| At this time of year in both 2021 and 2020, the threat of a new Covid variant threatening lives and economic disruption was top of the news agenda.
A year on Covid may no longer be the main story, but the sense of chaos and crisis are still very present.
The Covid lockdowns, war in Ukraine, a productivity crisis and the calamitous Truss budget have combined to leave the UK economy in quite a bad place, with high inflation and low wage growth meaning we are facing the biggest drop in living standards on record.
This makes it unsurprising that this December we are seeing the biggest strikes for a generation, as workers across sectors, particularly in the public sector (whose wages have been hit the hardest in recent years) call for inflation busting pay rises, all while the government refuses to support negotiations.
Our work on inequality and high pay, however, shows that the pain is not being felt equally across the economy, as CEO pay has more than bounced back after a brief period during the pandemic when the gap between CEO and worker pay shrunk.
Meanwhile the number of billionaires in the UK is still growing, and calls for increasing taxes on wealth continue to make news headlines and resonate with the general public.
But if Jeremy Hunt’s recently announced reforms to the City are anything to go by, which includes removing the cap on bankers’ bonuses, serious action on tackling inequality is unlikely to be high up on the government’s agenda in the new year. |
The strike wave has to be supported but we now, thanks to the crisis the Tories have inflicted on us, have hardship, poverty and hunger stalking the land. And it’s not mass unemployment. It’s the working poor who are being hit.
Heat or eat will soon become neither for millions of people as they can’t afford to pay energy bills or buy sufficient food, leaving them dependent on the charity of food banks and soup kitchens.
At this early stage of a crisis that is only going to worsen, surely the Left – or what remains of it – and the trade unions should be making preparations to organise Hunger March-type protests like the CP, the ILP and the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement did in the 1920s and 1930s.
May I suggest that fuel prices are the main cause of inflation and economic hardship, especially affecting the price of food. May I also suggest the massive increases in electricity and gas could easily have been avoided and are a product of what may be described as gross economic mismanagement, but what if this is deliberate policy? Who gains? The stock markets are not collapsing and currencies are stable, in fact the dollar is increasing in value. Energy companies have recorded record profits, but untouched by tax as fuel prices continue to increase…..all the fault of Vladimir Putin?
No fuel storage facilities in GB and an immediate call to increase nuclear power to facilitate the 40 per cent increase in nuclear armament announced by Boris Johnson as a final gesture to world peace and after 12 years of Tory gov’t the only policy on offer is more austerity and a massive decrease in living standards for the working class. ‘The class war is over’, who says?
The Soviet Union collapsed because its economy was undermined by the ‘Western Alliances’, and now an attempt is being made to repeat the process, but who pays? This of course is the price we must pay to protect democracy so we can go ‘rockin’ in the free world’ (sic). This is NATO’s war, but you try telling this truth to power on the BBC.
Nordstream 2 was blown up & an immediate investigation launched as to find ‘who done it?’ MSM speculated that it was the Russians who blew up their own newly built pipeline. The investigation has been completed and………..nothing; silence; no mention as the price of gas continues to rise. Nordstream 2 never existed. There is evidence to suggest that it was the USA that destroyed it, a hostile act aimed at the people of Europe who will pay the price.
The Western Alliances’, especially GB/USA/EU could make ‘arrangements’ with their ‘friends’ in the Persian Gulf to lower the cost of energy, but this will not happen and the only beneficiary will be nuclear and the oil rich kingdoms.
Good to know that the 4th Estate will protect democracy and promote free and open debate courtesy of Rupert Murdoch.