storbritannien – Modpress

David Cameron’s Big Society Bullshit

This is the reality of the Tory budget cuts:

The coalition’s spending cuts will hit the poorest in society 10 times harder than the richest as the health, social and education services they rely on are slashed, an extensive new study for the Trades Union Congress has found. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, says the research proves that the Conservatives are breaching their election promise to introduce cuts fairly.

Lone parents and pensioners will suffer the most from the public spending cuts, the study finds, with everyone but the top 10% of earners losing more from cuts than from tax and benefit changes.

Excluding benefit cuts, single people will lose the equivalent, on average, of £817 a year in services, while a couple with no children will lose £1,012 and a single pensioner £1,017. A lone parent, meanwhile, will lose £1,880.

Wake-up call: Single parents and pensioners are already somewhat strained, financially – so this is really a nice early Christmas present from David Cameron’s “compassionate conservatism”.

And why do they make these cuts? Well, the truth is they make them “just because” – there’s no financial justification for them whatsoever. As economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz point out, these cuts can only exacerbate the crisis by boosting unemployment.

So when British people, especially pensioners and single parents, are now hurled into poverty by the hundreds of thousands, they need to know that David Cameron and his government are not doing this to fix he economy. They are doing it because, doing so, they can give more tax cuts and privileges to the rich. Let’s not forget what Cameron is made of.

Link: Coalition cuts will hit poor 10 times harder than rich

Meet the new Lord, same as the old lords

David Cameron er Storbritanniens nye konservative premierminister. Hvad for en slags mand er han, og hvilken politik skal vi forvente af ham?

Vel, han er født ind i en kolossalt rig familie og har lovet straks ved sin tiltræden at give en omfattende skattelettelse, der kun kommer landets rigeste 3000 familier til gode. Heriblandt hans egen, selvfølgelig. Og på sundhedsvæsnet, skoler og socialhjælp har han lovet nedskæringer, nedskæringer og atter nedskæringer, så der kan blive råd til at købe bankerne fri fra det morads, de selv har skabt.

Som ung mand var han med i en gruppe aristokrater på Oxford Universitet, der “morede” sig ved at udsøge sig en fin restaurant, spise og drikke de dyreste og mest udsøgte retter på menukortet – og herefter smadre restauranten totalt.

Huffington Post har mere:

He was schooled at England’s most expensive and most exclusive private school — Eton — and then attended Oxford University where he was a prominent member of the notorious Bullingdon Club.

The club — a UK equivalent of Yale’s exclusive Skull & Bones Society — is an ultra-exclusive clique that admits only the nation’s richest and brattiest trust-fund kids. Its openly declared primary activities are outlandish drinking, boisterous behavior and damaging property.

BORN TO RULE (above): Cameron & his Bullingdon Club cronies in full regalia in 1987. The blond bombshell in the front-row is fellow Conservative Boris Johnson — now reigning over London’s citizens as their Mayor.
A well-documented typical evening while Cameron was a member in the late 1980s consisted of the members taking over one of Oxford’s fanciest restaurants for the night, eating the priciest food on the menu, ordering and quaffing copious quantities of the most expensive wines and champagnes — and then totally trashing and destroying the entire restaurant, furniture and fittings. The coup de grace at the end of each such excursion was to go up to the traumatized, distraught restaurant owner and, in a gesture that dates back to the aristocrat-peasant relationship of centuries passed, contemptuously throw wads of banknotes at the hapless owner as recompense for the massive damage caused.

That is the background of Britain’s new Prime Minister — whose only employment other than climbing the greasy pole of Conservative Party politics to become party leader was a stint as corporate flack and spin-master for a down-market TV network.

Manden er altså født med en sølvske i munden og har ikke gjort en dags ærligt arbejde i hele sit liv. Men det er altså den “compassionate Conservative”, der nu skal genetablere de “britiske værdier” og forsøge at være mere højreorienteret end … den Labour-regering, der var den mest højreorienterede regering, Storbritannien har haft, siden Churchill gik af.

Det eneste lyspunkt i det her er, at det måske er det, der skal til for at få den britiske venstrefløj til at vågne op af sin alt for uforstyrrede Tornerosesøvn.

