Tag: danielmargrain.com

Equality And Social Justice – Cameron Style

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The mainstream media today confirmed the Tories commitment to equality and social justice with their announcement of their plans to ensure that UK citizens aged 18-22 are (in line with anti-EU discrimination law), to be exempt from the same rights to tax credits, child benefit and housing benefit as their immigrant counterparts.

Government lawyers have stated: “Imposing additional requirements on EU workers that do not apply to a member state’s own workers constitutes direct discrimination which is prohibited under current EU law” (1).

So, apparently, in order to be compliant with EU law, UK citizens within the 18-22 age group must forgo these benefits on the basis that it’s discriminatory because immigrants are not entitled to them.

But instead of raising the bar by insisting that both UK citizens and immigrants within this age range be entitled to benefits on an equal basis, the Tories have decided to lower it by insisting that neither group are entitled to anything. In other words, equality in the gutter as opposed to equality at the dinner table.

The reason so many immigrants – many of whom risk their lives –  want to come here is because of the perception that the UK is a relative economic powerhouse. However, any cuts to benefits will not deter people who are primarily motivated by the need to improve the lives of themselves and their families as a result of perceived greater work opportunities this country allegedly offers.

The government have done nothing to dispel myths that the UK is a land of milk and honey. This would suggest that their plan to cut welfare across the board in order to adhere to EU law was planned. As blogger Mike Sivier put it: “The migrant situation is a crisis of the Tories’ own making and they are using it to hammer their own fellow citizens” (2).

So what next do the government have in the pipeline you might reasonably ask?

The Tories are ideologically opposed to the welfare state. This latest move is, I would suggest, part and parcel of their intention to get rid of it altogether by stealth. It’s a remarkable state of affairs when our only hope out of this morass appears to be Jeremy Corbyn.

Tough Tories

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Mr Amin hatched a scheme to persuade the English Defence League (pictured) to announce an inflammatory march against a new £18million ‘mega-mosque’

Employers who take on illegal immigrants will apparently face new sanctions under the law. Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire said companies “will be hit from all angles” (1) with raids and checks concentrating on building sites, cleaning firms and care homes.

Apparently, the government intends to use a multi-pronged attack using HMRC, the tax office, the health and safety executive and the Gangmasters Licensing Authority (the body that issues licenses to employment agencies and gangmasters within the agricultural industries) in an attempt to tackle employers who break the law in this way.

But is this merely another illustration of government grandstanding and the use of soundbites in exchange for any serious commitment to tackling the issue? A Freedom of Information request found the Home Office had issued almost £80m in fines but collected just £25m. The figures show that more than 8,500 penalties totalling £79,300,000 were issued between 2008/09 and 2012/13, but two-thirds of that total remains uncollected (2).

In 2009/10 the number of employers fined for using illegal immigrants stood at 2,254. By 2013/14 (the latest available figures) the number had been reduced to 2,090 (3). The government would claim that this is a success. But Labour and the unions say that this merely shows that the problem is going undetected because a lack of resources because of cuts, hence the need for the crackdown.

Unite, the country’s largest union, argue that the scope and powers of The Gangmasters Licensing Authority need to be expanded to prevent abuses that amount to modern day slavery (4).

They said that if the government was really serious about this crackdown it would expand the remit of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority to include more sectors other than just agriculture. And they would give it more money. In fact, it’s funding was frozen in 2010 (5).

The gangmasters when contacted by Channel 4 News about the supposed government crackdown didn’t know anything about it (6). A poll of Border Force employees revealed 98% ­questioned thought staff shortages were stopping them making all the checks they should (7).

Meanwhile, on the back of Cameron’s description of migrants as a ‘swarm’ (8), Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond defended his use of the term ‘marauding’ when describing the immigrants at Calais who are trying to access the tunnel their (9).

This narrative fits in with the government’s perceived crackdown on rogue employers who take on illegal workers. In reality, the appearance of toughness has more to do with appeasing their right-wing constituency in an attempt to win back former Tory voters who deserted the party for UKIP prior to the last election.

Public Coffers Hammered

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 Impressed: An image provided by West Ham which shows how the stadium could also be used as a concert venue after the Games

The new English Premier League football season begins today. As as life-long West Ham United supporter my expectations for a successful season are typically low. If the Hammers finish in a top eight position and have a good cup run I’ll be happy. With our move away from our spiritual home at the Boleyn into the Olympic Stadium at Stratford, east London next season, it’s imperative that we maintain our premier league status.

