As the government has decided to decided to make cuts of 25%  to many essential services, new research by SSY has suggested  that at least £220 million could be saved by cutting the monarchy.  Why should we have to suffer so that a few select people can live in luxury?

Not only is she living in luxury she is living a more expensive lifestyle than the other monarchies in Europe.

Why does she need £41.5 million, I MEAN  MATE! Thats what she cost last year, Come on, thats a little bit greedy isn’t it? And that doesn’t include security, their properties, the cost of the army marching by them for random reasons and Prince Charles’ posh biscuits.

The Danish and Swedish monarchs cost four times less than ours. Why does our queen need so much more, surely they are expensive enough, as they are clearly not poverty stricken.

Luxembourg and Spain pay less six times less for their monarchs. Think about how it could be put to better use….. Then again I guess it’s a great idea to pay a very large fortune for a woman to stay in a very fancy house, it wouldn’t go to better use on education or health. Which would be something everyone can enjoy

SSY’s team of analysts have come up with some other ways we could have spent this money more effectively

It would be more than enough to pay for free school meals for all children in Scotland for four years. There would still be a nice wee sum left over.

It would go half way to pay for free public transport in Scotland.

For the cost of just one Queen we could the basic state pension for 13141 less expensive pensioners.

We could buy 58,000,000,000 bags of Wethers originals and subscribe to the peoples friend for 22,000 years.

Or 22,000,000,000 penny sweets.

The Queen wants to take this nice old man's sweeties

And  most importantly we could pay for my cigarettes and alcohol for 1 month.

I think it’s clear we need to ban the monarchy as we have so many better options for spending this colossal sum of money.

Yesterday there were general strikes in Greece and the Basque Country. Last week workers in France and Italy walked out as well. Across Europe the working class is waking up to the threat posed by the attacks of European governments, but in the UK the response has still been quite muted.

SSY has been involved in building opposition to the ConDem cuts over recent weeks, with our members taking part in last Saturday’s street rally against the “emergency” budget for instance. But it’s clear that if we really want to stop the neoliberal assault on our rights, we need to learn a thing or two from our friends in Europe.

Read the rest of this entry »

George Gideon Osborne prepares to shoulder the burden of the economic crisis by cutting down on fancy waistcoats.

At the same time as Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Gideon Osborne, was announcing the pile of rancid shite that forms his Emergency Budget, it was also revealed that at least 23 out of the 29 coalition cabinet members are millionaires.

So while Osborne and Cameron and Clegg and their other filthy rich pals are telling us that we need to tighten our belts and “share the pain” of the brutal cuts to public services and benefit payments, plus tax hikes, they’re taking champagne baths and laughing into their gold encrusted Cornflakes.

Our very own Prime Minister David Cameron is worth £4 million, his wife SamCam gets £300,000 bonuses for fannying about with some stationary occasionally, and he’s set to inherit a whopping £30 million from his parents when they kick the bucket. Death represents a gigantic bonus for these rich families, and we’re sure the equivalent of winning the lottery several times over does take some of the sting out of bereavement for them.

The richest member of the cabinet is the Leader of the House of Lords, that undemocratic old folks home for senile ex-politicians and descendants of the chums of dead kings, Lord Strathclyde, who hordes at least £10 million all for his greedy little self. Don’t let the name fool you, I doubt he comes fae Glasgow like.

Axeman Osborne himself is worth at least £4.6 million, including a £2 million stake in his daddy’s “luxury wallpaper company”. Yet, we know he’s rubbish at wallpapering. We’ve been in his house and he’s got big bulgy bits, plus he spilt paste all over the carpet.

It’s not just the Tory cabinet members that are trousering gigantic wads and waiting breathlessly for mummy and daddy to die and leave them all their gold, the “real alternative” Liberal Democrats are a bunch of political cash cows too. Deputy Prime Minister/Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Clegg is currently worth an estimated £1.9 million, and is the son of a multimillionaire City banker.

Danny Alexander is upset to find out he's not worth £1million.

Of those 6 cabinet members that aren’t worth at least £1 million, there’s the likes of BARONESS Warsi, who is surely still worth a pretty penny, and Beaker from The Muppets Chief Secretary of the Treasury Danny Alexander. Boo hoo Acne Alexander, boo hoo for you.

It’s worth remembering that all of these figures are quite conservative (with a small ‘c’) estimates and don’t take in to account the vastly inflated salaries these parasites receive from the public purse. And what with the reputation of Tory bigwigs like Lord Ashcroft for cheating the system with scarily high levels of tax evasion, who knows what these chumps have got stashed between the Nazi gold in Swiss banks?

