Volume 54 Number 27, October 29, 2024 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
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Workers' Weekly Internet Edition: Article Index :
Forthcoming Budget:
The Anti-Worker, Anti-Social, Pay-the-Rich Economic Programme of the Labour GovernmentGovernment announces plans for weight-loss jabs:
Move to Stigmatise the Unemployed To Be "Lab Rats" for Big PharmaCrisis in primary education:
School Closures Are Not SolutionsConsolidation of Opposition to US Global Hegemony:
Successful BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia
On Wednesday, October 30, the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will deliver the new Labour government's first Budget. The massive budget shortfall that Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced, otherwise known as the "£22 billion black hole", is the justification for the prospect of infrastructure cuts in, for example, road and rail projects. Government departments' spending plans for the rest of 2024/25 and 2025/26 will be set in the first part of the "Spending Review" process. Plans for 2026/27 and 207/28 will be set next spring. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) will publish revised forecasts for the economy and public finances on the same day as the Budget statement. The Chancellor will publish her self-imposed targets for the public finances - the "fiscal rules" - at the Budget.
"Growth is now our national mission," Rachel Reeves has declared. But growth for whom? And are spending cuts and attacks on social programmes going to grow the economy? Although in words, the government is saying that austerity is "no solution" and that the government would "reject" it, that same government is saying that Rachel Reeves will have to make "tough choices" in her Budget to close the "£22 billion black hole". The people demand a different direction for the economy, which even Keir Starmer recognises. But he is determined to impose the anti-worker, anti-social and pay-the-rich direction nevertheless. The government's direction is that of "investment with reform", which in the programme of this Labour government means restructuring the state first to prioritise private interests even more, for instance in the National Health Service, before state investment is put on the agenda. Contrary to this direction, first and foremost investment is needed as a priority in the NHS, education and other sectors of the economy which benefit the public good. People demand a pro-social aim and direction for the economy, with a public banking system. They demand that the social wealth they produce be used productively for the good of all, not get siphoned off into interest payments and privatisation and other fraudulent schemes to pay the rich; above all they demand that social wealth does not fuel the militarisation of the economy, war production and the facilitation and complicity in genocide.
Furthermore, Starmer is crowing that the government will make a "bonfire of red tape". For "red tape", read "regulations", which in the main have been fought for in the fight against exploitation and to safeguard working people. In the present context, advocating a "bonfire of red tape" is a call that as the monopolies seek to reverse their falling rate of profit, everyone must fend for themselves and the government bears no responsibility for safety and the public good.
It should be pointed out that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner moved the second reading of the Employment Rights Bill on October 21. It appears that, in the context of trying to keep the organised workers' movement on-side, Labour is trying to square favouring private business interests with the rights of workers, which is not something that is in the gift of legislation to grant. The Employment Rights Bill has been introduced in the name of protecting workers under the slogan "Make Work Pay". Coming, as it does, at a time when the much-heralded Budget is coming up, one that will undoubtedly attract much opposition, will it save the day for the government?
Advocating the Bill, Angela Rayner pointed out: "The Bill marks a momentous opportunity to chart a new route to growth." She added: "Higher growth, higher wages and higher productivity-a new partnership between workers and business."
Workers' Weekly, however, has pointed out: "The way the government poses the problem is that what is holding back growth is a lack of investment, and investment requires pay-the-rich schemes and making sure the people are powerless to interfere. For their part, the workers do not see paying the rich as the key to investment in what society needs. Instead, they have been fighting for their individual, collective, and social claims, developing a movement under the banner of Enough is Enough! Their independent programme is to stop paying the rich and increase investments in social programmes." [1]
Notes
1. The Labour Government's Economic Programme, Workers' Weekly, August
11, 2024
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-19/ww24-19-03.htm
On October 14, a government press release [1] announced that at its "International Investment Summit" at the Guild Hall, London, it had achieved a "landmark collaboration" with US pharmaceutical company Lilly, "the world's largest pharmaceutical company, to invest in the UK as part of a collaborative partnership with UK government". The announcement said that the "UK's world-leading life sciences sector will receive a £279 million boost to tackle significant health challenges, with an intent expressed by Lilly" even though it is not a UK company. At the same time, amongst other announcements it was said that "the collaboration with Lilly aims to set the stage for government to work with industry to trial innovative approaches to treating obesity as part of a rounded package of care".
