by Stephen Lee Hodgkins

http://bit.ly/KkEnE6

GPs call for work capability assessment to be scrapped

GPs have voted unanimously in favour of scrapping the controversial work capability assessment (WCA), the test that determines who is eligible for sickness benefits, to prevent harming "some of the weakest and most vulnerable in society". At the annual GPs' conference, doctors backed a motion stating that the computer-based assessments were "inadequate" and "have little regard to the nature or complexity of the needs of long-term sick and disabled persons". They called for the tests to be replaced with a more "rigorous and safe system".
 
The vote at their annual conference in Liverpool reflects rising concern within the medical profession over the government's use of the work capability assessment (WCA) to reassess recipients of the outgoing incapacity benefit to determine whether they should receive the replacement benefit, employment and support allowance (ESA). Since the test was introduced in 2008, hundreds of thousands of people have against decisions to refuse them the benefit; around 40% of appeals are successful. Large numbers of patients with terminal and incurable conditions have been found fit for work after undergoing a 30-minute assessment, carried out by a private company, Atos Healthcare.

Andrew Holden, a GP from Petersfield in Hampshire, said the system was not able to distinguish between patients who really needed help and those who did not. "Since the system was introduced in 2008, people with terminal cancer have been found fit to work, people with mental health problems have complained their condition is not taken seriously and people with complex illnesses say that the tick-box system is not able to cope with the nuances of their problems," he told the conference, proposing the motion. "The computer-based assessments are carried out by a healthcare professional but one not necessarily trained in the field of the patient's disability, which is particularly important when it comes to mental health issues."

Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA's GPs' committee, said: "When 40% of appeals against the assessments are successful at tribunal hearings, something is clearly very wrong with the system. Being in work is good for people's overall health and wellbeing, but GPs are seeing too many patients who genuinely need to be on incapacity benefit coming in very concerned and confused by the system. The government needs to look again at the whole assessment process and replace it with one that is fit for purpose."

Dean Marshall, chair of the Scottish general practitioners' committee, which has already passed a similar motion, welcomed the vote. "These assessments can have a devastating effect on our patients' mental and physical health. There has been a dramatic increase in the numbers being assessed as fit to work and a massive number of appeals have been made against these decisions. The frequency of successful appeals seems to us to demonstrate the mechanism's shortcomings," he said. "Our patients are very concerned and confused about these assessments. Many are in fear of how they will cope with the removal of, or cuts to, their benefits. Evidence appears to suggest that people with serious health conditions are sometimes being declared fit for work."

Labour MP Tom Greatrex, who has raised a number of concerns about the WCA, said: "The government should not dismiss the strength of feeling being expressed by the medical profession in this motion – the very people the DWP are reliant on to carry out the assessment. As the motion reflects, assessing whether people are able to work is right in principle, but in so many respects the practice has been appalling. Thousands of people have suffered because of the decisions Atos get wrong time and again, costing the public purse millions."

A spokesperson for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said improvements were being made to the system. "We're absolutely committed to the reassessment of people on incapacity benefit and helping those who are fit to move back into work. Under the old system too many lives were written off. The work capability assessment introduced in 2008 was not fit for purpose, which is why we are implementing all the recommendations made by our independent reviewer to make this a better and fairer process. We want to keep improving the WCA," the department wrote in an emailed statement.

The vote means that calling for the WCA to be scrapped is now the policy of the BMA GPs' committee, which represents 44,000 family doctors across the UK, and the committee will attempt to make its views clear to the DWP.

Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian

The Radical Alternative to Austerity | John McDonnell

Cameron and Osborne have repeated again throughout this week that there is no alternative to their failing austerity programme. There needs to be a clear statement from the Left that there most certainly is an alternative to austerity and it goes beyond just cutting less deep and less fast. Below is a brief statement of what that alternative could contain, written by John McDonnell. It is not meant as a definitive statement but at least a broad depiction of what a radical alternative would comprise. If you are willing to put your name to the statement please do so by emailing John at mcdonnellj@parliament.uk

The Radical Alternative to Austerity

The austerity programme of the Coalition government is not just failing; it is prolonging and deepening the recession. Cuts in investment in public services, in jobs, wages, pensions and benefits are creating mass unemployment and mounting hardship. Austerity is creating a spiral of economic decline as cuts produce high levels of unemployment which in turn reduces tax income and prompts another round of cuts and job losses. The Government’s austerity measures are also unfair as the only people the Government seems intent on protecting from the recession are the rich.

