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.

Warning: This post contains some upsetting stuff about dead ducks.

The above video is one of several shot by William Todd Powell, a senior biologist working for the Province of Alberta in Canada. It shows a duck struggling to escape from a tailings pond, where oil company Syncrude dumped the toxic leftovers of its operation to extract oil from the Alberta tar sands.

Over 1,500 migrating ducks landed on the pond, covering themselves with the deadly residue. The vast majority of them died. Now Syncrude is facing a trial for its failure to protect the ducks, and the company could face up to $800, 000 in fines, and executives ultimately could get 6 months in prison.

Syncrude admit that they had failed to properly install noise-making equipment to scare the ducks away from landing on the toxic pond as they were migrating.

The disaster could have been covered up were it not for the courageous efforts of tipsters like Powell. Although legally obliged to do so, Syncrude had failed to inform authorities of what had happened. But when Powell and other wildlife officials got on the scene, their shocking images and video stormed around the internet, and forced action.

Footage of a Greenpeace action against the tar sands.

The whole affair has brought into sharp focus the environmental battle to stop exploitation of the tar sands. As the possibility of peak oil begins to bite, the fossil fuel industry is desperately looking for new areas to exploit to keep their profits flowing. The tar sands in Canada offer the prospect of huge new reserves, but they are very difficult to extract. This means huge amounts of energy are used in the process, causing massive carbon emissions. It also means enormous destruction of the natural environment, including much land that is home to Canada’s embattled indigenous people as well as pristine boreal forest. The fight to stop further exploitation of the oil sands is one of the most important battles against climate change and ecological destruction in North America, if not the world. Exploitation of the tar sands alone is enough to make Canada fail to meet its obligations under the Kyoto agreement on global warming.

Lawyers for Syncrude have entered a plea of not guilty to the trial, claiming there was nothing they could have done to prevent the disaster. Shamefully, they have attacked William Todd Powell, and, supported by the corporate media in Canada, accused him of “showboating”. Syncrude argues that Powell should have “shot the ducks with a gun not a camera” as that would have been more humane. Leaving aside the complete heartless hypocrisy of the statement, this ignores the fact that actually Alberta wildlife authorities did shoot the ducks that were in range to put them out of their misery. However, the pond is so vast and the number of ducks so huge, it was only possible for them to reach a fraction of them.

Ed Stelmach: Twat in a hat

The Conservative Premier of Alberta, Ed Stelmach, is unfortunately in the pocket of Syncrude and the other oil companies. His government has given approval to a massive expansion of tar sands operations, as well as spending millions on trying to improve the image of the dirty oil project. Responding to the disaster, he bizarrely chose to call the horrific duck deaths an “opportunity” to show the world Alberta “means business” when it comes to environmental protection. Quite how footage of dead and dying ducks does this is unclear.

In an even more ridiculous gaffe, Stelmach also told reporters recently he had not seen the notorious duck images, even though they had been headline news on TV and in the papers in Alberta. His comments outraged many, as they felt they showed a total lack of concern for his own responsibility in the disaster. In response, opposition politicians gave him photos in the legislature, and Greenpeace delivered blown-up and gift wrapped photos in person.

“Not even looking at the front page of papers in this province? That’s something that is not responsible for a premier to do. They are taking Syncrude to court, but are they actually examining their own actions?” said Mike Hudema of Greenpeace.

Greenpeace activists deliver gift-wrapped photos of the dying ducks to Ed Stelmach

Stelmach and his spokespeople have offered various different stories to try and get out of looking stupid over his claims. Stelmach now claims he thought reporters were asking if he’d seen the photos before they were introduced in court, which they clearly weren’t. His team have also claimed that they give him news clippings each morning with the pictures cut out. “He doesn’t have the luxury of opening a paper in the morning,” said his communications director, Cam Hantiuk. “He missed the visuals.”

