Are you watching the Scottish Leaders’ Election debate tonight?

We thought not. But SSY plans to repeat our feat of last week by bringing you LIVEBLOGGING action of ‘Scotland Debates,’ and in the process doubling STV’s viewing figures!

Why are we so sure that there’ll be so few watching? Well let’s start the fact that all those taking part are absolute fucking mystery men.

Don’t get us wrong, the people who write this blog are nerdy about politics. But we literally have not heard of most of the people representing the “major” parties on STV tonight. You’d think that if you were pitching for people’s vote you would put up a face they know, like Alex Salmond. But no, all the Scottish party leaders are MSPs, and are not standing in this Westminster election. Quite why they still aren’t allowed to come and represent their parties policies is beyond us.

What this farce does illustrate though is the growing political gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Last week we watched Brown, Cameron and Clegg say they’d do a bunch of stuff they have no power to do in Scotland. We look forward to seeing wtf all these Westminster MPs are going to debate tonight, given they only have power over things like foreign affairs, broadcasting or drugs (as if they’d have a debate about that.) All the big domestic issues, like health and education, are run by the Scottish Parliament, so the government that’ll be elected in May has no power over them here.

So who the fuck are these nonentities. As we wait with feverish excitement (not) for the debate to begin, we bring you a quick profile of the participants.

-Jim Murphy, the Secretary for State for Scotland in Her Majesty’s Government. Otherwise known as a completely pointless job since the Scottish Parliament was invented. In fact what Jim Murphy does is act as the member of the government responsible for campaigning for Labour in Scotland. He takes this job so seriously he often confuses the city of Glasgow with the Labour Party, something Leftfield has commented on before. He’s a former student bureaucrat for the NUS, and a former chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

-Angus Robertson, the leader of the SNP at Westminster. OK, we’re on shakier territory here, I know pretty much nothing about him though. Some swift googling however reveals that in the expenses scandal he claimed £1, 119 for a TV, £400 for a Home Cinema System, £500 for a bed and £2,324 for a sofa bed. So we’re guessing he likes to relax with a movie. At your expense.

-David Mundell, the ONLY Scottish Tory MP, and therefore the Shadow Scottish Secretary, by virtue of having literally no competition. Apparently a couple of years ago he wrote a memo which got leaked to the Record denouncing the leadership of the Scottish Tories, saying there was “a simple lack of thinkers” and that they were incapable of coming up with new policies. We wonder what leader of the Scottish Tories Annabel Goldie will be thinking as she watches him on the “leaders” debate.

-Alistair Carmichael, who is allegedly a Lib Dem MP for Orkney and Shetland. Why we are seeing this man is a total mystery to us. Apparently he was once part of a successful campaign to ban a book which slagged off islanders. Maybe he burned the author in a Wicker man, we don’t know, we’re speculating at this point.

So, are you thrilled and exciting yet?!?! Below are pictures of the mystery men. If you know which one is which you officially need to get a life.

21.03-”All these questions will be directly relevant to Scotland.” Unfortunately, they will be answered by completely irrelevant people.

21.06-Murphy “A perfect storm has scunnered Scotland.” The man from the government said that twice.

21.07-Angus Robertson is going on about expenses. See above about his really expensive telly.

21.08-The mystery Lib Dem man has been a mystery Lib Dem man since he was 14 and has never been this excited! Clegg-mania!

21.09-The Tory looks like a creepy, surprised owl. He’s keen to stress it’s a British election, otherwise he’d be completely irrelevant.

21.12-Nasal Murphy wants to cut the cost of dole scum! “We’re committed to raising the national minimum wage”, an impressive promise of something that happens every year anyway.

21.13-David Mundell has waste in his system that needs to come out now. He should eat more fibre.

21.19-David Mundell sez that no other party on the planet apart from the SNP pretends there doesn’t need to be cuts. Erm, actually the SSP does! And we’ve actually got a way we could do it! Take the money off ur banker pals!

21.21-Shouty man is shouting at “the guy in the red tie”. Even the audience don’t know who these fuckers are. He wants the old jobs back, not new ones. Murphy is not however promising to employ him as a town crier or jester tho.

21.25-Lib Dem man says we forget 9/11 too easily. 9 a what now? “It would be foolish to set a timetable for withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan.” Yeah, cos there’s no real timescale to an unwinnable war really is there?

21.27-Murphy says that we either fight the Taliban in Afghanistan or we fight them here. Meanwhile, Afghan warlords are massing for an assault on the Piping Centre, because of all the anti-war traitors that didn’t want to fight them over there.

21.29-Is Angus Robertson chewing a sweet?

21.30-Jim Murphy has a war planning diary, but he will NEVER write retreat in it. Nor will he ever ring the Taliban to say he’s leaving. Presumably he wouldn’t need to cos as soon as our troops left Afghanistan the Taliban would take power in Scotland, like wot he said.

