A Better Society Not A Bigger Society

David Cameron’s calls for a bigger society are complete nonsense. It was his party that killed British society. Thatcher even proudly declared, “There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families”.

One of Cameron’s plans is for a kind of voluntary National Service where young people do work in their neighbourhoods. He thinks it will get kids off the streets and away from petty crime and drugs. The simple fact of the matter is that the kids who will volunteer are not the ones we need to target. The kids who volunteer will be the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts. It will be the kids from white and blue collar families whose Mum and Dad will drop them off in the car. The teenagers who hang about outside my local Co-op drinking cider won’t volunteer. The smack-heads who commit 90% of the burglaries where I live won’t volunteer. The kids who are constantly in trouble at school won’t volunteer; it will be the well behaved kids.

I know I’ve got a cynical attitude and I wish I could more positive about it but I live in a run-down Northern town with high unemployment and high crime rates. I see what is going on with my own eyes. A 17 year old boy was stabbed to death yesterday on a road less than a 5min drive from my house. I don’t want to harp on about his privileged background but Cameron has absolutely no idea about what it is like in the real world. The big society plan will not solve the problems in the huge, run down and crime ridden council estates where I live. It will not solve problems in the inner-cities.

The only way to tackle the social problems in Britain is to tackle the poverty in Britain. It has been proven time and again that if you reduce poverty you reduce crime. The places with the highest crime rates are almost always the places with the highest unemployment rates. The schools with the worst attendance records and lowest exam results are also almost always in the areas with high unemployment rates.

We can improve our society by ensuring we give young people some hope. We need to show them that there are rewards for hard work and good qualifications. We need to show them that they can expect more than a life of unemployment, crime and gangs. We need to invest in their future and we can do this by increasing taxes for the rich, forcing non-doms to pay tax and introducing the Robin-Hood tax on the banks. We should then pump the money into job creation and improve wages for nurses, teachers, the police and fire fighters. Show young people that the jobs that benefit society the most are the best paid because they are the most important.

We don’t need a bigger society. We need a better society. Get people out of poverty and into fairly paid work and we will get the better society we seek.

The media attack on Nick Clegg

Today is another sad day for the British media. The right-wing press have gone into full attack Nick Clegg mode. It is clearly a fully organised smear campaign as it can be no accident that all these stories have been published on the day of the 2nd leader’s debate.

Some of the headlines, especially in the loveable Daily Mail, show just how desperate they are. There is the Clegg in Nazi slur headline, the Clegg and dodgy donations headline, the Clegg in pro-Europe disgrace headline and the Clegg is a baby killer headline. Okay the baby killer headline is a joke but you get my point.

If I was Nick Clegg I would be quietly pleased about the media campaign against him. It is further proof, if any was needed, that the Tories are more than a little rattled by his surge in popularity.

Cameron, BA strike and unions

The Tory party has traditionally had the attitude that trade unions are the enemy. They believed the unions were representatives for a working class that needed to be ruled not governed. It seems such an old fashioned attitude these days that it’s laughable.

The Tory party of today has tried very hard to move the agenda away from issues of class. They advertise and promote themselves as the new caring middle England party. They claim to be 100% in favour of the NHS. They want us to hug a hoodie. They play the environment card. David “call me Dave” Cameron tries desperately to show himself as an everyman rather than a privileged old Etonion.

Then suddenly we have the BA strike. Suddenly David Cameron is showing his true colours. The classic Tory response to a strike is to take a stance of non-negotiation and encourage strike breaking. This is exactly the position Cameron is taking in relation to BA. I have no doubt he will be the same with the railway workers.

Gordon Brown does has a conflict of interest, due to the financial support Labour gets from Unite, but he has taken the proper stance. The only way the BA strike will get resolved is through negotiation.

Over the next few years the government are going to have to save money. At some point there will be cuts to public services and minimal pay rises for public sector workers. There is also a high chance of protracted disputes in the private sector. This will undoubtedly lead to industrial unrest and possible strike action. We will need a government who will sit with the unions and the management in order to try and reach resolutions through compromise. Our economy is so precarious that large scale industrial unrest could be catastrophic. It would be a disaster for Britain to have a government who refuse to mediate and negotiate because of an outdated ideology.

Cameron may think Union bashing is a vote winner. He may love the thought of showing how tough he is by standing up to bullying “Union Neanderthals”. I think he will lead Britain into an economic whirlwind that will make the winter of discontent seem like a warm summer breeze.

Check out the link below that leads to a brilliant cartoon in the Guardian on this subject:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/mar/20/david-cameron-british-airways-strike