What makes this multimillionaires business all the more offensive is that yesterday they chose to unleash an economic blitzkrieg on the vast majority who don’t stuff their sofas with £50 notes like they do. The UK is in the midst of going through a course of severe economic shock therapy. The budget was called an “emergency” to make us think that what it contained was inevitable when in fact it is just the realisation of long-held Tory sadistic fantasies about what they’d like to do to the working class.

Here are just a few of the many ways you are getting fucked by the “emergency” budget:

"Hi everybody, I work for the DWP!"

Disability Living Allowance - It’s going to get even harder to receive this benefit. To qualify for DLA currently, you already have to go through a medical assessment to prove you really need it. The government’s announcement that they will “introduce a medical assessment for Disability Living Allowance from 2013 for new and existing claimants“. What this actually means is that they’re going to make it even harder to pass the assessments made by the quacks so-called “doctors” they employ to try and trick the vulnerable out of what they need to survive. Those responsible for this are not doctors, violating the first rule of medicine, do no harm. The government has decided that being a disabled person living on meagre benefits is such a laugh riot, that to restrict slightly the hedonistic lifestyles of these publicly funded wheelchair racers they’ll have to pass an exam in how sick they are first. These assessments are humiliating, frightening and about as useful as a statement of medical fact as a Harold Shipman death certificate.

VAT - Value Added Tax is one of the unfairest taxes that can be raised from ordinary people. It’s basically a cut that the government takes out of the price of essential things we all have to buy at the shops, and so the government’s raising of it to 20% will hit the cost of living for everyone. Instead of raising income taxes or others that proportionally work out how much you need to pay based on how much you actually have, they’ve deliberately chosen to raise the one that hits the poorest hardest and leaves the super rich like themselves relatively unscathed. Raising VAT at the same time as chucking people off benefits is the ultimate Tory wet dream, condemning many to the borderline of survival.

A single parent struggles to cope with the increase in VAT

Corporation tax -- Meanwhile, no surprise that the tax on the ultra rich mega corporations is getting cut to even lower levels. If you want to know who’s really in power in the UK, look at who’s done the best from the budget. Companies like the Gulf poisoners BP, merchants of death British Aerospace and public money vampires Royal Bank of Scotland. The tax they pay will be lowered to the scandalously tiny rate of 24%, less than half what they paid under the Thatcher overlordship (56%).

Parents - It’s going to get much harder to have a kid under the ConDems. Ultimately they want to scrap child benefit, one of the few remaining universal benefits. In the meantime, they’re freezing it for the next three years. People with babies will no longer be eligible for child tax credits, perhaps justified by the fact that babies are clearly the most self reliant of all children. And a grant that was previously paid to pregnant women to support them and cut infant mortality is to be withdrawn. Lone parents will also be forced to look for work as soon as their kids start school. There’s only one clear conclusion to draw: the government hates children.

George Osborne hard at work

These horror stories are just a flavour of the vicious hacking you’re going to get from the Tories’ rusty knives. The “emergency” budget is just the start of the cuts agenda -- everything except health and international aid is being cut over the next 4 years. So the real level of disaster they’re going to inflict on us is yet to be seen. In Scotland, we’ll be hit by a double whammy in the next Scottish Parliament budget, when we get two years worth of cuts in the budget of one.

For a full breakdown of the full economic violence we’re being subjected to, check out the upcoming issue of the Scottish Socialist Voice, which will feature in depth analysis from socialist economists. It’ll be available to buy on anti-cuts actions throughout the country, such as the street rally against the budget taking place this weekend in Glasgow. On Saturday people will be taking to the streets from 12 noon, on Buchanan Street, to protest the fact that it and other financial institutions have been kept profitable with our money, whilst the poor majority are face cuts and tax hikes.

In the meantime, check out the alternative budget produced by the SSP, outlining the many simple ways these cuts could be prevented. The fact of the matter is that the government is desperate for you to believe their cuts are inevitable, but in fact they are politically motivated policies aimed at making the rich richer at our expense. To see how things could be done differently, such as our plan to recoup a whopping £120 billion in evaded taxes by rich cunts, have a look here.

Above is exclusive future footage of Scotland just four years after the release of the “emergency” budget

(Additional reporting by Jack)

"Skiing or horse riding this weekend, I just can't decide!"

On June 22nd the ConDem government will release its emergency budget, plunging us into a nightmare of cuts and job losses. In a speech today Posh PM David Cameron gave some hint as to his real economic agenda.

He said:

”How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society – indeed our whole way of life. ‘The decisions we make will affect every single person in our country. And the effects of those decisions will stay with us for years, perhaps decades, to come.”

