Don't wait for supermarkets to end food waste scandal

“All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe,” says Feeding the 5,000, a campaign group which is pioneering food recycling.

Tesco – the UK’s largest supermarket – admits that 28,500 tonnes of food waste were generated in its stores and distribution centres in just six months. And this is only part of the 15 million tonnes of food which is thrown away in the UK each year.

Is this a new and startling reality?  

Well, yes and no. Years ago, I remember a speaker from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) explaining to pupils at my school that it was totally possible to feed all the hungry mouths on the planet with existing resources.

So the bigger question is why is that instead of such an elemental problem being solved, in the age of super technology, humanity is still struggling with it?

Campaigners are trying to get supermarkets to revise their attitudes to their products – such as sending food past its “best-by” dates to charities and food banks.

That seems sensible, but relying on corporations for whom food is a commodity to be sold for a profit can’t solve the problem, which goes deeper than how food is marketed and sold.

At a basic level, we are alienated from the very substances that keep us alive. Instead of seeing the lettuce leaves, apples, meat, fish and bread as precious products developed from nature by our fellow human beings, most see them as little more than useful commodities.

We have long lost the connection with the land and soil on which they grow and the people who tend the crops. We prefer not to think about how “free range” eggs are collected by cheap labour or how animals are kept and slaughtered.

We don’t think about the end destination of plastic, polystyrene and packaging used to attract children to dangerous sweets and to make us buy more and more.

Felix Preston, in a briefing paper produced for the Chatham House think tank, calls for “a fundamentally new model of industrial organisation”. He proposes a “circular economy” or “CE”.

Instead of seeing “waste” as something simply to be discarded, a circular economy would “transform the function of resources in the economy”. These proposals chime in with the aim of a zero waste approach now advocated by some municipal authorities and governments as well as ecological campaigners.

Of course, the hope is that corporate capitalism will adopt the circular economy approach because it is good for business. CE would “offer huge business opportunities”, according to its supporters.  

But what is needed is something different. The for-profit market-growth model must always prioritise its shareholder returns. Yes, some capitalists are much more far seeing than others. Yes, they may even believe the greenwash they churn out through their clever publicists.

But as the recent scandal with egg production in the UK shows, the bottom line for most companies is that they want to maximise their profits.

Preston’s proposals, he says, “requires systemic changes that go beyond the individual firm. They must be embedded in partnerships and networks of companies”, and would require a collaborative, information-sharing approach.

This is definitely not possible within the capitalist framework of production and exchange, driven by market share and maximising dividends.

Resolving the problem of waste is indeed possible. It makes the transition from a for-profit capitalist economy to a co-operative, collaborative, shared-ownership system more urgent than ever.

One of the greatest scourges of humanity -  hunger and malnutrition – could be overcome if humanity could open up an alternative path where eating, like heating, comes before profit.

Corinna Lotz

Useful links: http://www.thinkeatsave.org/

http://www.feeding5k.org/food-waste-facts.php

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/fast-facts-food-waste

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/wrap-and-circular-economy

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Energy,%20Environment%20and%20Development/bp0312_preston.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10393981/Tesco-food-waste-Why-half-of-your-shopping-basket-may-end-up-in-the-bin.html

ConDemned to a nuclear nightmare

When Japan and Germany decided to halt nuclear power dependency in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, some hoped it was a turning point. But the deal with French and Chinese corporations announced today marks an abrupt end to the dream that nuclear power might be phased out.

Instead, vast amounts of taxpayers’ money is to be handed to French and Chinese state-owned corporations to build a new power station in Somerset and be guaranteed a minimum price for the power it will generate in ten year's time.  

Hinkley Point will become the first new nuclear plant in Europe since Fukushima. That plant continues to leak massively to this day and was the second worst nuclear accident after Chernobyl in 1986. Then, radioactive fallout equivalent to 20 Hiroshima bombs damaged the health of countless people in northern Europe and continues to blight their lives.

The price agreed for power generation at Hinkley is at double the current market rate. This means that the companies are guaranteed longer-term revenues of around £80bn, according to some calculations. A scandal, or what?

The government has agreed to provide some £10bn guarantees to build the power station, thus subsidising nuclear energy at a higher rate than renewables – which are becoming more and more economic.

EDF, which is almost entirely owned by the French state, took over British Energy in 2008-9 and now operates 15 nuclear reactors in the UK. Nuclear expansion received a huge boost after the Blair governments enthusiastically endorsed it.

New Labour’s enthusiasm was matched a few years later by that of former anti-nuclear campaigner George Monbiot, who experienced a strange conversion in 2011 after Fukushima, when he declared himself pro-nuclear and made a vicious attack on the highly respected, Dr Helen Caldicott.

Despite the fact that the nuclear industry is so dangerously accident-prone, the companies chosen by Osborne and his ConDem clique are most obviously the least transparent and least responsible organisations to run such a dangerous industry.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that EDF and CGN will be any less negligent or open to scrutiny than the companies which built and supplied the nuclear reactors behind the Fukushima disaster.

Quite the opposite. Earlier this year, EDF pursued anti-fracking campaigners No Dash For Gas for £5m. EDF dropped its lawsuit eventually but only after the protesters agreed to a permanent injunction against entering EDF sites.

Less well-known is no doubt the fact that the head and deputy head of EDF’s nuclear security operation were jailed for three years each by a French Court in 2011.  They had spied on Greenpeace and hacked into the organisation’s computer systems.

Any misdoings by the Chinese state-owned CGN will virtually untraceable or accountable. Greenpeace campaigner in Hong Kong, Prentice Koo, warns that "Their [Chinese nuclear operators] track record is really bad and that they never give reasons for nuclear accidents.”

He told the BBC’s China reporter that "The nuclear industry in China enjoys such a privileged position that they have to pay only very limited sums in compensation if there is any major incident."

Thus, EDF and its Chinese partners will profit handsomely but are most unlikely to be responsible for any accidents or clean-up. So, cheap power generation, safety, transparency, accountability? You have to be joking.

Going nuclear at vast expense is a desperate act by a country without a sustainable energy strategy. It won’t even help to keep the lights on as it's a decade away. Consumers will pay through the nose and no doubt be asked to foot the eventual bill for storing radioactive waste.

