This week, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) fired the latest salvo in the Government’s increasingly farcical response to the manufactured panic around ‘designer drugs’- in other words substances that are created and marketed specifically to get around existing drug laws.
The ‘designer drugs’ story has all the ingredients of the best tabloid moral panics- an external threat to demonise (count how many of the sensationalist news items mentioned ‘South-East Asian laboratories’), an ’insidious’ technology that has changed society (They bought this filth ONLINE?!?!) and, of course, us feckless, wayward young people, simultaneously victim and villain, falling prey to evil Chinese megachemists cos we’d rather get mwi than get a haircut. Or something like that.
It’s a pretty neat package for establishment figures, both in the media and the state- it sells papers, provides an easy way for the government to look TOUGH ON CRIME, and provides a nice ideological smokescreen for increasing police powers. When the establishment stumbles on a win-win situation like that, the truth often gets lost (or callously exploited, depends on your point of view) somewhere in between hyperbolic headlines and self-serving ‘get tough’ schemes. As we’ve reported here before, the whole mephedrone scare was triggered by um, police getting the name of a drug wrong.
However, government have come to realise that, by their very nature, trying to legislate against designer drugs is basically a fuckin nightmare. Take the near-inconceivable chemical complexity of the human brain, throw in millions of people determined to take drugs and willing to pay for it, then add the internet, and you’ll see that it’s just too cheap, easy and profitable to create and sell new drugs for legislators to keep up.
Which brings me to the ACMD’s proposed solution. The chair of the ACMD, Les Iversen, has recommended that we adopt American-style ‘analogue’ laws, which would make any substance ‘substantially similar’ to a banned drug automatically subject to the same penalties. Sound like a neat catch-all solution to a thorny legal problem? Well, not quite.
For one thing, the American analogue law is horribly vague, with literally no grounding in medicine or chemistry. The wording is so ambiguous that some critics
What our artist thinks designer drugs might do.
have suggested that it technically renders naturally occurring neurochemicals illegal- for example dopamine, which plays a crucial function in every human brain and is synthesised as a medicine, is arguably ‘substantially similar’ to speed or meth. In the absence of any actual science, the decision on what counts as an ‘analogue’ falls to subjective and socially-determined factors like the class and status of users, how the drug is marketed, and the ‘perceived’ effects (as both scientists and drug users will tell you, how drug effects are experienced is largely dependent on ‘set and setting’- factors like where and with whom you take the drugs and what you expect from them. In other words, perceived effects are largely determined by the previously mentioned social factors.)
What this means in practice is that police and courts make these decisions based on profiles of users and the reasons they take drugs, leading to increased criminalisation and persecution of already-marginalised groups like young people and the very poor. When examined closely, analogue laws present a picture that pretty much gives the lie to the idea that drug laws exist to reduce harm to society, rather suggesting that they’re drug laws for drug law’s sake, seeking to criminalise certain forms of drug use as part of a moral crusade against the social norms of ‘deviant’ sections of society. One Colorado judge ruled that the Analogue Act was ‘unconstitutionally vague’ and that it ‘provides neither fair warning nor effective safeguards against arbitrary enforcement’. A cynical person might suggest that that’s kind of the point.
Now, I personally think it’s unlikely (though not impossible) that the UK will adopt analogue laws. For one thing, they run contrary to the common law principle that you have the right to know beforehand what is illegal and what isn’t. For another, the vague wording makes them notoriously hard to get a conviction under. However the interesting point is that this profoundly unscientific suggestion came from the ACMD, supposedly the body that advises the government on drug science. So how did the independent academic body that once pressured the Thatcher government into setting up needle exchanges, despite the powerfully anti-drug message of coked-up 80s Tories, become an unscientific front for legitimising the War on Drugs?
Just sayin like...
The process arguably began in 2004 under the Blair government. New Labour, as we know all too well, kind of has a thing for manufacturing evidence to support their policies, and the ACMD’s role as, well, people who’re supposed to tell the truth, represented a bit of an obstacle to that. In the wake of the invasion of Iraq, the massively unpopular Labour Government was searching for a nice headline-grabbing distraction that would cast them in a good light, and they landed on the scourge of people giggling and seeing pretty patterns in wallpaper. At that time, although the active ingredient of magic mushrooms was illegal, the law did not prohibit the sale or possession of mushrooms themselves. Labour decided, bastards that they are, that it would be a good idea to launch a crackdown on mushroom use and unilaterally made them a Class A drug without consulting the ACMD. This decision was, in fact, illegal, as the Misuse of Drugs Act that established the ACMD states that they must be consulted on any changes in drug policy.
Heartened by the positive headlines this gathered them, they next decided to contradict ACMD recommendations again, and whipped up a ridiculous media frenzy about so-called ‘super-skunk’, mad dangerous weed that makes you go mental and die. Having manufactured this public health scare, they then stepped in to appear responsible and public-minded and reversed the earlier decision to downgrade cannabis to a Class-C drug. Again without consulting the ACMD, again illegally. This was accompanied by a police crackdown, sniffer dogs on the London underground, and a massively disproportionate rate of conviction for young black men.
