Tag Archives: Transatlantic Trade

A Conservative victory: Now our suffering begins in earnest

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If you thought you had it bad under the Coalition then, as someone once said, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

The Conservative victory in last night’s election has left many of us reeling – not just because of its disastrous implications for the future of the UK and its citizens, but because nobody saw it coming.

Some have blamed ‘shy’ Tory voters. These are selfish little liars who skew the polls by denying any intention to vote for the Nasty Party. In the case of yesterday’s vote, many will have done so against their own best interests.

So why did they do it? The most likely reason being touted overnight is the success of the Conservative Party’s big scare tactic: The lie that Labour would go into a coalition with the Scottish National Party in the event of a hung Parliament. Cameron made vague claims that this would hit everybody in the wallet and Middle England – already burdened by a £4,000 per year loss of earnings thanks to Tory austerity – turned into a tribe of ‘shy’ Tories.

With the polls duly skewed, there was no way for Ed Miliband and Labour to know that their strategy wasn’t going to work for them, so they carried on. Britain fell into the Tory trap and now David Cameron has a slim majority.

And we are all in deep, deep trouble.

For supporters of the SNP, the disappointment must be the most bitter. Still, they supported a party with the most contradictory message of all – vote SNP in Scotland because Labour is bad, so that the SNP can go into coalition with Labour MPs from everywhere else because Labour is good.

It seems likely the most straightforward reason they voted SNP is because they had been whipped into a frenzy of righteous indignance about the independence referendum, believing the SNP propaganda that Labour was “in cahoots” with the Conservative Party – not just over the referendum but on general policy as well; ‘Red Tories’ was the SNP brand on Labour.

(Of course, others responded by labelling the SNP ‘Tartan Tories’. It is ironic that all this bickering resulted in the real Tories seizing power.)

So Scottish voters believed an SNP lie about Labour, and the knock-on effect was that English (and some Welsh) voters were convinced by a Conservative lie about Labour and the SNP. This created a domino effect which eventually meant that every single Scottish seat could have gone to the SNP, and the UK would still have ended up with a Tory government.

Is Nicola Sturgeon proud of herself? She seems to be. One is led to wonder how her party will respond to Tory legislation, when Parliament resumes.

Interestingly, Jon Craig (of Sky News) tweeted: “Tory at East Renfrewshire count: ‘Nicola Sturgeon has won more votes for the Conservatives in England than she has for the SNP in Scotland.'”

If anything, the election has demonstrated that Conservative/Coalition policy has created an atmosphere of division in the UK, greater than at any time in our history. Nationalism is on the rise, with Scotland keen to secede from the union and the UK as a whole heading for a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.

The SNP result should also signal the death-knell of the First Past The Post voting system in this country – although its demise is likely to be protracted (the Tories will fight tooth and nail to keep it). Where’s the fairness in a system that can deliver 56 seats to the SNP with 1.5 million votes, and only one seat to UKIP, with nearly four million votes?

(This Writer supports neither party, as previous articles on this blog make all-too-clear. Facts are facts.)

It will also be interesting to see what impact – if any – the Coalition’s ‘individual voter registration’ has had on the number of people who voted. Also, how many people didn’t bother to vote “because it never changes anything”?

Come to that, what about all those people who were forced to move out of affluent areas because they couldn’t pay the Bedroom Tax (which will, of course, continue)? Did they move into Labour constituencies?

We could be looking at interference in the electoral process on an industrial scale.

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Feel free to disagree with the free pass this image gives to Scottish voters if you like; the claim about voters in England is absolutely on the button.

Overall, the situation is best summed up by ‘Grumpy David’ on Twitter: “Seriously, who’s looked at the last five years and gone yeah, more of that please?”

What of the future?

Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK tweeted that a Tory victory would mean neo-feudalism is on its way in England, the union will be broken (with Scotland seceding), and the UK will leave the EU. He also predicted an economic crisis within a year.

Europe will be a major issue for the Conservatives now. With no Liberal Democrat partners to blame for government decisions, Cameron will be exposed to attack from his own backbenchers – many of whom are raving Europhobes.

Everyone on benefits will suffer, including those in work. Rachel Martin tweeted: “If exit polls are accurate I advise you not to be poor, not to be ill, not to be old and not to be in need of a job.”

The Tory victory means the end of the welfare state as we know it: People who deserve compassion will get none. Instead they will suffer £12 billion of cuts. Many thousands will die for the sake of a few pennies.

And the NHS? Privatised. With the provisions in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that will lock that privatisation into international law. Here’s Jacob Richardson: “Imagine seeing rape crisis shelters being closed and children’s palliative care being sold off to Virgin Healthcare, and wanting more of it.”