Then a day later, on October 15, Prime Minister Keir Starmer revealed the sinister truth in their dealings with Lilly when he told the BBC News [2] that he supported the proposals of Health Secretary Wes Streeting that "giving weight loss jabs to unemployed people living with obesity could be very important for our economy and health" and said that "the jabs could be given to help people get back into work". However, far from being at the level of proposals, it immediately emerged that even before Parliament, let alone health professionals, could discuss it the "government is partnering with the pharmaceutical giant Lilly who are running a five-year trial in Greater Manchester [3] to test if the weight-loss drug Mounjaro can help get more people back to work" and "prevent obesity-related diseases to ease the strain on the NHS in England."
The report said that the "announcement prompted a backlash, with accusations that the government was stigmatising unemployed individuals and reducing people to their economic value". Adam Green, chief executive of unemployment charity Yes Manchester, said that "obesity was low on the list of reasons why some people were struggling to get a job". Also, expressing his horror at Wes Streeting's plan to give weight loss jabs to the unemployed, Craig Murray, former British diplomat, said in his blog [4]: "The unemployed are more likely to be underweight than the population average, and this attempt to portray the unemployed as lazy couch potatoes is vile in many ways. Its masking as an 'investment' in the economy by Big Pharma is chilling. If it goes ahead, how many years do you think we are away from those who refuse to have the drug injected into their veins, having their benefits stopped? How are we to view this attempt to use the 'unproductive' as lab rats for Big Pharma?"
He also raised his concerns. Writing: "It has also been announced that the government is to send employment advisers into mental health wards to try to get sick people back into work. This is astonishing. It is extremely difficult to access any mental health care at all on the NHS. To get residential (acute) care requires in truth a level of mental health crisis that indicates a threat to life of yourself or others. Yet people from mental health wards are going to be got into work, when there are hundreds of thousands of perfectly well people desperate for a good job who cannot find one? What is the purpose of this nonsense other than propaganda and stigmatisation of the unemployed?"
Indeed the purpose of this move by government is indeed to stigmatise the unemployed who are going to be "lab rats" for Big Pharma. A spokesman for Health Innovation Manchester, which is running the study for US Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, claimed, "This is not about getting unemployed people back to work," but then said there was a "clear link" between conditions like obesity that cause people to be too ill to work or stay in a job and a fall in overall productivity. About 3,000 people across Greater Manchester are set to be involved in the study, but the exact details of how it will be run have yet to be revealed. It is claimed that its primary aim is to analyse how tirzepatide, sold by Eli Lilly under the brand name Mounjaro, reduces obesity and other health-related illnesses in the "real world". It is said that the five-year clinical trial will measure the "health effects, alongside other metrics like changes in job status and sick days".
In other words, the premise that "unemployment" and an "unproductive" workforces can be cured by these drugs is a big lie that will make huge profits for Big Pharma. It will not "release pressure on the NHS" as claimed by government but will further be used to reduce funding for health and social care. It is also off the scale in terms of violating the rights of all, the right to life and inviolability of the human person. The programme has no intention of providing more productive employment to communities, especially the poorest. It has no intention of "motivating" those in work. It has every intention of stigmatising the unemployed and those with obesity problems at work and out of work.
Streeting claims that he is "not interested in some dystopian future where I involuntarily jab unemployed people who are overweight". But that is exactly what it is. It is a programme in the making of mass imposition of these injections amidst mass unemployment, food poverty and other measures like it, so that the government can ignore the real problems that their system has caused whether it be forcing people to starve themselves or eat bad diets. On the contrary, the government's real aim is making themselves and Big Pharma richer out of public services at the expense of all in society. It is indeed a horror scenario that is being imposed by the same warmongering Cabinet ministers in government that also support and arm Israeli genocide against Palestinians and support the arming and escalation of war in Ukraine, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Today, workers are getting organised to resist these conditions forced upon them by the successive governments in the cartel party system. This striving for change is the order of the day that upholds the rights of all to a livelihood and food security whether able to work, or not, and a human centred health and mental health service that cares to all. Such moves by government to stigmatise the unemployed and for the "unproductive" to have medical trials imposed on them by Big Pharma must be condemned and opposed by all.