By this time it was becoming clear that there had been a cultural shift in government, and that the independent drugs advisory body was basically considered a bit too independent. When the former chairman of the ACMD, David Nutt, presented extensive scientific evidence to the government that Ecstasy and MDMA don’t do sufficient social or medical harm to warrant Class-A status they went one step further than simply ignoring his recommendations and sacked him for causing them embarrassment. This was followed by mass resignations of most of the experienced scientists on the ACMD, outraged at the way their professional integrity had been compromised.
Those who did not resign were promoted, and the rest replaced with more compliant figures. The process of eroding the ACMD was now complete. First illegally stripped of its role in forming drug policy, it gradually morphed into a useful propaganda tool for shifting debate rightwards, by making unscientific, reactionary, crackpot suggestions such as those of the last week. This means a further step away from real science forming our society’s attitude to drugs, which in turn means more needless drug deaths, more addiction and ruined lives, more costly and pointless imprisonment, more police repression and racial profiling.
But, just as we saw with mephedrone, you shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.
The polls are closed, and we’ll know the results of the Scottish parliament elections, and whether or not Westminister has a different shitey voting system (SO EXCITING!) by Friday morning. SSY teams will be bringing you amazing liveblogging from the Glasgow and North East counts, with extra reporting from SSY’s secret underground complex. But this won’t be your normal boring Guardian liveblog - have a look at last years to get an idea of what to expect. This year, expect us to call for the deaths of EVEN MORE bastards! If we haven’t all gone crazy by the end of the counting, enjoy the liveblog!
Polls opened this morning and votes are currently being cast in the Scottish Parliamentary election. As #2 candidate on the Scottish Socialist Party’s Glasgow Regional List, I should be out at the polling stations, desperately trying to convince voters to put an ‘X’ beside Scotland’s only party of independence, socialism and internationalism. The bogging weather has driven me indoors, where the only way to ease my inactivity-related guilt is to blog about how all parties are bastards except the SSP.
The campaign has been characterised by Labour imploding under the laughable ‘leadership’ of the embarassingly shit Mr Gray; the main parties refusing to lay out resistance to cuts, while squabbling about such red-hot issues as whether or not to rejig emergency services’ management boards; and the public’s interest in Holyrood plummeting to an all-time low.
Gray gunning for power
Analysts are predicting victory for the pro-independence Scottish National Party, with an increase in their number of seats. This seemed highly unlikely at the start of the campaign, with Labour riding high in the polls, independence unpopular and Alex Salmond’s “arc of prosperity” reduced to rubble. So confident was I that Labour would romp it, I bet SSP Glasgow top-of-the-list candidate Frances Curran a hefty fiver that Iain Gray would be the next First Minister. Though I will weep at the loss of 10% of my weekly giro, I am mighty relieved that Elmer Fudd will not be leading my country for the next 5 years. (Dinnae fret about the cash either, ah’m gonnae pull a fly wan n dingy payin her).
If Scottish Labour’s beleaguered leader has done nothing else in this campaign, he has at least provided us with plenty of laughs -- at his expense. As well as allegedly shiting out of being in the same ASDA as Salmond while they were both visiting the seaside paradise of Ardrossan, the aptly-named Gray made headlines by running away from anti-cuts activists in Glasgow, seeking refuge in a local Subway branch. It’s not known whether he went for a 6-inch or a footlong, but if anything like his speeches, it would have been full of cheese and lacking substance with a nasty aftertaste. Many of the protesters wanted to speak to him about the planned closure of the Accord Centre in the East End, a vital resource for disabled people and their families, which the Labour Council are demolishing in favour of a car park for the Commonwealth Games. Check their facebook page here.
I’ve been out and voted already. And I will now undermine the principle of the secret ballot by telling you what I did. Firstly, I voted SSP (obv lol) on the regional ballot paper. The SSP look set to receive an increase in votes compared to the disastrous 2007 election, but we are likely to fall short of the numbers needed to return a socialist MSP. Oh wellz.
Then, I held my nose and voted for Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP in my constituency, just as I did in 2007. The way I see it, there have been many issues on which socialists would challenge the SNP-led Scottish Government of 2007-2011; not least dropping their policy of regulating the buses after receiving a substantial donation from Stagecoach millionaire Brian Soutar, or overruling Aberdeenshire Council and helping evil tycoon Donald Trump to ruin the world. But they are also head and shoulders above the rest -- including Labour -- from a progressive viewpoint. Their regime began with the Scottish Govt stepping in to save hospitals from closure in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire.
SAVE CRICHTON CAMPUS!
