Tuesday 6 October 2015

Come the Revolution?

It is a while since I wrote on this blog. After the disappointing election result, where just 24% of the electorate, (or less than one in five of the population if you take account of those not allowed to vote), managed to vote in yet another Government of the minority under our patently undemocratic winner takes all voting system. Even in the Richmond constituency, where a parachuted in public school Tory was elected with a large majority of those who voted; the Tory still only has the support of just a third of the population.
But the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning, Tuesday 6th October 2015, really, really got my goat.
Reporting from the Tory party conference in Manchester, the BBC once again demonstrated its biased reporting. Time after time, the claims by the Tories to have created a strong economy went unchallenged. Not once, despite having the opportunity many times, notably whilst interviewing the nutty Minority Minister, David Cameroon, did any BBC reporter point out that since coming to power in 2010, the Tories have doubled the public sector debt (from c.£750 billion to £1.5 trillion and still rising): an increase greater than every Labour Government combined.
The balance of payments deficit (the difference between what the UK imports and what we export) was close to £100bn in 2014. That deficit was funded by the ever rising non-government debt: in other words we are all getting deeper in debt. That means that more and more of the UK's capital assets are having to be sold off to pay for that debt. Almost every major non-financial business in the UK is in foreign ownership. Many of these companies are dodging tax, because the Tories have still failed to implement meaningful anti-tax avoidance measurements.
The Tory chancellor, George Osborne was in China recently, kow-towing to the Communist dictatorship that runs that country, in order to get a few scraps from its table. Offering shameless bribes, such as offering more money to China for grass roots football, than the Tory Government spends on sport in North East England.
China produces more than 800 million tonnes of steel a year, over 50% of the world's production, on the back of massive Chinese Government support and low wages. In the UK, in one of the few remaining UK (but foreign owned) steel plants on Teesside; steel workers are being made redundant and receiving little support from the Tory Government.
The message is very clear, but completely over looked by the BBC. The Tories are rubbish at managing our economy and austerity just does not work. Pre-austerity post war Britain had higher levels of economic growth, which were more evenly distributed than today. Since Thatcher broke the post war consensus the UK has had lower growth than previously, as well as the three great post war economic crises: in the early 1980s, the early 1990s (Cameron was culpable in causing Black Monday) and the banking crisis after 2008.
What sense is there in reducing the top tax rate for millionaires down to 45% when you have massive public debt, when even under Thatcher it was 60%? Why hasn't this Government implemented sweeping changes to tax avoidance legislation to stop companies exporting their profits to tax havens? Why are the poor being penalised by reducing benefits and tax credits, whilst the rich get lower taxes? Why is this Government forcing Housing Associations to sell the dwindling stock of social housing, whilst paying massive subsidies to private landlords in the form of housing benefit?
These are the questions the BBC are not asking. The BBC and all the media should be challenging the Public school boys in charge, but instead they are run by them. Which is why the BBC virtually ignored the massive peaceful demonstrations against austerity outside the steel walls erected by the establishment around the ivory tower that is the Tory conference.
The BBC is part of the grand alliance of unaccountable power that rules this country and time is running out if we are to avoid a revolution being the only way to end this injustice.