Social and Economic Policy

Children's rights, crime & justice, immigration & asylum, pensions, poverty, youth, ...

Tory retreat on tax credits?

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne will set out the Government's tax and spending plans when he delivers the annual Autumn Statement to the House of Commons on 25 November. As well as outlining how the Government intends to meet its target of cutting an extra £20 billion from public spending by 2019-20, the equivalent of Departmental budgets falling by between twenty-five and forty per cent over the next five years, Osborne is also expected to list ways in which the Treasury will look to minimise the impact of the £4.4 billion in cuts to tax credits paid to low-paid and part-time...

Economic policy and creating space

Over recent months Jeremy Corbyn, now Labour Party leader, and John McDonnell, now Shadow Chancellor, have made four major statements on economic policy. Corbyn issued a document, The Economy in 2020, on 22 July, as part of his Labour leader campaign. McDonnell spoke at Labour Party conference on 29 September, and wrote articles for the Guardian website on 12 August and 12 May. They are a step forward from what we had from Ed Miliband, let alone what we had from Gordon Brown or Tony Blair. McDonnell and Corbyn commit clearly to restoring union rights and to renationalising rail. They advocate...

Land Value Tax and gentrification

I agree with the main points made by all contributors in the discussion on gentrification ( Solidarity 378, 379, 381, and 382). I particularly endorse the condemnation of the vandalism inflicted on the “Cereal Killer” cafe. The futility and stupidity of this “action” by a bunch of apolitical louts masquerading as anarchists reminded me of the equally futile and pointless spate of cottage-burning by a small group of Welsh nationalists calling themselves the “Sons of Glyndwr” back in the 80s. Their targets were second homes bought by English people. This campaign of arson, which went on for a...

The sham of Osborne’s “Northern Powerhouse”

It is alarming and deeply disturbing to see that some people, many of whom should know better, have swallowed George “high-vis” Osborne’s fantasy-speak about building a “Northern Powerhouse”. This is more amazing when you consider that ever since the Industrial Revolution there has always been a “Northern Powerhouse”, and it was the Conservative Party and Thatcher that destroyed it. Without the coal, iron and steel, shipbuilding, engineering and textiles of northern cities like Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Newcastle (to which Scotland and South Wales must also be added), Britain...

Gentrificiation for all

The capitalist housing market predominantly separates “nice” areas from “rough” areas. In the “nice” areas, people pay higher prices; bigger and posher houses and better shops and amenities and transport facilities are built. In the “rough” areas, only cheap and poor-quality housing is built; shops, amenities, and transport remain poor. The social divide, once established, tends to grow. But the market has cross-currents. Inner cities combine bits where rich people afford high prices to be near to city-centre facilities, and nearby bits where poor people can’t afford not to pay for cramped and...

Tories in tangle over tax credits

Chancellor George Osborne looks set to go ahead with cuts to tax credits which will see the income of low-paid workers drop by an average of £1,300 next April, despite opposition from Tory backbenchers and voters such as the woman who confronted a Government minister over the issue on BBC TV's Question Time. The changes to tax credits would save around £4.4 billion, or just over a third of the £12 billion the Treasury is seeking to cut from the welfare budget. Tory backbench opposition to the cuts stems from electoral calculations by MP's in marginal seats (it is significant that the measure...

A new kind of uniformity

The attack by Class War on the Cereal Killer shop in Shoreditch has been rightly condemned as self-indulgent, misguided and ineffective in articles by Gemma Short and Martin Thomas in Solidarity . Martin has gone further by writing — under the heading “The enemy is capital!” — to give a generally favourable view of gentrification in its impact on working-class communities in London. Where it causes their displacement, it can be resisted, he glibly asserts. Some of the effects of the movement of better off people into an area can indeed be positive. But alongside these there are necessarily...

The enemy is capital

In the 1970s, Hoxton, just north and west of Brick Lane, site of the now-notorious Cereal Killer Cafe mobbed by a publicity-seeking anarchist group on 26 September, was a stronghold of the fascist National Front. The national headquarters of the NF, a scarier outfit than the BNP of recent years, was on Great Eastern Street, halfway between the two areas. Hoxton's population was ageing, white, of the least organised sections of the working class or of the "lumpenproletariat" (chronically unemployed), and embittered. Brick Lane's population was overwhelmingly Bengali, also poor, and sufficiently...

Aids drug hike: nationalise Big Pharma!

Last week US based Turing pharmaceuticals hiked the price of Daraprim, a medicine used by Aids patients, by 5,000%. The drug, which costs $1 per dose to make, went from $13.50 per dose to $750 after Turing pharmaceuticals acquired the rights in August. Turing pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli has defended the decision by saying that the $1 manufacturing cost of the drug does not factor in marketing and distribution. Drugs should not need marketing! Nor should they be patented. Producing, testing and supplying life saving, life changing, or even just helpful drugs should be a public utility...

Not the way to fight gentrification

The protest against and attack on the “Cereal Killer” café in Shoreditch, East London, on Saturday 26 September would be funny in its ridiculousness if it weren’t so politically misleading. “Cereal Killer” sells breakfast cereal — but at upwards of £3.50 a bowl. No doubt the owners are pretentious and middle-class. No doubt they were only able to open such a café due to the changing nature of the area bringing in a clientele with large disposable incomes. No doubt the launderettes, greengrocers and corner shops that used to provide for a working-class community have been replaced. However none...

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