Despite the global recession, record unemployment and demands to cut public spending across the world Forbes has revealed that the wealth of the richest billionaires has continued to increase. The global financial crisis has still not stopped the rich from becoming even richer. This year, Bill Gates has been toppled from the number 1 richest by a Mexican Businessman Carlos Slim.

Slim now has a personal wealth estimated at $53 Billion – thats an increase from last year of $18 Billion. Slim’s personal wealth is even more disgusting when you consider that his home country of Mexico still faces widespread poverty – the average Mexican income is only $14,500 and 17% of the country lives below the poverty line. Slim makes his money through his telecom empire Telmex, which operates as a virtual monopoly controlling 90% of Mexico’s phone lines.

Despite his personal wealth increasing by $13 billion, the much more recognisable face of Bill Gates has been bumped into second place. Gates may have made his millions out of a genuine creative ability to redefine how people work with computers, but in order to keep the company he founded – Microsoft – dominant in the market they have had to form their own monopoly like Slim. Microsoft are increasingly threatened by superior and free open source operating systems for computers and have instituted technical measures that will allow them to keep their market share at the price of holding back progress in computer technology.

In at number 5 is Lakshmi Mittal, once the UK’s richest man. Mittal is a steel magnate whose personal wealth stands at $28.7 Billion. Mittal’s Kazakh mines have been condemned by the coalminers working in them, for their appalling safety record. More than 90 miners have died in his mines since 2004, and many of the miners condemn Mittals lax health and safety precautions as being even worse than during the Soviet era. Mittal has also done damage to the environment in the pursuit of naked profit – in 1998 Mittal bought a steel plant for only £1 in Cork, 3 years later not only had he made the workforce of 400 redundant but left the Irish taxpayer of a bill of €70m for the damage his plant had caused to Cork harbour.

The total number of billionaires on the list has increased from 793 to 1011, and their average net worth has increased to $3.5 billion, an increase of $500 million from last year. Interestingly the number of billionaires outside of the western world has rocketed – the number of Chinese Billionaires has doubled, and there are more Billionaires in Russia now than any European country.

Alongside Chinese Billionaires there has been an increase in the number of Indian Billionaires – showing that despite the massive poverty in India, there are a few who are able to live lives beyond the imagination of their workforce. In both China and Russia the dismantling of large parts of the planned economy and the welfare state has allowed a massive transfer of wealth to these Billionaires, which accounts for their ability to challenge the dominance of western Billionaires on the rich list.

The next time David Cameron, Nick Clegg, or Gordon Brown tell us about the necessity of sacrifice, about how were all in it together, or that it’s unreasonable for people to demand a defence of their jobs or living conditions remember this list. For the past 30 years Thatcherism and its equivalents in Europe and the US have made the rich richer than they could have possibly imagined in the 70’s, at the costs of the welfare state and the right to work. Now even in a global recession – the worst in 80 years – they are still getting richer, and expect us to pay for their mistakes.

“]

PCS in Glasgow [photo: john lanigan

 Thirty thousand civil servants (people who work in places like the Scottish Parliament, job centres, courts and tax offices) are on strike in Scotland today.
The action is being taken by members of the PCS trade union, over changes to redundancy entitlement which mean that if staff lose their job, they could also lose up to a third of what they would’ve previously been paid as compensation. The government is hoping to save £500,000 through this scheme.
What makes this so important at the current time, is that both Labour and the Tories are intent on pushing through massive cuts in the public sector, including job losses  - and now they don’t even want workers taking redundancy to even get decent compensation!

Meanwhile at the Student Loans Company – where workers are also represented by the PCS union – management are looking to lay off around around 150 staff in Glasgow – 20% of the total workforce!
Now, if you’re a student, you’re probably already pretty familiar with the SLC – last year, the issuing of loans was left in chaos, with tens of thousands of students starting the year with no money whatsoever. And these are the loans that have to be paid back, with interest, remember – no student grants for us! Predictably enough, it soon emerged that at the same time as students weren’t receiving their loans, senior executives in the SLC were getting massive bonuses – in some cases, up to five figures. And now, the same management have unveiled their plan to slash nearly 200 jobs across the country, which will presumably make the whole loans thing be even more efficient this year than it was last year, while hundreds of workers are thrown onto the scrapheap at the same time. Logic!

Mairi Cranie, an SSY member who works at the SLC in Glasgow, explained: “The Student Loans Company is cutting almost 200 jobs, the majority of which are in Glasgow. Forty-five of these jobs are moving from Hillington to Darlington at no saving to the tax payer. This will impact families across the west of Scotland and the service for both current students and people in the process of repaying their loans.”