21.33-Mundell “If you have an independent review, you should stick by what it says”, especially if it means I get to keep my lovely lovely expenses cash.

21.34-Could a devious individual invent a new species of flipping? What will flipper the dolphin say about this new species and the MP scientist responsible?

21.38-Woman in the audience-”I understand what expenses are for, but the system is a joke. It needs to get sorted out. WOW, insightful.

21.39-Mundell is like a fat version of Ben from Lost. He answers questions in the same evasive way, with an undertone of menace. Or there would be menace if he wasn’t so unscary (personally, not politically.)

21.42-In a poll, what’s the difference between being undecided and not having an opinion. Were some people militant about not having an opinion, and didn’t dare want to be lumped with the people who haven’t decided if they have an opinion yet?

21.44-Murphy: “There’s too much squabbling in politics.” Maybe we should have some kind of bizarre electoral system where no matter what happens Labour will always get elected to most of the seats in Scotland, but it doesn’t really matter because all the main parties agree we need cuts and to give big business whatever they want. Oh, wait. . .

21.48-Lib Dem man gets excited: “HOW DARE YOU DENY PEOPLE THEIR RIGHT TO LOVELY CLEGG! THERE’S A THIRD CHOICE AND IT’S AWESOME!”

21.49-Insightful woman with the earrings strikes again. “If everyone just worked together we could have a brilliant Britain.” People like you elected Hitler, lol.

21.52-Did you notice how Angus Robertson had a funny tone when he said “Northern. . .Irish representation” to allude he’s going to be pally with the crazy DUP?

21.53-While they drone on, news reaches us by text. Apparently Murphy used to be kind of involved with the RCP, and thought the militant tendency were not left wing enough. We hear he was a hardline vegetarian with pro-Palestine views. . . Then he became a right wing hack chair of Friends of Israel. What a twat.

Is that it? God, nothing makes you feel like you live in a diddy country than some pish like that nonsense, or watching the televisual tranquiliser Newsnight Scotland.

Our reactions:

Sarah: “THAT WAS PISH.”

TheWorstWitch: “That was the worst TV I’ve ever watched.” (Please note, her favourite TV shows include You Are What You Eat and Snog, Marry Avoid, so she has low standards for telly, and even she hated it.)

Liam T: “Why wasn’t Nick Clegg on it? He’s the BEST! I wish he’d buy Arran so I could call him ‘Your Lordship.’”

Ever since the earth-shaking political atom bomb that was last weeks Leaders Debate – which SSY dissected in characteristic form – the polls have been turned upside down. Nick Clegg has almost singlehandedly taken the Libdems from third place to pushing the Tories for first. The Libdems have been scrutinised more than at any time for a generation, because they will now almost certainly have to be part of a coalition Government with either Labour or Tories if a there is going to be a stable Government for the next 4 years. And given the cuts that are coming, it had better be stable to withstand the flak.

The massive boost for the libdems is shown in the polls conducted for the Guardian. It shows the Libdems have surged 10 points ahead, are on 30%, with the Tories on 33% and Labour on 28%. The Libdems boost has come at a cost of taking votes from both of the other mainstream parties, and a smaller segment from the smaller ones. David Cameron has resorted to hiding in his back garden as part of a last ditch effort to fuck the Libdems. As rubbish as the Libdems are it’s amusing to watch Cameron and Brown panic over having to develop their arguments a bit more beyond “It’s that prick or me”. What is interesting – and quite shocking – has gone pretty much unreported though.

Labour are set to get the most seats in Parliament, despite coming last in these recent polls.

And although the Libdems are ahead of Labour and only 3 points behind the Tories they have a fraction of their support in terms of MP’s. This is because the Westminster Parliament works on a FPTP system, where most peoples votes are wasted. Also Labour’s majority in 1997 was so huge, that in order to beat them it doesn’t matter if loads of people vote Tory or Liberal in some constituencies – they have to be beaten in key marginals. That’s why the Tories have pumped loads of money from tax dodging exile Lord Ashcroft into seats they need to win to have a clear majority. It’s also why any Labour leaflet coming through your door (particularly in Glasgow) telling you to vote Labour cos it’s a two horse race between them and the Tories is bollocks. Scotland has overwhelmingly voted Labour in the past Westminster elections, and it’s been the votes in the South East that counted.

Nobody in SSY has any sympathy for either the Tories or Libdems – but it’s ridiculous that Labour can get the most seats of any of the 3 major parties with the smallest number of votes. It’s another reason the Westminster parliament is an undemocratic fraud, where political parties on a minority of votes can hold political power. Remember that the next time politicians wonder why young people don’t vote – cos the majority voted against Labour, but they still won anyway.