Workers’ pay will take a hammering – and our ability to protest and get a fair deal will be removed, along with the rest of our rights according to the Human Rights Act. They will be replaced by a ‘Bill of Rights’ telling us more about what we can’t do than what we can.

The Labour Party will need to get its act together quickly. Probably the best thing to do is get right back out to the general public and get confirmation of why the vote went to the Tories. Was Labour policy too close to the party’s arch-rivals, as some have surmised? Did people feel Labour wasn’t offering a genuine alternative? There will be a conflict between the neoliberal Blairites and traditionalists, and it is important that traditional Labour wins. If there’s one thing to learn from the SNP victory, it’s that a genuinely left-wing, anti-austerity platform delivers a massive victory at the moment.

The Liberal Democrats have been destroyed as a Parliamentary political party – and rightly so. The message for others to take away is that any form of compliance with Conservatives is fatal. The Tories will shift blame for anything bad onto their partners and contrive to win more votes.

UKIP is also a spent force. Despite increasing its vote share, its representation in Parliament has been halved. Voters will see this and abandon.

The SNP has taken on the role that the Liberal Democrats enjoyed at the 2010 election. They were the darlings of the voters this year but will lose out when it becomes clear that they cannot deliver a single promise – and, in fact, their victory in Scotland ensured that they would not be able to do so.

Finally, what can we do – the public?

We need to watch the Conservatives – and any of their known collaborators – hawkishly. We need to build up information about them, their policies, and any other interests – including and especially those that are less than legal (and there will be a lot of this). They won because the public believed them. It is important to undermine that trust with the facts.

We need also to ensure that the Liberal Democrats do not stage a comeback. That party betrayed the people and must be consigned to history. Again, we need to monitor the behaviour of its members and work to make sure the public is not gulled into a false sense of trust.

And it would be good to start thinking about the kind of country we would create, if we had the chance – and what steps we could take to build it. This may seem like pie-in-the-sky at such a dark point in our nation’s history, but it is only with careful and clever planning that anybody achieves anything.

We are in a very dark pit at the moment – dug for us by the Conservative Party. At least we can take heart that, from here, the only way is up.

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MEP group rejects controversial TTIP trade dispute system – almost unanimously

12/07/2014 - Protestors against the EU-US trade deal (TTIP - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) outside the Houses of Parliament march to Europe House, the London Headquarters of the European Commission and the European Parliament, in Smith Square, London [Image: Huffington Post].

12/07/2014 – Protestors against the EU-US trade deal (TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) outside the Houses of Parliament march to Europe House, the London Headquarters of the European Commission and the European Parliament, in Smith Square, London [Image: Huffington Post].

The Labour Party has been instrumental in ensuring that a large group in the European Parliament has rejected any use of the controversial Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) in trade deals with both the US (TTIP) and Canada (CETA).

The Socialist and Democrats Group in the European Parliament adopted almost unanimously a position paper drafted by a working group headed by UK Labour Party MEPs including David Martin (chair), Jude Kirton-Darling (spokesperson on TTIP and CETA) and Richard Corbett (Labour’s Deputy Leader in the European Parliament).

The proposal was supported by 78 votes to five against.

“We have always been opposed to ISDS as a group, although we didn’t have a chance to adopt a formal decision on this matter since the last European elections in 2014,” said Mr Martin. “In doing so today, we are responding to the thousands of constituents and the many civil society organisations that have asked us to clarify our position.”

Jude Kirton-Darling added: “This decision … will prove to be a real game-changer, not only in the negotiations between the EU and the US but also with respect to the ratification of the Canada agreement.

The European Commission and Europe’s Conservatives will need our support in the end if they want to see TTIP through. Today, we are sending them a loud and clear message that we can only contemplate support if our conditions are met. One such condition is we do not accept the need to have private tribunals in TTIP.”

And Richard Corbett said: “Today the Labour Party has demonstrated that engaging with our neighbours across the EU yields tangible results in the interest of the general public. Labour were instrumental in securing this outcome, and this is a tribute to the hard work, commitment and resolve of Labour MEPs.”

This is an excellent result.

Vox Political has reported public opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership many times over the past few years, and it was clear that the main sticking-point was the intention to allow businesses to sue national government if legislation interfered with their ability to make a profit.

Allowing traders such power is clearly against the interests of the citizens of both the EU and the US (and Canada also, it seems). It would have made it possible for the Conservative Party, here in the UK, to lock its privatisation of the National Health Service into the way that service operates, because of an international agreement that would be binding to the UK.

Now it is clear that Labour – and its group in the European Parliament – will not accept that.

It is a welcome clarification that should silence the naysayers here in the UK, who have been quick to suggest that Labour retains too much of the neoliberalism that plagued the New Labour era, and actually supports moves that could exploit working people.

Any such claim has no credibility now.