With a new manager and former player (who appears to be finally attuned to the  entertainment ethos of the club that the fans demand) in place, all is relatively good on the playing side of things. As far as the fans are concerned, off the park shenanigans are good too given that those who run the club plan to substantially reduce season ticket prices in an an attempt to fill the stadiums 54,000 capacity – a model that other clubs are encouraged to adopt (1).

But here’s the problem. West Ham United are paying just £15million towards the £272million cost of converting the Olympic Stadium despite the fact that, should the club still be a Premier League next year, it will – under the terms of a new TV deal – be entitled to a payout of at least £99million (2).

Small business people, many whom whom run their businesses on extremely tight margins, might be wondering how the elite within football, like multi-millionaire lady Brady, who brokered the deal are apparently immune to the kind of market forces that the former are compelled to adhere to?

As far as the super-rich with contacts to the top echelons of political power – whether they be premier league chairmen or City bankers – are concerned, it would appear that the kind of business risks the rest of us are prone to, is not applicable to them. The Premier League football racket is akin to the banking racket.

The Benefit Sponging Elite

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Last night another row erupted after it emerged that hedge funds rushed to gamble on RBS shares falling in value after government plans to start selling its stake were leaked last week. (file image)

I was in my local cafe earlier today and nearly choked on my bacon sandwich at the sheer audacity of the banksters. I happened to glance over at the adjacent table at the copy of the Daily Mail somebody had left open. I generally detest this rag, but have to admit that every now and then it does come up with the occasional nugget.

The paper does appear of late to be on a mission to undermine Osborne and the Tories. As I alluded to in post on August 4, it was clear that the Tory Aristocrat had garnered some insider knowledge prior to the part sell off of RBS thus providing the opportunity for his mates in the City to, once again, pillage the public purse- this time to the tune of a cool £1bn (1).

This was money which no doubt could have been better spent on bailing out a non-taxable status charitable organisation like, for example, Kids Company run by Camila Batman (and robber?) ghelidjh. Maybe an extra billion added to the £3 million Cameron nodded through to the bankrupt charity would have saved it?

But anyway back to the latest banking scandal. With her insider knowledge and connections as a former City banker, it’s highly conceivable that Treasury minister, Harriet Baldwin. who defended the sell-off, would have advised Osborne on the matter.

The Daily Mail’s Banking Correspondent, James Salmon, revealed that hedge funds rushed to gamble on RBS – a ploy known in the market as ‘shorting’ – “may have generated profits of more than £10 million, This is because the bank’s share price fell in the days before the government sell-off.” (2).

Labour MP John Mann, a member of the Treasury select committee, said: “Yet again hedge funds and bankers are making money and the public are losing out.” (3). A few days ago former City trader, Tom Hayes,was given a 14 year sentence for his role in rigging the Libor interest rate. (4). But he is merely the sacrificial lamb for a much wider and systematic corruption that begins at the very top. The fact that these kinds of abuses are allowed to continue in the context in which people struggling on benefits are jailed for stealing food (5), is the scandal of our time.

The former Republican analyst Mike Lofgren, disgusted with what his party had become, said the following about the economic elite in the United States:

“The rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it ” (6).

He might as well of been talking about the UK, which is basically little more than the 51st state. Osborne and Cameron identify more readily with a transnational elite than with the other people of this nation. The proof is in the pudding. On behalf of this elite, the government gives away a staggering £93bn a year in corporate welfare – a sum bigger than the deficit.(7). It champions the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; a graver threat to the interests of this nation than Islamic extremism.

And yet there is a iron-cast consensus between the Tories and the Labour hierarchy in terms of their unwillingness to tackle the problem. This explains why the latter distance themselves from the populist Jeremy Corbyn who wants to put and end to this kind of revolving door political cronyism.

The real benefit spongers are not those who feature on low brow documentary programmes, but rather they are the elites who occupy the corridors of the plush buildings within the City of London.

Banking Racketeers Set For Another Windfall

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A sign is displayed outside of a branch of The Royal Bank of Scotland in central London, Britain May 20, 2015. REUTERS/Neil Hall

The UK Chancellor’s announcement that he plans to sell-off £2 billion worth of the 79 per cent stake the government has in RBS over the coming fortnight is, according to Unite national officer for finance Rob MacGregor, “recklessly irresponsible”(1). RBS shares that stood at £6.88 in 2007, are now valued at £3.30 (2). It should be noted that the shares have not been offered to the people who bailed out RBS, that is us, the taxpayers but to the Tories’ city friends.