WHO IS THIS MAN? Answers on a postcard to Lembit Opik's 'hash n honeyz fund', Transylvania

TONIGHT! LIVE! The SSY newsdesk brings you a blow by blow account of all the fucking THRILLING developments in the first of three US-style televised UK party leaders’ debates. What we want to know is, where’s oor Colin? He’d jazz the place up wi his funky earrings and tartan troosers.

8.35 – Gordon Brown is wearing a fetching pink tie, David Cameron looks like a taut scrotum, and some other guy’s crashed the party.

8.45 – All of them are being racist chumps with their bullshit immigration and asylum policies. What a surprise.

8.51 – David Cameron “I went to a drugs rehabilitation centre recently”. OO ER! Joining oul Stevie Purcell were you? He’s also saying “hardened” a lot, which is satisfying our childish humour.

9.01 – Gordon Brown claims the Labour party now support an elected House of Lords. WHAT’S THE POINT IN THAT, IDIOT? Abolish the fuckers. And the Queen.

9.08 – They’re all saying that they back having ‘recall elections’ for MPs when the public think they’ve got out of hand – a populist policy in the wake of the expenses scandal. This is of course something we could support. Of course, under a Labour/Tory/Lib Dem government the outrageous levels of corruption would lead to a by-election every single week!

9.09 – Host Alistair Stewart: “The Scottish and Welsh leaders’ debate take place on Tuesday.” Doesn’t matter cause we’re not real countries anyway.

9.14 – Cameron wants MOAR DISCIPLINEZ in schools, to keep all those pesky youths in check. Like it was in back in Eton, what ho old boy!

9.22 – “I’d LIKE to give everyone 250 pounds, but I just can’t do it right now!” – Nick Clegg. See, the Lib Dems can say whatever they bloody want, they’re never going anywhere.

*SSY newsdesk is bored. SSY newsdesk hopes this guy interrupts soon*

9.33 – All of them have the absolute cheek to try to sound solemn while ‘paying tribute’ to all of the soldiers who have lost their lives in the illegal war supported and implemented by ALL of the establishment parties, causing utter misery to not just those serving soldiers and their grieving families, but also all of the innocent Afghani civilians being killed on a daily basis.

9.40 – Nick Clegg – “We don’t need nuclear weapons to flatten St Petersburg and Moscow” – It’s called Leningrad you fuck!

9.43 – Cameron is rimming the NHS, aww how sweet.

9.43 – Nick Clegg “The government’s wasted some amount of billions on a computer system”. Well get Linux then, loser. Get wi the program Nick, teh internets makes the world go round. FREE THE INTERNET.

9.47 – Gordon Brown has literally said nothing of note. Maybe he is literally in Burma.

9.50 – David Cameron reveals a SHOCKING TRUTH! Apparently it’s not cancer that kills cancer patients, it’s the Labour administration! Nick Clegg says “we should all work on this together” – of course, he’s only saying that because he knows he won’t win. If he was in with a shout he’d be screaming “these fuckers will give you cancer!”. Yunno, under socialism, cancer will be abolished. Just sayin’..

9.53 – Dey talkin bout dis ‘free personal care for the elderly’ ting Gordy B has pledged. Scotland already has that! DEVOLUTION 1 – UNIONISM 0!

9.57 – “I admit that none of us have the perfect solution”. Yeah, we know. The perfect solution is socialism, obvs.

9.58 – Gordon Brown keeps sucking right up Nick Clegg’s hole. Oh Nick, you fine handsome lovely man, won’t you please form a coalition government with me?

9.59 – In the last few minutes, David Cameron has managed to use the words “lever-arch file”. What a thoroughly exciting man.

10.01 – Nick Clegg’s closing statement: “I have remembered all of your names, question askers! Because they are written on my notes! That’s how much I care, unlike those cancerous motherfuckers!”

10.02 – Gordon Brown’s closing statement: “I referenced Britain’s Got Talent, please love me? CANCER CANCER CANCER”

10.04 – David Canceron: “Choose hope over fear. If you are scared of us, don’t be! If you work hard, I’ll be behind you (watching your every move). I am never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie or hurt you.”

That was it then. Yeah, I prefer Tina Fey.

Primark’s secret plot to make little girls more appealing to paedophiles has been revealed, thanks to fearless journalism by The Sun.

They reported that “Primark bosses invite parents to send out girls of seven dressed as sex objects to be leered at by paedophiles,” after it was revealed that Primark have a range of swimwear for children which includes a slightly padded bikini top. Horror of horrors!

Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are all tripping over themselves to condemn Primark, and the Sun has extended its crusade to a whole host of other shops, announcing that it’s “Paedo heaven on our High Street“.

Let’s have a look at the bikini in question. It’s hardly a Wonderbra, is it?

