Solidarity 286, 15 May 2013

Let us eat, drink and be merry!

A few weeks ago the BBC published an article on how to eat for less than £1 a day, in reference to the Global Poverty Project’s challenge to “Live Below the Line”. Others have explained better than I could why the diet suggested in the article is totally unrealistic (for example, it is not possible to buy a quarter of a courgette). There’s a good blogpost on atheltheunread.wordpress.com. Last week, the BBC published a follow-up article with “Readers’ Stories” of living on little money. A few of the stories included phrases like “my dog eats better than me”, “porridge week”, “it is very lonely...

Brighton council workers fight pay cuts

A GMB member working for CityClean at Brighton council spoke to Solidarity about their battle against pay cuts. We won an equal pay agreement in 2009, after a campaign which included a strike, and the council regraded us. The current Green administration undertook another review of our pay arrangements in January, which they called “pay modernisation”. It was a levelling-down which attacked our allowances, which means any money we get paid above basic salary — contractual overtime, bank-holiday working, etc. The council is saying it’s an equal-pay issue because many of the lowest-paid female...

Cyprus left goes for euro-exit

On 29 April the Central Committee (CC) of AKEL, the Communist Party which until 28 February 2013 held the presidency of Cyprus, declared that "the only choice for Cyprus is a solution outside the loan agreements and Memorandum. The implementation of such a solution is likely to constitute a decision for exit by Cyprus from the Euro". The next day, 30 April, the Cyprus Parliament ratified the Memorandum, an economic agreement with the EU and ECB, by 29 votes against 27. The new governing party, the conservative and Christian-Democratic Democratic Rally, voted for. So did the Democratic Party...

Tories push kids into poverty; Labour says "give up"

Share prices are going up. Profits are increasing. Top bosses' pay is soaring. And child poverty is rising almost as fast. According to a new report from the conservative Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS): "Tax and benefit reforms introduced since April 2010 can account for almost all of the increase in child poverty projected over the next few years using the absolute low-income measure; using the relative low-income measure, child poverty would actually have fallen in the absence of reforms as a result of falls in median income". Coalition government policies will continue to drive up child...

How to marginalise Stalin

I share Eric Lee's revulsion at the portraits of Stalin on banners at the London May Day march ( Solidarity 285), but disagree with his proposed solution: a "no-platform" for the Stalinists. London's May Day march is different from other cities' because the organising committee insists on holding it on 1 May, usually a working day, rather than on a nearby weekend or holiday. In these times there is no possibility of large numbers of workers striking to join the march. No-one even tries to organise that. Consequently the march is small. Union banners are often carried by full-time officials or...

Left must avoid anti-EU trap

Bob Crow and the leadership of the RMT rail union have joined the chorus for British exit from the EU led by Nigel Lawson, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer for Margaret Thatcher. Crow argues the right-wing anti-EUers "are now only raising the issue of withdrawal out of pure political opportunism". Lawson, at age 81, is a bit beyond careerism and vote-catching. He lays out a straightforward pro-capitalist case for EU exit. He values free trade with Europe, but dislikes EU social regulation. He thinks British capitalism could fare better as an offshore site with lower social overheads and...

Hawking and the boycott

Stephen Hawking's decision not to attend an 18-20 June conference in Jerusalem has caused much celebration among advocates of an academic boycott of Israel. Hawking himself has made no statement on the issue, but the academic boycott campaign has published a letter from him to the organisers saying: "I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott". They claim it as a boost for their line that academics, writers, and cultural figures of all sorts should boycott Israel and Israelis across the board. Yet, as US professor Noam...

Left Unity: make space for debate

Left Unity is billed by its key organisers as filling a gap in the political market for Left politics; the thousands of people who signed the appeal for a new party billed as an expression of the widespread yearning for anti-austerity politics in Britain. Unfortunately, defined politics noticeably took the back seat at Left Unity's first delegate meeting on 11 May, attended by almost 100 people. The debates started with an incredibly long discussion on a procedural motion by Nick Wrack and Simon Hardy not to take decisions on the statements and key political motions. The argument was that this...

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