Where now for the anti-cuts movement?

[ymu]

So if this thread is anything to go by: bickering.

Quartz isn't anti cuts! He believes their shit.

 

[Quartz]

This is why you should look things up.

You mean that this is why the report was a whitewash. Do you really think that Cameron didn't know that beforehand? As has been denounced hereabouts ad nauseam, all the truly low-paid jobs are outsourced.

In no way should this post be taken as any kind of defence of highly paid execs or the LAs but your logic is insane. A few million, maybe 10 is what I reckon could be saved at Birmingham by cutting highly paid exec's pay/jobs at the most (and probably not that).. no way is it ever going to approach the hundreds of millions they've lost in central grants.

I think you'll find that the total cost of employing someone significantly exceeds their salary, so your figure of £10M should be very pessimistic. Assuming a 50% overhead, £10M would pay for about 300 people with salaries of £20K.

now if the councils had the balls to stand up to central government that would be different, but they don't..

Perhaps they should raise the funds locally? Silly me! Central government has prevented that.

 

[ymu]

Are you honestly claiming that Cameron announced a big review on high pay in the public sector, reigning in the fatcats to 20:1, knowing full well there were none by his proposed definition? You think he deliberately exposed Tory propaganda as a lie?

Do explain.

 

[BigTom]

I think you'll find that the total cost of employing someone significantly exceeds their salary, so your figure of £10M should be very pessimistic. Assuming a 50% overhead, £10M would pay for about 300 people with salaries of £20K.[/qoute]

so highly paid execs earn 20k now?
why have you started talking about something else entirely?

http://www.birminghammail.net/news/...-prime-minister-study-reveals-97319-26152802/

11 people earn over £100k at bcc with the chief exec on £200k - that's an absolute max of £2.2m + overheads and I'd say your 50% is very generous, and you wouldn't save most of that from cutting wages anyway, just the 12% NI.. and obviously not all of those 11 will be earning 200k but finding an average is going to require FoI requests probably and I definitely can't be fucked to do that. In any case, taking the max and your over generous 50% overheads you'd be looking at a max £3.3m
Now you can't just sack those 11 people - most, if not all of those positions are going to be necessary to run the biggest council in the country. so you'd be looking at wage cuts - and even at 50% wage cuts you'd save £1.1m + 12% NI..
so just another £210 million to find then.
not that I think we shouldn't save that money before cutting other stuff, but I think you're living in cloud cuckoo land if you think LAs can just cut some highly paid ppl and problem solved

Perhaps they should raise the funds locally? Silly me! Central government has prevented that.

yep, councils are capped in terms of council tax rises, max 3.5% no way to recover the iirc 20% cuts bcc are making

 

[BigTom]

back to the point of the thread.. where next? lets see what happens on june 30th. hopefully the strikes will spark of a wave of protests and direct action.
strategy i haven't a clue though and think audiotech and lletsa raised some important points about the need for deeper politics and the (re)creation of a genuine alternaive politics/political structures and not just protests

 

[Brainaddict]

The strike strategy is doomed ime. Broad-based strikes are an amazing strategy as the economic cutting edge of a broad-based movement. These strikes will happen in a context where there is no concept of solidary, no concept of class, little concept of why unions exist, little understanding of the economic intent of the government, and the majority of the workforce isn't in a union. The strikes (such as they are - there isn't enough workplace solidary for widespread strikes really) will be successfully portrayed as self-interested because they have no broad-based movement behind them. The likely outcome will be a tightening of union laws with many ununionised workers cheering on the government from the sidelines.

 

[frogwoman]

that doesn't mean that people shouldn't take action though surely? i agree with some of your concerns but at the same time from conversations ive had at work, a big part of why people aren't in a union is frequently because they think they won't do anything or they are scared of the conseqeunces.

i do share some of your concerns tho. the thing is what do we do about them?

 

[Brainaddict]

that doesn't mean that people shouldn't take action though surely?

Of course not. It's a plea for more strategic thinking really. Striking isn't a strategy in itself. And at this point in time, if used as a political weapon, I do think it will do more harm than good. It will be ruthlessly crushed and most people won't care. It's like trying to organise a pro-democracy demonstration in a country that has never heard of democracy or something.

 

[Brainaddict]

a big part of why people aren't in a union is frequently because they think they won't do anything or they are scared of the conseqeunces.

They're not wrong either are they? Most of the unions are bureacratic nightmares now, and if you get into union stuff you won't be promoted far.

 

[frogwoman]

They're not wrong either are they? Most of the unions are bureacratic nightmares now, and if you get into union stuff you won't be promoted far.

No they're not, but I don't know if that would translate into people cheering on anti-union laws. Many people, anyway.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

So if this thread is anything to go by: bickering.

Nonsense, I have fairly different politics from ymu but shit loads of time for his/her position, Quartz on the other hand is a gullible div we never needed or wanted in the first place.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

and if you get into union stuff you won't be promoted far.