There are two reasons girls start wearing bras or crop tops long before we might actually need them for support:

- to be mature and grown up, and avoid being made fun of by girls

- to hide the shape of our developing breasts, and avoid being made fun of by boys

Remember school swimming lessons, and having to stand in front of everyone you knew in a skintight costume that left nothing to the imagination whilst the PE teacher droned on for what seemed like an eternity… but none of the other kids paid attention because they were too busy making fun of you for either being a flatchested baby or a bigtitted slutty bitch? And to top it off, all of the popular girls are wearing bikinis and you’re stuck in a totally lame onepiece. Being a kid is really fucking hard.

As well as being ridiculous and not helping anyone, The Sun’s PAEDO BIKINI panic has an extremely sinister undertone. If paedophiles are only preying on children because of their “sexy” clothes, then who should take the blame when children are abused? The shops that sold the sexy clothes? The parents for buying them? The kids for wearing them? Anyone but the actual abuser and the sexually fucked up society obsessed with little girls’ and their virginity and purity, whilst promoting an pornographic ideal of hairless and childlike womanhood.

Laurie Penny at the Guardian’s Comment is Free has had the only remotely sensible take on this so far, saying:

Rather than encouraging healthy sexual exploration or promoting education, campaigns to protect girls from “sexualisation” assume that sexuality itself is a corrupting influence on young women.

The notion of “sexualisation” deserves serious critical unpacking. The term envisions girl children as blank erotic slates upon which sexuality can only ever be violently imposed. This narrow vision of sexuality leaves no room for young girls to explore authentic desire at their own pace, insisting instead that girls need to be protected from erotic influence, while boys, presumably, are free to fiddle with themselves to their hearts’ content.

Far from protecting young girls, the “anti-sexualisation” agenda actually serves a culture that shames girls if they have sexual feelings of their own while fetishising them as objects of erotic capital. The pornographic and advertising industries routinely infantilise adult women in an erotic context: in 2008, catwalk model Lily Cole infamously posed nude for French Playboy cuddling a teddy bear and licking a lollipop. Corporate visions of pubescent sexuality are marketed to children and adults alike as ritualised acts of erotic drag, and from an early age, young girls have a profound understanding that such sexual performance must be undertaken if we are not to be socially punished…

This ugly world of performative erotic control is made more confusing by a vociferous moral lobby in which adults talk to other adults about what young girls should be permitted to wear, say and do. The online mumocracy’s call for retailers to “show parents that their company believes that children should be allowed to be children” is irrelevant to the real experiences of girls growing up in a world where our sexual impulses are stolen and sold back to us.

Padded bras for preteens are not the problem. The problem is a culture of prosthetic, commodified female sexual performance, a culture which morally posturing politicians appear to deem perfectly acceptable as long as it is not ‘premature’. By assuming that sexuality can only ever be imposed upon girl children, campaigns to ‘let girls be girls’  ignore the fact that late capitalism refuses to let women be women – at any age.

But leaving all of that aside… surely paedophiles want children to look as childlike as possible, and would therefore be resolutely opposed to padded bras for kids? LOGIC FAIL.

"I've come to assess your disability claim"

From the Benefits and Work newsletter:

“Thousands will lose benefits as harsher medical approved

Tens of thousands of claimants facing losing their benefit on review, or on being transferred from incapacity benefit, as plans to make the employment and support allowance (ESA) medical much harder to pass are approved by the secretary of state for work and pensions, Yvette Cooper.

The shock plans for ‘simplifying’ the work capability assessment, drawn up by a DWP working group, include docking points from amputees who can lift and carry with their stumps.  Claimants with speech problems who can write a sign saying, for example, ‘The office is on fire!’ will score no points for speech and deaf claimants who can read the sign will lose all their points for hearing.

Meanwhile, for ‘health and safety reasons’ all points scored for problems with bending and kneeling are to be abolished and claimants who have difficulty walking can be assessed using imaginary wheelchairs.

Claimants who have difficulty standing for any length of time will, under the plans, also have to show they have equal difficulty sitting, and vice versa, in order to score any points.  And no matter how bad their problems with standing and sitting, they will not score enough points to be awarded ESA.

In addition, almost half of the 41 mental health descriptors for which points can be scored are being removed from the new ‘simpler’ test, greatly reducing the chances of being found incapable of work due to such things as poor memory, confusion, depression and anxiety.

There are some improvements to the test under the plans, including exemptions for people likely to be starting chemotherapy and more mental health grounds for being admitted to the support group.  But the changes are overwhelmingly about pushing tens of thousands more people onto JSA.

If all this sounds like a sick and rather belated April Fools joke to you, we’re not surprised.  But the proposals are genuine and have already been officially agreed by Yvette Cooper, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.  They have not yet been passed into law, but given that both Labour and the Conservatives seem intent on driving as many people as possible off incapacity related benefits, they are likely to be pursued by whichever party wins the election.