The fact is that the disastrous tar sands development is being driven by the corporate greed of Syncrude and others, and whatever the results of the trial they will continue to have huge control over the political process in Canada as elsewhere. The heroic work of William Todd Powell in exposing them shows the world a model of a responsible public servant. Unfortunately, Canadian governments see work like his as less of a priority than defending dirty developments, as wildlife services across the country face budget cutbacks and lay-offs.

The horrific duck deaths just underline the need for grassroots activism that works on the ground to undermine the power of the oil lobby and their paid-for politicians.

tesco's ideal employee

Young people are lazy, illiterate, untidy, useless and have an ‘attitude problem’, one of the most highly-paid people in the country revealed yesterday to a conference of supermarket executives. Lucy Neville-Rolf, who earned £1.6 million last year in her job as an executive director of Tesco, blames the ‘education system’ for its failings to create a perfect society of conformist minimum wage robot clones, in a speech which rolled out just about every clichéd anti-youth prejudice in the book. I mean, it is about time these pesky young folk were brought into line and started showing some fucking gratitude for their shitty minimum wage temp contracts, isn’t it?
Well, Lucy agrees, adding into her anti-youth tirade that ‘a society where people don’t feel the need to work to gain material possessions will not be a stable or successful society.’

Undoubtedly, Neville-Rolf hinted in her speech at serious issues in our education system, in her claims that  school-leavers “Cannot do reading. They cannot do arithmetic. They cannot do writing.”. There are tens of thousands of young people every year slipping through the system and leaving school lacking basic numeracy and literacy skills -- but the only reason this concerns Tesco is that it’s affecting their profit margins, not because they actually give a shit about the state of education in this country. If they really do care that much, maybe they could consider not going to such extreme lengths to avoid paying their taxes here…?
Tesco already employees 40,000 people under the age of 19, and seemingly want to see the whole school-system re-oriented to be a rolling production line of cheap labour to suit their own interests. In all their moaning about the state of education, something they’ve done in the past too, they seem to miss the point that education is important for education’s sake. This sentiment the education system purely acts to ready people for a live of wage slavery is pretty worrying at a time when schools and colleges are facing massive budget cuts from central government.

Lucy Neville-Rolf says that young people seem to think that the ‘world owes them a living’. Why the hell shouldn’t it? Everyone has the right to a job with decent pay and conditions, and  just because the bosses at Tesco would rather we lived in a corporate paradise of low-taxes and the conditions of cheap labour (ie. mass unemployment), doesn’t mean it’s suddenly acceptable to start shitting all over young people. After all, do you think Lucy Neville-Rolf would go into her work smiling, happy and looking forward to a fun day of shelf-stacking if she was on £5.86 an hour? I doubt it.

BONUS: TESCO INVADES DENMARK!!

I’m sure many Leftfield readers will have been watching the latest series of Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe, pretty much the best satire on telly.

I loved the second series of this vital show, taking down the lies and fantasies of the media at every turn. But I didn’t love most of the bits featuring “US comic and drunk [big woop] Doug Stanhope.”

This guy has a persona of an absolute misanthrope: he hates the world and everyone in it. His most objectionable bit was the one embedded above, talking about overpopulation.

In this little rant, Stanhope tries to make out like he’s telling the world a hidden truth, something hidden by the media because it doesn’t fit with the mainstream environmentalist agenda. This supposed truth is that there are too many people in the world, using up too many resources, and the only way we can really save the environment is to stop having kids.

But the reality is that this idea is a very powerful one, and it’s been used by the ruling class as an excuse for nearly 200 years now.

In 1798 English cleric and economist Thomas Malthus published his Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that population growth would always outstrip the expansion of the food supply, and that as more workers became available wages would be driven down, leading to poverty.

2.Many.Malthuses.

In other words, the working class in Britain were to blame for their own poverty. It had nothing to do with the exploitation they suffered at the hands of the capitalists, who owned the places where they worked, and got rich on the back of their labour.

The thing is, he was wrong. Food production has grown faster in the last 200 years than at any other time in history, and has rapidly outstripped population growth. Famines aren’t caused by food shortages, but by unequal distribution of food.

But blaming the poor for poverty and hunger was a convenient solution for the people who were really responsible-the rich.