The decision by Aristocrat Gideon Osborne, who seems set to be next in line to take the reins of PM from his friend David Cameron (3), and who promised action on tax avoidance (4), despite the fact that his family business has avoided tax (5), is defended by Treasury minister, Harriet Baldwin. Why would she defend the sell-off which will result in a £1bn loss to taxpayers, you may ask?

Well, it could have something to do with her connections within in the banking racket. Having joined investment bank JP Morgan Chase in 1986, she then became managing director and Head of Currency Management at their London office in 1998. She left the bank in 2008, after more than two decades with the bank (6). Maybe she has advised Cameron to get shot of the RBS millstone before his transition to PM.

The chief architects of the RBS collapse, Fred Goodwin and Sir Tom McKillop seemed to have disappeared into the ether.

To sell these shares when business is slow, many are on holiday and the stock market depressed, means its the opportune time for these scoundrels to defraud us for the second time round, which of course is really what this latest scandal is all about.

If, after this latest act by the page boy to his dads banker friends in order to further the interests of the banking racketeers, won’t have awaken the masses from their slumber, then I fear nothing will. There is no clearer illustration we are being taken for a ride than the governments collusion with the bankers as highlighted by this sell-off.  Austerity amounts to the raiding of the public coffers to bolster the pockets of the super-rich (7).

As economist Andrew Fisher alludes, this is clearly an ideological and dogmatic move by Osborne, not a financially pragmatic one:

“Banks that owe their continuing existence to public funds should be acting in the public interest — investing in the productive economy, reducing the margins between their lending rates and savers’ rates, and ending the fat-cat bonus culture at the top, while underpaying and laying off cashiers at the other end.”(8).

The Financial Times reported yesterday (August 3) that Osborne wants to flog off £32bn worth of public assets by the end of the financial year, as part of a strategy to reduce the role of the state that will do nothing to stimulate growth (9). The £32bn worth of public asset stripping that is to include the Met Office, Ordnance Survey and air traffic controller Nats, breaks even Thatcher’s record (10).

We are not in this mess because politicians are stupid but because of the cozy relationship that exists between them and the bankers who the latter lobby on behalf of (11). The Guardian outlines how it all works. A commentator on Craig Murray’s blog argued that:

“The entire RBS saga is a scam from start to finish:

• All banks make huge profits by lending prodigiously.
• Concentrate bad debts in a few banks.
• Instill ‘too big to fail’ meme.
• Order politicians to ‘nationalise’ compromised banks at huge cost to tax-payers.
• Continue injecting billions until ‘nationalised’ banks have paid off the lion’s share of bad debt.
• Sell bank back to bankers at knock-down price” (12).

Another commentator from the same blog makes another apt point:

“Note the bastards didn’t buy voting shares in RBS: the taxpaying sucker didn’t even have the opportunity to reform the bank. Lovely little restructure: the retail arm goes to another retail bank for a knockdown price (W&G may not have been too wise buying it even then), while the crooked division ends up divvied up between hedge funds. And lives to cheat another day” (13).

Don’t forget dear readers, we are all in it with the aim of getting the deficit down.

The Establishment Fiddles While Chilcot Burns Holes In Our Pockets

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Anger at the mounting sums of money paid to Sir John Chilcot and his committee have prompted calls for the government to stop any further payments amid demands by politicians for the publication of the Iraq inquiry report without further delay (1). Will we ever see it? Unlikely.

Analysis of the accounts released by the inquiry reveal that Sir John Chilcot, committee members and advisers have shared more than £1.5 million in fees since the inquiry began in 2009 (2).  If it does finally get released, it will likely either be heavily redacted or those implicated in the Iraq war crime, would have died rendering the inquiry meaningless in terms of justice having been seen to have been done.

Last year, tax payers spent £892,000 on the wages of the eleven civil servants and three support staff (3). The inquiry has not sat for the last four years and the last eminent session was in February 2011. Yet it has cost the taxpayer £5.5 million in that time in wages (4). A massive £10 million has so far been spent in total on the inquiry and we haven’t seen a word of it (5). In the past year alone, £119,000 has been shared between the four committee members and its two advisers – Sir General Roger Wheeler and Dame Rosalind Higgins (6). Given the number of days they worked, it amounts to a combined day rate for six people of £3,615.