We know that many people will find this news deeply upsetting and even frightening and we know that some people will condemn us for publicising the planned changes or for the language that we are using to do so.  But we also believe that it’s not too late to stop these ugly plans in their tracks if claimants and the organisations that represent them act now.

With 1.5 million incapacity benefit claimants waiting to be assessed using the work capability assessment in the next few years and tens of thousands of people already on ESA and set to be reviewed annually, these changes will be of great concern to many voters – if they find out about them before polling day.

So, please spread the word in forums and blogs and to people you know who may be affected. Ask any disability charity you have a connection with to speak out now, before election day, against these plans.  You might also want to contact local newspapers and radio to warn people about the proposals.

And above all, contact not just your MP, but the other candidates in your constituency, and let them know you will not be voting for anyone who does not loudly condemn this shameful attack on sick and disabled claimants.

These plans really are a potential seat loser, but only if enough people know about them.

Sources

Building bridges to work

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/building-bridges-to-work.pdf

Work Capability Assessment Internal Review

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-capability-assessment-review.pdf

Addendum
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/work-capability-assessment-review-addendum.pdf”

All that's missing is a smiling pic of the Dear Leader

For over a year now people have been gearing up for the potential horror of David the Replicant Cameron’s Tories taking power in May. In the face of this, not much attention has been paid to the many shite things promised by a potential incoming Labour government.

Yesterday Labour launched their manifesto, giving us a peek at their wonderful plans for us all to walk forward into a glorious dawn over a landscape of cartoon fields. Or that’s what the cover of ‘A Future Fairer for All,’ would have you think. Personally my first thought on seeing it was that it looked like a piece of socialist realism, but others have been comparing it to Labour election images from 1923 and 1945. The idea is to make you think you’re getting something pretty left wing, as they try desperately to make you feel like Labour is a decent alternative to the Tories.

When you take a look inside, the first thing that jumps out from the contents page is the fact that Labour obviously have no intention of standing up to the BNP line on immigration. Labour’s strategy for winning back support they’ve lost to the far right isn’t to actually offer support for the working class, but to help push racist ideas. The fact that there’s one section called ‘Crime and Immigration’ says it all.

Just now if you’ve been living in the UK for five years you can apply for citizenship, but Labour promise to break that link and make gaining citizenship based on what skills it’s been decided the British economy needs “making sure we have the amount of immigrants we need and no more.” This is because, Labour  say, “living in Britain is a right not a privilege.”

In other words, immigration is going to be determined based on the needs of employers, and pay no attention to people who have been living in Britain for years, and who’s whole life may be here. It’s going to make life a nightmare for thousands of people. Besides which, how do we define what Britain gains from immigration? I think we can all agree it would be a shit place to live without the contribution of different cultures to our boring society.

Labour are quite willing to along with the racist idea, pushed by the right wing press and unfortunately accepted by many people, that immigrants are all criminals who are out to cheat and steal. they proudly boast of how they’ve made immigrants subject to a high tech police regime of biometric controls enforced by thousands more personnel for the UK border agency, which has faced persistent allegations of racism in how it treats people.

They also promise to “stengthen” the ridiculous Britishness test, where immigrants are forced to prove their knowledge of things

"I totally forgot to put down the Royal Variety Performance!"

supposedly integral to everyday life in Britain, despite the fact that most folk born in the UK probably couldn’t tell you half the answers. Do you know which of these courts uses a jury system: Magistrates’ Court, Crown Court, Youth Court or County Court? Or could you concisely sum up in an exam the Queen’s official role and all her ceremonial duties? More importantly, why would you need to know this stuff just to get on with living your life in the UK? How about if more children live in single parent families or step families?

The ‘All immigrants are sponging criminals’ section also is none to kind for youth, with a return to the ASBO agenda of scapegoating young people for the social collapse caused by neoliberal government policies. They promise to introduce a ‘Preventative element’ to ASBOs, though quite how this Minority Report style promise will be carried out isn’t made clear. They’re also promising to make fines higher for teenagers for those who’ve been caught for minor offences that aren’t worth taking them to court for.

There’s more scapegoating on offer for the unemployed, with the expansion of plans to make the unemployed work for their benefits, which Leftfield has already reported on. They villify the unemployed as “scarred by joblessness”. I suppose that working in a shite job for virtually no wages or rights or you lose your benefit would definitely be less scarring than just being able to get your dole when there are no actual jobs going.

There’s no commitment to any kind of spending to try and alleviate the poverty being faced by the working class that Labour policies helped create. Instead, like their election broadcast of a man trudging along a deserted road, we’re all apparently going to make tough choices. In fact, there’s a whole page of “tough choices”, the toughness seemingly going to be mainly falling on public sector workers who will see their wages capped.