Trade agreements between the EU, US and Canada are not inherently bad ideas – but they need to be written to benefit everybody involved, rather than just a few money-grubbing shopkeepers and industrialists.

With this agreement in place, we are a step closer to ensuring this is the case.

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Cameron’s global crash warning: He’ll do nothing about it

"Our long-term economic plan is working!" says Cameron - and the debt keeps rising.

“Our long-term economic plan is working!” says Cameron – and the debt keeps rising.

It’s more accurate to say he’ll do nothing right.

David Cameron is warning that another global financial crash is on the way. It’s an accurate warning – others have been forecasting it for a while but, seeing him saying it, didn’t you ask yourself who he’ll be blaming this time?

It can’t be Labour’s fault – Labour has been out of office for a few years and besides, Labour policies were sorting out the fallout left by the last right-wing-precipitated global financial catastrophe until the Tories lied their way into office and then twiddled their thumbs for four long years.

He reckons emerging markets that sustained the recovery (what recovery?) are slowing down but the British economy is growing and needs to be insulated from any crash. He says employment is up massively and new businesses are proliferating – but if you scratch the surface of that claim you’ll see that the number of hours worked is no higher than in 2010 and new businesses are being ‘run’ by people who are claiming tax credits as self-employed because then they won’t be hassled by the DWP while claiming JSA. There are new businesses, of course, but not nearly as many as Cameron wants you to believe.

Cameron’s article in The Guardian, if read properly, is comedy. It certainly isn’t to be taken seriously.

“When we faced similar problems in recent years, too many politicians offered easy answers, thinking we could spend, borrow and tax our way to prosperity,” he writes. Which politicians? Gordon Brown is the only Chancellor in recent history to manage a surplus, rather than a deficit; his policies brought the UK unexpected prosperity (which, unfortunately, led to the EU surcharge that has so badly embarrassed George Osborne); and his successor Alistair Darling introduced policies that knocked £38 billion off the deficit created by the right-wing bankers’ gambling binge.

Cameron must be referring to Conservative politicians in his own government.

Yes, look, here’s a bit where he writes: “It is more important than ever that we send a clear message to the world that Britain is not going to waver on dealing with its debts.” He could have cut that sentence down to read: “Britain is not dealing with its debts.” The national debt has more than doubled since the Conservatives started running the economy – from around £800 billion to £1.8 trillion by 2015, meaning George Osborne’s pitiful attempts to tackle the national deficit by cutting public services and selling off the country’s assets have achieved less than nothing.

“This stability is vital in attracting the business and international investment that delivers growth and jobs, and which keeps long-term interest rates low.” You couldn’t make this up. Interest rates are low because lenders know the UK has its own sovereign currency and will always be able to pay its debts, one way or another, even if it means printing more money (quantitative easing, anyone?) – remember when the UK’s triple-A credit rating went downriver despite all Osborne’s efforts to keep it? He claimed this meant the cost of borrowing would leap, but the effect has gone unnoticed.

There’s a lot more waffle and you can read it on The Guardian‘s site. It’s amazing a paper of its standing bothered to publish it.

For a more informed opinion, let’s go to Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK, pausing for a moment to wish him well in his recovery from recent surgery.

“His focus is instead on highlighting problems in Europe and on signing TTIP – the trade treaty that will require the privatisation of the NHS whatever he says now,” writes Mr Murphy – possibly from the recovery ward.

“This is a man who can see a crisis coming and who must know that his austerity programme can only make it worse (anyone but a fool can see taking money out of a failing economy, as he plans to do,  is bound to make it worse) but who is resolutely refusing to recognise the issues that will cause this next wave of economic collapse.

The wrong people have the money… The people who spend least of their incomes have had the biggest pay rises and are the only ones to enjoy effective tax decreases over the last few years. These people are the highest income earners in the UK.

“At the same time, cutting benefits for the poorest and increasing VAT (which together with deliberately enforced wage cuts have reduced the net disposable income of most people) and cutting taxes for the wealthiest, this has been the inevitable outcome. And we know this outcome has not happened by chance: this is deliberate.

“When there’s a shortage of spending in the economy to let the wealthiest get wealthier, [it] simply means that the imbalances within it get worse. And it’s imbalances that cause crises.

“Corporation tax cuts and reforms to our corporation tax system that means that multinational corporations based in the UK can, since 2010, find it much easier to make effective use of tax havens to cut their UK tax bills have also made the problem worse. I reckon these cuts are costing at least £10 billion a year. What these cuts do is transfer money that would have belonged to the state to companies in the hope that they will be encouraged to invest it as a result. But they aren’t doing any such thing.

“Companies are taking the tax cuts and banking them. They aren’t even giving them back to their owners. They’re just hoarding it. Like the wealthy (perhaps, unsurprisingly) large companies are simply sitting on their cash.