There is an alternative to austerity
There is no lack of wealth and resources in our country that we can draw upon to tackle this recession. The problem is that this wealth and these resources are held in the hands of too few people and are not being used productively to create the growth and jobs we need. If we can release these resources, we can overcome the current recession and start to build a prosperous future for our country, linking with others across Europe and the United States to overcome this global economic gridlock.

Releasing the resources within our own country is not difficult. It simply requires the introduction of a limited range of redistributive measures which will raise the funds we need from those most able to pay and who have profited most out of the boom years. This redistribution can be achieved through:

• a wealth tax on the richest 10%,
• a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions,
• a Land Value tax,
• the restoration of progressive income tax of 60% on incomes above £100,000
• and a clamp down on the tax evasion and avoidance that is costing us £95 billion a year.

Investing the resources released can halt the spiral of decline
With unemployment rising month by month we urgently need to get people back to work and earning a decent living. We can do this by investing the resources we have released through taxation in modernising our economy, its infrastructure and our public services to meet the needs of our community.

Instead of cutting and privatising our health, education and local services, this means:

• investing in a mass public housing building and renovation programme, in universal childcare, in the modernisation of our public services, in the NHS, in creating a national Caring Service, in our schools and colleges, in our transport infrastructure and in the extension of broadband;
• investing in alternative energy, combined heat and power and insulation to both tackle climate change and create one million climate change jobs;
• establishing a national investment bank with the resources levied from the banks so that there is no shortage of funds to lend for manufacturing growth and research and development.

To be successful the recovery programme has to be fair
We will need the support of a significant majority of our people if we are to drive through this type of radical regeneration and redistribution programme. To gain this level of support means the Radical Alternative must be seen to be fair. This means addressing many of the inequalities of our current system. For those at the top it means ending the bonuses and limiting high salaries to no more than 20 times the lowest paid in any company or organisation.

For all others it means replacing the minimum wage with a living wage and a living pension and living welfare benefits, reducing the working week to 35 hours, closing the gender pay gap, controlling rents and energy prices, and restoring rights at work. For young people it means a guaranteed job, apprenticeship, training or college place for every young person with the burden of fees abolished.

There is no shortage of resources to implement this programme of reform. The problem is the distribution of these resources. The Radical Alternative simply releases the resources we have to regain control of our economy and invest in our future.

Never again can we let them say that there is no alternative.

John McDonnell

mcdonnellj@parliament.uk

What must they be thinking?

Theresa May gets caught out by police logo

Clegg and Cameron's cruellest day

Greece, the birthplace of democracy, has set off a voters' rebellion against the dictatorship of financiers. In the eye of the vortex, no one knows if the centre can hold or what happens next when voters say no to austerity imposed by the same financiers who caused the crash. JP Morgan's reckless derivatives gamble lands on cue to make the point. As François Hollande and Angela Merkel meet for the first time on Tuesday, Karl Marx could not have devised so perfect a crisis of capitalism.

At first the voters acquiesced, tightened their belts, obeyed the iron laws set by bankers whose grotesque pay flows from bailouts by states they impoverished. But the prospect of years of unremitting high unemployment and stagnation shows the great austerity experiment has failed, and even its north European proponents are being gingerly forced to acknowledge it.

In Britain the failure of that experiment is most telling, because no one imposed it on us except our own government. Inflation is predicted to stay obstinately high while wages lag, shrinking demand in households with ever less to spend. Industry now begs the government to kick-start the economy. Bond rates here fell even lower on Monday: our government can borrow more cheaply than for 300 years. The refusal of Cameron and Osborne to borrow and invest in housing, energy, schools and transport is the ideological fixation that will destroy them. Once a Conservative government loses the trust of industry, it's in deep trouble.