When he says our way of life is going to have to change, the way of life he’s referring to is the right of public sector workers to have a job that pays them enough to live on, or the right of people thrown out of work by capitalism to receive some support to keep them alive.

King William IV's shagging about produced, 5 generations later, our current PM

You can bet he doesn’t mean his own way of life. He and his wife have a combined wealth of £30 million. He’s a direct descendant of King William IV and his mistress of the time, making him a fifth cousin of the Queen. Everybody knows he went Eton ‘Hogwarts for Bastards’ College, which costs over 24 grand a year in fees. No doubt some of his vast stack of cash makes a big contribution towards his stated hobby of horse riding, alongside other jolly fun outdoor pursuits that the rest of us don’t have time or cash to pursue.

Then there’s tosspot deputy PM Nicholas William Peter Clegg, worth personally £1.9 million. This horsefly enjoys walking near his expensive home in the Peak District. Growing up, when he wasn’t at his own uber-posh Westminster school at the cost of around 2o grand a year, he had access to his rich Daddy’s multiple homes in London, the Chilterns and skiing chalet in the Swiss Alps.

Or Chancellor and axeman in Chief George Gideon Oliver Osborne, who through the trust fund that owns a 15% stake in Daddy’s company is worth around £4million. Some of this goes on his personal love of skiing and wintersports. Nothing says posh like the names he’s chosen for his kids: Luke Benedict Osborne and Liberty Kate Osborne.

Whatever happens to the rest of us, these chaps are going to go on enjoying the great outdoors, horsey fun and hitting the alpine slopes, while the rest of us are forced to live with the miserable consequences of their cuts.

Cameron’s speech predictably enough made lots of noise about “the crisis is much worse than we thought”, “we’re going to have to cut more than ever” etc. etc. Translation: we’re in power now so we’ll say all the things we tried to hide from you during the election campaign.

Clegg takes an afternoon stroll. WHILE YOU'RE AT WORK.

In fact what all this chat about the way of life means is a warning from our right wing government. They are using this crisis as an opportunity to push through things we would never accept in normal times. It’ll start with cuts and job losses, then move on to attacking and dismantling the NHS and privatising the post office. The ConDems have a clear, classic, neoliberal agenda for transforming the UK into a place where what remains of our public services are gone and we’re forced to slave for basic survival.

They want to sneak this all through while we’re still in shock, convincing us that there’s no choice. But they are making a choice: a political choice to smash up the services that keep the poorest in our society going. It’s time to get active to stop them.

Tory Chancellor George Osborne lets the capitalists know where he stands

Today was the announcement of the first round of cuts by the UK government, with £6 and a quarter billion coming out of public spending. It’s been a busy day for SSY, as we took direct action at several points throughout the day to oppose the ConDem savagery. But first, let’s have a look at what’s been announced.

Posh boy Chancellor George Osborne, and his Lib Dem henchman, the former senior banker at JP Morgan and Barclays, and current Chief Secretary to the Treasury, David Laws, were as chummy as the two rich pals they are announcing the cuts.

There’s lots of attempts to buy people off with headline grabbing measures like removing chauffeur driven limos for ministers (although even then they can still get one if needed for “security.”) But in reality things like this will be a drop in the ocean of the cuts announced today, which themselves are just the first taste of the brutal axe that the ConDems plan to take to public services, wages and benefits.

One of the biggest pieces of news is that child trust funds are to be scrapped. This was a scheme that gave all children born after 2002 an account with £250 in it to be saved and invested, that belongs to the child and can’t be touched until they turn 18. The idea behind it being that it gave an opportunity to people from lower income families to have a little bit of the advantage that rich kids have when they go off to uni or want to buy a house etc. It’s being phased out and scrapped entirely in January. No doubt private school boys like Cameron or Clegg won’t be that bothered, having plenty of Daddy’s money to back them up.

The PCS union for civil servants has condemned the proposed freeze on recruiting more people to work in the civil service. PCS members have been forced to repeatedly strike already against the huge attacks they’ve faced from Labour, and now their jobs are set to get even harder. The union has agreed to mount a major national campaign against the cuts, arguing that the money can be found from other sources, like making the rich pay their fair share of tax. General Secretary Mark Serwotka said:

“We have serious concerns about the staff in many government agencies who will have read in the media at the weekend that their jobs could be at risk, but have been given little information since.

“We do not accept that huge spending cuts are necessary or desirable, and we do not believe it is credible for the government to say it can protect public sector jobs and services while taking the axe to departments in this way.

“A recruitment freeze now, when tens of thousands of civil service posts have been cut in the last few years, will further add to workloads and put at risk the services our members provide to the public. We would welcome the opportunity for a full and honest debate about the public sector and its role in the economy, but the government appears intent on short-circuiting that by cutting first and asking questions later.”