Energy minister Michael Fallon is hailing the process as a “nuclear renaissance”. Actually, it’s more like an expensive nuclear nightmare the ConDems are holding out before us. 

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Heat or eat, live or die: the market will decide

Behind the rip-off increases in gas and electricity prices announced by British Gas is an industry dominated by six secretive corporations who take their cue from the international energy market to drive up profits. 

It should come as no surprise that the big six operate as an oligopoly, raising prices in unison whenever they can, but especially before the winter sets in. They decide whether people will heat or eat and, in the case of some, live or die from the cold.

While the market wholesale price for gas, for example, has risen and fallen since 2004 (see graph), the big six have ensured that the price paid by consumers has continued on its upward trend.  

Attempt to find out how the six operate and you come up against a brick wall of “commercial confidentiality”. Trying to get to the bottom of it all baffled Which?, the Consumers’ Association magazine. In its October edition it reported:

“And most of the trading they [the six] do externally just isn’t transparent – there are no details of how much electricity is sold or what prices were paid. It’s nearly impossible to find out how much your company paid for the energy it sells, and therefore impossible to work out if you’re paying a fair price as an end user.”

That’s not the end of it. Each of the major suppliers also has a power generating arm. They sell electricity to themselves. “However, this is carried out behind closed doors and the price the supply arm of the company pays to the generation arm isn’t made public.” The generation arms of these companies made average profits of about 20% in 2012.

Which? concludes that the companies are so cynical they don’t even care about losing customers as a result of price rises. In 2006, British Gas’ parent company Centrica raised prices by an astronomical 28.6%. Over 850,000 customers quit. But revenue from gas sales still rose by 15%.

You can just see British Gas executives laughing all over their faces following prime minister Cameron’s appeal yesterday for people to switch suppliers. They are not bothered in the slightest. As for them blaming the government’s “green tax” for the rise, it only accounts for 5% of your bill.

Although renewable energy now accounts for 11% of the total (even this output, by the way, is sold on the market!), Britain is still reliant on fossil fuels despite their proven connection to climate change and extreme weather patterns.

Gas and electricity prices have been rising steadily since 2004 – the year Britain first became a net importer of energy as North Sea gas and oil supplies began to fall way. Since then, first New Labour and now the ConDems have been thrashing around trying to devise an energy policy reliant on the private sector

The fact is that both the ConDems and One Nation Labour are in thrall to the corporations and the market. So we’re now faced with a market that protects profits at the expense of consumer plus the refusal of the state to create an ecologically-sustainable energy supply that breaks the dependence on fossil fuels.

Switching suppliers is, as we have seen, a bit pointless as the prices of the main suppliers are more or less in line with each other. Smaller suppliers are simply squeezed out. Labour’s idea of an 18-month price freeze sometime in 2015 is combined with a plan to “reform the market”. This is a sticking plaster approach rather than a solution.

The energy market itself is an obscenity. Fuel is a basic necessity, a social right. So no one should expect profit-driven generators and suppliers to deliver on this. Breaking dependence on the market would mean a massive switch to renewable energy generation. That will also require the return to public ownership of the energy industry.

Who is prepared to implement this solution is another question. The answer certainly lies beyond the political careerists at Westminster and a system that puts profits before people.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

  

Fracking capitalism is the way to go

The campaign against fracking the UK is building on all fronts, including the legal one. Greenpeace is encouraging actions for trespass against the companies like Cuadrilla. But will they be enough to bring a halt to shale gas exploration?

Unlike in France, where the constitutional court this week upheld a government ban on fracking introduced in 2011, the UK state is heavily committed to the dash for gas.

Planning laws and new technical guidance introduced in the summer are heavily weighted in favour of applications to frack.

For example, the guidelines state: “Mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies. As stated in paragraph 144 of the National Planning Policy Framework, minerals planning authorities should give great weight to the benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy, when determining planning applications.” [emphasis added] The guideline say:

• Planning applications for exploration of shale gas should not take account of “hypothetical future activities” – actual extraction.
• Planning authorities should not consider demand for, or alternatives to, oil and gas when determining applications.
• Councils should understand that government policy is clear that energy supplies should come from a variety of sources.
• Planning authorities should give great weight to the “benefits of minerals extraction, including to the economy

Jon Gateley, principal planner at property firm Savills, told Planning magazine that the guidance was akin to a presumption in favour of shale gas. "Rather than just introducing controls over how decisions would be made, the guidance implies that government wants to see them go through," he said.

As the hot summer rolled on into September, the government stepped in again with plans to change the current notification requirements on underground gas and oil applications to make it easier for the corporations, naturally.

At present, companies have to serve a notice on any other person who owns or is a tenant of land to which the application relates. They also have to publish a notice in at least one local newspaper and display a notice in every parish affected ahead of submission.

But under the draft proposals,  the requirement to serve notice on individual owners and tenants of land would be dropped where solely underground operations would be involved.

Enter Greenpeace. They are assembling home owners to mount a legal challenge to prevent fracking companies drilling underneath the homes of people who don’t want it. The campaign group says that such drilling would amount to trespass and be illegal.

“This is about people asserting their legal and democratic right,” said Anna Jones, senior campaigner with Greenpeace. They’ve launched a website wrongmove.org where homeowners can find out, using their postcode, whether they are living near a potential fracking operation.

While under English law, mineral rights beneath the surface belong to the state, Greenpeace argues that companies will still need permission from landowners. Lancashire dairy farmer Andrew Pemberton has joined the legal action. “My biggest worry is pollutants,” he said. Water supplied that feed his animals come from aquifers beneath the Lancashire Fylde.

But as Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, pointed out yesterday, the state is heavily committed to fracking. She was actually speaking outside court, where she pleaded not guilty to alleged offences following her arrest outside the Cuadrilla site in Balcombe in the summer.

She said: "The government is not only refusing to listen to the evidence, it is choosing to become a flag-waver-in-chief for the fracking industry, offering them generous tax breaks as well as allowing them senior roles within the government itself.”

Among those she was referring to is Lord Browne, a former BP boss, who is now holding a cross-departmental role in government, reporting to the minister for the Cabinet Office, at the same as he holds significant shares in Cuadrilla. Coincidentally, the minister concerned, Francis Maude includes Balcombe in his constituency.