Link: UK Election Winner! Meet the New Toff (Same as the Old Toffs)

Englands demokratiske underskud

George Monbiot har en glimrende kommentar i dagens Guardian om noget, som også har undret eller i hvert fald optaget undertegnede: Af de fire nationer, som udgør Storbritannien, har de tre – Skotland, Wales og Nordirland – deres eget parlament. Kun én, nemlig den dominerende, har ikke noget.

Hvorfor er der ikke et engelsk parlament? En oplagt forklaring er, at England er så dominerende i helstaten, at det britiske parlament på en måde er det engelske parlament. Det betyder imidlertid paradoksalt, at netop England er ramt af et demokratisk underskud: Regeringen har i mange år indgået studehandler med skotske, walisiske og nordirske parlamentsmedlemmer om at indføre stramninger og nedskæringer, som de skotske, walisiske og nordirske parlamenter efterfølgende har friholdt deres egne befolkninger fra.

Det betyder derfor, at fordi englænderne ikke har en ordentlig parlamentarisk repræsentation, kan politikere indføre regler uden nogen som helst støtte af befolkningen hen over hovedet på en befolkning, der ikke har en jordisk chance for at protestere. I England er demokrati erstattet af bureau- og autokrati:

England, the great colonising nation, has become a colony. It is governed by a Scotsman who uses foreign mercenaries – Scottish, Welsh and Irish MPs – to suppress parliamentary revolts over purely English affairs. There is still no democratic forum in which English interests can be discussed only by English representatives. The unfairness is staggering, the silence stranger still.

One of the peculiarities of UK politics is that issues supported by hardly anyone receive majority assent in parliament. In the current system, no popular support is required. University top-up fees, for example, were rejected by the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, but Scottish and Welsh MPs were frogmarched through the lobbies to impose them on England (the government won by five votes). Foundation hospitals were voted down in both Wales and Scotland, and foisted on the English by the representatives of those nations. Had Heathrow’s third runway been debated only by English MPs, the proposal would have been resoundingly defeated; it was approved by 19 votes, after 67 MPs from the other nations were induced to support the government. They can support such measures without any electoral risk, as their constituents are not directly affected. Devolution, which has had such beneficial consequences here in Wales and across the other borders, has left the English high and dry.

Løsning? Monbiot foreslår, at man indfører et engelsk parlament og fratager den britiske regering de fleste beføjelser – mens udenrigs- og sikkerhedspolitik stadig kan varetages af unionen, bør stort set alt andet, “taxation, health, education, transport, local government, planning, the environment, police, courts, prisons and the rest” – lægges ud til de enkelte nationer.

Et engelsk selvstyre ville i hvert fald være til gavn for hele Storbritannien – for det kunne hjælpe med til at ophæve det besynderlige engelske paradoks, at regeringen hele tiden tromler igennem med underlige politiske tiltag – Irak-krig, overvågning, egenbetaling af universitetsstudier, sociale nedskæringer, og mange flere endnu mere drakoniske ting – som ingen tilsyneladende støtter.

Link: England, that great colonising land, has itself become a colony

En million frit tilgængelige fotos fra de Britiske Øer

Et spændende eksempel på fri kultur i aktion: Geograph er et projekt, der går ud på at samle Creative Commons-beskyttede fotos fra de britiske øer (som altså kan genbruges i f.eks. blogs, tidsskrifter, på hjemmesider, og hvor man ellers har lyst, uden særlig tilladelse men på nærmere angivne betingelser), og knytter dem til punktet på kortet.

Projektet fungerer ved, at folk opretter sig som brugere og indsender deres billeder sammen med koordinaterne, hvor det er taget – man kan både søge og klikke sig frem på et kort. Projektet er nu oppe på ikke mindre end én million billeder fra alle dele af de Britiske Øer!

Værd at kigge på, både hvis man har brug for et billede af et sted i Storbritannien, eller hvis man bare vil se, hvordan der ser ud forskellige steder. På billedet ses Wye-floden syd for Llangurig, Wales. Jeg er sikker på, du selv kan komme på meget mere spændende steder.

Link: Geograph – via Boing Boing.