In further attempts to make what they were up to look not that bad, the ConDems also have pledged not to cut “frontline services” in this round, for example by leaving out schools. However, for education this means that the cuts have hit hardest in further education. There’s going to be 10,000 fewer places at unis available this year than was previously planned, at a time when demand has skyrocketed by 16.5%. It’s going to get harder for young people to get into education, increasing the numbers forced to survive on benefits. Overall £200 million is coming out of higher education.

Where the ConDems send you with your UCAS form

Something that will hit the most vulnerable people in society the hardest is the £1.2 billion cut to local government grants. This is politically helpful for the ConDems, because local councils will be the ones that have to make the choices about which services that people depend on will be axed. But the people who depend most on the services provided by local councils are overwhelmingly the poorest and most vulnerable.

They’re also axing the future jobs fund, which helps people on job seekers get a job for six months on the minimum wage. It’s far from perfect, and can force people into a pretty crap job compared to what they could be doing, but it is at least the minimum wage. What will come next will be workfare – forcing the unemployed to work for their pathetic dole money, at far below the minimum wage. In other words, slavery.

There’s other stuff too, such as the decision to seriously delay the building of a major centre for medical scientific research in London. We’ll update you with more info as it becomes clearer.

In Scotland, the actual cuts are deferred until next year. That doesn’t mean we’ve escaped unscathed though. The Scottish budget is losing £332 million, but it will be next year’s budget that the Scottish Parliament will be asked to axe, because this year’s has been set already. If the SNP Scottish Government was serious about standing up to cuts, they’d say they intend to resist this reduction, but we won’t hold our breath. The need to elect socialists to the Scottish Parliament next year has never been greater, to try and push for defiance of cuts imposed by a UK government that wasn’t elected in Scotland.

The ConDem government is composed of the parties that came 3rd and 4th in the last election. They have absolutely no mandate to attack the poorest Scots in this way. That was the message that SSY and SSP members took to the streets to spread today. We’ve already reported about our successful banner drop this morning, that was seen by thousands of rush hour commuters, and drew a lot of appreciative honks from drivers.

Later in the day, SSP Red Shirts took direct action to show our anger that an unelected government feels it has the right to ruin Scotland. We were inspired by the actions of the poor and working class in Thailand, who have faced the full force of the military as they demand the resignation of an unelected government. We decided to do the same in Glasgow.

SSP Red Shirts outside Robert Brown's office

Unfortunately, the only real public premises of either of the ConDem parties in the city centre is the constituency office of Lib Dem MSP Robert Brown. While he isn’t personally part of the UK government, he is a public representative of a party that is propping up the Tories. Without Lib Dem support the Tories wouldn’t be in a position to take power, and we think that all Lib Dems shouldn’t be allowed to forget their complicity in government butchery.

SSP organiser Richie Venton, who helped make the protest happen, said:

“In faraway Thailand an unelected dictator, educated at Eton school for the very rich and privileged, is facing determined opposition from the urban and rural poor, organised as the Red Shirts movement.

Meanwhile, an Eton-educated Tory Prime Minister who was rejected by 85% of Scottish voters is out to rule and ruin Scotland without a mandate.

Cameron plans to commit carnage against public sector jobs, workers’ pay and pensions, and the vital local public services they provide. He is only able to launch this Tory butchery because of Lib Dem treachery.

The Lib Dems posed as an anti-cuts party during the general election and conned a minority in Scotland into voting for them; now they have formed the Twin Tory government that will cut taxes on the rich and big Corporations, whilst slashing up to 100,000 Scottish jobs.

The Scottish Socialist Party is determined to unite workers and communities to resist, defy and defeat these cuts. At noon, the SSP Red Shirts marched into the offices of Glasgow Lib Dem MSP Robert Brown to conduct a polite, peaceful dialogue with him, putting him on the spot about the treacherous role of the Lib Dems in propping up the vicious Tory government.”

Robert vs Red Shirts

To be fair to Robert, he took the whole thing mostly in good humour, although when we told him we were the Red Shirts his crack that we’d “get shot” rang a bit hollow considering the Lib Dems, through their membership of the international Liberal Alliance, support the violent, pro-monarchy, anti-democratic Yellow Shirts in Thailand. He also at one point got into a bit of fairly heated debate with James N, telling the SSP’s Glasgow Central candidate to “shut up.”

Apart from the cuts, and our refusal to accept his assertion that the Lib Dems would make sure they were “fair” when they refuse to tax the rich, and make the poor pay the cost, we also took up a few other issues. We demanded he explain why the Lib Dems, who won so many votes by pretending to be against nuclear weapons, are now part of a government that will replace Trident and build new nuclear power stations.