You have to conclude that it will take more than local legal challenges to halt fracking. And it will also take more than a change of government, as rebranded One Nation Labour is totally silent on the issue, leading campaigners to suspect Ed Miliband’s party has fallen for discredited “cheap energy” claims. We will have to put fracking capitalism on the agenda.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Clock is ticking on US debt time bomb

Is America too big to fail? Or will a dysfunctional Congress, by continuing to block a deal on raising the astronomical federal debt ceiling, precipitate a default by the world’s largest economy?

There’s an air of panic. “No clear plan to avoid default as deal collapses”, screams the headline in the Washington Post this morning, with just 48 hours to go before the deadline.

With many government services shut down for nearly three weeks already, it’s small beer compared to what happens if the debt time bomb explodes. In any case, it is already too late to stop the economy unwinding.

There have been several attempts at predicting the sequence of events likely to unfold if Congress cannot come up with a deal, but nobody really knows what might happen. Payments to US war veterans would be amongst the first casualties and they are already on the streets, mounting protests.

For five years, the real conditions in the global economy have been building to a moment that demands something expressive of much greater destructive impact than the “collapse of the house of cards” metaphor widely used for the 2007/8 financial meltdown.

The problem is this: the US needs more debt – an estimated $1.1 trillion to keep paying the interest on the accumulated $16.7 trillion. As with all addictions there has to be a dealer, someone to supply the next fix. Just printing money doesn’t do it.

An increase in debt, and the associated repayments, demands an increase in the value which has to be produced by someone doing productive work, somewhere in the world. And with the US economy not generating enough growth to pay off the debt, exploitation of workers in other countries must also be ramped up.

If you follow the trail of connections to the source of the new value needed to back the debt repayments you find yourself chasing from the factories in China to the murderous conditions in Bangladesh and on to the latest source of cheap labour -Vietnam. 

Which brings us back to the origins of the crisis. During the 1960s and early 1970s the United States was engaged in a losing war in Vietnam. The impossibly high cost of the war contributed to runaway double digit inflation and mounting federal debt. This in turn forced the US to sever the relationship between the dollar and gold which had been the keystone of post second world war economic arrangements The end of the gold standard opened up the period of credit-fuelled expansion, which itself crashed in 2007-8 when the world system came to a griding halt and many banks went belly up.

Nearly 40 years after the end of the Vietnam war finds the US government still making payments to the veterans who fought there. Based on a causal link to the Monsanto-produced defoliant Agent Orange used in Vietnam, federal officials approved diabetes a decade ago as an ailment that qualifies for cash compensation and it’s a large bill. 

Without the ability to borrow more money, the US government cannot pay out to veterans or anyone else. On October 23, a $12bn social security payment is due, and November 1, a range of bills will use up the government’s remaining cash. As some wit put it, by the end of Thursday the US will be like a shopper who has hit his overdraft limit: he cannot borrow more but still has a little cash in his wallet.

The credit rating agencies are moving to further downgrade America’s AAA grade while Citi and other banks have divested themselves of US debt due for payment over the next few weeks. But for China, Japan, the oil exporters – the main holders of US debt – there’s no such luxury. Selling would drive down the dollar further and leave them well out of pocket.

The House of Representatives is hostage to the far right Tea Party faction and seems determined to go to the brink. President Obama could ignore Congress and raise the debt ceiling himself, but that would provoke a major constitutional crisis.

Whichever way you look at, American capitalism is being blown apart by its addiction to debt. And the rest of the global economy is not too far behind. 

Gerry Gold

Economics editor 

Osborne extols virtues of China while students work for nothing

While chancellor George Osborne and London mayor Boris Johnson are busy selling off UK infrastructure to Chinese capitalists, they want us to abandon what they claim are outdated attitudes about the country. The trouble is, the new reality about China is almost as bad.

Speaking on the BBC on Monday morning, the chancellor said: "I think there is a bit of a British attitude which treats China as a sweatshop on the Pearl River. One of the things I'm trying to do this week in China is to change British attitudes to China...this is a country that is right at the forefront of medicine and high-tech and computing and high-tech engineering and all of that."

It’s also a country that is right at the top when it comes to appalling labour conditions and intense exploitation of the country’s workers. Beneficiaries, naturally, include the major transnational corporations like Foxconn and Apple.

Foxconn, the world's biggest contract electronics maker, has just admitted that unpaid student interns worked shifts at a factory in China. Last year, the corporation owned up to hiring underage interns at the same unit.

Reports suggest that upwards of upwards of 1,000 China-based Xi’an Institute of Technology students may have been forced to work on an assembly line unpaid, assembling Sony’s PlayStation 4. They were warned they wouldn’t get credits for their course unless they played ball.

The Taiwanese-based corporation makes parts for major retailers, most notably for Apple’s iPhone. Workers are often housed in dormitories and are subjected to intense pressure at work. After a spate of suicides at its Shenzhen factory, Foxconn put up nets to catch falling workers. Sick, or what?

And just today, the US-based China Labor Watch (CLW) accused US-headquartered toy corporation Mattel over a series of violations at supplier factories in China, including failure to pay overtime. The campaign group put the value of what it called “wage theft” at the six factories at between $8 million and $11 million annually.

“One of the most alarming findings was the various methods – many illegal – that Mattel’s factories use to reduce their workers’ due wages and benefits,” it said. “Mattel’s factories achieve cost reductions through the degradation of labour conditions ... Workers at the bottom of the system are forced to bear the brunt of this burden.”

In July, CLW published an investigative report detailing the labour violations of three factories of Pegatron Group, a major supplier to Apple.  Average weekly working hours in the three factories probed by CLW were approximately 66 hours, 67 hours, and 69 hours, respectively. Workers were forced to sign forms indicating that their overtime hours were less than the actual levels.

CLW executive director Li Qiang said, “Our investigations have shown that labour conditions at Pegatron factories are even worse than those at Foxconn factories. Apple has not lived up to its own standards. This will lead to Apple’s suppliers abusing labour in order to strengthen their position for receiving orders.”

Chinese workers have been fighting back against super-exploitation. Chinese private-sector wages rose 14% in 2012, following similar increases the year before. While this still leaves workers way behind average earnings in Japan, Europe and North America, the increases were still enough for the Wall Street Journal  to warn its readers that this could “hurt business profitability and export competitiveness”.