You can sign a petition against the cuts at the SLC here: http://www.gopetition.com/online/34078.html
The PCS strike continues tomorrow, so get down yr local picket line and offer them some support!

At some point in the next couple of months there’s going to be a General Election.

It’s looking frighteningly possible that we’ll be under the rule of Dave “I’m just an ordinary bloke” Cameron and his gang of merry buffoons.

Scared yet?

You should be.

Leftfield presents the Top 10 Tory Terrors…

1. They want to strip back women’s abortion rights, piece by piece, until we’re left with no choice and nowhere to go.

2. They want to force people on Jobseeker’s Allowance for more than 12 months to do community service. That is, effectively creating a slave workforce of the unemployed.

3. They want to cut benefits to single mothers in order to ‘encourage marriage’ – or just punish women stupid enough to get pregnant to men who’ll leave them with the wean.

4. The Conservatives plan to repeal the fox hunting ban, making it perfectly acceptable to rip an animal to shreds just for a laugh.

5. Their determination to stop immigration has caused them to come up with some crazy ideas – not only are they going to set up a Border Police Force, but they’re going to force any woman entering the country with a man other than her father or husband to a private interrogation. WTF?!?

The Tories on a YBF school trip.

6. They plan to allow anyone to open up a school, in the ridiculous belief that exposing schools to the capitalist free market and competition will improve standards, in a move criticised by the Association of School and College Leaders.

7. Tory candidates and activists are trained by the terrifying Young Britons’ Foundation, who want to scrap the NHS and shoot environmentalists. The YBF took the young Tories to meet scary American right-wingers and shoot machine guns. Sounds like one of those terrorist training grounds they’re so worried about…

8. The Tories have promised to bring us a new age of austerity, slashing public spending, freezing pay for public sector workers and putting thousands of people out of work.

9. They want to completely privatise the Royal Mail, and have already been in talks with some private vultures bidders who are up for buying it. This will lead to a crappy service, posties out of work, and those kept getting shite pay and conditions.

10. In return for the support of the right wing papers he owns, the Tories have basically offered to let Rupert Murdoch and family write their media policy. This means major cuts to the BBC, weakening of regulation of his media empire, and generally much less good telly and media, as Rupert expands his stranglehold with government support.

Young David and chums in their uni days. Cameron is second from the left in the back row, Boris Johnson is sitting on the right

It was announced this week that the BBC is planning to make sweeping cuts, including shutting down BBC 6 Music and the Asian Network.

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that whoever gets into government after the general election is going to try and slash public services of all kind. Both Labour and the Tories are obsessed with getting back the money the government has spent on bailing out banks, and they intend to get it back from you and me.

In the case of the BBC, it’s no secret that the Tories have done a major deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News International. The Murdoch family control Sky TV, The Sun and a host of the UK’s most powerful media outlets. In return for their support, the Tories have effectively let the Murdochs write their media policy. Part of this agenda is cutting the funding of the BBC, so that it can compete less effectively with their products.

But what’s shocking about the cuts announced by BBC Director General Mark Thompson is that they are trying to pre-empt these cuts by making their own. It’s an approach that will fail in any kind of public service that tries it. The only way to stop cuts is to fight them from day one, not try and make them more acceptable.

The National Union of Journalists understands this, and has pledged resistance. Their General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Mark Thompson has put BBC management on a collision course – not just with us and the hundreds of BBC staff who face losing  their jobs, but with licence fee payers up and down the country.

“BBC management’s strategy of desperate, hopeful self-sacrifice is fundamentally flawed. Far from convincing an incoming government or commercial rivals that the BBC should now be left well alone, their self-harming approach will only encourage commercial media operations to demand more cuts. Public outrage at the proposed cuts has been overwhelming. A ‘Save BBC6 Music’ Facebook group has gained almost 90,000 members in just a few days and group members have appealed to us and other BBC unions to organise a joint demonstration. We’ve seen an increase in requests for membership from BBC staff right across the UK.”

Vaizey: Posh Wank trying to look cool

The closure of 6 Music has attracted the biggest outcry, including a lot of support from music celebrities like David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker and Lily Allen. One of our favourites was Adam Buxton, of the Adam and Joe Show, inviting Mark Thompson out for a fight. Some have even suggested that it may well be a deliberate headline grabber, with the BBC manufacturing a controversy so that it can demonstrate how much public support there is for BBC output. This theory was given a boost when Tory culture spokesman Ed Vaizey (who, as a the son of a life peer, in fact bears the title ‘The Honourable Edward Vaizey’), tried depserately to prove how in-touch, cool and not posh he was by changing his mind to support 6 Music. He initially came out in support of the proposals. But once he saw this might make him fall foul of the Facebook/Twitter cool vanguard he quickly changed his mind and declared himself a fan of the station.