Notes
1. Landmark collaboration with largest pharmaceutical company - Press
Release
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-collaboration-with-largest-pharmaceutical-company
2. Unemployed could get weight loss jabs to return to work - BBC News,
October 15
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjd54zd0ezjo
3. Weight loss jabs for jobless not dystopian - BBC News October 20
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgk7l30egjeo
4. The Notional Health Service - Craig Murray, October 17
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/the-notional-health-service/
Teachers at three middle schools in Northumberland are currently on strike following the council's failure to engage in meaningful consultation over plans to close the schools, reports the NASUWT [1]. In a move that has put 143 jobs at the school at risk, the council wants to close Glendale, Tweedmouth, and Berwick Middle Schools as part of a restructuring to a primary and secondary school system. The NASUWT has been trying for months to secure firm commitments from the Council and Berwick Partnership Headteachers to put in place real mitigations to avoid unnecessary compulsory job losses.
Teachers initiated seven days of strike action at the beginning of this month, with further action scheduled from October 22-24, combined with demonstrations on Berwick Bridge.
Northumberland County Council had committed to protecting staff from job losses, but they have so far failed to honour this pledge, says the union. Demanding a say, teachers are asking the Council and partnership headteachers to engage in a full consultation exercise.
"The Council are behaving appallingly in refusing to do everything possible to save jobs and engage in a full consultation with those affected," said Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT General Secretary. "Our members have enormous talent, expertise and teaching experience that can be used for the benefit of children and young people in Northumberland. But instead of finding imaginative and workable solutions to mitigate the reorganisation, they are refusing to work with us and the members and trying to force through these jobs cuts. Members are standing up to this and fighting for their jobs and so have no other option bit to take further strike action."
The closures are part of an unfolding crisis in particularly primary education in Britain, which is seeing scores of schools under threat of closure across the country.
Also this month, Hackney Council announced potential closures of several primary schools due to over 20% of reception places being unfilled. The council acknowledged that these closures are necessary to ensure financial viability, despite the emotional and community impact. The closures have sparked protests from parents and teachers who argue that the shortage of affordable housing is driving families out of inner-city areas like Hackney, exacerbating a decline in pupil numbers. [2]
Worker's Weekly recently reported that the Isle of Wight Council plans to close a devastating six primary schools at once across the island next year, including Arreton, Brading, Cowes, Godshill, Oakfield, and Wroxhall. The island has long suffered from the generalised crisis in education and other social programs. Now these closures will force affected children to attend alternative schools by July next year, in some cases long distances from their homes. Parents and children have been organising themselves, meeting and discussing the situation, and staging protests outside affected schools. [3]
Closures are not only affecting primary schools. Back in May, it was reported that 324-year-old Lambeth High School for Girls in Tulse Hill, south London, is set to close due to falling pupil numbers. The school, which currently employs over 50 staff, will close to Years 7, 8, and 9 in August and will close completely next summer after older pupils have completed their exams. The school teaches some 400 school students. The closure follows a similar announcement by Archbishop Tenison's School in Vauxhall in April. According to Lambeth Council's Member for Children and Young People, Ben Kind, the closure was out of council control due to the school's academy status. [4]
The argument is put that primary school closures are the result of a decline in pupil numbers, particularly in urban areas, driven by falling birth rates and demographic changes. Further factors cited are ongoing after-effects of the Covid pandemic, during which schools were closed to most pupils, and fallout from the crisis in concrete safety, leading to partial or full closures. The combined effect has been an intensification of financial pressure on schools.
A report published in April by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) warned that falling pupil numbers could lead to schools losing over £1 billion in funding by 2030 [5]. The report suggests that schools may be forced to consider cost-cutting measures, mergers with other schools, and closures due to demographic changes.