The Police Federation's letter to David Cameron following the march

PoliceOracle.com has obtained a copy of the letter given to Prime Minister David Cameron last week following the Police Federation’s march through London. The march on May 10 culminated in the Police Federation of England and Wales handing in a letter to 10 Downing Street to outline its concerns about government austerity measures and the Winsor Review. 

A federation spokesman said the letter was more than just a gesture following the march – as the government itself seemed unclear on the Fed’s position. This letter therefore provided clarity:

Dear Prime Minister,

We write to you as the statutory representatives of 135,000 police officers in England and Wales to inform you of the morale crisis amongst our membership. In recent months we have been inundated with telephone calls and correspondence from police officers who are angry, dismayed about their future, and completely demoralised. 

Through the introduction of the Winsor reviews they feel they are being treated differently and more harshly than any other public sector workers. They accept that the police service must share some of the financial burden of the economic crisis but feel they have been unfairly singled out and targeted by your Government.

For decades, successive Governments have respected the fact that police officers have restrictions on their private lives and work lives; whether that is restrictions on where an officer may live, the requirement to intervene in incidents when off-duty, or the fact that their hours of duty, rest days and annual leave can be changed or cancelled if operational reasons dictate. 

Your Government has broken this ‘covenant’; pushing ahead with the Winsor recommendations demonstrates a view that that there should be no protection of police officers’ terms and conditions or recognition of their unique employment status as holders of the office of constable.

In addition, proposed changes to privatise core policing functions will transform the British police service from one based on policing by consent, and that is the envy of the world, to a body of officers unable to develop and deliver policing skills other than the use of coercive force. 

Your ministers have given us assurances that they agree with us that the independent Office of Constable is the bedrock of policing; however, that independence is threatened with the proposed introduction of compulsory severance whilst the privatisation of policing will expose the public to an unaccountable second-tier of law enforcement.

Today thousands of police officers have taken a day’s holiday to come to London in their own time to make their voices heard. Many say they feel so under-valued that they are seriously thinking about leaving the police service.

This is an important and challenging year as we embark upon the biggest policing and security operation we have witnessed in this country: the 2012 Olympic Games. We are genuinely concerned that public safety will be jeopardised in the future if large numbers of police officers leave the service.

We would welcome an urgent meeting with you to discuss what we can do to avert this national crisis.

Yours sincerely,

PAUL MCKEEVER, CHAIRMAN

IAN RENNIE, GENERAL SECRETARY

Coalition cocks up again - not surprising considering the cocks in charge

A £1.4bn coalition scheme to boost the economy has failed to achieve value for money, according to the government's official auditors.

Why?

Because the scheme is spending as much as £200,000 generating a single job.

Needless to say, Dave and Nick praised the initiative when they visited Essex earlier this week. 

And previously, Nick has said the fund would lead to half a million jobs. But that was a lie, Nick, wasn't it? The report forecasts that it will create only up to 41,000 jobs.

Then there's Nicebutdim Nick's claim that the fund would help rebalance the economy. It hasn't, has it, Nick?

'£1.4bn regional growth fund not value for money, says finance watchdog' - http://bit.ly/IOKLnt (Guardian)

Cameron tells Mail how Lib Dems are holding him back

On the eve of the Queen’s Speech, Cameron has used an 'exclusive interview with the Daily Mail' to insist he is determined to lead a Conservative-only government after the next election

Complaining of a "growing list of things that I want to do but can’t" because of the Liberal Democrats, he admitted more candidly than ever before where his coalition partners are holding him back. Cameron singled out human rights law, reform of workplace rights and support for marriage as areas where Tory principles are being held in check but urged senior MPs growing tired of coalition not to waste the next three years. He also suggested a referendum should be considered on  Clegg’s plans for a mainly elected House of Lords, particularly if it could help avoid the Government’s legislative agenda becoming ‘bogged down’ in the issue.