In the first few months of government, keen to avoid triggering clashes with popular resistance movements, they intervened to prevent damaging school mergers in Edinburgh (following a campaign led by SSY organiser Sarah, among others) and stopped the closure of Glasgow Uni’s Crichton Campus -- another campaign with a high level of input from our members. They nicked socialist policy and got rid of Prescription Charges, even if they did unnecessarily stagger it over 4 years, costing thousands of people money in “sick tax”, but making them look good just before this election. Shame they didn’t stick to their word when they (again borrowing from the SSP manifesto) said they’d scrap Council Tax. But they did destroy a key component of Thatcher’s legacy by abolishing “right to buy” on council housing. Sometimes politics comes down to a choice between 2 undesirable options, making the SNP & Salmond an easy choice compared to New Labour & Gray. Speaking of undesirable options…
There was the referendum on changing the electoral system to use Alternative Vote. I am in favour of real electoral reform, to break the stranglehold of the big-money mainstream parties and stop the crime of huge chunks of the population effectively being disenfranchised because they live in a local Labour/Tory/whoever dictatorship.
Props to Stefan
But AV will not change anything. The LibDems know it, the Yes campaign knows it, everyone knows it. And no-one even supports AV! However, I didn’t wanna vote to preserve FPTP. Also, I consider this an illegitimate plebiscite as it abuses the people’s wish for proportionality by offering 2 systems which aren’t proportional. Therefore I fulfilled a lifelong ambition, drawing a giant willy on the ballot paper. I also wrote “DO YOU THINK WE’RE STUPID? THIS REFERENDUM IS A FARCE” and “Clegg, Cameron, both are dicks”. Yas.
Thankfully in Scotland we have a slightly better electoral system (AMS), so there’s a chance a few Greens will get in. Some sources say there’s a chance that SNP+Greens+Margo McDonald could equal a pro-independence majority. Here’s hoping. From that point of view (and for several other reasons) it is to be hoped that arch-Unionist and sham-socialist George Galloway is not succesful in his self-serving effort to grab a seat in the Parly.
As time has gone on, the shine has somewhat faded from the once bright and hopeful Scottish Parliament. Certainly it was sad that the ‘Rainbow Parliament’ turned grey in 2007, with the SSP presence wiped out along with many other smaller parties and independents. The relatively low levels of interest in this campaign show that the Parliament is in danger of becoming irrelevant to most working-class people. There is only one way for Holyrood to prevent that: by representing the wishes of the vast majority of the Scottish people, and resisting the program of cuts and austerity which has been led by the ConDem coalition at Westminster.
Some career politicians may lie that the cuts are necessary, others that their Parliament can’t do anything. The social movements will pressurise them all. We must tell them: you may not have the constitutional capacity to defy the cuts, but there is certainly the political capacity, and it must be used. The people of Scotland would fully support a Parliament which offered an alternative, where public services are protected and expanded, and the rich are taxed more to pay for that. A defiant, anti-cuts Parliament would be a major act of Scottish self-determination and a key step towards an independent socialist republic.
The likelihood is, no matter who wins, we’ll get another crop of careerist bastards. But those in authority are vulnerable. I am optimistic about the capacity for struggle and change in Scotland, and I’m cheered by the recent emergence of a nascent grassroots anti-capitalist movement based on direct action and direct democracy. Whether the politicians respond or not, there is a new world to be built.
Well not exactly -- so far both the tyrannical Labour careerist and despotic leader of Egypt still cling to power, but at yesterday’s demo against cuts in EMA some students finally got close enough to their “leader” to tell them exactly what they think of him, leading him to flee the demo he was supposed to be speaking at under police protection. Your plane to Jeddah is waiting too Aaron!
Just to remind readers why Aaron Porter is a total dickhead, when student demonstrators occupied Millbank Aaron condemned their actions as being “despicable”, with no condemnation of police violence. He then flip flopped when it became clear that hundreds of thousands of students supported the occupation and (bar stupidity like throwing fire extinguishers) thought it was fantastic, and said that he and the NUS had been “spineless” on supporting the student movement against fees and cuts and he personally had “dithered”.
This conversion to radicalism didn’t last long -- Aaron Porter voted against a proposal for the NUS to back a second demonstration against cuts and fees, instead calling for a “candlelit vigil” to try and lobby MP’s. Aww bless. As if this wasn’t bad enough, leaked emails showed that Porter was calling on the Government to make massive cuts in grants -- £800 million over four years. This is alongside his public stance in favour of a graduate tax, which may not be as bad as tuition fees but still undermines the principles of free education based on academic merit, not your bank balance. It’s also a mad position for a union leader to take -- retreating from the principle of free education means you’ve conceded ground to the Tories you can’t retake.
Porter -- like all former NUS presidents bar one -- is a member of the Labour Party, and clearly views his role as president of NUS as being the first step on the Labour career ladder. Cuddly daytime politico Andrew Neil said that Porter sounded like “a future MP” when he was on his tv show -- a view that’s far from unlikely when you look at what exNUS presidents have gone on to do. Jack Straw, former foreign secretary was a former President of NUS as was racist liar Phil Woolas who was immigration minister.