The EPI projects the greatest falls in pupil numbers will be in London and the North East of England. Under a scenario where all schools receive a 0.5% real terms increase in pupil-led per-pupil funding each year, the overall funding for primary and secondary state schools will fall to £41.6 billion by 2029/30, down from a peak of £42.7 billion in 2024/25, according to the model used in report. North East is projected to experience the largest 12.7% decline in pupil numbers between 2022-23 and 2028-29 years, while Lambeth is projected to see England's largest primary drop in pupil numbers at primary level by 24.5%. All regions are projected to see a decrease in primary school funding between 2023-24 and 2029-30.
General secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, Paul Whiteman, said: "Schools are already strapped for cash - and even with a dip in pupil numbers, any further cuts to funding would be a catastrophe for our children. Instead, the drop in pupil numbers provides the government with an opportunity - by maintaining current funding levels, schools could keep current staffing levels, paving the way for smaller class sizes, and targeted support for pupils." [6]
"It would be a waste to allow smaller schools to close, only for there to be a need for more places in those areas further down the line," he also pointed out.
A Department for Education spokesperson stressed the figures were "speculative" and funding was "subject to future spending reviews". "It is for local authorities and academy trusts to balance the supply and demand of school places, in line with changing demographics, as they have done for many years." They added: "We are increasing school funding to £60.7bn next year, the highest level ever in real terms per pupil. Every school will receive a per-pupil increase in funding, and the national funding formula makes sure that funding is distributed fairly based on the needs of each school and their pupils." [7]
The wave of school closures indicates a profound crisis unfolding in education. Posed in terms of "viability", this crisis centres on the right to education and the aims of the education system, and how or whether the economy is directed to guaranteeing that right.
Students from schools through to universities have long since taken up the principle that education is a right, not a privilege. The closures reveal that, in place of this right, the education system is aimed in some other direction; they raise the questions of the aims of education, what interests it serves, and how it should be funded.
Changing demographics leaving certain areas with fewer children itself raises further questions, but those issues aside, the result can only be a "surplus" of school places relative to a defined standard class size and a system of funding allocated per child that enforces this size through restricting the money going to schools with fewer children and the opening of schools to market forces, making schools with smaller classes become "unviable" to run.
A system aimed at meeting the right of all to education at the highest level that society can provide - an education not narrowly focussed to employment by competing private interests, but that exists to aid the all-sided development of every individual to enable their full participation in society; a system that fosters the modern democratic personality, both collectively and in individual form - would see smaller class sizes as a positive thing, and would strive to not only make such schools viable but to be fully equipped and staffed in every sense.
Schools, of whatever size, add massive value by educating the young; it is how this value should be paid for that is not seriously addressed. Rather than being opened up to plunder by business through, for example, the anti-academic system of academies, business should pay for the education from which they benefit.
The conception that there is a "surplus" of classroom places is fundamentally at odds with right to education. Closing schools will solve no problems and will only deepen the education crisis.
Notes
1. "Northumberland teachers strike to save jobs", NASUWT, October 7,
2024
https://www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/northumberland-teachers-strike-to-save-jobs.html
2. "Parents and teachers furious as council mulls more primary school
closures", Joe Steen, Hackney Citizen, October 4, 2024
https://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2024/10/04/parents-teachers-furious-council-primary-school-closures
3. "Closing Village Schools Will Only Deepen Education Crisis",
Workers' Weekly, September 21, 2024
https://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-24/ww24-23/ww24-23-07.htm
4. "Lambeth school announces closure amid falling numbers", BBC
News, May 13, 2023
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65581380
5. "School funding model: Effect of falling school rolls", Education
Policy Institute, April 11, 2024
https://epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/school-funding-model-effect-of-falling-rolls
6. "Head teachers say cuts in school funding a 'catastrophe for our
children'", Rose Tremlett, NAHT, April 11, 2024
https://www.naht.org.uk/News/Latest-comments/Press-room/ArtMID/558/ArticleID/2387/Head-teachers-say-cuts-in-school-funding-a-catastrophe-for-our-children
7. "Schools could be forced to close amid drop in pupils - think
tank", BBC News, April 11, 2024
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68786770
The BRICS 16th Annual Summit was very successfully held in Kazan, Russia, from October 22 to 24. The Summit revealed greater co-operation of its members on its various fronts of work to facilitate economic co-operation and resolve international problems without resorting to violence and war.