So it’s on to the next venue for super-exploitation. Countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam are seen as alternatives as global clothes retailers look beyond China. Marks and Spencer, for example, has more tripled its staff in Vietnam over the past three years.

So chancellor Osborne, the sweatshops are simply moving countries. No doubt you will be visiting them in due course, extolling their virtues while turning a blind eye to what’s really going on in the factories. ConDem business as usual.

  

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

 

The surveillance state tightens its grip on us all

New laws that will mean ID checks for all, state supervision of the media, gagging of campaigns in the run-up to an election and a threat against publishers of devastating accounts of secret surveillance. Russia? China? Nope, dear old Britain.

The ConDems’ new anti-immigrants Bill will mean checks on status before people can access housing or health. This will hit everyone, as the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association (Ilpa) has pointed out.

"What this means in practice is a system of identity checks for all, since it is necessary for British citizens or people with permanent residence to prove that they are lawfully present in the UK if and when checked," says their response to the Home Office consultation.

Moving swiftly past the decision by the mainstream parties to introduce a legal oversight of the media through the unelected, secretive, feudal institution known as the Privy Council, let’s deal with state surveillance which we’re not supposed to know about.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden has just been given the Sam Adams Award by former CIA officers, who gave it to him in Russia, for “exhibiting integrity in intelligence”. The Guardian’s decision to publish Snowden’s revelations has run into a wall of hostility and intimidation.

Britain’s secret services – backed by Labour, Tory and LibDem politicians – have all but accused the Guardian of treason for printing chapter and verse of how the state can access every digital transmission you make – at will and without you knowing.

MI5 chief Andrew Parker’s accusation that Snowden was “handing the advantage to terrorists” ratcheted up the offensive on behalf of the secret state. He was predictably backed by No 10 and the ultra-reactionary Daily Mail, which accused the Guardian of “lethal irresponsibility”.   

But it’s not simply the Tories versus the Guardian. Former Labour home secretary Jack Straw has leapt into the fray. He claims that the Guardian was arrogant and naïve and guilty of “adolescent excitement” in its handling of Snowden’s material.

At least Straw’s consistent. It was New Labour that laid the legal ground for mass surveillance with its passing of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIP) 2000.

But things have moved on dramatically since 2000 as novelist John Lanchester has concluded. Acknowledging his initial scepticism, he spent a week reading the Snowden files in New York (those in London were destroyed on MI5’s orders).   

Tempora is the clandestine security electronic surveillance program established by GCHQ in 2011.  It was exposed by Snowden, along with Prism, which is the US’s own mass data mining programme. The two programmes have a cable and network tapping capability called Upstream which allows spooks to extract information in “real time”.

Lanchester notes that the “basic intention of the UK-spy base GCHQ engineers is “to get everything”. GCHQ’s eavesdropping abilities “are on a scale unmatched anywhere in the free world, and they privately boast about the ‘more permissive legal environment’ in the UK”.

He rightly says that we are already “the most spied on, monitored and surveilled democratic society there has ever been”. And, in case you think that Snowden simply told us what we already knew – think again.

“We are right on the verge of being an entirely new kind of human society, one involving an unprecedented penetration by the state into areas which have always been regarded as private. Do we agree to that? If we don't, this is the last chance to stop it happening. Our rulers will say what all rulers everywhere have always said: that their intentions are good, and we can trust them. They want that to be a sufficient guarantee.”

The chilling fact is that the law governing surveillance is “so broadly drafted and interpreted, it’s almost impossible to break”, Lanchester admits.   

We don’t live in a democracy, or at least one that is anything more than a sham. A corporate-driven surveillance state, with the major parties cosying up to each other on education and other policies, is no use to anyone except the powerful and the corrupt. We definitely need a new people-centred, democratic constitution, an Agreement of the People for the 21^st century.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Stop council 'regeneration' vandalism

In the country where people work the longest hours in Europe and have the least leisure time, where real wages are what they were two decades ago, councils are fixated on building new shopping and leisure facilities. All in the name of “regeneration”.

We reported here the planned vandalism of Glasgow's George Square, halted by public protests, against secret plans to remove statues and ban demonstrations to  create a space prioritising shopping and events.

Now in Newport, South Wales, the local authority has taken a wrecking ball to a much-loved mural celebrating the Newport Uprising, a dramatic moment in the struggle for democratic rights in the 19^th century.

It was in the way of a shopping development, so it had to go. The mural was demolished without even councillors being told it was happening, the day before a planned protest.

Newport Council is consulting on a cultural strategy full of "overall aims, vision, mission, priority themes, desired outcomes and objectives" – the well-known weasel words of bureaucrats everywhere.

A survey showed that people said the top six best things about Newport were heritage, arts and culture, wildlife and open spaces, sport and leisure, attractions, events and things to do, social networks and community, and children’s activities.

Not SHOPPING – you notice. And number one was HERITAGE.

And what is Newport's heritage? Like Glasgow's, it is a heritage of working class struggle, heavy industry and a passion for sport.

Of these Newport Council chooses sport as its number one focus - sporting venues, sporting events and, to be fair, sport for young people. Glasgow has the same priorities - sporting venues are being constructed for the Commonwealth Games 2014. One will later become a massive stadium for visiting pop stars, with expensive ticket prices.

Council's interpret their responsibilities as maximising income for big retailers and entertainment corporates – the same trickle-down economics that have failed so badly for so long.

The claim is that more shops mean more jobs. But as new shopping areas open, with big retailers huddling together like nervous teenagers, others becoming increasingly run down.

Before you know it the glamorous ‘80s shopping mall is full of pound shops, and the local shopping streets are destroyed. You know your local high street is finished when betting and charity shops outnumber the fresh food shops.

And just exactly how successful is this constant lust for the shoppers' pound? The graph below shows that retail in Britain bumps along, never reaching the high point just before the debt bubble burst in 2008. And the real growth in retail sales has in any case been in on-line shopping.

Are the much heralded jobs arriving? Glasgow has the highest number of jobless households in the UK. Unemployment in Newport is 1.3% above the UK average.

So back to the Newport mural and the struggle for the right to vote, which in one dramatic moment in 1839 broke out into an armed uprising of ironworkers, miners and farm workers.