Porter clearly doesn’t want to rock the boat too much and defend students interests in case he fucks up his chance of getting a cushy job in the shadow cabinet. When Porter came to speak at yesterdays rally against fees, hundreds of pissed off students went to confront their President about his conduct, he bolted and went to the police to get them to escort him away from his angry and revolting subjects. A fantastic piece o direct action against a sell out Labour hack, and lets hope it’s repeated any time Porter tries to posture against cuts until he resigns as NUS President and fucks off to become a researcher for a Labour backbencher.
Cheerio Porter
EDIT -- It’s been reported in the press that Porter was racially assaulted by protesters, that he was called a “fucking Jew”. If it did happen it’s contemptible and the folk who said that should be told to shut up or fuck off anti-cuts demos. A report from the Alliance for Workers Liberty who were at the demo said there was no evidence to suggest this happened, so either it’s a lie or it was just a couple o folk and not a large crowd of eejits chanting anti-semitic abuse.
Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.
So with the Coalition – remember, the ones that Ed’s official job is to oppose – embarking on the biggest offensive against the welfare state since its inception, surely the natural place to find him would be at the forefront of resistance to their austerity measures of cutbacks, job losses, wage freezes and VAT rises?
Alas, no. In fact, probably the only time you’ve seen Ed anywhere near the headlines since his election has been over a cabinet reshuffle last week, and his earth shattering decision last year to not attend any of the student protests. Not even the nice NUS candlelit vigils.
Last week, Ed came out and said that he opposed co-ordinated strike action to defeat the cuts. This is no great surprise, but a blunt display of how markedly to the right the Labour party are from even the mainstream union leadership, who at least are employing the rhetoric of industrial action, if not the action itself. As we reported last week, Miliband has also been pandering to the right-wing press over the mythical ‘Royal Wedding Strikes’, saying that he finds the idea “appalling” and “totally condemns it”.
On top of this, not-very-red Ed has “strongly implied” that, nevermind backing strike action, he isn’t even willing to march against the cuts. And we’re not talking about some semi-legal student kettle frenzy, the march in question is about official as demonstrations go: the one organised by the Trades Union Congress for Saturday 26 March in central London – the demo that the TUC leadership have eventually called about a year after everyone wanted them to. Instead, all Ed can say is this: “What we are not going to do under my leadership is go back to the heroic failures of the 1980s which set the party back… Industrial action is not the way you change governments. You do it through the ballot box.”
Well that’s us told. Sit tight for the next four years and then on 7 May 2015 we’ll elect a Labour government and everything will be fine. Or not, as the case may be. RMT leader Bob Crow is right when he says that we “don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next general election… Con-Dem attacks on jobs, services and standards of living are hitting us now”.
26 March will be a key date for the movement to beat the cuts and the coalition. Hundreds of thousands – maybe more – will march in London. Unions are mobilising members from across the country – a number of trains have already been booked to run from Scotland, and dozens of coaches will also be heading down.
Let’s be clear, marching in itself will not be enough to defeat the ConDem’s agenda. But it can be a springboard for the sort of action that can. The student movement which exploded off the back of November’s NUS demo is a good example of what a big demo can achieve, managing to spark action across the country and bringing the coalition to the verge of their first defeat, thinning their majority dramatically.
Regardless of the attitude that the officials and bureaucrats within the trade union movement, the NUS or, for that matter, Ed Miliband , think, a huge militant demo has the potential to give a confidence boost to millions of workers across the country, and kickstart momentum for industrial action.
Autonomous groups have already started building for mass resistance on the 26th. A mysterious website, purporting to be from the ‘armed wing of the Trades Union Congress’ have initiated a call-out for decentralised mass action in London on the day. They’ve also got a wee bit ahead of themselves and started calling for all power to the soviets, but we share the general sentiment. Last weekend’s ‘Network X’ conference, of anti-cuts activists from across the country, also supported the call-out for direct action on 26 March that goes beyond simply being herded from one park to another to listen to speeches by a few TU leaders.
The Labour party have had 10 months now in which to show which side they’re on. The party’s leadership have no interest in fighting the cuts, being careerists of the worst kind, who’d rather sit back quietly for the next few years and hope they get elected sometime in the future. The time to fightback is now, and hopefully March 26 can prove to be the beginning of the end for this government’s austerity programme.
As the Lib Dems prepare for their first election – a by-election in Oldham – since they jumped in bed wi the Tories, it’s looking likely that not only will they not be able to win the seat, but they will be crushed at the polls. Even David Cameron has felt some sympathy for the poor Lib Dems and says the Tories aren’t really trying to win the by-election – a bit like when your dad gives in to your shit tackles when you’re wee to let you win.
In fact Labour will almost certainly win back this seat, and with a much increased majority. There doesn’t appear to be any dent at all in Labour’s support, despite the fact that “Red” Ed Miliband picked the racist chancer Phil Woolas to be his Shadow Immigration Minister while he was under investigation by the courts.
Even worse for the Lib Dems is that their vote in Oldham – which will collapse – will be far higher than the national average that the Lib Dems are currently polling at, a measly 7%. Since selling his soul to the Tories Nick Clegg has transformed from a messiah figure to the most hated man in Britain.
