Vote Green, not Brown (1)

The Vestas saga (New Labour duplicity on the low carbon economy) may have some consequences:
1) Union members will demand that many of their compromised leaders change tack and press for an industrial revival based partly on manufacturing renewables
2) We convince them about our vision of a low carbon economy placing industry in the centre – jobs, high technology and low emissions.
3) Among many Labour voters, the credibility of New Labour is terminally shattered as they are found out to be obsessed in kow-towing to carbon-trading multinationals and to Nuclear.

What I would like to see is now:
a) a continuing protest to force the government to step in and save Vestas
b) a practical Green vision of a series of wind turbine plants up and down the country. For example, setting up clean manufacturing in the Thames Gateway and other sites in London – how many Mega watts, how many jobs, and in which locality.

The Green New Deal gave a broad outline. Since then, we have had additions, for example, by Sean Thompson, on embedding that initial document with reducing inequality and wealth mal-distribution, with a firmer commitment towards nationalisation.

I would now like us to draw a picture of what a green industrial renewable landscape actually looks like by region.
For example, if we had the per capita wind energy capacity of Denmark or Germany, how many jobs would we create and how many factories would we have?
Would it ten or twenty Vestas plants in England and Wales?

Farid Bakht

Tower Hamlets Labour AM thinks hedge funds ‘add value’

Saturday’s Progressive London conference was peppered with Labour politicians. They did their best to stretch the word Progressive to breaking point.
John Biggs, the Labour Assembly Member (and Tower Hamlets stalwart) astounded the audience with his comments.
On a Saturday, dressed impeccably in a suit and tie, he highlighted his credentials of working in the City of London.
He told us that hedge funds added value to our economy (while the Chinese economists in the main hall were saying the opposite)…. how we had to ‘work with the City’… how it was a nostalgic dream for manufacturing to return to London………
This was a performance of an unreconstructed New Labour politician in thrall to the City and the banks.
Northern Rock, the collapse of the banks all seemed to pass by…..
He also came out against any EU regulation of the City…. which rather says it all. He made a comment that we don;t need Europeans to regulate us.. well, we wouldn’t if the UK Labour Government had the guts to do something (Darling’s speech last week was widely derided as Labour’s final capitulation to Finance)
If Singapore can operate as a financial centre, a manufacturing centre and a magnet for tourism why not London?
In any case his old boss, Ken Livingstone, told the main meeting that indeed we need to bring back manufacturing to the Thames Estuary….

Incredible..

Banks batter Brick Lane

Today, Lloyds announced that another 2,100 jobs would be slashed. Another source forecasts that the City of London would continue cutting – the financial sector will lose at least 13,000 this quarter. Looks like 70,000 jobs will go this year from financial services.
At street level, the City still looks plush – Bishopsgate/Spitalfields still buzzing or so it seems.
Suited execs still cross Commercial Street and enter Brick Lane, though in ever decreasing numbers. The waiters and owners of Banglatown restaurants have noted the drop in sales over the last eighteen months.
Their faces show no sign of witnessing any ‘green shoots’ providing more covers and customers.
This is how trickle down economics works (or doesn’t). Next door to the two great financial centres on this planet, very little wealth crosses over.
Still, in the good times, some Bengali owners could rent out flats to City workers and others swap curry for money – it’s still happening but getting tougher by the day.
The Bankers (or more precisely the top execs) are cutting jobs and those remaining eating less in Brick Lane.
To top it all, the supposedly nationalised banks are not lending to small businesses.
They are eating up our money but rationing out loans.
Small businesses are suffering from a drought of ‘working capital’.
While the New Labour government, ever so keen on voters, is intent on banks lending to consumers (voters), we hear nothing about banks looking after their small business customers.
Where are the jobs going to come from if local, small businesses are not given a lifeline?
Size does matter…. Big Banks…. Big Auto companies…… Too Big to fail companies….. they get the ear of Lord Mandy and Mr. Darling… small businesses need not apply….