In the 1960s Malthus’ arguments were revived by environmentalists, who argued that population growth in the third world was causing an ecological crisis and must be stopped.

These people never however stopped to think about the centuries of looting that the third world has suffered at the hands of European empires. Nor did they consider that many people in poor countries have many children to ensure that some of them survive the harsh realities of an impoverished childhood.

In fact, the rate of world population growth is slowing. It peaked in the 1960s, and ever since the rate of increase has been getting slower.

The population theorists thought that if the world’s resources were a pie, reducing the number of people who wanted a slice would mean everyone gets more. But what about the 1 or 2 people that are eating three-quarters of the pie, leaving the rest of us fighting over the crumbs?

Delicious pie: Time to fight for a bigger slice

Most mainstream environmentalists don’t want to confront the realities of inequality, caused by capitalism. It’s much easier to tell everyone that they have to play their part, change their lightbulbs etc., than to say “A tiny minority of the world’s population are fucking everything up to make themselves rich.” The reason it’s easier is that rich people are very powerful, and taking them on is a hard fight. But if we’re really going to prevent the worst of climate change, and save the global environment, then we’ll have to take them on and beat them.

As a system, capitalism is based on economic growth. Every year we must produce more products, consume more, and make more money. But growth is unequal-the economy is constantly funneling more and more wealth from the hands of the majority into the those of the rich.

Right now, 10% of the world’s population own 54% of the world’s wealth. The richest 50 humans on Earth make more money than the poorest 416 million put together. In their unceasing quest to get richer, these people are trashing the Earth, by pulling out everything of value from the ground, the sea, and the soil, and by pumping back the toxic waste left over. These are the people who are really responsible for climate change, and must be defeated.

The best way to reduce population growth is to start ending the poverty afflicting most of the world’s population. For decades the world’s rich countries and financial institutions have forced poorer countries to cut their public spending, preventing them from having decent health services. If more poor countries were able to follow the example of Cuba, and set up world beating health services, then less babies would die and parents would have less children. Another key issue is women’s access to proper sex education, and reproductive rights to control their own bodies.

If we’re really going to save human civilisation from the potential catastrophes on the horizon, we can’t be human-haters. We need to change our society to be more eco-friendly, and at the same time more people-friendly. It’s more than possible to meet all the basic needs (clean water, housing, enough to eat, a fulfilling life) for all the people in the world.

The people in the way of us achieving this would much rather believe that all humans are equally responsible. I’m sorry to disappoint them, but with unequal wealth and power comes unequal responsibility. So Doug Stanhope isn’t bringing us a radical message that they don’t want you to hear. His hatred of humanity (which conceals a real misogyny-see his comments about “a tired old whore” and women’s wombs) actually suits the mainstream agenda just fine. Because it lets the people who’s fault it really is off the hook.

This map uses colour and distortion to show two different things. The extent to which a country is squeezed or inflated shows the extent to which countries are consuming their fair share, based on population, of the world’s resources. Starved-looking countries consume less than their fair share (most of Africa), whereas stuffed-looking countries consume far more than their share (most of Europe and North America). The colour of the countries shows the balance between whether a country has, within its borders, can generate enough resources and cope with its own waste within its environment (green, like environmentally rich Brazil and Canada) or not (like the Middle East and, yes, the United States). (via www.pthbb.org)

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

So apparently the original press statement Glasgow’s Labour Council were going to release regarding Stephen Purcell’s resignation described a “chemical dependency” of his as being the reason for his standing down. Of course, SSY is in no position to make any informed comment regarding such accusations. We can however, make informed speculation as to what the chemical dependency may or may not be. Of course we have to make clear that the chemical dependency could be one, many, all or none of these things.

1) Stephen Purcell is obsessed with making model volcanoes.

We all know someone who has fallen into volcano addiction. First it begins with small models, perhaps only the size of a molehill but eventually expands to the size of a back garden, swamping friends and loved ones in baking soda. The process of lies begins with an excessive amount of bicarbonate soda – all to be used in “baking cakes” which never seem to materialise.

