How we can still change the budget:
Posted on | July 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
George Osborne’s dangerous Budget is not yet a done deal.
MPs can still make a difference by proposing and voting for amendments to remove the worst aspects of the plans as it passes through Parliament.
LibDem Deputy Leader Simon Hughes has already signalled that his MPs might take a lead in making some of these changes, and Labour MPs may be willing to take a stronger stance than before on the danger posed to the economy by cuts to benefits and services.
Even Conservatives need to hear how their constituents feel about the economic mistakes the Chancellor is making!
So, we need to contact our MPs now to get them to take action in Parliament in the coming weeks.
Our simple tool will create a letter suitable for any MP asking for their views and a promise of action. You can also add your own message before sending (so if your MP is a LibDem you can tell them you didn’t vote for these cuts!)
It takes just one minute and could make all the difference.
To get started, enter your postcode here:
Cuts to Legal Aid risk its collapse
Posted on | July 26, 2010 | No Comments
Access to legal representation in the UK is a right, one that won’t be completely abolished without a serious outcry (I would hope at least), but the quality of that representation is something that is seriously under threat. Solicitors working in legal aid have had to swallow a bitter pill for the second time this year after being told the Legal Services Commission, the body that governs legal aid in England and Wales, doesn’t have enough money to pay its bills. Cue the crying of “why should I care that some toff lawyer cannot afford another jacuzzi in his second home in Toulouse” or “I don’t want taxpayer’s money going to defend some knife-wielding immigrant gang-member hoodie scumbag”. These are misconceptions about the legal aid system.
First of all, can we all just forget the myth that all lawyers are paid vast sums of money and are simply intent on squeezing every last penny they can from people in return for doing little work. Next we need to recognise the two different types of lawyers we have in the UK that work on legal aid; solicitors and barristers (aka counsel) – barristers are the ones with the wigs and robes – and most work extremely long hours, do very different jobs and are paid differently. And lastly legal aid exists to allow access to legal representation to those that cannot afford it, and is frequently used to represent people in cases of childcare, sexual harassment, employment tribunals, domestic abuse as well as crime. It is not about tax money defending criminals.
The problems with legal aid are three-fold; legal aid fees are unbalanced, cuts and mismanagement by the Labour government has left the Legal Services Commission in a situation where it cannot work efficiently and both the previous and current governments are very hostile towards complaints made by solicitors. The net result of this at worst could be the collapse of the legal aid system, but more likely will simply mean that only inexperienced and junior solicitors will work in legal aid as there will be very little money to be made from it. This will mean that the most vulnerable will be denied access to decent legal representation.
Law is often seen as a high-paying profession with many solicitors and barristers earning huge sums of money. In some cases this is true, private tax and corporate law for example, though not often in legal aid. Legal aid is charged on a system of hourly fixed rates which have not risen in more than 10 years and when compared to the rate of inflation actually amount to a year-on-year cut of 2.5%. This means that over the last decade there has been a 25% cut in the value of remuneration for legal aid while costs have soared. Many solicitors no longer offer a legal aid service and those that do are struggling on a month by month basis to survive. And there are more changes being made to legal aid fees, particularly with regard to childcare.
The previous Labour government, under Lord Chancellor Jack Straw, took the running of the Legal Services Commission in-house, integrating it into the Ministry of Justice and made a large number of crucial staff who process bills and payments to solicitors redundant. This resulted in massive delays in payments, further compounding solicitors’ cash-flow crisis. This in turn has meant that many firms that rely on bringing in money from legal aid work have not been paid money owed since February this year and are teetering on the brink of collapse.
In addition, the new Tory government is looking to further cut funding on services which are currently available by 50%, the implications of which will be devastating. In the field of childcare there has been a massive increase in demand following the Baby P case, yet there is less money and fewer solicitors able to meet the demand and so more children not getting the help they need. The overall result of the delays in payment, the low-fees and fewer and fewer solicitors offering legal aid means that cases such as that of Baby P will be more common.