A consistent theme of the Summit was the development of relations among nations that respect each member's sovereignty and independent thinking and way of life. This requires a renewed international governance system based on equality among nations, including reform of the United Nations Security Council.
Another important theme was the advancement of international trade and commerce for mutual benefit and duty to provide assistance to the least developed countries of the world. Emphasis was put on avoiding any use of trade to exploit others or weaponising of the global monetary system, which have become common practices of US imperialism.
The US use of its industrial and military power and control of international institutions and dollar dominance to perpetuate US hegemony was discussed. The negative practices of the US to exploit others and steal their social value and resources in its striving for global hegemony were exposed as problems to be overcome on a global scale through organised co-operation and collective action.
Concrete examples were discussed on how to avoid US control by acting as an organised force, such as by using national currencies in trade rather than the US dollar, working together to circumvent US-imposed sanctions on individual members and supporters, and demanding, with a unified voice, more equitable terms of trade and general relations with Group of Seven member countries (G7: Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States). BRICS is already making strides in this direction, challenging the US and strengthening its ability to do so as it expands to include more countries.
Methods and mechanisms were also discussed for solving problems in relations among peoples and nations without violence. Emphasis was placed on unifying their voice to stop the US/Zionist genocide of Palestinians and attacks on Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Iran and to demand US/NATO commence peace negotiations with Russia to end its proxy war in Ukraine.
A Powerful Organised Force for Change
The original BRICS members - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa - have now been joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). An additional 34 countries have begun the process to join or have expressed interest in doing so, including 13 which have become partner countries: Algeria, Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, Indonesia, Thailand, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Türkiye, Uganda, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
BRICS member countries now account for a combined Gross Domestic Product of 35.6 per cent of the global total, exceeding the GDP of the G7. and its purchasing power parity (PPP), a measure to compare the purchasing power of the countries' currencies. In the past decade, BRICS member states accounted for more than 40 per cent of the global GDP increase.
Their population represents nearly half of the world's total and they occupy more than one-third of Earth's land mass. BRICS members' global trade accounts for one-fifth of all such trade including about a quarter of the world's exports of goods, especially metals and food, and over 40 per cent of all oil production.
Eloquent and United Expression of Concern and Demand for Change
The Summit was a united expression of the concern of countries throughout the world with the present international economic and political direction and their demands for change. The level of discussion, the tone and calibre of the exchanges and the rational approach taken was dignified and raised the level of political discourse, so much needed and so much wanted. There was no hint of the hooliganism and disinformation the US and its allies are known for.
Economic, political, social and environmental problems have multiplied by leaps and bounds since the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the 1989-1991 period. The broad striving of US imperialism for control of a world under its "rules-based international order" has led to one failure after the other while its insistence on destroying anything it cannot control has given rise to extreme violence. Direct and proxy wars of destruction have proliferated, generating untold death and misery and dislocation for tens of millions of people, and the destruction of their countries. US authority is clashing with the economic, social, natural and political conditions in the US and internationally.
The BRICS group of nations is emerging as a powerful organised force for change, assisting one another to overcome the obstacles posed by the US imperialist dominance of international trade, commerce and finance.
Change is demanded. It exists independent of anyone's will and the peoples of the world are in motion to bring it about. The Resistance Forces are making important contributions but the international system continues to keep the initiative out of their hands such as when it comes to ending the extreme violence and ability of US/Zionist forces and Genocide Cartel to act with impunity in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Many countries are taking concrete steps to challenge US authority.
The growing popularity and influence of the BRICS organisation of nations is an example. BRICS members are putting into practice mechanisms to bypass and even negate the nefarious US efforts to completely control world trade, commerce, finance and politics. As expected, the US is employing pressure and blackmail to prevent the growth and success of BRICS but is having only limited success.
(TML In the News)
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