But was Purcell a Volcanolic? Was his abscence during the Save our Schools campaign due to an obsessive desire to recreate Krakatoa in the bathroom of central chambers? Labour sources have revealed nothing.

2. Bunsen Burner fetishes.

Most times a bunsen burner is a vital piece of scientific equipment which should be dealt with caution in youth as a source of burny flames. However in the hands of a hardened bunsenaholic like Purcell the burner becomes an altogether more sinister piece of equipment.

Purcell could have spent literally days locked in his office burning various transitional elements, alkali metals and, given the correct equipment various noble gases. There is a time and a place for science but when the leader of Scotland’s largest council spends days conducting scientific experiments already extensively confirmed by various scientific institutions it is time for concerned families to ask questions.

3) Mentos and Coca Cola.

It begins as a joke – perhaps dropping one mento into a bottle of Diet Coke in someones front room at a house party, and watching as the room is covered with fizzy shite. But even this simple pastime can drag someone down the dark, souless road of an addict.

Did Stephen Purcell amass gigantic quantities of Diet Cola – up to 3 metric tonnes according to some sources – and subject it to mentos? Despite a lack of evidence, we can say with confidence almost certainly yes.

4. Fabric softener.

Take a look at Stephen Purcell. I think we can all agree he’s a well dressed man, ready to go out and do his best for the people of Glasgow. But did certain cleaning substances go beyond the realms of appropriate hygiene and into a murky world of fabric softener obsession? Did Purcell take regular half hour breaks from important council meetings to plunge his head into baskets of freshly laundered clothes, to get off on the smell of febreeze? Certainly not on taxpayers time and money, SSY hopes.

5. Distillation.

Distillation is essential for separating crude oil into various fractions which can be used for various purposes – fuels etc. But Stephen Purcells interest in this chemical process is rumoured to go far beyond either an amateur or even higher chemistry student interest.

Sources at Grangemouth say someone matching Stephen Purcell’s description has been secretly infiltrating the plant to oversee important chemical processes. Sources say that so far it has only been due to Purcell’s extensive obsession with safety that a major disaster at Grangemouth and several other plants has been avoided.

***

Of course we have no idea which of these chemical dependencies could be accurate or not, hopefully this has simply been an error made by Glasgow City Council and it has in fact been Stephen Purcells tireless fight against schools, binmen, and trade unions across the city which has got him so tired and exhausted.

After all, whenever SSY is exhausted there’s nothing we like better than having a sit down, cup o tea, watch a dvd and tell a high profile legal team to absolutely cut the shit out of anyone who even suggests weve been up to anything dodgy whatsoever like.

Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa, has been in the UK meeting the Queen and causing a stir.

The Daily Mail has whipped itself into a frenzy, calling Zuma a “vile buffoon” and a “sex-obsessed bigot”, as well as repeatedly calling him “Zulu Boy”.

The Telegraph is appalled that he has been invited after  describing the British as “condescending imperialists” and think Her Maj ought to teach him some manners.

The BBC is obsessed with his multiple marriages.

The Guardian’s front page pictured the Queen next to Zuma’s wife Thobeka Stacey Madiba, as if to contrast liberated white womanhood against Mrs Zuma as chattel.

Let’s get some things straight. Jacob Zuma isn’t a very nice man. He’s a corrupt, homophobic, misogynist, rapist.

But most Heads of State and people of power are pretty distasteful, if you look in to it.  The Queen has hosted Mugabe and Ceauşescu, for goodness sake, as well as being big buddies with George W Bush.

So how come the media aren’t reporting on Zuma’s corruption, or his politics, or what he’s done in his role as President? How come they’re not using his actions to talk about issues of rape, women’s rights, gay rights, and equality in South Africa and the rest of the world today?

All we’ve learnt from the media coverage of Zuma’s visit is that we can all point and laugh at the crazy brown man, mock him and his culture and call him ‘Zulu Boy’ and get away with it. It all stinks of racism and white supremacy.