What we need is a new popular struggle, this time not for the right to vote, but for the right to decide, the right to control our destinies. At present we vote, but we decide nothing. Power has migrated into the hands of the corporations and our "representatives" serve them, not us.

Those who opposed demolition of the mural could mark the 175th anniversary of the uprising next year by launching a Newport People's Assembly. There people can start to formulate their own plan for the future of their city and start putting it into practice in their communities. United with people's assemblies right across the UK, they can become part of a new power in the land – a popular democracy to do our Chartist heritage proud.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Moving goalposts no solution to climate change

A group of eminent climate scientists has come to the not-so-scientific conclusion that adopting the 2°C target for global warming has “failed to drive social change”. Their proposals to move the goalposts are unlikely to meet with any more success.

A group working with the prestigious Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia say that the prospects for holding average global warming to below 2°C are “rapidly decreasing”. There’s no arguing with that conclusion, which was reinforced by the recent inter-governmental climate change panel assessment.

That  showed that the world’s “carbon budget” - the amount of greenhouse gas that can be emitted without exceeding two degrees warming - could be used up entirely by 2040.  

Carbon emissions have continued to increase, intensified by a turn to shale gas and oil extraction in the United States and the expansion of coal-fired power in China and elsewhere. Cost-cutting by corporations looking for a competitive edge in the recession has put carbon reduction investment projects into cold storage for the duration.

The Tyndall group argue in a peer-reviewed paper published in Climate Policy that too much of the debate has been taken up with when/or if global warming will cross the 2°C threshold that scientists agree will have irreversible and catastrophic results.

And their response? “Society should accept that adopting science-informed targets such as 2°C has failed to drive social change and governors should instead concentrate on delivering what is politically achievable in the short to medium term.” (emphasis added)

They urge policy makers to “explore the risks and opportunities associated with alternative goals and targets”. What are these exactly? The Tyndall group has more modest ideas: mitigate for 2°C but adapt for 4°C; adopt more specific goals; be politically “more pragmatic”; “recommit” to substantial reductions in emissions.

While Professor Andrew Jordan of the Tyndall Centre says “this need not be a pretext for abandoning the existing target”, there’s a grave danger that’s how government policy makers will view the proposals.

In reality this is how most governments already act - minimum targets, half-hearted attempts at renewable power, "green capitalism", failed energy saving schemes and pathetic amounts of aid to countries like Bangladesh already facing climate change impacts. None of it has reduced emissions overall or prepared us for what is coming up the line.

In the end, no amount of finessing targets, alternative proposals, mitigation ideas etc. will cut the mustard. The present international system of states cannot reach an agreement on global warming for other reasons. These are primarily to do with the nature of the economies they represent.

Climate talks have foundered because the corporations set the agenda. Their mantra is growth based on year-on-year expansion. Without that, capitalism seizes up and goes into recession. Then cost reduction takes over, ensuring that even dirtier methods are used or maintained.

Even as the Tyndall scientists do their best to extract humanity from this impasse, another study in the journal Nature confirms the urgency of the situation. It says that between 2047 and 2069, the mean annual climate of an average location will pass the most extreme conditions experienced during the past 150 years.

Tropical areas will be among the first to see the climate exceed historical limits, threatening significant rainforest ecosystems. The study team from the University of Hawaii estimate that up to 5 billion people could be affected under a business-as-usual emissions scenario.

The study “provides a new metric of when climate change will lead to an environment that we’ve never seen before,” said author Camilo Mora, a professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

How many more warnings like this do we need. The 2°C target was adopted as an aim of international climate policy back in the 1990s. Previous warnings that humanity will overshoot this target have failed to stimulate climate policy, as the Tyndall group point out.

We have to conclude that those in charge are beyond stimulation as they move robotic-like towards a precipice, accepting their marching orders without too many questions. It’s a question, then, of us or them. The case for replacing the political and economic system with  non-profit, democratic alternatives has never been stronger.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The trillion dollar question with no answers

If nothing changes, the US government will run out of money, somewhere between October 22 and November 1 and plunge a fragile global economy into another meltdown. With the two parties in Congress locked in deadlock, time is running out.

Already, two million federal government workers are having their pay cheques delayed, and 800,000 of them might never be paid at all. The days are running into hours as the deadline approaches for Congress to award itself a further extension of its towering $16.7 trillion debt (a trillion has 12 zeros, by the way).

But with no sign of a solution to the week-old US government shutdown forced by the Tea Party wing of the Republicans, a political deal looks less – and an historic, unprecedented default by the world’s biggest national economy – more likely.  

Updated forecasts from the International Monetary Fund can only intensify the deepening political crisis. In its World Economic Outlook, the monetary hit squad now expects the global economy to grow only 2.9% this year, down from the 3.2% it estimated just six months ago, in July.

And, as everyone with half an eye to political economy knows, capitalist economies become unsustainable with anything less than 3% growth.

The figure for the US, still the world’s largest economy, sees a sharp drop from 2.8% in 2012 to 1.6% in 2013, nowhere near enough to see unemployment fall to 7%. This is the level the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, says will trigger a reduction in quantitative easing, the massive inflationary programme of money printing supposed to bring about the mythical recovery.

The interventionist wing of US capitalist interests argue that the faltering signs of recovery call for more credit to be pumped up. But the Tea Party and its friends will intensify their hijack of the government – insisting on sharper, more brutal spending cuts as the price of an agreement.

The 0.5% increase in the forecast for the UK, which triggered press demands for an apology by IMF chief Olivier Blanchard to chancellor Osborne over the former’s criticism of the latter’s austerity drive, is nothing to celebrate. Despite being the biggest increase among the developed countries, it only raises the expectation of UK growth to a dismal 1.9%.

Sainsburys operates at the sharp end of capitalist interests. Its sales are a key measure of the impact of economic conditions on people’s ability to buy food.  Its boss Justin King expects frozen wages and inflation to bring about a further 2% drop in real incomes over the next 12 months. No recovery there.

The IMF sees conditions in the euro area continuing to worsen for this year, with an overall shrinkage of 0.4%. Germany will at best make a 0.5% rate of growth. Italy will shrink by 1.8%, and Spain by 1.3%. Next week, the IMF together with its European Central Bank and European Commission partners in the “troika” will be back in Greece. The ongoing global crisis has forced its economy to contract by one quarter since the 2007 crash, and further 4% shrinkage is expected this year.