Farid Bakht

Happy days are here again

Today we were told by one think tank that the recession could be over.
House prices are also going up.
Before you crack open that bottle of champagne, press the pause button:
BP, now longer beyond petroleum, says oil consumption is down to 2003 levels in the UK at 1.7 million barrels a day.
It’s not due to efficiency but a sharp decline in factory production.
Quantitative easing or printing may offer temp jobs and prevent a depression but it is likely to lead to hyper inflation by 2011 – after an election maybe but important to all when you wonder if that means higher interest rates next year.
Unemployment will soar for years.
To reduce government borrowing from Zimbabwe levels, next year will see 10% cuts across the board – a Tory gave that away today though insisting the NHS wouldn’t be touched. Yeah, sure.

Farid Bakht

After the election: savage cuts

The Daily Mail creates the slogans.
The Telegraph reveals more what the elite really think.
This month Telegraph has taken to tell David Cameron to forget about the centre ground and go back to being a Thatcherite. Pretty certain that the Tories will win the election, the Telegraph wants Cameron to spell out what he is going to do for the City of London and international financiers.
The economic scenario is scary (forget the green shoot nonsense which is all about us lulling us into spending again). Have a look at some of these right-wing quotes.
“The UK will soon have a budget deficit of 15pc of GDP. The Government will be selling gilts equivalent to 20pc of our national income for at least three successive years. To say this is the worst fiscal crisis in this country’s peace-time history is an understatement.”

“The importance to our tax base of financial services and housing meant the bursting of the credit bubble was bound to hammer government revenues. Combine that with the retirement of millions of baby-boomers and 2010-14 was always going to be difficult.”

“If Cameron doesn’t say (he will make massve cuts) ……. the UK will soon lose its Triple-A credit rating. Big institutions will then be forced to dump UK gilts – leading to a disastrous spike in yields. Interest rates right across the economy will balloon, whatever the Bank of England does. “
“For international debt markets, the name of the game is supply – how many gilts will be issued, and when. So if the Tories don’t show how they’ll issue fewer gilts, the Government will have to pay much more for credit, leading to even deeper spending cuts.”

“Unless Cameron starts building the political consensus now, getting the country squarely behind the need to spend less, the markets simply won’t believe he’ll actually will cut spending when he gets into office.”
“The stark truth is that the UK’s ability to roll over its debts is in grave danger”.
According to the Telegraph, by not talking about this subject, the political classes are out of touch.
“The country knows full well we’ve long lived beyond our means. The public is screaming for someone to take control.”
David Davis says there should be a debate about how to cut public spending
For a Tory then to talk about cutting Trident and renegotiate PFI contracts (which have fattened many a private company) is extraordinary. He also made the familiar call to cut public sector pensions.
” During the coming few years, our fiscal meltdown will make it tougher than under Thatcher, tougher than the IMF debacle of the mid-1970s.”

In case this makes you think it best to vote for New Labour, forget it. It will be worse with them. The last twelve years have shown how Brown (Chancellor and PM) has bent over backwards to prove his credentials and gain some brownie (no pun intended) points from the money-men. They would cut even more than the Tories to show they meant business and retain Britain’s credit rating..
Nick Clegg, in trying to get into bed with either party in government, will ask Vince Cable to persuade us that There Is No Alternative.
TINA makes a comeback …… a few months after all the banks went under………..

Now do you understand why they are diverting everyone with red herrings (H1N1, MPs pay…. Bankers’ bonuses)……. ?
Somehow I think the people aren’t that easily fooled. The problem is they are not sure who provides an alternative…………….

Farid Bakht

The Italian Job

People are angry, worried and bewildered.
Where’s the good news?
Today, it is MPs flipping homes.
Before it was H1N1 and a flu pandemic.
Police brutality at the G20 demos.
That was preceded by Goodwin and Bankers’ outrageous bonuses.