If the British media wants to criticize Zuma, maybe they could have reported on the South African feminists fighting for equality under Zuma’s regime, such as Pumla Gqola, whose wonderful myth-busting article on polygamy cuts right to the chase:

The point of the matter is not whether in a feminist republic we’d force Zuma to choose one wife or banish him… We’d probably banish Zuma for many more reasons, least of which his preference for multiple partners.

How come the white ruling class only give a shit about women’s rights when they’re trying to justify their own racism?

Would you trust this man?

This man harbours ambitions to be the leader of the Liberal Democrats, and one day Prime Minister. Is it any wonder no one takes the Liberal Democrats seriously?

He’s mainly known for three things: being convinced that one day VERY SOON an asteroid is going to destroy the earth, his ridicularse expenses claims as an MP at Westminster, and a confounding ability to get good looking women to go out with him.

Leftfield finds membership of the Liberal Democrats weird in and of itself – this is a party that seems to have no ideological grounding, floating between latching themselves on to populist campaigns (such as the odious Katy Gordon, candidate for Glasgow North this upcoming election, sending me countless newsletters through my door urging me that ONLY SHE CAN SAVE OTAGO LANE), and an enshrined tendency to prop up the ruling governments at their worst. They flip flop on life or death issues like war depending on which way public opinion seems to be turning. They claim to be ’social liberals’ AND ‘market liberals’, a fundamental contradiction which prevents their policy from progressing beyond the populist and ineffectual. They’re laughably shit, and they don’t even have the conviction of the justness of their ideology to take the sting out of that shitness.

Lembit Öpik is possibly the physical embodiment of the political joke that is the Lib Dems. The sad thing is that he genuinely thinks that asking a Cheeky Girl to marry him on a reality show is good stage management of his political career. Future Prime Minister material he ain’t.

What really puts a strain in his groin is the idea that an asteroid hitting the earth is imminent. He’s been giving that same tired shtick for over a decade now. Leftfield isn’t saying that that wouldn’t be like, totally shit, if it happened, and that a space exploration/study program isn’t a worthwhile thing for governments to be investing in. But Lembit seems a bit… obsessed, even in the face of people who actually know what they’re talking about telling him he’s talking baws. He often claimed that the chances that an asteroid identified in 2002 by actual space investigatory people rather than oddball Members of Parliament would devastate the earth were “100%”, and then neatly backtracked and admitted it would actually miss the earth by 600,000 miles. This tendency to sensationalize only serves to make him look like a ranting idiot, and does nothing to help the reputation of those of us out there who are actually interested in the idea of space exploration, and indeed science fiction nerds in general. Lembit Öpik is basically the Daily Mail of space geeks, making grandiose claims about what’s going to kill you that you’re not quite sure whether to laugh at or be scared by.

He’s a bit of a moneygrabbing wanker as well. Not content with the £64,766 salary he receives each year from Westminster, on top of the £5000 he earns from his column in that bastion of political integrity, the Daily Sport, as well as countless thousands he has made from daft public appearances, magazine deals with the Cheeky Girls and TV spots, good old Lemsip Opalfruit felt that he was entitled to claim £111,880 in parliamentary expenses over the last 7 years. With this he paid for his second home which he never used, a plasma TV, and a £40 fine he’d received for not paying his Council Tax. But he offered to pay back the £40, so at least he’s not a TOTAL bastard, eh?

Jennifer Aniston runs from Lembit's advances

Not only is Mr Ö a massive self-centred chump of an MP, he also thinks he’s god’s gift to women. Of his high profile romances, he recently said “There’s been a weathergirl, a Cheeky Girl and a Wonderbra girl, so where do you go next? Then again, I do hear Jennifer Aniston is still available”. Oh, he’s so cool. I wish I were more like him. To all the PURE MILLIONS of Lib Dems out there who are clearly avid readers of our humble blog – this misogynistic, attention grabbing idiot isn’t doing your already silly reputation any favours. And Lembit, the day Jennifer Aniston wants your squinty face anywhere near her we’ll be sure to tell Angelina Jolie she can finally rest easy.