The IMF has also been busy in nearby Serbia. Lazar Krstic, the 29-year-old finance minister, pledging to stabilise government debt by 2017, yesterday launched the country’s own savage austerity and privatisation programme. This is part of the price of hoped for EU membership, and he is also seeking billions of euros in loans from the United Arab Emirates to avoid imminent bankruptcy.  

Look further afield to the “emerging and developing countries’” and the story becomes even more gloomy, with negatives across the board. China’s three-year deceleration is continuing, its growth rate shrinking towards 7%.

Xi Jinping, president of the second largest national economy, said he expected a "long and tortuous process" of world economic recovery. That’s a euphemism for further brutal assaults on living standards just about everywhere for the foreseeable future. If global capitalism was on a supermarket shelf, its “use by” label would be a long time in the past.    

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

War on migrants behind Lampedusa tragedy

How terrible, how sad, said the politicians from Italy to England. Pope Francis called the shipwreck a “disgrace” and offered prayers for the victims. Italy took the easy route saying, quite understandably, that it was a problem for Europe as a whole.

But less than a week later, the drowning of some 363 migrants off the coast of  the island of Lampedusa has already fallen out of the main news. Had the victims been white Europeans or Americans instead of Syrians, Somalis and Eritreans, no doubt there would be more soul searching.

Even in the immediate aftermath, it became clear that the deaths could have been avoided then and there. How was it that in the combined surveillance forces of the Italian coast guard (backed up by European and American security systems of all kinds) did not spot the foundering boat quickly enough?

The first on the scene were local fishermen Vito Fiorino and Francesco Colapino. They personally pulled dozens of migrants out of the water. But they said they were frustrated by the Italian coastguard. They took an hour to arrive (even though the boat sank only some 700 or so metres off the Lampedusa coast) and, by their accounts, refused to help.

This latest loss of life, however immense, adds to the already huge figure of some 20,000 people estimated to have died in similar circumstances in the Mediterranean since the mid-1990s.

“Murderous Europe”, a statement by Migregroup, a Euro-African network of campaigners for the human rights of migrants, rightly affirms the deaths were in no way inevitable or an act of fate.

The deaths in the seas between Europe and Africa, as well thousands more in the deserts of Sinai, Algeria and Mali  (not forgetting Syria) are the consequence of a war against migrants.

How else can the European Union order control mechanisms and surveillance systems bearing hideous names like Frontex and Eurosur be described?

Migregroup says that while people traffickers are denounced as the guilty parties, it is actually the states of Europe who refuse to issue visas to those seeking asylum or a new life in Europe, those pushing people into so-called illegality.

There are an estimated six million illegal migrants in Europe who are victims of the “securitarian logic” of the EU’s Shengen Agreement.

Whilst decrying the warring regimes in Syria, Ethiopia and Somalia, European states, including Britain, refuse to offer asylum to those fleeing persecution or poverty.

Instead the EU has signed agreements with Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya to make these states stem the flow of migrants.

Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which asserts the right of freedom of movement and choice of domicile, clearly does not appear to be on the EU lawmakers’ horizon.

While Italian agencies and international NGOs struggle to help survivors with totally inadequate funds and against obstruction by the Italian state, the real money is of course elsewhere.

The dire situation facing millions in Africa is because as far as the global big powers are concerned, they are simply collateral damage.

While the US state is in shutdown mode, hundreds of millions of tax dollars continue to be poured into making Italy “a launching pad for the wars of today and tomorrow”.

While officially saying there are no US military bases in Italy, there are in fact 59 Pentagon-identified US bases in the country, including the Sigonella Naval Air Station near Catania in Sicily – less than 100 miles away from the African coast and even less from the island of Lampedusa.

Since 2008, the Pentagon has spent an estimated $31 million on a Global Hawk complex at Sigonella, part of its “global war on terror” programme for military operations in Africa.

The responsibility for the deaths in the seas of the Mediterranean lies on the shoulders of the European states and their co-criminals in the Pentagon.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary 

In Tory Britain, old people are like 'robots to be serviced'

Picture this graphic illustration of Two Britains. While hedge funds and big investors can choose whether to cash in on the Royal Mail sell-off, the choice for thousands of older and disabled people is whether to go thirsty or go to the toilet.

The City is eagerly buying up Royal Mail shares, which, by all accounts, have been under-priced by the ConDems to such an extent that investors can anticipate a 40% instant profit when they start trading next week. For some of the least privileged in our society, mere survival is the name of the game.

Increasing numbers of older people and many with disabilities in their own homes depend on some help with basic necessities like dressing, bathing and eating. Those with some savings can “buy-in” private care at their own expense. The majority, however, look to their local council to provide what is known as “adult social care”.

If only the name lived up to its promise. A report by the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability condemns a sharp increase in what it terms “disgraceful” short care visits lasting just 15-minutes. These are used by 60% of councils in England and they are not long enough to provide adequate care.

Chief executive Clare Pelham said visits should be at least 30 minutes long. "It is disgraceful to force disabled people to choose whether to go thirsty or to go to the toilet by providing care visits as short as 15 minutes long," she said. Most people need 40 minutes to get up, washed, dressed and have breakfast. "We are treating disabled and older people as if they are robots to be serviced, rather than real people who deserve to be treated with kindness and consideration," she added.

The proportion of visits which lasted 15 minutes or less has risen by 15% over the past five years. And some local authorities deliver more than three-quarters of their care visits in 15 minutes. As the ConDems have only been in office for under 3.5 years, this began under the previous New Labour government.

But there’s no doubt that cuts in social service budgets imposed by the coalition government since 2010 have hit the most vulnerable the hardest. In May, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services warned a “bleak outlook” was becoming “bleaker”. Research showed that £800m was to be taken from the central budget in 2013-14, following the loss of £2 billion in the previous two years.

Naturally, the local bureaucracy and elected councillors have simply passed on the cuts. Defending the indefensible, Sandie Keene, president of Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (Adass), which represents care managers said some short visits were "fully justified and fully adequate".

Social workers and their managers had to make "horrendously difficult choices" every day to give the best possible care with limited resources. Perhaps it’s about time some of them said “No”, we can’t provide care on this basis? I’m not holding my breath for such announcement.