And we also challenged him on the Lib Dem claim to have ended the detention of the children of asylum seekers, just after Nick Clegg and Liberal ministers stood by and allowed Sehar, and her baby Wania, Shabaz to be deported back to Pakistan on Saturday, where they face violence and ostracism. Whatever happens to them there is on the hands of the ConDem government. Robert claimed the government was “making progress” on the issue, but the progress only seems to be families progressing down the motorway in the back of a van to incarceration in Yarl’s Wood instead of Dungavel. He might call it progress, but to us a baby in a private prison is still unacceptable, whether the prison is in Scotland or England.

Once we’ve edited them we’ll update the article with the video highlights of our exchange, so keep checking back. As you’ll see, we remained respectful and peaceful, and left without having disrupted his day’s work too much.

In the big picture, the cuts today were carefully handled by the ConDems. The politics behind today’s announcement was all aimed at proving to the rich and the international markets that they have a government in Britain that is unequivocally on their side. Their plan clearly was to try and make a small amount of their overall planned cuts today, trying to minimise it to the public while showing their bosses and colleagues in the financial elite that they’re serious about making the poor pay for the rich’s mistakes.

Expect as the months go on for them to slowly bleed us with cut after cut, until we’re faced with hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, benefits and services. For us, today’s actions were only a beginning to a rolling programme of resistance. The ConDems are desperate to make people believe there is no alternative to making us pay for a crisis we didn’t create. But there is. The huge wealth of the banks and the super rich is what should be used, not money taken from the poorest and most vulnerable. That’s the message we’ll be taking again and again to the streets and picket lines. One of the biggest next steps will be building action against the emergency budget, due to be announced on June 22nd. Watch this space!

The resistance to today’s announcement of £6 billion worth of cuts in the public sector by the new ConDem government got off to an early start today, with SSY members in Glasgow storming a multi-storey car park at a busy city centre junction for a rush-hour banner drop.

The SSP red shirts will be engaging to anti-cuts actions throughout the day – watch this space!

Tory Chancellor George Osbourne is coming to get you

It’s started: finally secure in their position of power, the Tories, with the support of the sell out Lib Dems, have declared war on the working class.

Today, the government announced it will hold an emergency budget on June 22nd. But, in an attempt to pre-empt the fightback, the ConDems are to announce £6 billion of public spending cuts next Monday.

We’re about to face cuts unlike anything  Britain has seen in modern history. Services that working class people depend on are going to be decimated.

-As a conservative estimate, 750, 000 public sector workers are likely to lose their jobs. Those still in work will face wage freezes and cuts.

-The government wants to make us all work longer, with the retirement age increased to 66 by 2016 for men and 2020 for women. This will hit poorer people far harder than the more well off, because studies have shown again and again that the working class have shorter life expectancies due to their living conditions under capitalism. Pensions for people who work in the public sector are also going to be shifted from a guaranteed amount to instead being gambled on the stock market, and what you get depends on how the bet goes.

-The most regressive taxes, which hit the working class hardest and leave the rich unscathed, are also to go up. Many predict that VAT will go up to 20%, making the essentials of life much more expensive in the shops. If you remember the Tories harping on about the “jobs tax” in the election, here’s what they’ve actually done in power: your boss won’t have to pay any extra contribution to your National Insurance, but you still will have it taken out of your pay!

They’ve also announced the establishment of an ‘Office of Budget Responsibility.’ In the past, the government has made forecasts of how much the economy will grow, and written the budget on that basis. Now, this new unelected committee of businessmen and “experts” will make the forecasts. The Chancellor will then have to write the budget based on their recommendations or account for why they haven’t done.

One of the first acts of Gordon Brown when he became Chancellor under Tony Blair in 1997 was to give the Bank of England the power to set interest rates, removing economic control from the elected government and putting it in the hands of unelected bankers. Thirteen years later, one of the first acts of the ConDem government has been to give another undemocratic committee huge power over the economic policy of the UK, and if we don’t like what we say we can’t vote them out. There’s also no guarantee that these “experts” will get their forecasts right: few capitalists saw that an economy based on debt and fictional accounting was about to collapse (unlike quite a few socialist economists.)

On June 22nd this battered old case will contain an economic SNUKE aimed at you

This is nothing short of a declaration of war by the ConDems. We always expected it of the Tories, but sadly the Lib Dems are also the ones making it possible. If you voted Lib Dem in the last election in the hope of getting a leftish alternative, then we’re sorry, but you got conned. They’ve abandoned the policies that made them popular in the campaign to get a slice of power.