In fact the collapse in the Lib Dems vote has been so massive, even the Taliban in Afghanistan currently have more support than the Lib Dems – despite Mullah Omar’s controversial stances on gay marriage, stem cell research, international jihad and the flying of kites. Approximately 9% of the Afghan public support the Taliban taking over again – and more worryingly for Nato – 27% of Afghans support attacks on Nato soldiers occupying the country.
That’s a massive section of public support, and it’s even worse when the insurgents are fighting from impenetrable mountain territory basically doing the same thing they’ve done on and off for the past couple of hundred years – repel any and all attempts to invade and occupy them.
Both polls should be wake up calls to the people who run the UK; in Afghanistan the occupation of the country by the British and American military is actually helping build support for arguably the most mental and repressive group o folk on the planet – while at the same time the second party of Government in the UK has less support than these same crazies because of their sellouts.
"We want to look over those proposals for PR again Mr Duncan Smith"
And remember Lib Dems this is before you actually put a million folk on the dole and cut public services worse than Thatcher. Wi these kind of poll ratings though the Condem coalition is very weak and with enough resolve the anti-cuts movement can force out the Government before we see the Lib Dems vote collapse even further – which is admittedly a bit of a shame.
This weekend people are coming out again to protest against the tax dodging greedy megacorp Vodafone. At 10am at St Enoch’s subway, Glasgow (if there’s going to be anything happening elsewhere in Scotland this weekend, get in touch and let us know!) the people’s debt collectors will be meeting again to try and recover some of the estimated £6 billion in unpaid tax that Vodafone owes us all.
You might remember last weekend we were part of a group of activists that had a 9 hour picket of Vodafone on Buchanan Street, shutting them down all day. The reason for this is that it’s emerged Vodafone were hiding profits in a subsidiary in Luxembourg, and therefore managing to dodge paying tax on the huge amounts they’ve had rolling in.
When this multi-billion effort to defraud the people was found out by the government was discovered, the government took the generous decision that, despite their claims that the country is “broke”, that they didn’t need to bother recovering the full amount, and let them off with a derisory settlement.
A common question that people asked on the streets last week was simply, “Why?” This week, in preparation for more direct action, we took a look at why it is Vodafone was allowed by the government to get away with such blatant bastardry.
Vodafone are the 4th largest company in the FTSE 100 index, and is one of the most powerful British companies. But their tax dodging is just the tip of the iceberg, with all the UK’s biggest businesses in on the act of cheating us out of what we deserve. The problem didn’t come about overnight, and it’s not just the Tories fault. In fact, the Labour government was just as bad as the Tories at letting their pals in big business away with incredibly bad behaviour.
As Chancellor, Gordon Brown loved letting big time tax dodgers get away with murder, boasting to the CBI that they were using “not just a light touch, but a limited touch”. In 2001, he commissioned Dave Hartnett (who’s now the Revenue and Customs Permanent Secretary for tax, and ultimately responsible for the Vodafone decision) to review the procedures of the government staff responsible for catching corporate tax dodgers.
Dave Hartnett, the tax dodgers' best friend
The result was a “new, faster approach, focusing only on the most important issues”, a “collaborative approach”, based on “mutual trust.” Translation: we’re going to stop bothering our arses about pretending to enforce the law when it comes to big business.
The result was a string of bad news for those of us unfortunate enough to be forced to pay our taxes. Cable and Wireless got away with paying just £380 million for a bill which they’d set aside £1.8 billion for. Then, rubbing salt in the wound, the HMRC sold their own offices to Mapeley, a tax avoiding company which was registered in Bermuda!
The HMRC were forced by this bad publicity to tighten up a bit, but pretty soon bosses club the CBI was screaming that it was all so unfair. So in 2006, Gordon Brown asked the then head of tax, David Varney (who himself had been responsible for a major tax avoidance as head of 02) to set up another review to see how else they could give them everything they wanted on a plate. Part of the team coming up with new tax plans were Ken Hanna of Cadbury Schweppes (up in court at the time for hiding profits in Ireland), Jon Symonds of AstraZeneca (who had been caught out using transfer pricing to hide profits) and Richard Lapthorne of Cable and Wireless who we already mentioned. Unsurprisingly, the results were not tough on tax dodging!
They agreed there was need for more “mutual trust and respect” (a bit like how cops need to get on with gangsters?), and so they halved the time they would work on investigations on tax dodging overseas, many tax inspectors saw their jobs rebranded as “customer relationship managers” charged with giving “low risk status” to the “well behaved”, and Dave Hartnett promised to intervene personally, (which many staff felt would make them lose credibility in doing there job if Hartnett could go over their head, as he was to do with Vodafone).
The truth is that the HMRC is fighting a war against a nuclear power with swords and muskets. Big business snap up the best and brightest financial minds to execute the most complex and incomprehensible dodging schemes to hide their profits from us, and those out to catch them have just 600 staff to cope with over 700 dodgy organisations. When you take it into account these staff are fighting with one hand tied behind their back by successive Labour and ConDem governments, it’s not hard to see why some are tempted by the up to £40 grand a year more they can make if they defect from the gamekeepers to the poachers, and start working for tax dodgers instead.