When complaints about the legal aid fees system have been brought forward before, they are shouted down by further touting of the myth of the overpaid lawyer. To prove the point, the government has in the past released figures to demonstrate that legal aid lawyers are in fact very well paid – they provide the annual earnings of the top five Queen’s Counsels (a high ranking barrister) who earn c. £500,000 annually from legal aid, therefore all lawyers must be earning the same. This is simply not true and the fact of the matter is that the situation will only get worse if the Tory government goes ahead with it’s planned 50% cuts in legal aid spending, a LOT worse. Legal aid will end up being the domain of junior solicitors and the poor will lose out on representation by senior and experienced solicitors. The impact will mean that the most vulnerable in our society – children and victims of abuse – are left without help.
A-Z of why these cuts are mad
Posted on | June 23, 2010 | 3 Comments
Posted originally on Twitter, then on Bright Green Scotland by Adam Ramsay
I just tweeted an A-Z of why I oppose public spending cuts. Here it is.
a) the biggest waste in our economy is unemployment not spending
b) we’ve lower debt:GDP than most EU/G8 nations
c) the money is owed to us
d) the payoff on public services’s > our loan interest
e) Italy’s credit rating is far below ours but they only pay slightly more interest
f) where else will bond markets lend?
g) how can we have export led growth as the EU collapses
h) why is growth meant to be led by the banks?
i) raising the personal allowance gives more to the rich than the poor
j) VAT is the most regressive tax
k) what happened to green investment?
l) WTF is this I hear about first children only?
m) scrapping child trust funds while promising cuts to inheritance tax is fair?
n) cutting jobs hits the poor first (are you listening @guardian?)
o) we still remember you cut uni places – crushing a generation’s hopes
p) universities have the biggest jobs multiplier of anything, so cutting their funding is the thing most likely to cause a double dip
q) Tories have always opposed proper funding for public services
r) the long term economic costs of the human strife of austerity are huge
r) the deficit has already naturally dropped by more than Osborne said he wanted it to this year, & will half by 2015
s) taxes on the top take fewer jobs away
t) it took decades to build the public services he wants to ruin
u) the economists against this tend to be those who predicted this mess
v) what’s the point of a triple A rating if you can’t borrow in a 100 year recession?
w) our loans are very long term
x) we have big assets
y) the richest 1000 people have seen their wealth increase by 30% in a year – half the value of the deficit
z) Osborne is trying to save the economy by destroying the economy. That’s as crazy as it sounds. That is all
Exciting New Film
Posted on | June 21, 2010 | 3 Comments
Feel free to share with your friends and let us know what you think!
What’s George up to now? Try our random cuts generator:
Posted on | June 16, 2010 | 3 Comments
Try our new random cuts generator, very generously put together by charlieharvey.org.uk – then tweet the results.
Click below:
RANDOM CUT NOW, PLEASE!
Need ammo? Read our new FAQs
Posted on | June 11, 2010 | No Comments
Making the case that the Coalition’s cuts aren’t based on sound economics isn’t always easy.
Our experts have got together and put together a very useful set of FAQs, tackling all the most common LibCon objections to the idea that cutting public spending now would be dangerous.
Read the FAQs here
On this page, you can also download a handy pdf, which you can print out and take to your local pub, Conservative Club, SU debate, garden centre, bus – in fact they’re invaluable wherever you might come across bad arguments for cuts!
‘These cuts are driven by dogma not by sound economics.’
Posted on | May 24, 2010 | No Comments
Top economist David Blanchflower described the announcement of £6.2 billion of cuts as ‘a dreadful day for British people’ – and said they are ‘driven by dogma not by sound economics.’
Unlike most economists, David Blanchflower – a former member of the Monetary Policy Committee – actually predicted this recession, and called for measures which would have helped prevent it.