Liberal Democart peer Lord Dykes said, “I’m concerned about this report. Myself, like many others, are concerned that there might be a kind of cover up going on – not by Sir John Chilcot himself, but maybe by other people who are trying to delay it”, he said. Asked which individuals may be involved, Dykes replied, “people who might be connected at a senior level with the perpetration of an illegal war” (7). Can you think of anybody like that? A spokesperson for the Iraq inquiry refused to comment further.

Snouts, Troughs And Revolving Doors

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A House of Lords peer has been criticised for claiming up to £5,700 a month for walking to work from her £4.5m home 200 yards away in Westminster. Baroness Wilcox a former Tory minister has been accused of exploiting a new tax free payment of up to £300 a day. The 74 year old former Cadbury’s Schweppes director who takes home £74,400 in parliamentary attendance allowances has not broken any rules (1).

Many other peers are thought to be claiming the allowance despite despite living in and around the Westminster area. Labour MP John Mann said, “It’s a scandal as big as the MPs expenses scandal. “There is a lack of transparency”, he said. “There is no evidence that these people stay around even when they sign for their money”, he continued (2). That confirms the impression I had, namely, that these parasites just stick their heads around the corner before making their way to the subsidized canteen for their lunch.

Mann said, “this place is mired in sleaze – people doing business deals and exploiting their position and the abuse of their expenses is just one strand of it”(3). The most valuable thing about being a peer, is the title that comes with it because you can append it to the note paper of any shady organization. You will be made a non-executive director – a non-job – which means that you don’t have to show up. Their title alone will be sufficient to whitewash dodgy company practices that they put their names to.

Analysis by the Daily Mail found that 124 of the 161 Lords that live in London claimed the daily allowance this year. They claimed £763, 350 in two months. It’s estimated that the annual bill will come in at around a staggering £3.8 million (4). The total costs of Lords expenses in 2013/14 was a staggering £21.4m (5). We’re all in it together to get the deficit down!

Lord Paul, whose steel business is worth £2.2 billion received more than £40,000 of our money for attending Westminster last year (6). He is one of three peers with combined family fortunes estimated at more than £4.5 billion who together were paid more than £100,000 in tax payers funded attendance allowances last year. The revelation raises fresh questions about the unelected multi-millionaires given a crucial role in making Britain’s laws.

Despite his vast wealth, Lord Paul appeared in the Lords on 134 days last year pocketing £40,200 (7). Yet he spoke in the house on only three separate occasions for a total time of just 14 minutes.  Top Tory donor, Lord Kirkham worth £1.15 billion attended 181 days, claimed £24,300 and made no (zero) speeches (8). We’re all in it together to get the deficit down!

Darren Hughes of the Electoral Reform Society said, “our unelected chamber is in dire need of a clean out” (9). According to radio presenter Nick Abbot they also get to claim expenses for travel, parking, taxis, trains, business class on planes, top hotels, postage, office expenses and IT equipment. If they manage to wangle a meeting they get to claim for two extra days on either side of it. They are also entitled to free trips away on “parliamentary business”, says Abbot.

There’s also committee meetings and parliamentary delegations and travel with the armed forces, and to outreach programmes, and to the Scottish parliament, European parliamentary business and on and so forth. To top it all, none of it is taxable (unlike, for example job seekers allowance) and they don’t even have to declare any of it on their tax returns. We’re all in it together to get the deficit down!

Cecil And Anthropomorphism

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The killing of Cecil the lion at the Hwange National Park on July 1, was of course tragic. However, the public response to his death reflects a deeper tendency for humans to want to humanize animals. Because we ascribe human-like appearances and behaviours to them – what’s known as anthropomorphism –  conservation movements’ are more easily able to recruit people to their cause on the back of it. Similar in principle to the concept of corporate environmental Greenwashing, conservation movements’, whether intentional or not, tend to focus their resources on areas where there exists the human compulsion to empathize with animals that we perceive to be cuddly or cute to the detriment of other species (1).

I don’t want to make any excuses for people who kill wild animals for fun. I think recreational big game hunters like the American Walter Palmer are the pits and I disagree fundamentally with the concept of killing animals in the wild. I personally find this kind of activity and the people who engage in and enjoy it, as repugnant as those who engage in, and enjoy say, bullfighting or fox hunting.

In the sad case of Cecil, he was lured by Palmer with food. Palmer proceeded to kill him with a cross bow from relatively close range compared with the more common use of a telescopic rifle from afar. In that sense, Palmer’s actions could reasonably be construed as being more dangerous for him, therefore paradoxically increasing the chances of Cecil surviving.