That’s exactly what the director of the large businesses unit at HMRC, John Connors, did in 2007, jumping ship to become head of tax at Vodafone, with those he left behind to try and claw back some of the profit they’d been hiding abroad feeling “betrayed”. Not Dave Hartnett, who by this time was in charge, though. Dave kept working closely with John, culminating in the settlement that was reached that has so outraged anti-cuts protesters over the last couple of weeks. Connors brought intimate knowledge of the way HMRC was dealing with big tax dodgers to his new job, along with personal contacts there, that will have proved invaluable for those fighting the good fight for Vodafone to hang on to money they owe us.
Gideon hawking Vodafone in India
But was there more to the story of how Vodafone got away with it than just a culture of acting as yes men for big business? Just days after the announcement of the settlement, Chancellor Gideon ‘George’ Osborne was in India hawking Vodafone. Over there, Vodafone has another set of tax problems, where it’s been ordered to pay back $2.5 billion it dodged from another offshore deal. It surely wouldn’t look good to have people at the top of the UK government essentially acting as Vodafone salesman when they had two outstanding massive tax deals, and so many are suggesting that the government encouraged their end of the process along by letting Vodafone get away with it.
In the meantime, the government has cut the rate of tax for big businesses to 21%, which in real terms works out more like 17%, meaning that big businesses are paying less of a tax rate than you are in VAT or income tax, and less than small businesses as well. Decisions like the one made for Vodafone only encourage them to try and get away with even this ridiculously low rate – only 33 of the companies in the FTSE 100 publish where all their subsidiaries are, even though the law says they have to.
Indeed, for the heads of big companies, there is a personal incentive to dodge corporate tax. Company directors often pocket bonuses based on earnings per share, meaning that every pound they save in tax is more money for them. This shows why a “relationship of trust and respect” is never going to work with these daylight robbers – there is no amount of nice chat that is going to be more persuasive than the prospect of massive bonuses and billion in extra revenue.
It’s time to get tough with the tax dodgers, and if the only way we can make that happen is with direct action then so be it. The government claim they have no choice but to implement cuts, but they’ve made a cut with their approach to corporate tax, and that choice is to leave billions of pounds in private hands instead of what it should be used for – the benefit of society. It’s time to get out on the streets to show we’re not accepting that.
Meet 10am, St Enoch’s Subway, Glasgow, Sat Nov 6th.
Notorious New Labour Knobhead Phil Woolas is facing explusion from Parliament after a court ruled today that he’d broken electoral law during his successful re-election campaign in May. This is after he lied throughout his election material, which falsely claimed that his rival Lib Dem candidate was being “wooed” by Islamist extremists.
Indeed, it didn’t stop there: Woolas decided to centre his whole campaign around the “tough” line he’d taken as immigration minister from 2008-2010. He managed to weave a whole fantasy around this: that “militant Muslims” were waging a war against him in alliance with a local Lib Dem candidate and his party’s crazy plans to circumvent local planning rules to build Mosques in every street, and give an amnesty to “hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants”. The special election court’s ruling today means that Woolas will be barred from parliament for three years, and a by-election will now be held in his seat.
Woolas claims to have come into politics as an anti-racist campaigner – he joined the Labour Party in college and ran a “campaign against Paki-bashing”. He was elected in 1997, in one of the most ethnically diverse seats in the country, Oldham East. Phil said in 2008: “It’s had a race riot, it’s had a huge BNP presence and it’s a marginal seat. It’s a complete crucible. But we’ve never had a BNP councillor – I hope I’ve had something to do with that by getting in and getting dirty.”
It’s now fairly evident what Woolas meant by “getting in and getting dirty”. He didn’t mean confronting the BNP’s ideas, politically and in the streets. He didn’t mean proving the BNP’s politics to be based on lies and hysteria, division and hate. No, it’s now clear that he meant taking the votes of the BNP by seizing the ground of the BNP. And not by talking about real issues that the far-right do occasionally bring up, but by pandering to their obsession with “Islamic extremism”, immigration, and asylum seekers. The Labour Party were so impressed that, after years of scapegoating Muslim women and refugees, he was given the role of Immigration Minister in 2008. He proceeded with glee in his new role of kicking out desperate asylum seekers, attacking charities that offer vital help to them and appeasing the right wing press with his tough talk on “immigration caps” and jobs for the “indigenous population”.
Phil Woolas is a racist fuck, no mistaking that. He made a calculated decision that whipping up racial tension in his area – which as he helpfully reminds us, suffered serious race riots less than a decade ago – would be a sure-fire vote winner. Much of the commentary surrounding Woolas’ outrageous election material has stated that his leaflets read more like something the BNP or UKIP would produce than a supposed social-democratic party. But Woolas didn’t face victimisation or even official condemnation in his party – in fact his outright Islamophobia was applauded, with “lefty saviour” Ed Miliband appointing him as a shadow Home Office minister, responsible for immigration, in his new opposition cabinet!