Actually it depends on where you live, and where you work. You can't write off an entire union or the entire union movement because of what happens sometimes, the fact is there is loads of potential to build effective fighting unions as long as you're clever about it.

 

[Brainaddict]

Actually it depends on where you live, and where you work. You can't write off an entire union or the entire union movement because of what happens sometimes, the fact is there is loads of potential to build effective fighting unions as long as you're clever about it.

I'm glad if that's true. I'm not trying to dismiss unions as irrelevant. I think there are political contexts where they can be very political and help deliver killer blows to those in power. I just don't think we're in that position right now. I think a lot more legwork needs to be done building up to it first. In theory the act of taking smaller strikes could be part of this legwork, but as soon as the industries people notice going on strike (as opposed to education workers say) start doing it, the government will declare war on them, and the unions are in such a weak starting position that I think they'll lose that war.

 

[Streathamite]

I can't help but feel increasingly negative and disillusioned about it's prospects to achieve anything but give the usual suspects a sense of doing something, anything. If you aren't involved however you're carping from the outside and being negative (but perhaps at least providing constructive criticism), but if you are involved and trying to stay optimistic about possibilities - where is it actually going and what is it actually achieving? I think 25 years of left failure has left the ground so completely and utterly obliterated and lost, that the anti-cuts movement in it's current guise and form, has next to no hope of being anything other than a retreat for optimisitc activists.

Is this too harsh, is it just my personal experience, or is it widespread?

I've been in one Anti-cuts group where this is - emphatically - very much not the case, and one where it seems like it's going that way. Might your OP possibly be a reflection of the local cuts movement in your local area?

 

[emma goldman]

Do they still have librarians or has this area also succumbed to the proletarianisation of the middle classes?

In academic libraries, librarians still exist but in public libraries, the focus is about customer service and customer experience, so instead of being called library assistants we're customer service assistants or information support assistants. Librarians get paid quite well, relatively speaking, but most library workers dont get paid well at all. Cuts to library services will see those of us who still have a job, having our roles and pay downgraded even further.

 

[Streathamite]

I dont know who pickman is but am definitly interested in linking up with other library workers to fight threats specific to libraries, so please do pm me pickman if you;d be up for that.

steps means the poster Pickman's model and IIRC he does work in a library, a University one.

 

[LLETSA]

I see you've posted 'virtually impossible'. You're softening.

The only real change in favour of the working class and the poor that seems to be happening is in parts of Latin America, where it's being carried out by elements of the ruling class and/or political class, albeit with large degrees of popular participation. However, even this is subject to reversal and probably will be reversed before too long, once their powerful enemies in international capital find a way. Elsewhere we see, as in parts of the former Soviet bloc and now in the Arab world, partial or pseudo-revolutions where stage armies take to the streets to face the bullets and batons only to leave another part of the same ruling class firmly in control (often there seems to be no popular desire to do anything more than this.) And in the West we have a situation where working class organisations and former social democratic and Communist parties are either broken beyond repair (in terms of effectiveness), as are the unions tied to them, or else can only do what capital tells them when elected. The far left is powerless to halt its terminal decline, with parties and temporary alliances that will never, even in the best of situations, command more than 5-10% of the popular vote (in the UK this would be an absolute impossibility) hailed as historic breakthroughs, and working class political consciousness is at an historic low (despite 'anger' about the cuts and the economic crisis etc etc.) The best the organisations just mentioned can hope for is to affect a country's political culture and acts as a brake on capital's excesses. Meanwhile capital has never had so few shackles to contend with and completely controls the media, and thus is guaranteed to win the battle for hearts and minds. And all this is leaving out the effects of the coming natural resource and environmental catastrophes, which will not be conducive to what used to be called progressive change before people forgot what progressive is supposed to mean politically.

I'm not sure whether I should remove the virtually in the statement 'virtually impossible.'

 

[Streathamite]

I don't have access to that, but LA spending is the responsibility of LAs, not Cameron. And if some LA wants to continue spending £200K on a chief executive instead of front line staff, then again, you cannot blame Cameron. Much as we'd like to.

Are you being serious? The cuts being imposed on LAs are of such a huge and draconian nature that the salaries of Director-level staff are an irrelevance. It is one of the reat myths that local govt is a mire of spendthrift extravagance, waste and inefficiency; they are not, and you are falling wholesale for Tory propaganda.

 

[Pickman's model]

Are you being serious? The cuts being imposed on LAs are of such a huge and draconian nature that the salaries of Director-level staff are an irrelevance. It is one of the reat myths that local govt is a mire of spendthrift erxtravagance, waste and inefficiency; they are not, and you are falling wholesale for Tory propaganda.

tbh they're much more careful about their spending than i'd expected.

 

[Streathamite]

tbh they're much more careful about their spending than i'd expected.

yup, totally. Even Haringey - for all that it has been a regular target of my vitriol, have rigid spending controls that would make a thatcherite chartered accountant applaud.