To try and make it seem like they’re doing something leftish, there’s lots of talk about encouraging co-ops and and mutualising public services. In fact, what this is likely to lead to in practice will be more undemocratic bureaucracies like Glasgow Housing Association, and other supposedly “not for profit” provision of things the government or councils used to do, before they spent all their money on giving banks wads of cash. This couldn’t be more clear in their pledge to continue the creeping privatisation of the NHS by turning every hosptial into a foundation hospital.

To try and demonstrate a commitment to the NHS, the manifesto launch took place in a brand new hospital in Birmingham. What they didn’t tell you is that a hospital that should have cost £627 million is actually going to cost the taxpayer a whopping £2.6 billion because it was built under the insane PFI scheme where private companies end up owning public facilities.

Ellie Gellard next to the man she previously called for to be sacked

At the launch itself, the show was introduced by one of those totally awful Labour student types who’ve got an eye on a cushy job as an MP in a couple of years. You can see Ellie Gellard’s speech here, which is mainly about how you need to make sure everyone you know watches Labour’s youtube videos. Unfortunately for Labour, journalists were quick to catch on that she hasn’t always been so keen on Gordon Brown, having previously blogged that he should quite as PM.

The sad fact is that both Labour and the Tories are equally committed to cutting the living standards of the working class in order to recoup the money they handed over to the banks. They’re also totally shameless about employing racist rhetoric and encouraging people to blame immigrants for problems which they in fact are responsible for. Peter Mandelson was right to describe the manifesto as ‘Blair Plus’, the plus being an added, pathetic and unconvincing, attempt to look left wing.

Last night Labour released their first party election broadcast for the general election.

It features Sean Pertwee, off of that Bo Selecta spin off, trudging along some long country roads. At the very start he looks at how far at he has to go and makes a noise that the rest of us would express as “Fuck’s sake,” before trying to find a bus stop.

The point of all this is to remind us how grim things have been since the economic collapse, and how we need to keep plodding along with Gordon. Although PM Brown doesn’t feature in the video, his heroic actions to help banks “families and businesses” are referenced constantly.

It’s not a very inspirational message, recognising that after all these years in power, there’s not really anything the Labour Party can promise us, apart from of course cuts “deeper than Thatcher’s” and kicking people off the internet in order to protect the profits of record corporations.

So instead of ‘Things Can Only Get Better,’ we get “Now is not the time to change course.” In other words, grin and bear it.

Of course, it’s not quite as scary as Sean Pertwee’s last Party Political Broadcast, seen below. Watching this effort, it makes us wonder how far Labour’s repression of our desire for a better society will go:

Although, to be fair, it’s unlikely that Labour will ever bring us something as exciting as Gun Kata.

The broadcast ends with a little voiceover from none other than recently retired Timelord David Tennant, although he’s not doing the English accent he had to put on to be Dr Who. He promises us that we can make Britain “the country we all want it to be”, which of course begs the question of how government spending cuts will affect the Torchwood Institute.

But we do advise Labour to be careful about accepting Tennant’s support. He’s proven to be fickle in his political alliances in the past, and his support could prove to be a poisoned chalice:

Sean Pertwee is of course the son of Jon Pertwee, himself a former Timelord. If only the Third Doctor was still around he could perhaps have given some much needed advice on how to spice up the film. Here’s how the Labour election broadcast should have looked. If they had put this out as what Labour had planned for the next few years, they may well have persuaded me to stay the course:

But as it is, all they are in fact offering us is “stick with boring Gordon cos he’s not quite as bad as the Tories.” Hardly “I have a dream!” is it? In fact, we think that this video pretty much accurately sums up the promises for 4 more years of boredom and neoliberalism given in Labour’s broadcast.

Bonus: To see how an election broadcast should be done, check out this.

As Britain is gearing up for the most important election in decades, it’s also the most closely fought. Successive opinion polls have shown that it is unlikely any party will have an overall majority to govern – that either means working as a minority Government, or one in coalition. This has an obvious disadvantage, that at the time when the ruling class in the UK needs a strong Government to enforce public sector cuts, take on the trade unions and face down community campaigns against cuts to their services they may in fact have the weakest Government in decades; a Government that can be undermined by appealing to the opposition or coalition partners with cold feet.

This scenario has caused considerable and obvious disquiet to Britain’s bankers and potential investors. In order to quash this concern, the British state is, according to at least one press report prepared to rely on undemocratic and ancient rules to enforce stability at the price of democracy; that is, the use of Crown Powers.

The Daily Mail reports that none other than The Queen has been approached by leading civil servants to discuss using her powers as a Monarch in relation to a hung Parliament. It outlines a scenario in which no party has a majority, and the Parliament is a hung one. The minority Government could approach the Queen to request another general election to secure a stable majority Government. Leading civil servants are worried this would cause instability in the UK, and are discussing with the Queen the possibility of her using her Crown Powers to deny a request for a second General Election.