They weren’t the leaflets of the BNP or UKIP, they were just the leaflets of a Labour Party beset by racist, anti-immigrant populism. All Woolas did was take twelve years of racist Labour policies to their logical conclusion andstuck it on a leaflet. What he said wasn’t much worse than what the wider party was proclaiming during the election – and then when Labour lost, the leadership became stuck on blaming the fact that their discourse on the issue hadn’t been right-wing enough, that they’d “failed to connect”. With the exception of Diane Abbott (who finished last with 7% of the vote), every candidate in the recent Labour leadership election was united in holding this view. Andy Burnham said of immigration, in a comment surely worthy of the BNP: ”People aren’t racist, but they say it has increased tension, stopped them getting access to housing and lowered their wages”. Go figure.
Burnham is lying – the Labour Party are convinced that most working class people are racist. No one would dispute that racism is a large problem in our society – but the way to get around this is to challenge and confront racist ideas wherever they come from, not pander to it through racist immigration laws and anti-terror legislation that serves little purpose beyond being a useful tool to harass Muslims.
Phil Woolas may have gone through a technicality of electoral law , but the ideas he represents are still every bit ingrained within the Labour Party.
After the most vicious battle between two brothers since Van Damme vs Van Damme in Double Impact, the victor for Labour leader has finally been declared. In a surprising result, Ed Miliband has defeated his brother David, despite being much geekier with him, not as good with women and not allowed to stay up as late as him during weeknights.
It’s also surprising given the New Labour/Media campaign against him, with Peter Mandelson denouncing him for losing them the last election. Mandy also declared any candidate – i.e. Ed Miliband – who wasn’t New Labour enough would lose the next election. The Daily Mail got in on the act by labelling him “Red Ed”, in a feat of tabloid literary imagination not seen since the Sun’s classic “Super caley go ballistic Celtic are atrocious”.
The justification for this campaign to brand Ed a dangerous Old Labour style Socialist comes from his left posturing during the leadership election, which includes support from the unions and a call for a living wage. As far as anything the Labour leadership candidates called for (with the exception of possibly Diane Aboott) the living wage was the most eye catching and progressive demand by far. While this might not be saying much now Ed is Labour leader Socialists in the SSP, SSY and Labour should push for him to pressure all Labour controlled councils to enact his living wage policy.
It was this willingness to at least sound a bit left-wing and break from the Blairite vs Brown infighting that won Ed the Labour leadership. Despite losing to his brother in the membership and MP/MEP votes, he had a clear lead in the union votes. Expect this to be used by the Tories and their media allies to attack the Labour Party as a puppet of the Unions.
The reality behind the red-baiting is that Ed Miliband is no Socialist or progressive. His campaign has simply been willing to make left sounding noises without any real substance to back it up. Ed has also had the advantage of not being in New Labour politics long enough to accumulate much dirt on his hands. Unlike his brother, he wasn’t involved in torture flights, or Brown’s economic policy like Ed Balls. He also managed to avoid being in the parliament for the vote on the Iraq war.
In his last position of responsibility in Government as Climate secretary however, Ed managed to reveal his true colours in putting the UK with the rest of the Western world in a campaign to bash the poorer countries over climate change at the Copenhagen summit. Socialist Resistance member Liam Macuaid has an interesting piece on his blog detailing how “Red Ed” tried to coeerce poorer countries into accepting a deal that would allow the US and other developed countries to continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Proposals by Venezuela and Boliva to examine capitalism as an economic system being responsible for he destruction of the environment were dismissed by Ed Miliband, who was much more keen on blaming China and whitewashing the West. So much for “Red Ed”.
Ed’s already been trying to break away from the Unions who got him his position. One of his supporters, ex-Labour leader Neil Kinnock said,
“Ed Miliband owes the trade unions nothing. They haven’t asked and he certainly hasn’t offered, nor will he agree to any form of supportive role or order-taking. He’s certainly not enthralled to the unions, although obviously the support of some of the unions and some of the union members was immensely valuable.”
His first act as Labour leader has been to conduct interviews with the BBC laying down the line immediately that he is “his own man” and not in hoc to the unions. He’s already aiming for the same “middle England centre ground” Tony Blair did when he became Labour Leader.
Ed’s flagship “Left” policy, the campaign for a living wage is also a fraud – it is only about putting pressure on institutions to implement a decent wage, instead of a legal compulsion to do so. That’s quite unlike the SSP and SSY’s demand for an £8 an hour minimum wage to be enshrined by law for every worker over 16.
Labour are already seeing a new lease of life in many areas due to the brutal cuts planned by the Conservatives and the betrayal of the Lib Dems. In Scotland it looks likely that Labour will be the largest party in Holyrood next year. This resurgence in support for Labour has meant a lot of folk on the Left have advocated rejoining Labour, arguing it’s still the natural party of the working class.