The other issue is who provides the 15-minutes of “care”. Much of this work is now “outsourced” to the private sector, and has been since the 1990s. A survey of social service practitioners showed that most believed the quality of adult care had deteriorated because of large-scale outsourcing. Nine out ten thought outsourcing had been driven by cost cutting.

So while older people and the disabled suffer from cuts in spending and are often dismayed by poorly-trained care workers, the wealthy elites are cashing on a fire sale state assets. If there was ever a case for turning our wretched capitalist society upside down, this is surely it.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Ralph got it right and his son 100% wrong

In defending him against the malicious Daily Mail, Ed Miliband tries to depict his father Ralph as a man who “loved Britain” while at the same time distancing himself from his actual views.

The assumption that everyone has to love “their” country is, of course, a patriotic, populist sentiment encouraged by the media and political elites. Its purpose is to bind the whole population together behind the state, especially in times of crisis.

"Your King and Country need you”, went the recruiting slogan of World War I. All the parties supported it, including Labour. Millions believed in it enough to volunteer to join what would be become a human slaughter house on the battlefields of Europe.

For Ed Miliband to suggest that because his father fought in World War II he “loved his country”, is plainly wrong. In the main, British soldiers fought for self-preservation, for their comrades and communities against the Nazis. It was possible to fight without “loving your country”.

Many had spent years on the dole, living in appalling housing with no health service while the political elites were oblivious to their plight. What was there, for these soldiers, to “love” about this class-divided Britain?

As for the notion that World War II was a “war for democracy” against fascism, that was simply not the case. The British ruling classes flirted with the Nazis for six years before war broke out. Rothermere’s Daily Mail found much to admire in Hitler’s Germany. A whole group favoured a separate peace with Hitler after hostilities began and they almost prevailed inside the cabinet.

For the ruling class, it was above all a war to preserve the British empire and, in line with foreign policy down the centuries, an effort to prevent one European power from dominating the continent.

It’s hard to believe that Ralph Miliband “loved his country” in an unthinking way, in the fashion that his son describes. Of course, he was grateful for being allowed in as a Jewish refugee. But as his political thinking developed, he could never espouse a concept that is embraced mainly by the right wing.

As a Marxist academic, he understood the significance of class in capitalist societies like Britain. In place of an abstract “country” there was a society divided along class lines, where interests did not coincide but were in constant conflict.

In 1983, Ralph Miliband wrote an essay called “State Power and Class Interests”. This took up the issues of the state in relation to the rule of capital, which had recently become the subject of intense debate in Marxist academic circles. He wrote:

“… The contradictions and shortcomings of capitalism, and the class pressures and social tensions this produces, require the state to assume an ever more pronounced role in the defence of the social order. The end of that process is one form or  another of ‘Bonapartism’. Meanwhile, it makes for a steady inflation of state power within the framework of a capitalist-democratic order whose democratic features are under permanent threat from the partnership of state and capital.”

This “partnership” is what his son wants to develop under the populist umbrella of "One Nation Labour". As he says in his own article in the Mail: “I want to make capitalism work for working people, not destroy it.”

But how on earth can a system that is run for profit, for the benefit of shareholders and funders, ever do what Miliband junior wants? Even if we all declared that we “loved our country”, the real world would confirm that Ralph Miliband was right and his son 100% wrong.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Biodiversity offsetting - a licence to trash nature

A cynic, wrote Oscar Wilde, is a man “who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”. Climate change denier Owen Paterson, the ConDem anti-environment secretary, fits this description down to his toes. 

He is championing “biodiversity offsetting”, which puts a market price on habitat so that

developers can destroy protected wildlife and woodland areas, if they create a new habitat elsewhere.

Patterson, who earlier this week said that global warming might be a good thing, claims: "Offsetting is an exciting opportunity to look at how we can improve the environment as well as grow the economy. There is no reason why wildlife and development can't flourish side-by-side."

Driving the government’s plans is the Environment Bank which is described as the “leading trader in the UK in environmental assets”. It brokers deals between buyers (developers, corporate, investors) and sellers (landowners, farmers, conservation bodies, land management companies), according to an EU project on the concepts of “natural capital”.

Like all offsetting projects, this is a market-driven concept that creates a profit for the “broker”. As the bizarrely-named Operationalisation of Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services project acknowledges, “biodiversity offsets have recently been identified in the UK… as one of the top business opportunities related to valuing and/or protecting nature”.  

Value and sell nature. You couldn’t make it up. But that’s capitalism for you. The replacement habitat doesn’t even have to be in the same area as that which has been lost - presumably it can be on any old bit of waste land. You can be sure it'll be land the developer is happy to be rid of.

Patterson’s department seems to believe (or pretends to believe) there is some equivalence between a developed habitat and a piece of disused land. It's like saying that destroying a 1000- year old hedgerow can be offset by planting a privet hedge!

There is no recognition of the complexity of eco-systems, where species exist in a naturally occurring web of interdependence that you can't just reinvent.

As Sandra Bell, nature campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: "Nature is unique and complex – not something that can be bulldozed in one place and recreated in another at the whim of a developer." Others have called the plan a “licence to trash nature”.

Environment Bank CEO Tom Tew claims that “when you put a value on biodiversity you are putting a financial incentive for developers not to trash it". But how does that work exactly? There is no explanation of how these benefits will accrue. And this is the whole problem with this now fashionable approach, where all of nature is classified as "environmental services" or "green capital".

"Green capitalism" was the mantra at the Rio+20 summit earlier this year, and of course governments are going to snatch at this idea. It suggests you can protect the environment whilst encouraging growth, without challenging or regulating the activities of the corporations.

But suppose they succeed in fully incorporating every molecule, every leaf and drop of clear water, into the global capitalist system - then what? Why, they do what capitalism always does, of course – you work out a way to make that capital work for you in order to generate profits. That's what's happening already as corporations buy up wholesale patents on natural products.

The reality is that the concept of building "whole earth costs" into planning for development and production can only contribute to the protection of eco-systems if it is part of a not-for-profit economic system. Instead of trying to force nature to operate according to the laws of capital, we need to regenerate and refound our human society to operate in line with the laws of nature.

As the Cochabamba declaration on Mother Earth rights states: "The creation of new market mechanisms for nature, the development of a market for environmental services, will bring us toward a collapse. We believe it is wrong to break down nature into simple environmental services subject to economic valorization and market exchange. The laws of the market, of supply and demand, are in conflict with the laws and natural cycles of the Planet Earth."