This would be designed to force the political parties to form a stable coalition Government, able to make the cuts necessary to make the UK profitable for capitalism again. Such use of Crown Power in the UK would be shocking and controversial, and it may not be necessary but it is far from impossible. Crown Powers have already been used in people’s lifetime – the Governor General in Australia dismissed a left-leaning Government in Australia using Crown Powers. These powers have also been used to overrule a High Court ruling which said the expulsion of Diego Garcia’s indigenous population to make way for a US military base was illegal.

The reality is the Crown still has plenty of power in the UK, if not to be used on the whim of the monarch itself but in the interests of Britain’s ruling establishment of MP’s, civil servants, bankers etc. It is still used in the Privy Council, whose prerogative powers were used to deny justice to the islanders of Diego Garcia and to ban GCHQ workers from being allowed to join a union. And there is of course the undemocratic House of Lords, whose peers are allowed to block laws voted on democratically in Westminster.

All these hang ons from the medieval ages are kept as an insurance policy in case any Government – in the past a feared “ultra-left” Labour one – would go too far, and for any Government to use as an extension of it’s powers beyond the relative transparency of Parliament. Remember that the next time the Monarchy comes up in a debate – tourists they may attract, but Mickey Mouse does not have the power to deny elections to the Senate in the United States!

The Queens Diamond Jubillee will be held in 2012, with public holidays on the 4th and 5th of June to celebrate her glorious reign. The SSP won’t be attending however – and will organise a demonstration for an Independent Republic, like we did at Calton Hill in 2004. We’ll be protesting so that the Queen and all the undemocratic hangovers of the middle ages have no role in politics, and Scotland is a modern, 21st century democratic Republic without inherited privilege or power.

The 3 contenders for Chancellor of the Exchequer all agree on one thing – the budget deficit must be cut. This will require a variety of “brutal”, “savage” and “deep” cuts – but none of course, will affect you or your frontline services. It’s a bit like serial killer say he’s going to stab you repeatedly but you will still be able to go for a pint and a game of football afterwards. Most people don’t like seeing their school, hospital or for that matter job cut. But all 3 parties say they can make these brutal cuts without it really affecting the living standards of the population – how?

Well the Tories in league wi the tabloid press have said they” cut “non jobs” that are allegedly rampant in the public sector; gypsy co-ordinators, totem pole dramatists, carbon officers, etc. A lot of these jobs are basic admin stuff which have been made to sound fancy to stop the people working in them from forgetting that we are all middle class now. But a lot of them are tokenistic, designed to make it look like the Government are doing something about climate change, racism and discrimination in the workplace.

Ultimately though the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates 14 – 24% cuts in non-protected departments are necessary to deal with the budget deficit. We gave £500 billion in a bail out to the banks – sorry folks, there aren’t enough walking coordinators and health and safety outreach guardian jobs to cut to save that kind of money.

One thing that can be cut, and doesn’t directly affect the mass of the population though is benefits. There’s already demands from the tabloid press to drastically cut “spongers” on benefits. There are parts of Glasgow, London, Manchester etc with large minorities of adults who are living on benefits – a lot of whom are also on disability benefit.

Disability benefit ranges from £47 – £70 a week, an increase from what you get on the dole, which is around £50 a week depending on your age. The Government can’t cut people’s dole easily, but it can force people who are on disability allowance on to the basic unemployment allowance.

New Government tests have been designed, with 70% of the applicants failing to qualify for disability allowance, and deemed fit to work. These tests have been condemned by charities like Macmillan, and the Citizens Advice Bureau for deeming those with terminal illnesses as being fit to work.

Here’s a few examples below,

A CAB in London saw a former engineer in his 50’s who was working as a driver. After feeling ill for a number of months he visited his G.P and was immediately referred to hospital where he was admitted with heart disease and required a triple bypass. About three weeks after he’d been discharged he started to feel extremely ill again. He went back to hospital and after a series of new tests was diagnosed with inoperable and incurable stomach and liver cancer. Although he was advised to continue taking regular exercise, he found walking and breathing difficult, was in constant pain and suffered a number of uncomfortable side effects from both his cancer and heart medication. At his WCA he was found fit for work on the basis that he remarked how he walked daily (although not far and not without discomfort) and could raise his hands above his head (once). None of his medical consultants could believe the decision. He recently appealed the original decision and was successful in being put into the support group for people not required to look for work.

Other examples are given, of one client with Parkinson’s disease who was barely able to stand, and whose speech was slurred but still cleared as fit to work. Another man who was shot at by a violent gang, and diagnosed with PTSD was declared fit for work. His test did not take account of any of his personal circumstances, but just asked him a series of yes and no questions. It’s not dissimilar from what was featured in the documentary The Trap, where people were diagnosed or cleared of complex psychological disorders on the basis of a questionnaire and nothing else. New Labour are quite literally working people to death to save money.