The real question as we come under attack is this: what are we going to do about it? Do we sit back and take it, or do we stand up and fight? Many people aren’t happy about the cuts, but think there isn’t any choice but to make them to save the economy. This is a lie that has been peddled to us by the capitalists who want to take our money.

Immediate measures the government could take as an alternative to cuts include cancelling the illegal Trident nuclear weapons programme, which alone would save an amazing £130 billion. We should also immediately pull all British troops out of Afghanistan, saving both billions of pounds and thousands of lives.

Beyond this, we could stop the rich from being able to avoid paying their fair share of tax by increasing fairer taxes like corporation tax and cracking down on the loopholes that let them move their cash abroad. But more importantly, we’ve all given our money through taxes towards the billions that were used to bail out the banks. It’s time we had a government that took control of the hugely wealthy banks and financial institutions. Instead of that money sitting in accounts of the super rich, it could be used to transform our economy, moving us away from a carbon based economy that destroys the climate, building homes for the thousands that need them, and providing world class public services, for starters.

What should we do to put this people’s agenda on the table? We need anti-cuts committees in every city in Scotland. We need to have mass actions against the emergency budget on June 22nd, and next Monday as well if possible. And, crucially, we need to be spreading the message to everyone that there is an alternative to the ConDem war on the working class.

Tomorrow night if you’re in Glasgow the Scottish Socialist Party is holding a meeting to discuss how we begin our counter attack. Come along and help by giving your views. It’s at 7.30, in the Piper Bar on the corner of George Square.

Fucken AWESOME banners mate, Fucken AWESOME.

Awritey mah wee chummos! Yur auld pal Lydia here, joost back fae Edinburger again. This time though, ah wisnae houndin’ the auld SDL, bit ah wis greetin’ mah chum best David Wankeron. Welcomin’ ‘um tae bonnie wee Scotland, cause like, presumably like, he’s nevur been here ur anyhin. Tae be fair ‘es prolly seen pichurs aye the highlands n aw that it ‘es posh Uni. Bit ‘es nevur seen us common folks before, so it wis prolly a bit ay a shocker fur ‘um like. Shame, eh? NAW.

Anywey. So whit actually happened like, wis we goat telt last night thit big DivCam the Sham would be in Scotland fur a wham-bam wi big Lecko Salmond. So we quickly organised and goat folk up tae Edinburger the next mornin’.

When we goat there, thur wis only a sparse group ‘ay people ootside the Scottish Parliament, an a hink they wur joost there tae gee Cam the auld eyeballin’. So we gets wur gear oot, wur obviously fucken amazin’ banners an aw that. An we situates wirsels it the side door ay the parliament, waiting fur good auld shiny face tae make an appearance.

Bit ‘eh disnae. Bit we staun there anywey, we shout ‘n’ chant. Joost the usual banter aboot tellin’ the Tory mob tae fuck off an that. Thur wis a real energy, ye know? People aw there fur the same cause n aw that. Aw these enthusiastic peopo who aw want tae batter David Cameron’s fucken heid in. Ahh it wis brilliant. But anywey, it wis really good an aw that, bit we started tae get a wee bit suspecious ken, cause like, DivCam wisnea makin’ an appearance, so we mosied oan doon tae the front entrance tae make sure the slimey bastard didny gee us the slip like.

Roon ‘it the front, it wis strange, like cause there wis a wee walkway set up fur his majesty an that, bit like eh polis would let a pansy Eton scum boey walk through a crowd ‘ay ragin’ Scottish peope who didny vote fur the cunt! It was aw so suspicious, ken, We wur shoutin’ loud enough fur fuckin’ Westminster tae hear us, so ahm no surprised thit they decided no tae ship the gold in through the front. So eventually, we gets aw the info. It aw comes oot.

Roon 'eh side ay the Parliament buildens.

Turns oot thit the sly basturts huv shipped ‘um in through the fucken bat cave doonstairs! An undergroon car park, ken! (Good tae know wur taxes are bein spent fucken wisely like!) An then they smuggled ‘um back oot! An let me tell ye, we wur pissed off thit we didny get tae scream in ‘es mush, but we wur well chuffed thit ‘e wis too much ay a fucken cowardly scumbag basturd thit ‘e couldny even face the fucken peopo ‘e wis tryin’ tae extend a fucken olive branch tae, like. Aye fucken right. Wur no gonnae sit an let that cunt make oot like wur fucken best pals wi the wanker. Ahm no ‘ed fucken pal. Ah HATE ‘um! AH HATE CAMERON!