Whether in fact it is true that the closure of 6 Music is some kind of conspiracy double-bluff by the BBC remains to be seen-it’s certainly the service with the most public (and celebrity) support, and may well get saved. But as several presenters have pointed out, Asian Network listeners are less likely to be able to mobilise famous people in support, and are also less likely to be Facebook or Twitter users able to generate a huge campaign online. The majority of listeners get the Asian Network via AM rather than digital radio.

The BBC argues that the Asian community in the UK is made up of many different groups, from different places, with different languages and religions. This is absolutely right, Asians in the UK are not a homogeneous group. Where they get it wrong is then going on to say that the idea of a national network that can serve this whole community was never going to work. As one presenter argues, the network brings the communities together, as well as allowing discussion of controversial issues without the racism and ignorance in much of the rest of the mainstream media. Although there are other Asian-based radio stations throughout the country, there is no comparable UK-wide media outlet for the Asian community (and indeed the many white listeners, like me, that enjoy its programmes too!)

The other part of the cuts package is slashing the BBC website, especially the brands aimed at teenagers BBC Switch and Blast! The reasoning behind this is that the teenage audience is already being served by Channel 4. But the whole point of the BBC is that everyone pays for it, and everyone gets something out of it. Once we start accepting that teenagers are better served elsewhere, well let’s not forget that there’s Sky News or ITN to cover the news too. Where does it end? With the BBC providing only niche programming which others don’t do because it isn’t profitable. Teenagers have as much right to expect some service in return for the licence fee which either they or their parents pay as anyone else does.

If it is the case that the BBC needs to save money, then Leftfield has come up with a few ways this could be done with no impact on the quality of programmes. Currently, the BBC pisses gigantic sums of money into the bank accounts of a few people who really don’t need it. This is money paid in by the public via the licence fee. Let’s start with the top:

-BBC Director General Mark Thompson is on a salary of £834, 000. This is several-hundreds-of-grands more than Gordon Brown gets paid, and enough to pay for more than 7 months of 6 Music’s total costs.

Moyles' world record attempt for most amount of chins on air

-Then there’s Chris ‘Great Face for Radio’ Moyles, the boring and sexist Radio 1 presenter, who is on £630, 000 a year. In return we get a man who mocks gay people and says Polish people make “good prostitutes.”

-Or Jeremy Clarkson, who earns an unbelievable £2 million a year, and on top of that gets another £200, 000 through merchandise, and then receives another £117, ooo in “payment as services” i.e. freebies.

-Or Anne Robinson, who is getting £3 million a year from the BBC, after having said “what are Welsh people for?”. She also made old Blue Peter presenter John Noakes cry by asking about Blue Peter dog Shep “Did he die or just run away?” (hope you felt big and clever after that one!) Just how much is a wink worth?

The BBC would of course argue that these salaries are justified, because there is no other way it can compete to get “top talent” to stick with themand not go to other networks. Clearly there’s a very wide definition of talent being used. We suggest that the BBC immediately slash the salaries of all the above to make sure they’re not earning more than £70 an hour. If they say they can’t survive onthat, or they don’t want to, then fuck them. The UK is full of talented people who only want a decent living

Jeremy having fun: you're paying

wage and could produce amazing and innovative programming that benefits everyone. Some of them work for 6 Music and Asian Network!

Save the BBC petition.

Love 6 Music website.

Save 6 Music Facebook.

Save Asian Network Facebook.

Tell the BBC your views.

In a grim sign of what’s to come in Austerity Britain 2010, Glasgow City Council have pulled out of funding one of the most important services available in Scotland for women and children who have suffered abuse or are vulnerable.

The Women’s Support Project is a voluntary organisation that, since 1983, has provided support for thousands of women, in particular those whose children have been abused. It also does all kinds of crucial research into violence against women, prostitution, pornography and protecting children. If you’ve heard any kind of reliable information on these issues in Scotland in recent years it’s likely they were involved. The project works to provide training and information to organisations and individuals that will help build up services for women.

But now, as local government funding is slashed everywhere to pay for the various bouts of government insanity we’ve seen in recent years (wars in Iraq, giving rich people loads of money, duck houses etc.), Glasgow City Council has decided to withdraw 100% of its funding for the project.