The hypocrisy of many of those who condemned Palmer cannot be overlooked. On the day that Cecil died, Cameron was demonizing humans at Calais by describing them as a “swarm” and a Palestinian baby was murdered by Jewish extremist fanatics. But the plight of an animal gets most of the media’s attention. The vast majority of the public will think nothing of eating animals that would have arrived at their plate after having been slaughtered in an industrial fashion on mass by agribusinesses.

Many of these animals would have died in worse circumstances and had a worse life than Cecil. Unlike, for example, the said beast who we have collectively ascribed a name to, an anonymous cow prior to being slaughtered in a slaughter house would have been artificially inseminated and forcibly crammed into a lorry along with other cows having spent most of it’s life in a cage.

Sometimes the level of hypocrisy can be astounding. I heard a self-confessed carnivore and angler on the radio the other evening spitting with rage at the actions of Palmer. Apparently, it hadn’t crossed his mind that the hobby he undertakes on a regular basis – luring fish with food for fun – is essentially no different from the actions of somebody like Palmer who lured poor Cecil with food for fun as the precursor to his killing. In both cases, living things are killed or maimed for fun.

The moral equivalent here is that for those who participate in both pursuits the basis for their participation is one of enjoyment as opposed to necessity. The aspect that tends to get people upset is that as opposed to nameless and indistinct fish, Cecil was given a name and looked like a cuddly stuffed child’s toy. But both live in the wild and both are lured from their natural habitat for the enjoyment of humans.

Bee Killers

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Bee

When I was young it used to be a common sight to see cars splattered with insects and numerous species of bees collecting nectar from plants. Bees and insects are wonderful and part of the connectivity of living processes in our world. Nothing human beings do, and nothing that takes place in the natural world, occurs in isolation. And yet we are using pesticides that kill pollinators whose role is essential to the human food chain.

Neurotoxins that kill much of life on earth on both land and in water, and degrade entire foodchains, are resulting in the ‘colony collapse disorder’ (ie the sudden disappearance) of honeybees (1). In the United States, half the colonies of bees exposed to neonicotinoids disappeared in the course of one winter. The findings of an analysis of 800 scientific papers show that worldwide contamination is indiscriminately wiping out wild animals, including those on which farming depends (2).

The use of pesticides that impact negatively on bees and soil animals seriously threaten the food supplies of humans. So why is Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Elizabeth Truss, seemingly subservient to chemical companies like Bayer and Syngenta to the detriment of the science?

The UK government appears to want to throw everything it has against an EU proposal to suspend their use on flowering crops. Last year the Department of the Environment commissioned a study claiming to show that bees were not being harmed (3). It was so flawed that no journal would take it. The lead author soon left to work for Syngenta (4).

The government’s lifting of the ban on neonicotinoid pesticides and their seemingly appeasing of the chemical corporations who are clearly in their pocket, would suggest that Cameron and Truss are prioritizing the interests of these corporations over and above the sustainability of the eco-system.

This is the take of the BBC who imply that the National Farmers Union (NFU) are complicit:

The government has temporarily lifted a ban on neonicotinoid pesticides in certain parts of the country.

An EU-wide moratorium was put in place after some studies showed the pesticide caused significant harm to bees.

But following a second emergency application by the National Farmers Union, two neonicotinoid pesticides can now be used for 120 days on about 5% of England’s oilseed rape crop.

Environmental and wildlife groups have called the decision “scandalous”.

‘We have fully applied the precautionary ban on the use of neonicotinoids introduced by the EU’
Defra spokesperson

The areas where farmers will be allowed to use neonicotinoids has not yet been decided. According to the NFU, it will be those areas where there are records over the last season or so that the pests – primarily the cabbage stem flea beetle – have inflicted most damage on oilseed rape crops.

Farming Minister George Eustace MP told BBC’s Farming Today that it was “predominantly farmers in Suffolk” who would now be able to use neonicotinoids. He said that the government was approaching the issue “with an open mind” and that there was “a lot of ambiguity” about the evidence (4).

Meanwhile on 23 July 2015, the independent British not-for-profit political-activism organisation 38 Degrees issued an emergency petition:

“Fresh batches of bee-killing pesticides are on their way to British farms right now. Prime Minister David Cameron could stop these toxic chemicals before they are spread across our fields and wreak havoc on bees. But he’ll only do it if enough of us pile on the pressure.