All the while, we are ignoring the elephant in the room……. the economy is going down the tubes for millions, yet the guilty (bankers, the main political parties, majority of opinion formers) are still cashing in.

While each issue is important, they are mostly symbolic – MPs have paid back £140,000 – wow, that’s a month’s renumeration for a top banker!
Let’s get some perspective here.

Yes, whack an MP who played the game and yet signed up to the draconian welfare reform bill to chase single mothers for a few pounds.
By all means, rail against greedy bankers.
But is it enough to have the equivalent of a scene from the middle ages: where the poor serfs are encouraged to vent their anger throwing rotten food at someone in chains in the village square.
The story ends with the serfs returning to their hovels, and the Lords back to their castle.

We are missing the Big Picture.

Rather than the tail wagging the dog, we should be explaining the true origins of the current crisis (thirty years in the making) and how we can get out of this by replacing it with something new.

It seems the three main parties and their associates in business and media are keen to divert us for the rest of this year. They may hope we become apathetic. Others would like us to become anti-political, looking to usher in a Berlusconi form of extreme right agenda Clean Hands).
Meanwhile most hope the economy recovers by sometime in 2010 so that they can get back to making hay, without the need of an Italian Job.

For the rest, anger is useless if it is not channeled. And it has to be non-violent.
Look for the pattern – pre G20, the relentless media barrage about violent demos and police warnings about civil unrest, and little about the issues.
So today, we remember the G20 for a tragic death and kettling but forget the reasons the demos were there in the first place (to protest against leaders not taking responsibility for the crisis and putting a band aid on when surgery is required).
If wars are supposed to be won in ‘hearts and minds’, then so are political battles about an economic and social shift.

It’s early days thankfully but the time for complacency is over.
Some of the progressive elements seemed to have thought that all they needed do was blow a biblical trumpet for the walls of neo-liberal orthodoxy to come tumbling down. The walls have been weakened but progressives (in the non-Blairite sense!) have shown no ability in taking the City. The populace aren’t welcoming them with open arms since they are not sure they would be any better than ‘the other lot’.
If these elements don’t get their act together sooner rather than later, then in a few years, an exasperated & desperate population will indeed elsewhere….. to an Italian solution.

Farid Bakht

Say the right thing

Some polls are showing that anything from 6% to 34% of voters would consider voting for the Greens.
The two themes people want to hear from the Greens are:
a) the economy
b) climate change

From now and for years ahead, the Green Party has to lead on the economy, given that i) we are in the middle of the worst economic slump since WW2 and b) because the wider Green Movement is focusing on climate change and c) that if there is one thing we do not have to convince anyone about, it is about our stance on climate change – you could say it’s pretty obvious.

What may have held back people from actually voting for the Green Party is that they thought (and mostly think) of us as a one-trick pony.
Now, instead of climate change sliding down the list of priorities, it is still there as part of a solution to the current economic crisis, as long we explicitly link a low carbon economy to jobs.
This is a very different debate to that of only 12 months ago.

If New Labour, to their infamy, could bang on about education and health in 1997, the Greens must devote maximum exposure to the Green project to create millions of jobs, bring back education, health and railways to full public control and truly nationalise the banks (the latter is still only whispered and not boldly stated enough).

Let’s hope the new videos and emphasis on bread-and-butter issues continues.
Finally, it is time the big NGOs, so long in the limelight, make a strategic decision to move to the economy and back the Green Party.
The original Labour Party would not have succeeded without the wider Labour movement (Unions). Ditto with the Greens today.
The NGOs and ‘friendly media’ now have to get out of their comfort zone and choose sides.
It will not be pleasant – if the likes of Zac Goldsmith can join the Conservatives, it shows the green idea can be twisted in many different directions.
Or perhaps that type of action reflected the era before the credit crunch became vogue. Who believes that blue-is-green nonsense anymore?
I get the feeling that most people today are aware that the Green Party ideal of social, economic and environmental justice is the only way to solve the crisis.
We just have to keep saying the right thing.