He’s not alone. Bill Clinton’s chief economist (and Nobel Winner) Joseph Stiglitz, recently said: “the economics is clear: reducing government spending is a risk not worth taking.”
David Laws and his Tory friends have always wanted to dismantle much of the welfare state. And now they are relishing an opportunity to do so.
Lib Dem MPs were elected promising to stop this budget of cuts – sign the petition demanding that they keep their promise
The petition below will be sent to the following LibDem ministers:
Nick Clegg - Deputy Prime Minister
Vince Cable – Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary
Danny Alexander – Chief Secretary to the Treasury
Petition:
“the economics is clear: reducing government spending is a risk not worth taking.” - Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, The Guardian, 7th March 2010
We, the undersigned, call for an end to attempts to cut government spending levels.
These cuts risk kick-starting a spiral of unemployment now, and the damage they will do to public services risks leaving the next generation to pick up the tab for the failure to invest in people today.
The Conservative Party's desire to cut funding for our public services is as old as those services themselves. They are trying to use the recession as a smoke screen to secure the cuts they've always wanted.
Please don't let them get away with it. People did not vote Liberal Democrat expecting to see public services suffer six weeks later.
Signed...
347 signatures today.
Stop the cuts to justice
Posted on | May 21, 2010 | 1 Comment
Update
Obviously, with the change of personnel in the Cabinet, we’ve changed this post to point to new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, instead!
Email Liberal Democrat Treasury Minister, Danny Alexander today.
Legal Aid is a cornerstone of our justice system. It allows ordinary people essential access to our courts that the rich expect and can afford.
The Legal Aid service has already suffered substantial funding cuts in recent years. British people are increasingly priced out of justice. Yet the new justice secretary Ken Clarke, with support from Liberal Democrat Treasury Secretary, Danny Alexander, is seeking to push through further cuts to legal aid which will hand much of our justice system to the wealthiest.
Read the BBC Story here
We can stop this cut. In the past, Liberal Democrats have taken a strong stand in favour of Legal Aid. Join us in calling on them to protect our justice, and oppose cuts to legal aid.
Please send an email to Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Use the suggested text below or add your own words.
Thank you!
Addresses for Danny Alexander:
Treasury: ministers@hm-treasury.gov.uk
Parliament: alexanderdg@parliament.uk
Please copy or bcc us at info@noshockdoctrine.org.uk and don’t forget to sign up for our news (on the right of this page) so we can keep in touch.
Email text:
Dear Mr Alexander,
I am dismayed to read that you may be supporting Justice Secretary Ken Clarke in his attempts to cut to the Legal Aid budget.
Legal aid is crucial to our justice system. It allows ordinary people to have essential and necessary access to our courts that we cannot otherwise afford.
Liberal Democrats have a strong record of defending justice in our legal system and protecting individual rights by opposing cuts to the Legal Aid system.
Please re-consider these dangerous cuts.
Yours sincerely,
Sign the petition to LibDem ministers – don’t cut public spending!
Posted on | May 18, 2010 | 4 Comments
“the economics is clear: reducing government spending is a risk not worth taking.” – Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist, The Guardian, 7th March 2010
During the election campaign, Liberal Democrats and Labour agreed; immediate cuts to public spending were not needed, and would be dangerous both socially and economically.
A majority of voters support this view, and voted for these two parties.
But, just six weeks later, the LibDem ministers in the new government look set to push through an ‘emergency budget’ making exactly this mistake.
Whether you voted LibDem or not, now is the time to tell the LibDems not to cut public spending.
Sign the petition here.
UK economy: a case of (continued) short-sightedness
Posted on | May 18, 2010 | No Comments
By Nishma Doshi
Pick up any broadsheet newspaper today, and you’ll definitely find an article (if not a feature) on the current deficit ‘crisis’. The resolution, according to the new Conservative – Liberal Democrat coalition, is cuts to public services. If you’re a little inexperienced in economics, yet a little bit of a history buff, this reasoned argument doesn’t quite make any sense when unemployment figures are so high and the numbers of people below the poverty line continue to increase. Further research indicates that the deficit’s proportion to Britain’s GDP is the lowest of the G7 countries.