(This article was brought to you by someone who gets really annoyed when she wakes up to 3 Lib Dem newsletters that say precisely FUCK ALL every morning. Quit wasting your paper on me!)

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!

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Looking shifty: Steven Purcell gets the sweats

After the resignation of the leader of Glasgow City Council Steven Purcell on Tuesday, it’s hard to find someone with a bad word to say about him.

Even SNP First Minister Alex Salmond, who once told Purcell to grow up, has been being nice about him.

So where do you go if you want to see someone be critical of this knobhead? Most of the media are, today at least, keeping cautious about the rumours about his resignation, since it was announced by his expensive high-powered solicitors. We wonder why that could be?

The official reason for Purcell standing down is that he is “exhausted and stressed”. But last week he seemed to be on good enough form to go to a fancy dinner at the Hilton with Gordon ‘Citric Idiot‘ Brown and Rangers manager Walter Smith to raise money for the Labour Party. But over the course of the weekend, things changed, and word started to come out on Monday he was standing down.

It’s easy to see why he would be stressed, following a major scandal at Strathclyde Passenger Transport, the public body responsible for running the subway and other public transport in Glasgow. Labour councillors have been in the top posts at this body for a long time, but recently it began to emerge that despite SPT bosses’ huge salaries, they’ve been making ridiculous expense claims, which added up to £520, 000. Free junkets enjoyed by top managers included trips to football games, expensive restaurants, £117,573 in foreign trips around the world, and even a Neil Diamond concert (where they undoubtedly had a few bottles of Red Red Wine).

Back of an SPT train

When this all started to come out several top managers were forced to resign. How this is linked to Purcell’s resignation remains to be revealed. Relations between the council and SPT have been severely strained by the affair. Tensions haven’t been helped by the slow pace of building up transport links needed for the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

Almost everyone who has commented on Purcell’s resignation has been quick to praise his role in bringing the Commonweath Games to Glasgow. But was the successful bid such great news for Glasgow as all the mainstream parties would like us to believe?

The current budget for the cost of the games is £288 million, but of course nobody believes such huge projects will ever stay inside their budget. Meanwhile, the race is on to for property developers and lazy rich people everywhere to get their hands on land in the East End and other extremely poor parts of Glasgow. Many know that if they own land they will get huge payouts from public funds for them. And after the Commonwealth Games, the long term effect is likely to be a wave of gentrification. That means that new housing and investment will mean that poor people can’t afford to live in areas they grew up any more.

It shouldn’t surprise us that this took place under Purcell’s leadership. Before he was leader of the council he was responsible for Development and Regeneration Services. What that really means is that he was at the head of efforts to use capitalist economics to transform Glasgow, and make sure it has no future as a working class city.

Purcell’s other greatest achievement was completely pissing off parents across the city when he decided to close 25 schools and nurseries, many of them in less well off areas like the Wyndford. This idiotic decision has been fought all the way by the city-wide Save Our Schools campaign. The fight included parents going into their children’s schools to occupy them.

Many were asking themselves why there was a bottomless pit of cash for the one-off Commonwealth Games, but nothing for the long term educational needs of Glaswegian pupils.

The full story behind Purcell’s resignation will take some time to come out. The announcement that today he came out of a drugs and drink rehab clinic may be the first sniff of the truth, but it’s still unclear why he was there. We do hope however that his recent experience in rehab, surrounded by people with serious addiction problems, will open his mind on the issues surrounding drugs in Glasgow.

Say hello to our new leader, Glasgow.

Glasgow urgently needs more support services for those with addiction problems. But Scotland as a whole needs to take a radical new approach, and recognise that the war on drugs has been lost. It’s time to stop treating people with problems like criminals, and give them the help they need through the NHS.

Unfortunately there seems to be little sign of the Labour Party as a whole taking this on board. The interim leader replacing Purcell is Jim Coleman, a man who has made a career out of being anti-drugs, and opposed several different education and support organisations. Whether this stance has any bearing on his selection as city leader remains to be seen.