The tax gap is another indication of this. What really belongs to the government is in the hands of crooks and cheats, with massive economic consequences.

“What can be done? I’ve always pointed out that there are only four drivers of the economy: consumer spending, investment, net foreign flows and government spending.

  • “Investment is not happening; business will not do it: that’s why they havecash.
  • “Net foreign flows are broadly neutral: the trade deficit is dire but hot money still comes to the UK, although we cannot rely on that.
  • “Consumer spending is poor and may get worse: most people do not have the money.
  • “And that leaves the government to put matters right. It has to generate new economic activity.”

Mr Murphy proposes more quantitative easing – printing money and then investing it in a new, sustainable infrastructive (not the kind that Cameron is pushing); rebalancing tax by increasing taxes for those who can pay; and closing the tax gap.

You won’t see any of those under a Conservative government!

Get ready to batten down the hatches for another round of financial catastrophe, and this time, be prepared to put the blame where it really belongs – on Conservative politicians whose supposed reputation for financial competence is a myth and who should never have been allowed near the national economy.

And remember where the blame lies when you vote next May.

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Fears over Cameron’s ‘rocket boosters’ TTIP pledge

Cameron at the G20: He reckons he has put "rocket boosters" on the planned TTIP agreement. But is it just a lot of hot air?

Cameron at the G20: He reckons he has put “rocket boosters” on the planned TTIP agreement. But is it just a lot of hot air?

Does anyone else think David Cameron’s pledge to put “rocket boosters” on plans for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership has more to do with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker’s doubts about the project than anything else?

A little more than two weeks ago, Mr Juncker announced that he was reviewing part of the proposed trade agreement between the European Union and the United States of America – the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) scheme, a part of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement that critics say would make it possible for corporations to sue national governments for damages if new legislation was likely to affect their profitability.

(Note that a BBC report has described it as an element of TTIP which “would allow foreign investors to go to an international tribunal for compensation if a government breaks the rules”. This is not true – Mr Juncker has stated that the Commission “will not accept that the jurisdiction of courts in the EU Member States be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes” – but what can we expect from a BBC that is hopelessly enslaved to Conservative ideology?)

According to the BBC, Cameron claimed that EU and US leaders had all agreed that TTIP “is a deal we want”. Oh really?

The report goes on to say he “‘sensed an enthusiasm'” – honestly, visit the site and read it yourself if you think Yr Obdt Srvt is making it up! – “from EU leaders and US President Barack Obama during a meeting in Brisbane earlier, and was now ‘hopeful of progress’ on TTIP.”

So did they actually say they wanted this deal to go through? Or is Cameron just talking through his hat again?

Conservative ministers seem to be making a habit of coming back from meetings with foreign ministers with an extravagant claim, only for it to fall apart under examination – look at George Osborne’s disastrous failure over the EU surcharge.

Regarding the concern Mr Juncker raised over ISDS, Cameron blathered: “We’ve signed trade deal after trade deal and it’s never been a problem in the past.” How reassuring. But those trade deals were not the same as this, and it is right that Mr Juncker should examine the evidence critically in the light of public outcry. Cameron really has no power in this matter; it is an agreement between the EU – not the UK – and America.

Cameron also tried to make light of fears that ISDS would ‘lock in’ his changes to the English National Health Service, and make it possible to lock them into the health service in other parts of the UK if they fall under Tory control in the future. “There’s no threat, I believe, from TTIP to the National Health Service,” he wibbled, “and we should just knock that on the head as an empty threat.” Again, how reassuring. But he provided no guarantees and we should not believe him if he did.

You see, Cameron wants to lock his changes into the NHS, and he sees TTIP as the mechanism for achieving this.

His problem is that talks are proceeding at a pace that means any agreement will take place after the UK’s General Election in May next year – and an elected Labour government would repeal the Health and Social Care Act 2012, which allowed private healthcare firms to cherry-pick services in the English NHS, the very next day.

This is one reason you should ignore claims that Ed Miliband’s Labour Party is unelectable. Cameron is clearly terrified that he will lose power before he can hammer the final nail in the coffin of public healthcare in the UK.

His claims that all involved are keen to accelerate the TTIP agreement with “rocket boosters” are just – appropriately – gusts of hot air.

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Is ISDS the TTIP-ping point for Juncker?

Jean-Claude Juncker.

Jean-Claude Juncker.

This is shaping up to be a very bad week for David Cameron.

Not only is his ‘welfare reform’ plan a laughing-stock after the DWP was revealed to be posting fake tweets about Universal Credit; not only was he struck by a passing jogger when he was in Leeds to discuss the (don’t laugh) High Speed 3 project (less than a week after a man threw a bag of marbles at hime during Prime Minister’s Questions); but now…

His much-cherished plan to ‘lock in’ privatisation of National Health services in England is in jeopardy after incoming European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker announced a review of the relevant part of a proposed trade agreement with the United States of America.

