Dear #Cameron @Number10gov: Here is our #Ultimatum. #NoWages or #WelfareState? No #Labour or #Taxes - #SHARE Dear David Cameron - 10 Downing Street, If you continue to #withdraw our #wages and our welfare state, then we will withdraw our labour and our taxes. This is the very simple, and fair, message that needs to be communicated to the Cameron and the crony Conservatives & Liberal Democrats in coalition. For the sake of fairness, the message should be copied to the entire #political class. Because what we are witnessing here is the end game of a #neoliberal consensus that has gripped our political, academic and media institutions – and has even crept into our courts. This has been the work of every government since at least Margaret Thatcher from 1979, to the present day. In the dying embers of #WorldWarII, a new social contract was drawn up in Britain. Freedom from #poverty was made a right – a condition of #citizenship. A person paid their #NationalInsurance and their #taxes, and was safe in the knowledge that that they would not be made #destitute by the vicissitudes of this so-called ‘market’. Furthermore, a person who was #physically or #mentally unable to participate in the jobs market, would not be abandoned to the mercy of philanthropy, but the responsibility of all. It was never a pay as you go system on a transaction by transaction basis – I pay this, I get this. Instead, taxes and national insurance for all who could pay, was the price of living in a country where the gap between #rich and #poor was narrowed, where all children received a free and decent #education, where every person had a safe and decent home, where any person was entitled to the best healthcare available when they were sick, regardless of their ability to pay, where you could expect a swift and just response from the police if you were the victim of crime, and a fair trial whether plaintiff or defendant, where roads, buses, trains and other forms of public transport were cost effective, safe and reliable. In short, the price of living in a civil society. It was also understood that the natural ambitions of #corporations to reduce costs and increase profits, versus the worker’s requirement to be fairly compensated for their work – meant an arbiter was needed to balance these conflicting needs. It was agreed that a working person living in poverty and destitution, was unacceptable in our society. This was our social contract. But while the overwhelming majority of people are still honouring their side of the bargain – the political and corporate class (increasingly, actually the same people), are not.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Mar 2014 23:27:17 +0000
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