Follow @RPJblog
By Jason Michael
The political forecast for the UK is grim: With Labour in complete disarray it is certain that the Tories will be in power for the foreseeable future, and their agenda is clear. May’s government is going to help the rich get richer and squeeze the rest of us.
Unless the Scottish government can pull independence out of the bag before the end of the Brexit negotiations, given the present crippling dysfunction of the parliamentary Labour Party at Westminster, we had best buckle in for at least a generation of Conservative rule. Not exactly great news in the last few days before Christmas, but it is at this time of year when the effects of Toryism truly hit the ground. Queues at foodbanks, a worsening of the sanctions regime, children being added to the homeless register, and the elderly going without fuel are just four of the miseries we will have to swallow. As this – what can be at best described as the utter failure of governance – is what we have to look forward to, we’d do well to know who or what is driving the bus.
By 2014 David Cameron’s Conservative Party was receiving a whopping £28.9m in private donations; that’s £25.2m more that was donated to the Scottish National Party in the same year, and with personal donations of £50,000 or more gaining the donor a lunch date with the Prime Minister it is clear that these political donations are not without strings. Corporations and wealthy private individuals are encouraged to cough up the readies in exchange for the sort of access to power that allows them to make demands of the people for whom they have paid. In February 2015 it was uncovered that 27 of the largest donations came from people who featured in the Sunday Times “rich list,” and almost half of all donation came from hedge-fund managers. This is the party of the rich, and the rich expect a great deal in return.
The corporations and the super-rich backers of the Tory Party are in the business of making money, and this is why it is useful for them to have governments in their pockets. Business has to operate somewhere and that somewhere is always within a State, and States mean regulation and tax – major obstacles to making money. This is precisely why these corporations and wealthy people donate huge sums of money to political parties. With these donations they gain access to the people in power and keep them in power in exchange for deregulation and friendly tax agreements, the result of which is deteriorating pay and working conditions for regular people, and less money paid into the State coffers by the wealthiest segment of the economy.
In order then for the State to continue to function, rather than limiting business and collecting a fair rate of tax from the rich, it puts the squeeze on everyone else – the lower middle class, working people, and the poor. It then becomes the job of the corporately owned media to convince those who are being robbed to start blaming one another, thus keeping everyone’s attention away from what is actually going on. Meanwhile, while the government launches savage cuts on healthcare, welfare, housing, and education, those at the top are benefiting from legal – of course they write the law – tax avoidance schemes that remove unfathomable amounts of money from the country.
Less money in the country means that less can be taxed and spent on the welfare of the nation, making everyone at home poorer and with fewer services available to them. Over time this wealth transfer from the bottom to the top destroys the fabric of the country, leading to greater hardship for those who have no access to power in a nation where the effective function of the State is to steal from them and leave them vulnerable to wealthy corporate employers. All of this is Toryism by definition and it is what we have to look forward to unless we can get our independence.
Rampant Fantastically Corrupt Tory Election Fraud
Author: Jason Michael (@Jeggit)
Random Public Journal 