The welfare bill for the budget is massive, with £190 billion spent on social protection – the largest single cost – and a further £29 billion spent on personal social services. Since coming into power in 1997 New Labour have been attacked for this massive proportion of spending on the welfare state. But the reality is the benefits you receive today for being unemployed are lower in relation to average income than ever before. Benefits are now 10% of average wages, down from almost 20% in 1970.

New Labour’s massive welfare bill exists due to long term unemployment in urban areas all over the UK – who previously had no lack of people working, but were plunged into massive unemployment, poverty, ill health and crime as part of the transformation of Britain from a manufacturing country (with the union power that entails) to one based on finance services.

This transformation meant that the economic boom has passed over areas in Scotland with massive unemployment, and without any Government investment or control of the economy to make jobs there are thousands claiming benefits because the talents they had are now irrelevant to the modern economy.

Another part of the welfare bill is in tax credits. Tax credits act as benefits for those who work, but are paid very poorly. Contrary to the tabloids many civil servants who administer this service are themselves paid so low that they also claim them. Tax credits effectively act as a Government subsidy to employers who pay their workers such a low wage, the state has to step in to provide them with enough money to earn a decent wage.

You can expect the unemployed to face a sustained attack from whichever party wins the next election; cutting benefits, forcing the ill to work, making people work for the dole (and not a decent wage). Remember that the biggest welfare state claimant in the UK’s history is not single parents, immigrants, the unemployed or the disabled – it’s the banking system who took £500 billion. They’re the real spongers.

As I explained in a recent blog post, I decided to write to Osama Saeed and Anas Sarwar, to encourage them to take a stand against the BNP’s freedom to stir up racial hatred. Below is the text of an emailed letter I sent to anas@sarwar4glasgow.com and blog@osamasaeed.org

Dear fellow candidate,

First of all, allow me to congratulate you on being selected by your party to run as a candidate in Glasgow Central. It is shaping up to be a hard-fought contest and I am ready to fight as hard as anyone in delivering my party’s distinctive message of peace, justice and socialism. This election is particularly important because of its context – the worst economic crisis in living memory, sharply rising unemployment and the threat of swingeing cuts to public services, wages and pensions alike.

My reason for writing is one of concern for the future. Throughout history, candidates of the extreme Right have sought to utilise economic downturn and the misery it causes the majority of people, in order to divide the people; focusing blame not on those in power nor the system they uphold, but on minorities, organised workers and all those who they consider ‘deviant’.

In past times, Britain has witnessed periods of growth for fascists such as Mosley’s blackshirts in the 1930s/40s and the National Front in the 70s/80s. Their role has been to terrorise minorities including Jews, Blacks and Irish. Today’s manifestation of this scummy tradition is the British National Party, whose main role is to act on the anti-Muslim climate whipped up by reactionary sections of the mainstream press. Without wishing to overstate their importance, they do represent a serious danger which cannot be ignored.

Despite their attempts to rebrand themselves as a non-violent electoralist party, you only have to scratch the surface to discover their true character. Many of their members have been convicted for racially aggravated assaults. The ranks of their organisation, all the way up to the top level, are full with Nazi sympathisers and white supremacists. It is no coincidence that some of the racist English Defence League’s biggest and most violent recent gatherings have occurred in areas of BNP growth, e.g. Stoke (recently abolished elected Mayor for fear that the BNP would win it) and Bolton (part of Nick Griffin’s North-West England euro constituency). Wherever they are able to gain a foothold, there is an inevitable subsequent rise in attacks on non-white people, religious minorities, homosexuals and radicals.

I raise all this to support the idea that far from being a legitimate political outfit, they are a menace to any vestiges of democracy and a threat to the safety of many members of our society. It is not unreasonable to suggest that if they came to power, I could be discussing them with you within the confines of a concentration camp. The 1 million votes they received in May, alongside some crafty PR spin, has tricked some into allowing them access to public service broadcasting and a place in the official political sphere. This is a dangerous practice and one which we should not simply stand by and allow to happen.

In the coming campaign, we will likely be invited to participate in debates or forums where members of the public engage with the candidates. The BNP are yet to declare a candidate, but will probably do so as they will seek an opportunity to cause division in a multi-ethnic ward with 2 prominent Muslim candidates. They should not be allowed to exploit these opportunities to spread their bile. I am asking you to take a brave stand and pledge that you will not share a platform with a representative of the BNP. For those who are organising such events, the pledge that major parties are united in unwillingness to allow fascists to take part will deter them from inviting BNP representatives.

I would be grateful if you could reply, confirming your position on this matter.

Yours sincerely,
James Nesbitt
SSP Candidate, Glasgow Central
30/03/2010