Anyone who’s ever studied the Great Depression, even at GCSE level, is aware of basic Keynesian economics – that in order to escape an economic downturn you have to encourage exchange and monetary circulation. Named ‘fiscal stimulus’ by economists, this generally involves creating a general change of mentality, where the public begins to believe that the economy is stable, and their jobs (and savings) are secure. As such, in a globalised economy, it is perfectly arguable that the government has little control over the economy, but there are measures to ensure that this does not remain the case. A step towards self-sustainability has always been available, yet we continue to ignore this long-term development in favour of high-risk short-term growth in stopping financial services from moving their offices elsewhere.
The Case for Vestas
I can’t say I was a fan of supporting the Vestas workers on the Isle of Wight as I saw little benefit in making wind turbines in the UK that were only going to be exported to the US. However, more recently I have been beginning to see the benefits of the government nationalising the company. Apart from saving hundreds of jobs, had the government taken over the factory and given the reigns towards a workers’ collective (that would eventually pay the government back), the UK would have retained an exportable good.
This would have meant that there would be external currency fuelling the economy and thus less demands on government to fund a way of tackling the deficit. In addition, the government would have to do little to actually run the company whilst providing the workers with the benefit of continued employment and a fair wage from their gains.
Investment not Cuts
Public spending is not a bad thing as much as the Tories would like to argue otherwise; it provides education, health, transport, jobs, welfare, advice, defence… the list is endless. These services are essential for retaining well-being in order to provide potential for economic stability. If these services are cut, this may ease out current deficit but in the long-term, as Joseph Stiglitz has argued previously, we will end up paying the price with a slow descent into a poorer educated workforce and an inability to continue with our own economic development.
Obviously, there is a case for tackling our deficit, but we should look towards investing in a medium-term solution rather than paving our way into yet another recession. The argument held by Larry Elliot in an article published in the Guardian today, has been the development of export-driven economic policy:
Export-led growth is certainly what the UK needs: whether it will happen is highly questionable. Consider the facts. More than half British visible exports go to the rest of Europe, the bulk of them to the euro area. Yet this is a part of the global economy that struggles to grow. Over a full economic cycle from 2001 to 2009 Italy did not expand at all; Germany managed less than 0.5% a year; France a little over 1%. Spain, Greece and Portugal have all announced austerity packages and, like Britain, are seeking export-led growth. But this will remain a pipedream all the while Germany is imposing deflation on the rest of Europe and while Angela Merkel seems intent on becoming the new Herbert Hoover.
The Case for an Economic Re-evaluation
This global economic downturn should have given us the opportunity to question what society we are trying to develop. There are inherent problems through which our economic beliefs have shaped our political approach to the economy. Instead of trying to seek out those problems and identify how we can change them, we have opted to take the regular apathetic ’shit happens’ attitude. Is this because we are scared to see the results as it would violently crumble our ideology of Free Market economics? Or is it because corporations and the government are fearful of the implications it would have on their profits and belief in infinite growth?
We need to recognise that the economic growth we continue to demand in order to achieve high rates of employment is not sustainable. For that, all we need to think about is where we actually gain our material wealth from; on a planet of finite resources, infinite growth is an idealist’s dream. For long-term economic sustainability we need to start creating a political economy which renews wealth from the efforts of its citizens rather than one that demands wealth externally.
Yes, this would mean that our manufacturing industry should be based on local demand and supply as well as local resourcing, ultimately not supporting an export-driven economy as I argued earlier, but the economy has never been so simple. My opinion is that we need (a) Stop Cuts and (b) to grow our export-based economy as a way of ultimately developing our own local economy. Thus, in a decade or two, the UK have a self-sustainable economy though initially grown-through and supported by external revenue.
keep looking »Watch our film or make a random cut, like George!