The decision must pile insult on top of injury for Cameron, who launched a famously lonely campaign to prevent Juncker’s appointment as president, attracting almost no support at all from his EU colleagues (only Hungary supported him) and confirming the catastrophic loss of influence the UK has suffered in the European Union under Cameron’s premiership.

Mr Juncker said the Investor-State Dispute Settlement scheme – a part of the proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership agreement that critics say would make it possible for corporations to sue national governments for damages if new legislation was likely to affect their profitability – would be reviewed.

In a speech to the European Parliament, Mr Juncker said: “I took note of the intense debates around investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations.

“My Commission will not accept that the jurisdiction of courts in the EU Member States be limited by special regimes for investor-to-state disputes. The rule of law and the principle of equality before the law must also apply in this context… There will be nothing that limits for the parties the access to national courts or that will allow secret courts to have the final say in disputes between investors and States.”

He said he had taken control over the ISDS process away from Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and handed it to Frans Timmermans, the incoming, and first, Vice-President in charge of the Rule of Law and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. “There will be no investor-to-state dispute clause in TTIP if Frans does not agree with it too,” he said.

The Financial Times has reported that Juncker made his decision “largely at the behest of Germany, which has turned sour on ISDS”. This will rub salt into the recently-opened wound caused when the EU billed the UK an extra £1.7 billion for membership, based on calculations of our economic improvement (Germany is getting a rebate).

“Germany’s misgivings have in turn fed into a more generalised distemper with global trade across the EU, encompassing the French far right and fringe parties elsewhere. They claim ISDS has morphed into a tool of multinational companies that use the arbitration panels to circumvent, or even alter, national laws at their whim,” the paper reported.

This is exactly what has caused hundreds of thousands of people to complain to the European Commission after details of the TTIP proposals were leaked from secret meetings.

Even now, TTIP remains largely unreported by the mass media here in the UK, which is mainly run by right-wing, pro-privatisation moguls. Mr Juncker announced his decision in a speech on October 22 – a week ago – but the only British newspaper to report it was the FT.

For Cameron, the humiliation is just as bad, whether the media reports it or not.

This is not a victory for campaigners against ISDS or the TTIP – although Mr Juncker’s decision may discourage the United States from taking the project further. It remains as important as ever that anyone with an objection needs to make that objection known.

But it is a good sign.

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TTIP: Why aren’t more people offended by Westminster and the European Commission’s supercilious attitude to our concerns?

12/07/2014 - Protestors against the EU-US trade deal (TTIP - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) outside the Houses of Parliament march to Europe House, the London Headquarters of the European Commission and the European Parliament, in Smith Square, London [Image: Huffington Post].

12/07/2014 – Protestors against the EU-US trade deal (TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) outside the Houses of Parliament march to Europe House, the London Headquarters of the European Commission and the European Parliament, in Smith Square, London [Image: Huffington Post].

There seems to have been a little public activity in opposition to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Hooray!

All over Europe, according to the mainstream media (who seem to have woken up and paid attention for a change), people have been out on the streets protesting against the plan to streamline (it says here) regulation of trade between the EU and the USA in order to boost trade for both sides.

We all know the arguments against it – standards will drop to the lowest common denominator rather than the highest; privatisation of services is built into the agreement and corporations will sue national governments who use their sovereign powers to change conditions (like re-nationalising privatised services), thus endangering corporate profits.

The most interesting parts of the BBC’s story come towards the very end, where Tom Burke, from environmental organisation e3g was predicted to tell Foreign Office minister Amber Rudd that “the deal will be unacceptable unless it guarantees that the highest possible standards will always apply”.

The article quotes Health minister Earl Howe, defending against fears that TTIP will “lock in” the privatisation of NHS services. He assures us that we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it because “it would not be in the interest of British pharmaceutical firms to exclude health from the negotiations as they currently face trade barriers in the US”.

So their interests are more important than those of everybody else in the UK, are they?

If you think that was condescending, the European Commission has gone further, saying the concerns are misplaced because TTIP “could have no impact on the UK’s sovereign right to make changes to the NHS.”

That’s nice. But will it appear in writing on the partnership agreement? If not, the Commission’s words are meaningless.

Over in the Huffington Post, trade minister Lord Livingston “said that TTIP talks ‘can’t be sacrificed by misinformation and scare stories’.”

He then went on to provide no evidence that any of the claims about TTIP were misinformed. “Blogging on the Huffington Post UK, he said: ‘Huge numbers of people and many consumer groups as well as business organisations would like to see the TTIP negotiations succeed. Which? can clearly see the benefits it will bring consumers. The Federation of Small Businesses backs it, welcoming the help it will give members to access huge new markets. The Confederation of British Industry, and many, many more are rooting for this deal. And you should be too, for the £10 billion it could add to the UK economy each year.'”