Anywey, so we kinna joost started tae go hame, an we goat a wee bit doon ‘eh road n’ somecunt phones us an gees us the lowdoon thit the Toff Wank is in St Andrew’s hoose. So we dis a u-turn n sannies it up tae St Andrew’s hoose. (Another fucken grande waste ay tax money) an whin we get there, this big disaster kinna happened. See, we goat split up. Some ay us goat there furst an whin mah group goat there, aw we coul see wis the others aw fucken fenced in in this tiny kettoh. Ah wis lit “Aw naw man, geis peace,”

So the polis comes slimin’ up tae us an wis aw lit “Ye need tae go ower there, mate.”

An we wur lit. “Naw.”

An they wur lit “Bit we’ll gee yeese the heids up if ‘eh comes!”

An we wur lit “Dae we look lit fannies tae you? Naw, mate. Take yur leave,”

So the banter goes oan fur a wee bit, but they don’t manage tae gets us penned up lit wur pals. So we joost wait aboot fur um, annoyin’ the polis in a kinna casual wey like. These two mad poshos wur pure staunin’ lookin’ it us lit we wur aliens. Well, obviously we wur tae thame cause we didny huve suits, briefcases n a look oan our faces lit a duig hud shat in wur shoes.

Fucken ragin' an that.

So the big momento arrives. It wis glorious mah chummos. He comes oot wey a pure smug look on his gleamin’ mush. An we wur joost pure lit “SCUM SCUMS SCUM! YA BASS!” An ‘es wee ginger LibDem gimp nearly started greetin’ and pure dived in the motor. DivCam’s smiled kinna dripped aff lit cauld tamatae soup. We hailed ‘um oot wi wur chants an somecunt threw an egg which burst aw oor (no ‘es puss unfortunately) the motor windae as it sped the fuck ootae poor-land.

Joost goes tae show ye thit DivCam couldny gee two fucks aboot us an nevur fucken will. Cause fur a start ‘es too fucken scared tae own up tae the fucken crimes the Tories committed tae us in the past. ‘E cannae face us an ‘e fucken proved it the day wi ‘es smugglin’ in an oot ay places wi fucking high-vis wanker protection.

Princess Murdoch

The Sun’s front page today (above) is a the final showcase they have to try and desperately push for a Tory government.

Leftfield has said consistently that the best thing we can hope for out of this election is a hung parliament. Nobody knows for sure how tonight is going to turn out. A strong Tory government (which is still possible) or a Labour majority (which looks really unlikely at this point) both would result in a strong government for the capitalist class.

A strong government elected today means that before too long we can expect a massive attack from the people in power, starting tomorrow. Just look at Greece: the people there elected a “Socialist” government in disgust at the economic crisis. Now that same government is pushing through an unprecedented assault that threatens the survival of the Greek working class.

The good news is that the opinion polls are all pointing towards a hung parliament, and a period of uncertainty and indecision as to who’s in charge. The only big party right now that looks like it could deliver a government with enough seats to push through cuts, new anti union laws and sackings is the Tories, and the Murdoch papers are trying to give them one last push.

Even though the other big two parties are no better, it is a testament to the class consciousness of normal people that a year ago the Tories had a huge poll lead, but a the day drew near they realised they didn’t want an Eton educated wanker in government. Despite the full weight of the right wing propaganda machine behind him, David Cameron hasn’t been able to get clearly ahead. Which is good.

That doesn’t mean that we should be fighting to keep a Labour government either. They’ve promised cuts “deeper than Thatcher”, as everyone reading this blog must know by now. The Lib Dems also want to cut, and have also committed to bring in new laws that would stop workers being able to strike against those cuts. More importantly, the Lib Dems want into power, and will prop up whichever party looks like they can put Liberals in ministerial limos.

The key thing to understand is that the UK, like most of Europe in the world, is in huge debt, because the state used our money to cover the losses made by ultra rich bankers betting on the stock market. This means that the government can’t afford the cost of running the country. Their solution to this crisis is to make you and me pay. None of the three parties that could be part of the next government can possibly conceive of an alternative.

Hung parliament: Best of bad options

But there is one. Make the ultra rich, whose wealth jumped again last year, pay their fair share in tax, and end tax evasion. Cancel the incredibly expensive plans to renew Britain’s weapons of mass destruction, and bring British troops home from Afghanistan. But most importantly, tell the banks we want our money back. The banks that were bailed out with our money have more than enough cash. If we take them into public ownership, and use those vast reserves of money to do actually useful stuff, like transforming the UK energy economy to try and prevent climate change for example, it’ll create jobs and do a hell of a lot more good than going towards bonuses for millionaire executives.