Environment minister Liz Truss has just approved this fresh use of bee-killing pesticides. It’s no surprise – she’s been exposed holding cosy meetings with chemical industry lobbyists. If our environment minister won’t protect bees, we need to turn the pressure onto David Cameron. He’s her boss – and that means he has the power to overturn her decision.

Please can you sign the emergency petition to Cameron now, asking him to overrule his minister and act to protect the bees? It will only take a few seconds.(5).

People Socially Cleansed As ‘Dirty Money’ Floods Into London

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“There is no place for dirty money in Britain”, so says UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has promised to crack down on dodgy offshore companies that buy up luxury properties in the UK. Cameron says he will introduce a public land registry of properties owned by foreign investors. Channel 4 News has access to the data which highlights the problem is particularly acute in London.

“London must not become a safe have for corrupt money from around the world”, says Cameron. “We need to stop corrupt officials or organized criminals using anonymous shadow companies to invest their ill-gotten gains in London property without being tracked down.”

The figures are staggering. Some £122 billion worth of property in England and Wales is owned by foreign companies. Around 100,000 UK property titles are registered to them. Most are in Greater London where almost 43,000 properties are owned by overseas firms. “There is no place for dirty money in Britain. Indeed, there should be no place for dirty money anywhere. That is my message to foreign forces. London is not a place to stash your dodgy cash”, he said.

Undercover reporters’ working as part of the Dispatches documentary, From Russia With Cash, discovered just how easy it is to buy property in London with no questions asked. Chido Dunn from Global Witness says that “the presence of corrupt money in the London property market props up corrupt regimes overseas and means that a lot of people are stuck in poverty and violence and don’t have access to education.

So concretely, how is Cameron proposing to deal with the problem?

In the Autumn, data will be released that will highlight which foreign companies are buying up property in England and Wales. Although the data already exists within the public domain, Downing Street says it will now be more easily available.

In Westminster, where one in ten homes are owned by foreign investors, Channel 4 asked  Transparency International about the changes that are being consulted on.  A TI spokesman said that if enacted, the proposals would require foreign owners to declare their interests at the same standard as UK companies. The unanswered question is why the discrepancy in the first place?

That aside, over last 10 years a suspected £180 million of laundered money has been investigated by the authorities. However, according to Global Witness, that’s merely the tip of a very large ice berg. What these new measures will do if enacted will be to identify where the corrupt money is and prevent it from coming in to the country in the future. Currently the government is able to identify who owns a property on an individual and company basis but crucially not who the real people are who hide behind these companies.

People can still use offshore companies to structure their investments in order to benefit from things like inheritance tax and capital gains tax. But, if the consultation process succeeds, people hiding money for a criminal reason will no longer be able to hide it in property.

This appears on the surface to be an important first step. The question is, should the proposals go through, will law enforcement be empowered to properly investigate the practice of money laundering in the UK?

In a speech to Muslims in Birmingham on July 20, Cameron said “that people can grow up and go to school and hardly ever come into meaningful contact with people from other backgrounds and faiths”.

But money laundering is a major contributory factor (as is the failure to tax property effectively) in house price rises which in turn results in the kind of social cleansing I discussed here. Any failure by Cameron to get to grips with the problem will increase the problem of social exclusion he claims he wants to redress.

As with much else in the area of social and economic policy, the UK government appear to be tugging at the coat tails of the United States. What applies across the Atlantic is of as much relevance in New York as it is London. But at least in the former, rent controls to some degree ameliorate the problem. That said, UK government policy is geared towards increasing the disconnect between the rich and poor in much the same way the United States is.

As George Monbiot astutely puts it:

“The rich disconnect themselves from the civic life of the nation and from any concern about its well being except as a place to extract loot. Our plutocracy now lives like the British in colonial India: in the place and ruling it, but not of it.” We suffer the same curse: a ruling class whose wealth lies offshore, and which identifies more readily with a transnational elite than with the other people of this nation. On behalf of this elite, the government now gives away £93bn a year in corporate welfare: a sum bigger than the deficit. It champions the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership; a graver threat to the interests of this nation than Islamic extremism presents.”

The failure to tax property effectively has fuelled a rise in house prices so severe that entire English regions are becoming almost uninhabitable to the poor. The situation is made all the worse by the announcement from the head of the National Crime Agency who said there is a direct link between money laundering in property and the massive rise in London house prices.