Farid Bakht

Greens: One million jobs in 1,000 days

Ahead of its manifesto launch later this week, the Green Party today revealed one of its key policies – a Green recovery package that would create a million jobs.

The Greens have costed their manifesto in terms of how many jobs would be created if all their policies for the Euro-elections were implemented. The total comes to over a million.

“Put the economy on a war footing NOW”

To deliver these jobs urgently (2), the UK economy must be put on something like a war footing, say the Greens – as the best way to tackle the recession and the only way to tackle the climate crisis.

The Greens maintain a big national effort is needed to rebuild and transform Britain’s economy, industry, public and financial services, public transport infrastructure and local communities.

Only a vision like this, say the Greens, can provide the antidote to the current widespread sense of apathy, cynicism, disenchantment with politics and insecurity over our economic future – including the effects on the global and British economies of climate change and peak oil.

The real Green New Deal - and beyond

The Green Party has been pushing for a multi-billion-pound Green New Deal since last year – only to see the government produce its own version which the Greens said was “neither Green nor, strictly speaking, a new deal” – as much of the government scheme involved cash already allocated by previous plans, and much of it would create jobs only in many years’ time. And it included things like nuclear power stations, which are known to sustain relatively few jobs per megawatt “and are certainly not Green.” And since then, it has been shown that the government’s “green stimulus” was in fact offering more cash to high-carbon than to low-carbon projects (3).

But the million-job Green New Deal offered to voters this year would only be a start, say the Greens – as kick-starting the Green industrial revolution would lead to:

a) The rapid growth of low-carbon industries like wind-turbine and solar panel manufacture.
b) The building of more trains, trams and buses to serve a revolution in public transport.
c) Jobs-rich Green waste management systems to replace jobs-poor incineration projects.
d) A revolution in UK agricultural output.

Notes to editors

1. Green candidates will be making their point visually with giant banknotes bearing the picture of Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MEP and the words: “We promise to pay for one million Green jobs.”
2. The basis for all these jobs could be laid within one year – and all the jobs delivered within 2-3 years.
3. According to studies by HSBC and NEF.

Greens say scrap VAT for small businesses

The South East’s Euro-MP Caroline Lucas has told small businesses only the Greens have the policies to help them through the current recession.

Unveiling the party’s package of measures to help small business ahead of next month’s European and County Council elections, Dr Lucas pledged to scrap VAT and merge National Insurance and Income Tax to reduce bureaucracy.

She said small businesses faced increasing pressure from anti-competitive practises, late payments and complex regulation.

“Yet it is not small businesses that cause the most pollution, waste the most resources and exploit their workers.

“They serve largely local markets and strengthen local economies and communities. They provide many jobs, are centres of creativity and innovation, and lead in the emerging green economy, providing organic food and services like insulation or community transport.

“Many are cooperatives or community enterprises. Small business goes with the grain of the green ethos – building a local and increasingly self-reliant economy means building up small business.

“The Green Party would introduce a framework of policy to give preferential support to local and smaller businesses and counteract the excessive power of global corporations. Most significantly we would reform the tax system by replacing the Unified Business Rate with a land tax paid to local rather than central government, and by banding corporation tax so that small businesses pay lower rates than larger businesses.”

Dr Lucas unveiled a number of specific policies to help small businesses flourish under the current recession.

She said the Greens would:

* Reduce bureaucracy by scrapping VAT

* Simplify PAYE by merging National Insurance with Income Tax

* Support local community banks tasked with supporting small local enterprises

* Introduce legislation to outlaw late payment

Who controls the money? (4)

“The modern banking process manufactures currency out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented…….If you want to be slaves of the bankers, and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the banks create currency”

Lord Josiah Stemp, former director of the Bank of England (1937)