 

[treelover]

'Elsewhere we see, as in parts of the former Soviet bloc and now in the Arab world, partial or pseudo-revolutions where stage armies take to the streets to face the bullets and batons only to leave another part of the same ruling class firmly in control (often there seems to be no popular desire to do anything more than this.) '


I've just come back from Hungary, they have adopted the US/Anglo Saxon model of capitalism there, last week in Budapest I saw a blind guy begging and there are homeless, poor, everywhere..

 

[LLETSA]

'Elsewhere we see, as in parts of the former Soviet bloc and now in the Arab world, partial or pseudo-revolutions where stage armies take to the streets to face the bullets and batons only to leave another part of the same ruling class firmly in control (often there seems to be no popular desire to do anything more than this.) '


I've just come back from Hungary, they have adopted the US/Anglo Saxon model of capitalism there, last week in Budapest I saw a blind guy begging and there are homeless, poor, everywhere..

Despite its exposure as being an utter failure and instrumental in bringing about the near-catastrophe of 2008, the neo liberal model, it seems, is set to remain the contemorary orthodoxy. It will, for instance, despite everything, be imposed (or rather reimposed) on all of the societies currently in ferment in the Arab world.

Strange times.

 

[ymu]

Strauss-Kahn, guilty as hell no doubt, appears to have been stitched up for rejecting neo-liberalism. I wouldn't be so pessimistic.

The new rulers of the world ain't us, they aren't jn financial shock mode, and they ain't as stupid as you seem to think.

Thirty years of lunacy does not a permanent orthodoxy make. The financiers were saying much the same about Keynesianism 50 years ago.

 

[grit]

Strauss-Kahn, guilty as hell no doubt,

ooohhh you have a crystal ball, quick whats the lotto numbers?

 

[butchersapron]

Strauss-Kahn did not reject neo-liberalism. He was a prime exponent of it and austerity -albeit with slightly structurally different immediate plans from the more open hardliners - but with the same long terms aims. He saw those hardliners as threatening the long term future of the neo-liberal project by daft short term manouveres. He was in fact one of the best friends the neo-liberal scould have wished for today. You've got to be really careful not to just drop scum like him into our camp because they've argued for some form of planned international fiscal stimulation to save themselves and their neo-liberal system.

 

[LLETSA]

Strauss-Kahn, guilty as hell no doubt, appears to have been stitched up for rejecting neo-liberalism. I wouldn't be so pessimistic.

The new rulers of the world ain't us, they aren't jn financial shock mode, and they ain't as stupid as you seem to think.

Thirty years of lunacy does not a permanent orthodoxy make. The financiers were saying much the same about Keynesianism 50 years ago.

I'm not saying anything's permanent. In your rush to find something postive where there's really nothing positive to be found, you tend to answer what nobody's said.

And far from claiming anything's permanent, what I actually imply above is that a dogma that's not only been discredited in the eyes of the world but went to the brink of bringing about the collapse of the very capitalism in whose favour it skews whole societies, is clinging on way past its sell-by date. That's why I called these times strange. It's almost as if the world's powers are keeping everything in suspended animation until the natural resource and environmental crises-the two catastrophes in the making for the human race-bring it all crashing down. And then we, the helpless mug punters, will likely be left longing for the relatively stable, civilised days of the neo-liberal ascendency.

 

[LLETSA]

Thirty years of lunacy does not a permanent orthodoxy make. The financiers were saying much the same about Keynesianism 50 years ago.

The other thing is that patterns do not necessarily keep repeating themselves. The world is changing faster than we can keep up with.

 

[ymu]

Strauss-Kahn did not reject neo-liberalism. He was a prime exponent of it and austerity -albeit with slightly structurally different immediate plans from the more open hardliners - but with the same long terms aims. He saw those hardliners as threatening the long term future of the neo-liberal project by daft short term manouveres. He was in fact one of the best friends the neo-liberal scould have wished for today. You've got to be really careful not to just drop scum like him into our camp because they've argued for some form of planned international fiscal stimulation to save themselves and their neo-liberal system.

I'm not dragging him into 'our' camp, ffs! Like he was ever going to be anti-capitalist! I'm not fucking interested in heroes and villains, unless it's a fairy story.

He convened the IMF-hosted conference this year that had all top thirty academic economists agree that austerity was nuts, and it had to be more spending and lower taxes, He ran with it. The crazies dug dirt to get rid of him. That is all.

 

[ymu]

ooohhh you have a crystal ball, quick whats the lotto numbers?

It's more the state of misogyny in the French political elite than a crystal ball. It would be astonishing if there was no truth in any of it.

DSK and Assange needed no dirt making up, just digging up to be flung. Ritter and Kelly had to be framed/libelled.

 

[TruXta]

The crazies dug dirt to get rid of him. That is all.

Sounds a bit too conspiralooney to me. Wait and see, sure, but it certainly sounds like the guy's got previous form.