If you live in one of these places, you can vote today for someone who stands up for this alternative. but today is only the beginning. Over the next few months we need to build up a ferocious resistance movement to the world of shit that the next government is going to try and plunge us into. We can stop the cuts, and we can put an alternative on the agenda. The weaker the next government is the better for us, but whatever happens tonight it’s going to take a hell of a lot of people power. So today, we recommend that where you can you vote for a socialist candidate standing against the cuts. And from today, get involved in building up a fightback to whoever forms the next government.

If you think it can’t be done, just check out some of the stuff we’ve been covering in Greece over the last few days.

David Cameron’s reaction on learning he won’t get a majority government:

Lib Dem supporters in this election must feel like they’re dreaming after the TV debates the other night. The Liberal Democrats have had a huge poll boost, and are now ahead of Labour in people’s voting intentions.

Why has this party, seemingly always doomed to be an also-ran, suddenly emerged as an actual contender for power? Mainly because people hate Labour and the Tories. The incredibly undemocratic election system used for the UK parliament has meant it has always been a two horse race, and the Lib Dems have never really stood a chance of getting into government. So people have always assumed that however rubbish both Labour and the Tories are, you have to vote for one of them. The telly rarely devote anything like the coverage to the Lib Dems as they do to the big two. And when you see parliament on the news, Brown and Cameron are down the front battling it out and Nick Clegg is somewhere up the back being shouted down.

So, for most people, who aren’t that political, the idea that there actually is an alternative to the different shades of shite being proffered to us by the big two is quite exciting. This is the first proper look they’ve had at the Lib Dems, and it’s people who don’t pay that much attention to politics who are driving their poll ratings.

The problem is, you could stick anyone up against Brown and Cameron and they’d end up looking good. We’re all bored of the two of them, and someone else is always going to seem new, different, and therefore, good. But unfortunately, the Lib Dems are just as much a party of the establishment as the other two.  If you really want change from the mess that all the right wing parties have got us into, they’re not going to give it to you. Here’s a few reasons why:

Lib Dems are not against the end of the world, but they do promise to make it cheaper

1. One of the biggest boosts Nick Clegg got in the leaders’ debates was when he said he was against the replacement of Trident. A lot of people will have thought that this means that the Lib Dems are against the UK continuing to hold Weapons of Mass Destruction that could destroy life as we know it. In Scotland, the trade unions, the churches and everyone with half a brain cell are against the madness of nukes. The Lib Dems, unfortunately, are not. Their manifesto only says they’re against “like for like” replacement of Trident, and that they’d hold a full review in government. Nick Clegg has previously talked about how an option they’d explore is using the Astute system instead of Trident – slightly less powerful submarines, but still capable of travelling anywhere in the world to deliver mass death on the orders of Prime Minister Clegg. The idea that the Lib Dems are clearly against nuclear weapons is just not true.

2. They support the idea of getting young people on to bullshit work placements, where they will only be paid £55 a week, for three months. To give them credit, they do support ending age-wage discrimination, by making the minimum wage the same for all workers over 16. That is, unless you’re on an apprenticeship, in which case it’ll still be perfectly legal to exploit your labour for less than the minimum wage.

3. They want to start privatising Royal Mail, meaning the postal service will get worse, and posties jobs will be attacked, as Royal Mail goes further down the road of making private profits instead of public service.

4. They want to set up a UK Infrastructure Bank, that will continue the idea of using private money to build public projects. That is, every time we build a new school, hospital or road, some private investor will get rich at your expense.

5. They are “critical supporters” of the UK mission in Afghanistan. Having voted for the imperialist slaughter and occupation of Afghanistan, they now explicitly support the strategy of a troops surge.

Clegg wearing everyday dress from the last time the Liberals were in power

6. Like the Labour manifesto, they lump crime and immigration in together, tail-ending the rhetoric of the far right. In the debate Clegg seemed desperate to join in with the “tough on immigrants” chat, promising that he would force immigrant workers to stay in the one region where their labour was needed, meaning people can’t move around the UK looking for work.

Probably most importantly, the Lib Dems accept, as do all the contenders to be the next UK government, that we should pay for the capitalist economic crisis. They’re up front that they’re going to make big spending cuts, and restrict tax credits. They claim their strategy is to be honest with people about the need to recoup the money paid out to banks.

The only vote against this pish is voting socialist. All the capitalist parties accept the banks have the right to take our money, continue to pay themselves huge bonuses and make huge profits, while we have to suffer cuts to pay for it. For the many people who are looking for an alternative and are attracted to the Lib Dems, unfortunately we’re not going to get a government that stands up for us, even if they win. We need to start building up for a fight against whoever gets in, and strengthening our forces to resist the cuts. One of the ways you can do that is by voting for the SSP where we’re standing on May 6th.