But the fact that Miliband is considered a “left” shows how weak the left is in the Labour Party – any candidate not explicitly a Blairite is painted as being red. This is alongside John McDonnell being unable even to get on the ballot, and the candidate of the Socialist left being Diane Abott - who only got 7% of the vote and was eliminated first.
It’s definitely true that the situation for the Socialist left outside the Labour Party isn’t good – but at least outside Labour you can put forward your own ideas and arguments about how to oppose the condems cuts, withdraw troops from Afghanistan and stop climate change to the general public. In Labour you’re trapped in a party where the left can’t even get on the ballot – and is eliminated first before it’s even able to start reaching out to people.
I hear from my super sleekit pals in the meedjuh that Ruth Black, the Glasgow councillor and manager of the Glasgow LGBT centre who I just finished writing about, has been expelled from the Labour Party! Deary me. I guess there might be some truth in some of those accusations after all…? Perhaps a website update is in order, Castro webmaster.
ETA: Well, the party have suspended her and Gordon Matheson has withdrawn the Labour whip from her; in the world of murky Labour politics that’s as good as a straight expulsion. In other news, a stunning victory as SSY scoop The Herald on their own exclusive. Yaaaaas!
Unfortunately, as expected, Glasgow is about to lose its LGBT centre for the second time in less than two years due to the immediate withdrawal of the centre’s £50,000 grant. As much as Labour will want to put this down to one bad apple (and let’s be clear that this loss of another LGBT centre must be laid squarely at Ruth Black’s feet) this never would have happened without good old cronyism. And what exactly have they allowed to happen? Well, pretty much all the awful shit we detailed yesterday, but since this wee internal investigation is over we can stop being so coy and break out the juicier details.
- The centre’s management (ie Ruth Black) are under investigation by HMRC because despite deducting it from employee pay they have paid no tax or NI over for seven months. Naughty naughty! And also totally tragically hillarious from someone who has spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to convince everyone of what a good socialist she is. If the employees’ NI credits aren’t made up then they can lose pension and benefit entitlements. Fantastic. Well done Ruth!
- Part of the £50,000 grant for the council was used to buy a private car for someone.
- Huge phone bills have been run up and charged to the centre and stupid amounts of money have been paid to a Perth games machine company without any profits being declared.
- Ruth Black employed her partner’s son which is totally contrary to council grant rules. OOPS!
- The Centre has had its building insurance withdrawn because of non payment of premiums. OOOOOOOPS!
- Ruth Black has been operating the centre with no public or employee liability insurance. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPS!
Ruth comes up with another brilliant money saving idea
However, good old Ruth has promised that the centre will continue to trade without the council grant. Do I really have to spell out why that is a totally stupid idea that is never, ever going to happen? Ruth has managed to get the centre into £45,000 of debt, but has only received £20,000 of the council grant and wont be getting any more. That’s called being insolvent Ruth, and we aren’t even taking into account your eventual bill from HMRC and the fact that you’re trading illegally without proper liability insurance. Apart from that, does anyone in the Glasgow LGBT community want this woman in charge after the uncovering of this mess? My guess is no. You have to wonder what the hell Ruth’s actually been doing at the centre apart from skimming money off the top and making a shitload of phonecalls. I suppose the answer to that is nothing. Perhaps someone should have explained to her that saving money for yourself and saving money for the centre are two different things, and that things like insurance and paying for your beer are really not expenses that you can neglect.
No matter what Ruth Black says, the Castro centre is finished. Well fucking done Ruth for ruining Glasgow’s second LGBT centre after the first one closed in other mysterious circumstances, and congratulations for beating the last one by having your spectacular flaming failure before the centre’s even been open for a year! Ruth Black should never be in any kind of position of authority in the Glasgow LGBT community again, and here’s hoping that this debacle helps encourage folk to take charge and demand the LGBT centre that they want, instead of the centre that the council want.
Maybe Ruth will want to follow her good pal Steven’s example and make a rapid exit for a holiday in the sun where she can get away from nasty rumour mongering bastards like us. Might I suggest the Cayman Islands? I think it’d be right up Ruth’s street.
Before you jet off though Ruth, fancy explaining what the hell you’ve been doing with the centre, and where the stolen tax and national insurance is?
Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.
This weekend people are coming out again to protest against the tax dodging greedy megacorp Vodafone. At 10am at St Enoch’s subway, Glasgow (if there’s going to be anything happening elsewhere in Scotland this weekend, get in touch and let us know!) the people’s debt collectors will be meeting again to try and recover some of the estimated £6 billion in unpaid tax that Vodafone owes us all.
Notorious New Labour Knobhead Phil Woolas is facing explusion from Parliament after a court ruled today that he’d broken electoral law during his successful re-election campaign in May. This is after he lied throughout his election material, which falsely claimed that his rival Lib Dem candidate was being “wooed” by Islamist extremists.
They weren’t the leaflets of the BNP or UKIP, they were just the leaflets of a Labour Party beset by racist, anti-immigrant populism. All Woolas did was take twelve years of racist Labour policies to their logical conclusion andstuck it on a leaflet. What he said wasn’t much worse than what the wider party was 
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