Except the experience of nations like Mexico is that the benefit goes disproportionately to the United States, rather than anywhere else.

So when the HuffPost states that “business secretary Vince Cable recently warned that the United States would ‘simply push ahead’ with trade talks with Asian economies if TTIP negotiations fail,” the logical response is to say “More fool them” if they take up the offer!

Cable, look the damn fool he turned out to be, went on to say: “The only sense in which this is in any way relevant is that its design, as in the European single market, is to ensure that procurement is on a non-discriminatory basis. All that is envisaged for the health service is that principle of non-discrimination is extended.”

So discrimination in favour of what’s best for the patient is a bad thing, is it? But this agreement will merrily discriminate in favour of what’s best for money-grubbing, profit-making parasites like the pharma companies mentioned by Earl Howe – who already charge far too much for their pills and potions, from a captive market.

The attitude of all these assembled bigwigs beggars belief. They don’t care if 400 protests took place today, or 400,000. As far as they’re concerned, TTIP is for them, not us. It’s about making things as cheaply as possible (by cutting safety standards and exploiting the workforce) and selling them as profitably as possible (to the exploited workforce who’ll have been paid too little to afford most of it).

They know they’ll have us over a barrel as soon as the ink is dry because even if some of us boycott products that are made and sold as a result of the agreement, most people won’t – not because they don’t want it but because they won’t believe they have any choice.

That’s why this agreement – as it stands – is no good. If it was an agreement to enforce the highest standards possible, it would be a different matter.

Would Earl Howe support that? Would Lord Livingston? Would Cable?

Have a wild guess.

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Did you hear the one about Labour and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership?

140115TTIP

Apparently somebody said Labour supported this hugely controversial scheme, and lots of people believed it.

In fact, the claim is doubly false. But first, a bit of background: You need to know that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership is a ‘free trade’ agreement being negotiated between the European Union and the United States of America. Unfortunately for most of us, the agreement as currently described would end democracy and put us at the mercy of international corporations.

This is because the agreement includes a device called ‘investor-state dispute settlement’ (ISDS), which allows corporate entities to sue governments, overruling domestic courts and the will of Parliaments. You would lose the ability to affect government policy – particularly on the National Health Service; after the Health and Social Care Act, the trade agreement would put every decision relating to its work on a commercial footing. The rights of transnational corporations would become the priority, health would become primarily a trade issue and your personal well-being would be of no consequence whatsoever.

Labour doesn’t want anything to do with an agreement that locks privatisation into the National Health Service, and TTIP – with the ISDS – would do exactly that. So Labour called for the NHS to be exempted from the conditions of the agreement, while remaining in broad support of the negotiations in the belief that the deal promised billions of pounds worth of jobs and economic growth.

The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are fully behind TTIP and have ruled out any opt-out for the NHS. The Tories in particular see TTIP as an opportunity to lock-in the privatisation changes they have made to the NHS.

That is the situation that most people believe exists today. They are mistaken.

Labour’s National Policy Forum met at Milton Keynes recently, where a new stance towards TTIP was agreed. Members raised the question of other public services, besides the NHS, that a future Labour government might wish to return to public ownership. With the ISDS in its current form, it would be more or less impossible to return the railways, energy firms and water companies to public ownership in the public interest.

So the current policy is as follows (with thanks to @LabourLewis of the LabourLeft blog): “Labour believes that [the] key to an EU-US trade deal that we would encourage the rest of Europe to support, which avoids a race to the bottom and promotes decent jobs and growth, would be safeguards and progress on labour, environmental, and health and safety standards. Labour has raised concerns over the inclusion of an ISDS mechanism in TTIP. Labour believes that the right of governments to legislate for legitimate public policy objectives should be protected effectively in any dispute resolution mechanisms.” [bolding mine]

This is unlikely to be Labour’s final position as many members believe the party should be even more strongly opposed to the agreement in its current form, as these concluding comments from @LabourLewis affirm: “I believe TTIP represents a free market model of the world economy that has failed the vast majority of us. The last 30 years have shown such a model of capitalism increases inequality and insecurity and leads to more frequent financial crashes.

“Simply tinkering on the margins will not be sufficient. A tad more regulation there, a bit more transparency here, a regulation over there, some restraint on executive pay over here.

“It simply won’t wash and a growing number of us, including our leader Ed Miliband, instinctively understand this.”

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If BBC News was a barrel of apples, would Nick Robinson really be the rotten one that spoiled the whole bushel?