Workers at the project are determined not to close, and to continue providing vital services. They’ve launched an urgent appeal to raise £10, 000 so they can keep afloat over the next year while they look for alternative funding. Their aim is to get 5000 people to pledge £20, so if there’s any chance you can spare it, then head here to donate.

Of course there’s also things you can do if you haven’t got anything to spare, the main one being asking Glasgow City Council wtf they think they’re all about. The Save the Women’s Support Project Facebook page has got more on this, but you can find out who your local councillor is here. Or you can go straight to the top and email Councillor Archie Graham, Executive Member for Social Care, at archie.graham@councillors.glasgow.gov.uk

While you’re at it, you can also email Deputy Executive Member for Social Care and Equalities Councillor Ruth Black, at ruth.black@councillors.glasgow.gov.uk. Politics nerds everywhere will of course remember that Councillor Black was originally elected for Solidarity, but defected to Labour in order to “assist with the equalities agenda.” Let her know she’s got a great chance to make good on that commitment by fighting the Labour council’s decision!

Anti-fascists & local yoof block the route of the NF: Lewisham 1977

The dieing days of a Labour government, discontent bubbling away in the trade unions, a resurgent Conservative party, mass unemployment, cuts – everywhere – cuts!, the far-right gaining limited electoral success, the SWP falling apart .. fuck me, haven’t we been here before?
Well, um not strictly, seeing as SSY are all under-the-age-of-26 and that, but you get the picture. We seem to be heading towards a bad re-run of the late 70s, but this time, the economic crisis is that bit worse and we’re going to see the biggest erosion of the welfare state and attacks on the working class since like um… Thatcher as it happens.

And now, to top it all off, the National Front are back. Allegedly. They’ve been trying for a while to play on the back of discontent with the direction Fuhrer Nick Griffin is taking the BNP (not enough hitler worshiping, too many jews) with some limited success. But, I mean, it’s hardly like we’re about to see a resurgent threat of the far-right marching on our streets, victimising minorities, and taking over OUR chain-pubs though, is it?
OH NO WAIT, we already are -  it’s just being done under the, ahem, respectable guise of the English/Scottish Defence League, that’s all.

Now the Scottish section of the NF have announced that they’re having a wee get-together this Saturday, in Glasgow. All five of them, presumably, but it’s good to know that they’ve advertised it on the internet just in case they get a few keen new members. Do the fash never learn? Posting details of yr gatherings on the internet = a silly idea.

Glasgow Anti-Fascist Alliance are mobilising to oppose the National Front. They will be assembling at 12 noon at Borders on Buchanan  Street, Saturday 13 February.

Next Saturday, 20th February, is the date of the Scottish Defence League’s planned second outing  – this time in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance are calling a counter-demo to confront the SDL, assembling at 9.30am on Princes Street, outside Princes Mall.
There’ll also be some pish Scotland United ‘let’s listen to speeches by boring mainstream politicians about why teh racists are bad ‘ one, but you’re nae missing much with that.

my ones r better than yurs

A new phenomenon is sweeping Parliament. Yeah, those crazy politicians, they just can’t stop saying the C-word!
Gutted to say that the C-word they’re all so keen to utter isn’t even a particularly descriptive word, let alone the C-word that sums themselves up so succinctly. Nah, this is a nice, clean, friendly, smiley, happy C-word, that our fearless politicians are prepared to face head-on… cuts!
And as if they weren’t having enough fun with that, there’s now some kind of contest going on over which party can come up with the ‘best’ cuts, like a bunch of pre-school kids who’ve just been let loose with scissors for the first time.
Whether these cuts will be quite so smiley, happy and fun to front line service users, postal workers, debt-laden students, council employees and basically anyone who isn’t frequently in the society pages of Tatler, is less clear. But who cares about that, ’cause MPs are suffering too… David Cameron, never a man to shy away from a bit of radical social reform, is going to scrap cheap food for MPs as well! And with that, the crisis of capitalism was solved in one simple step.

bolshevik revolution 2.0

Leftfield has a confession to make though: we can be pretty fond of the C-word at times too. After literally an entire ten minutes of deliberating, I’ve managed to come up with a couple of suggestions Alistair Darling might like to consider before he gets too carried away with his insane cutlass wielding rampage of cuts. So here goes… the Monarchy (we each pay £3 towards it annually), Trident nuclear weapon renewal (£2100+ each over its lifetime) and the war in Afghanistan (£75 each a year on average). That’s the kind of c-word usage we approve of.

spoilsports