Penny Cole

Environment editor

US shutdown shows the system is cracking up

The shutdown of the US government by the right-wing Tea Party faction of the right-wing Republican party is a critical moment, one that reveals deepening cracks inside the capitalist state’s political system.

On the first day, 800,000 federal employees were affected by the absence of a government that could pay their wages. On the same day, many of the 32 million Americans not covered by insurance queued to sign up for access to affordable health care.

The new insurance marketplace websites which opened for business on the first day of trading are a key part of the president’s so-called “Obamacare” legislation. Overwhelmed by the demand, many websites crashed in the first hours. 

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was adopted in 2010, in fulfilment of Obama’s election pledge, and Republicans have failed 50 times to block it. To their disappointment, the Supreme Court ruled that that legislation was constitutional.

In trying to place more rocks in the road of a long, tortuous, contradictory journey towards the universal provision of healthcare, Republicans led by the Tea Party have initiated the shutdown of government by denying approval to the federal budget.

So with services closing, government workers are being sent home on unpaid leave. It’s wish-fulfilment time, a dream come true for the super-rich corporate funders of the Tea Party who vehemently hate all forms of public spending.

Never mind that the massive expansion of the insurance market was a Republican model pragmatically adopted by Obama as a way to provide health care for the tens of millions who’ve been denied it in the world’s richest country.

The health industry, especially in the US, has been a feeding frenzy for Big Pharma, for the makers of ever more technologically advanced and expensive medical devices and highly profitable insurance companies.

Although US spending per head on health is 150% more than in the UK, life expectancy at birth is among the lowest of developed countries, while infant mortality is the highest. Potential years of life lost by people under the age of 70 are also far higher. It’s a health system that benefits the well off.

When the economy crashed in 2008, the turning point arrived. The status quo was unsustainable. Millions were thrown out of work, losing access to healthcare funded through insurance as part of their employment contract. Economically, socially and politically the game was up.

One thing is clear: having taken the first tentative steps towards universal access,  the current system of government looks unlikely to survive. Its problems are piling up fast. The two wings of the Congress of the 1%, for the 1%, by the 1% are in deadlock. 

Although the Republicans are trying to block Obamacare, the bigger issue looming ahead is the soaring federal government deficit. Unless Congress votes to raise the debt ceiling later this month, the US government could be staring at an international default as it won’t have the money to service interest payments.

The consequences of default by the world’s biggest capitalist economy are beyond imagination. Most analysts are saying it couldn’t happen, they’ll surely come to their senses. But the Republican Party is so divided in itself that anything is possible.

Who is to blame for all of this? Reflecting a generalised rejection of the political process, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed about one-quarter of Americans would blame Republicans for a shutdown, 14% would hold Obama responsible and 5% Democrats in Congress, while a massive 44% said everyone would be to blame.

George Atkinson, an 82-year-old Coast Guard veteran of the Korean War was among those pushing past barricades to visit the National World War ll Memorial,  closed by the government shutdown. "The whole group ought to be replaced, top man down," he said.

Events around the world show that it’s not so much the people who are operating the system who are to blame. It’s the system itself. It’s in trouble wherever you look. The Greek government has arrested some of its own, elected, Golden Dawn representatives. Britain has a non-elected coalition. Berlusconi is singlehandedly trying to bring down the Italian government. The system is cracking up.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Why teachers have had enough

The two main teachers’ unions, representing about 500,000 teachers, today begin a series of rolling strikes culminating in an all-out national strike for one day before the end of the year. They have simply had enough and it’s easy to see why.

Nowhere is the lack of democracy that is a feature of our age more apparent than in education. Education secretary Michael Gove has shut his ears to the education experts, the teachers themselves, their unions and most parents too. 

In line with what is happening in most other workplaces, Gove wants every teacher to take on more duties, work longer for less pay and agree to lower pensions. And he plans to dismantle the national pay bargaining system which is a direct attack on the unions.

Head teachers will get more power (and money) while the teachers themselves, at the sharp end, get pay cuts. They are expected to toe the government line, swallow their principles, and carry on teaching in a set-up that they most of them think should serve all children better.

And they are not consulted or listened to. Such is the arrogance of this Tory Party. They know best.

The Labour Party’s answer? Shadow minister Stephen Twigg’s speech at the recent party conference was almost pure waffle. There was nothing on the pay and conditions of teachers, nothing on performance-related pay, so impractical and unpopular with teachers.

And, of course, there was no commitment to return the new academies and free schools to local authority control — which would restore some fairness to the system. No surprise there as New Labour introduced academies in the first place. On the role of teachers to help work out Labour policy on education, there was not a word.

“Our vision of one nation is one of high aspirations for all,” said Twigg. “The Tories will tell us that we shouldn’t aim high for all. That’s what makes them conservative. Out for the privileged few. Wrong choices, wrong priorities. But as the progressives of British politics, we reject their defeatism. One nation is about high aspiration. On childcare. On the forgotten 50%. On higher education. Opening up power wealth and opportunity....”

Blah, blah, blah.  

Labour would make a few tweaks to the education system here and there, and some small policy changes such as wrap-around-care of pupils from 8.00am to 6.00pm, but would not challenge the Tory grand plan.

Gove’s ambition is the fragmentation of state education into competing schools, some with fancy new names and extra money, and some destined to become “sink schools”. Some would be able to select their intake of new pupils, others would end up with the so-called problem children, mostly the poor, and those on free school meals.

A few would have to teach to the narrow and prescriptive national curriculum, while the new academies and free schools, like the public schools, can ignore it.

The idea of having a co-operative family of schools in a region or of providing a good community school in each catchment area, is simply not on the agenda of the three main parties. It is the “global race”, the necessity of keeping UK PLC competitive and more profitable than the next country, that drives everything, including education policy.

Private schools are the model the Tories are heading towards. They, together with high-achieving state schools, can select the future entrepreneurs and scientists that the capitalist economy needs. The rest can join the race to the bottom.

There are other models of education, of course, that can be developed through practice and discussion. In a different world, they would set out to develop the talents and aspirations of all children, not for capitalism or the nation but for themselves and humanity as a whole.  

Peter Arkell