How the Daily Record reported the 4,000-strong demonstration outside the BBC's Glasgow headquarters, after the social media revealed that Nick Robinson had misrepresented Alex Salmond in a report.

How the Daily Record reported the 4,000-strong demonstration outside the BBC’s Glasgow headquarters, after the social media revealed that Nick Robinson had misrepresented Alex Salmond in a report.

When TV licence-fee payers take to the streets in protest against BBC news coverage, you know there’s something rotten in New Broadcasting House.

The Corporation’s political editor, Nick Robinson, is apparently responsible for kicking up the stink – by broadcasting a misleading report about SNP leader Alex Salmond. Robinson claimed Salmond failed to answer a question during a news conference but footage has emerged on the Internet providing no less than seven minutes of proof to the contrary.

Did you notice the word “apparently” in the immediately preceding paragraph? It is there for a very good reason.

There is no doubt that Robinson knowingly misled the viewing public by making a false claim about Alex Salmond. The SNP leader definitely answered his question as this Pride’s Purge article makes clear. It is surprising that, after multiple debunkings of the mainstream media by their social media counterparts, organisations like the BBC still think they can get away with this kind of behaviour.

The operative question is, why did Robinson ignore what Salmond said? Was it not what he wanted to hear? Was the reference to information that should not have been divulged to the BBC too sensitive for the Corporation to allow onto our screens? Or was there a more deep-seated political agenda?

Frequent Vox Political commenter Jeffrey Davies reckons that Robinson’s report is a breach of the Trades Descriptions Act 1968.

In his comment, he says he bought his licence in the belief that the BBC would follow its Charter and Agreement (Section 3: Accuracy, Principles) commits it to fair, unbiased coverage:

“The BBC must not knowingly and materially mislead its audiences. We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or otherwise undermine our audiences’ trust in our content.”

Regarding the Salmond incident, he said it breaches Article 44 of the BBC Trust Charter Agreement, which states: “(1) The BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output.”

He is right, and it is right that Robinson should pay for what he has tried to do.

But what about Fran Unsworth, deputy director of BBC news and current affairs; Mary Hockaday, head of newsroom; and Gavin Allen, news editor, BBC News? According to Private Eye (issue 1369, 27 June – 10 July 2014, p12), “all vie for control of the [New Broadcasting House] newsroom and the historic task of ‘driving the news agenda’.” If that is correct, which of them carries the responsibility for this cock-up?

Come to that, what about Keith Blackmore, managing editor of news and current affairs; Jonathan Munro, head of newsgathering; and their boss James Harding, the director of news? Did they have a hand in this balls-up?

Or did the rot emanate from the new chair of the BBC Trust, Rona Fairhead – who only took up her position last Tuesday (September 9)? What’s her involvement in this cock-and-ball story?

Why mention these directorial types when a news report is the responsibility of the person making it? Simple.

Most – if not all – of these distinguished personnel are also distinguished Conservatives, and it is known that the Conservative Party supports the ‘No’ camp in the referendum campaign.

Robinson is also a dyed-in-the-wool Conservative, as the following (again from Pride’s Purge) makes clear:

NickRobinsonConservative

Therefore we must ask whether any or all of them agreed to ‘slant’ BBC reporting in favour of the ‘No’ camp in an effort to influence voters on behalf of their Tory masters.

We should demand their suspension while an impartial investigation takes place – followed by their resignation if they are found to have any responsibility in this matter.

Do you think that is overstating the matter?

Then perhaps some other matters should also be taken into consideration, including the privatisation of the National Health Service, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the abuse of sick and disabled people by the Department for Work and Pensions – all of which are considered to have enjoyed either biased reporting or have been ignored altogether by lovable, licence-fee-funded Auntie.

38Degrees has launched a petition calling for an independent inquiry into BBC bias regarding the Scottish referendum campaign. To sign, visit this site.

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Public consultation or ‘concentrated attack’? With TTIP it’s all the same

Facepalm: When Karel de Gucht [pictured] offered to hold a public consultation on proposals for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, he clearly did not expect to receive 150,000 responses. Now he is calling the public reaction a "concentrated attack".

Facepalm: When Karel de Gucht [pictured] offered to hold a public consultation on proposals for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, he clearly did not expect to receive 150,000 responses. Now he is calling the public reaction a “concentrated attack”.

Isn’t it a shame about Karel de Gucht?

The European Union’s trade commissioner launched a public consultation on the hugely controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership back in January – as reported in this blog – but has now changed his tune.

After receiving more than 150,000 submissions from EU citizens – raising concerns about proposals to restrict our freedoms in multiple ways – he described the unprecedented response as a “concentrated attack”, according to an email circulated by SumOfUs.org.

Perhaps somebody could send the following message to Mr de Gucht, to help him understand something fairly fundamental about his position:

When hundreds of thousands of people voice opposition to a political plan, that isn’t an attack; it’s called democracy.