Speaking on the day he made a joint appearance with Clegg at a tractor factory in Basildon, Essex, to focus on the economy, he said: ‘Look, as Prime Minister of a coalition government at a time of national difficulty, I must focus on what can be done, what must be done now. We have the programme to deal with deficit, to get the banks lending, get young people employed, boost apprenticeships, get businesses investing and growing. Whether it’s capping welfare, limiting immigration, we have a programme that needs to be delivered. Of course there are frustrations, and there is a list of things that I am looking forward to doing if I can win an election and run a Conservative-only government.’

Directly addressing senior Conservative MPs who unveiled an alternative Queen’s Speech featuring traditional Tory policies at the weekend, Cameron declared: ‘I completely understand your frustrations, but let’s be clear: We’ve taken on some areas like reforming student finance, reforming public sector pensions, freezing public sector pay. These are things that previous Conservative governments weren’t able to do. Hell, I even vetoed an EU treaty. So I would say to Conservatives, I know it’s frustrating. I share your frustration. I want a Conservative-only government. But don’t let’s waste the chance we have now to help get this country out of the mess it was left in. We have got the mandate and the policies and the team to do it.’

French precedent | John McDonnell

Letters to The Guardian

Hollande's victory (The change France needs, 7 May) and scale of votes for the left in Greece demonstrate the emergence of a potential European-wide anti-austerity alliance which Labour could be a part of.

To join this movement that is giving hope to people across Europe means Labour decisively rejecting austerity and supporting the demand to tackle tax abuse by the rich, rejecting the privatisation and cuts in our public services, and setting out clearly plans to create the jobs that will restore prosperity. Sarkozy was described as "the president of the rich".

The last Osborne budget demonstrated so clearly that we are governed by a government of the rich for the rich. The European message for Labour is seize the moment and show clearly whose side we are on.

John McDonnell MP
Lab, Hayes and Harlington

Contrary to popular belief, we can afford both welfare and housing, says Andrew Fisher of the LRC

It was Nietzsche who said that man has killed God and Christianity, “but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exist”. He meant the belief in sin remained, but now with no belief in the cure. Listening to Iain Duncan Smith talk about welfare reveals the same scenario: “A system developed to help the most vulnerable and support people in times of need is trapping people in a cycle of dependency.” Of course it is, because it has to be accompanied by a policy of full employment.

 
As well as creating the welfare state, the 1945 Attlee government also had a policy of full employment. That policy of full employment was part of the welfare system they created. The contract was that the government would provide a stable economy that eradicated mass unemployment.

It worked: between the 1940s and 1978 unemployment in the UK never rose above a million. In 1979, unemployment had risen to just over one million - a national shame which led to the Tories famous election poster ‘Labour isn’t working’. Within a few years of that election, unemployment reached 3 million, and the commitment to full employment was buried.

Today the Tories are attacking welfare with unprecedented viciousness. Around £30bn in welfare cuts have been announced since the Tory-led government came to power. When he announced the first tranche of welfare cuts in the 2010 Budget, the Chancellor said: “Total welfare spending has increased from £132 billion ten years ago to £192 billion today. It’s one reason why there is no money left.”

“There is no money left” – the same phrase that Labour’s shadow minister Liam Byrne used in his infamous note. The problem with it is it’s not true. The best evidence to prove that is that over the same period as Osborne’s £30bn cuts to welfare, he will have cut business taxes by £30bn. So Osborne is redistributing wealth from the poorest in society to the shareholders of large companies. But there is a large deficit and welfare spending has increased by 45% in the last decade. More importantly there’s the misery of mass unemployment to tackle too.

So how could a Labour government tackle the welfare bill in a socially just way?

• Firstly invest to create jobs to reduce the £4.8bn cost of unemployment benefit – committing to full employment again;

• Secondly - and this would create jobs - build council housing to cut the massive £20bn cost of housing benefit, which mostly goes into the pockets of wealthy landlords;

• Finally, make the minimum wage a living wage to reduce the £8bn tax credit bill – which means the government is subsidising low paying employers.

Labour must promote a systematic approach again: full employment, decent wages in work, the guarantee of a secure home, and a generous welfare state that offers security to those unable to work.

Andrew Fisher will be speaking alongside Kevin Maguire, Teresa Pearce MP and Andy Winter at the LRC’s Brighton Fringe event  ‘We can afford welfare and housing’.