Apparently it’s quite a popular concept in Mr de Gucht’s home country of Belgium, where they’ve been struggling to form an effective government since 2007. Perhaps that’s why he seems to have a problem with it…

Mr de Gucht seems keen to forget about his consultation so, faced with this opposition from a man who clearly thought an ill-informed public would support TTIP – or would not care about it – SumOfUs has launched an alliance with more than 150 partner organisations to create a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) calling for TTIP negotiations to be halted.

For this to work, these groups must collect at least one million signatures in seven European countries. The ECI can request a legislative act from the European Commission, repealing the European Union’s negotiating mandate for the Transatlantic Trade Investor Partnership (TTIP) and not concluding the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) – and can force a hearing at the European Parliament.

At the same time, country-specific quorums must be achieved in at least seven EU member states, with a minimum number of signatures required to achieve that quorum. In the UK, that minimum is 54,750 signatures.

Inevitably there is a price to pay for this kind of democracy and SumOfUs is seeking donations to pay for the two full-time staff who are coordinating the European-wide campaign work, developing a software to collect the signatures online, and planning to print and send thousands of packages with information material and signature lists “so that TTIP is an issue on every market stall in even the remotest village in Slovenia”.

To contribute a quid towards this project, click here.

It might be one of the most important pounds you’ve ever spent.

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Cameron has shown that protecting the NHS from corporate rape is the last of his concerns

What a bunch of... bankers: As mentioned in the article, government ministers are happy to spend your money defending bankers' bonuses in the European Union - but when it comes to defending your publicly-funded health service, they haven't squeaked.

What a bunch of… bankers: As mentioned in the article, the government is happy to spend your money defending bankers’ bonuses in the European Union – but when it comes to defending your publicly-funded health service, they haven’t squeaked.

Remember the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership? Also known as TTIP? The proposed agreement between the EU and USA that – in its current form – would lock future UK governments into a legal framework that protects the privatisation of health services in this country?

A part of the agreement called the Investor-State Dispute Settlement would allow any commercial organisation the ability to sue governments that acted in an anti-commercial way such as – for example – re-nationalising health services that the Conservative-led Coalition has sold off to firms in which many government MPs have shady personal financial interests.

David Cameron used to have a cabinet minister responsible for handling negotiations on the TTIP – Kenneth Clarke, the Minister Without Portfolio (aha! Now we know what he was supposed to be doing for a living).

But of course Clarke left the government in the July reshuffle. He gave every indication that he was delighted to be going, which suggests that work on the TTIP was not agreeing with him.

Perhaps it was the weight of all those people campaigning against the locked-in commercialisation of the NHS, in which treatment for particular conditions will depend on whether it is profitable where you live, coupled with the weight of Cameron’s determination to do nothing to prevent it – all obscured by the veil of secrecy that all involved have tried to draw across the negotiations.

Unite’s Len McCluskey told the Huffington Post: “First David Cameron claims there are no exemptions [so the NHS will be included in the deal – we should always remember that is Cameron’s default position], then EU Trade Commission[er] Karel De Gucht suggests that the NHS may have been exempted.

“Now civil servants are sending out statements claiming that the NHS was never in TTIP to begin with. It seems the government simply does not know what the world’s largest bilateral trade deal actually covers.”

Confusion! That’s an excellent way to slip in unwelcome changes – but it would mean the government was admitting its own incompetence.

McCluskey added: “David Cameron can choose to exempt the NHS if he’s prepared to fight for it. He was prepared to go to Europe to defend bankers’ bonuses.”

Good point. Despite the fact that bankers caused the financial crisis and many banks are still in debt, Cameron went to Europe to defend the ridiculously high bonuses they continue to award themselves. Then again, Cameron and his ministers have spent the last five years pretending that the crisis was entirely the fault of the previous Labour government. They must think we are stupid if they think we’ll swallow that – and we must bear that in mind when considering Coalition policy towards the TTIP.

Under the TTIP, a few other British standards will also suffer, according to the HuffPost:

  • We will be forced to accept other countries’ rules. UKIP voters take note that your party supports the TTIP.
  • Bosses will be allowed to reduce wages and hammer labour rights.
  • Food regulations will be weakened to allow banned products – like chlorine-bleached chicken and growth hormones in beef – into the country.
  • The UK could be forced to reverse its ban on asbestos in order to match US standards, leading to an increase in lung cancer and mesothelioma.
  • Private information about you could become public under e-commerce provisions – although it seems the Conservative-led UK government is already determined to publicise as much of your personal information as possible.

Put it all together and you can tell why the Coalition, the EU and the USA all want to keep this squalid deal secret!

The question is: Are you going to let them get away with it?

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