An Expected Betrayal

Apparently, on election night Jenny Willott, getting her words mixed, hit the nail on the head. "Tonight," she declared, "we witness a triumph of politics over democracy."

Never has a truer word been spoken. Cameron, the leader of a party that a majority of people voted against, has been made prime minister with the help of Nick Clegg, leading a party that even more people voted against, by the assent of a monarch that nobody voted for.

The Liberal Democrat MPs who couldn't resist joining the tories in government have shattered any illusions their supporters have had in them that they offer an alternative to the main parties and the big business interests that they represent. They did it for the country, they said - for stability and the national interest, so that massive cuts to public services and jobs could be made and the markets reassured. If this was the issue which had such veto-power over all others why not just urge their supporters to vote Tory in the first place?

The yellow ministers have won nothing but an increase in their salaries. Liberal Democrats will be whipped to abstain in votes even on those issues they made manifesto commitments, giving the Tories a majority they did not win at the ballot box. Already, Chris Huhne, Lib DEM MP and energy sec, has admitted that new nuclear power stations could be constructed.

And only is electoral reform of any kind in all likelihood off the agenda (because the Tories' massive campaign chest will be used in a referendum to finance opposition) but the legislation the Libservative government is proposing will technically rule out a vote of no confidence in the government within a five year term. This paper commitment, however, will not live up to the stress and strain of reality - in seeking to make the government stronger they've only made it rigid, and more brittle, and the movement that will develop to fight the cuts in the period ahead will smash it to pieces.

As the Independent joked, Clegg and Cameron are married, "till debt us do part."

Campaign to Reopen Llanedern Post Office

Llanedeyrn residents were shocked this week when they turned up at the Post Office and found out it had been closed without warning. So was I! - we were at the Maelfa on Tuesday campaigning to abolish the carpark charges at the Heath Hospital and the Post Office was very busy.

I contacted Post Office Limited today, who told me that there is no re-opening date, that the Llanedeyrn Office has been closed indefinitely and that there is no emergency plan to provide services locally until the Office can be reopened permanently. Many people, including pensioners, are now having to trek all the way to Albany Road to use the Post Office there and fear (justifiably, in my opinion) that the Post Office won't reopen unless there's a campaign to save the service.

Post Office Limited wouldn't comment but there are rumours that the local franchise operators couldn't keep up with their payments and have gone bankrupt.

If this is true, then the finger of blame should be pointed straight at the Labour Government, which - besides carrying out a massive programme of Post Office closures around the country - has cut subsidies to local Post Offices, putting the important public service they provide at risk.

All three main parties, including the Liberal Democrats, plan to push privatisation further in Royal Mail, putting services further at risk. It seems the main parties won't be happy until communities like Llanedeyrn are stripped of every last shop and service. The Liberal Democrat and Plaid Cymru Council Executive plan to close the local high school Llanedeyrn and now it seems the Post Office is at risk.

The Socialist Party and supporters of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition are campaigning for the immediate reopening of Llanedeyrn Post Office and for fair funding and democratic control for all public services. No more treating vital public services like businesses - put services before profits.

Save NHS Facilities at the Royal Infirmary

Plans to break up health facilities at Cardiff Royal Infirmary are rolling ahead but so is the campaign to save them.

Socialist Party members have been at the heart of the campaign since the beginning, and helped to set up CRI - Save Its Services (CRI-S.I.S.) over a decade ago. First, campaigners - with a petition of over 100,000 names - prevented the selling off of the site, then we saved the buiding from demolition, next won £5million for extra services, and now a consultant employed by the Welsh Assembly has confirmed what we knew all along - that the CRI should be restored as a fully-functioning hospital. The pressure from the campaign has forced politicians to restore some NHS services to the CRI, including a badly needed walk-in clinic, but no casualty or triage facility, which the city centre badly needs. Emergency patients at the Heath hospital already face the longest waiting times in the country, thanks to the cutbacks in funding under New labour.

Since when is a "demolition" an "investment"?

The main parties are queuing up to take the credit for this victory (won by campaigning AGAINST them!) and they all support the "investment" approved by Labour's Assembly Health Minister. But we're not laying down our placards yet: take another look at the plans and you'll notice that 10% of the funding announced will be used up in knocking down all but the core of the original infirmary building, with no clear plans to replace. Freedom of Information requests to see a copy of Hunter's report have been denied. If the politicians of the main parties had listened to a previous report, we could have had a fully-refurbished CRI for £16-17 million, a fraction of the cost of this seemingly cut-price version on offer today.

A third of the buildings have gone already, and, if completed, 80% of the bed space which the CRI could house if renovated will disappear under the plans. One Health Board official dismissed this as getting rid of "100 years of tat" but the programme's motivated more by the need to make cuts and sell land off to developers if possible than it is with preserving the building. The Health Trust had its budget slashed by £20million last year, and the Assembly had the Grade II listing status removed from the bulidings so that the wreckers could take them down. If residents in the East of Cardiff aren't careful, they'll end up with another St David's - a small hospital in a massive carpark surrounded by private housing developments.

And we might not see an increase in NHS facilities in Cardiff under the plans. Services in Roath, Splott, Radyr and Butetown could be cut and moved to the CRI.

Liberal Democrats like our sitting MP have refused to say they won't support savage cutbacks in NHS services after the election. But Labour and the Tories - despite their claims to protect NHS spending - will do this same. After all - THIS IS EXACTLY THE PLEDGE THAT MARGARET THATCHER MADE before being elected, and all the main parties .

It's true: we do need to make cuts in the NHS. We need to cut the private profit-makers - like those running the carpark at the Heath and those hoping to make money out of CRI land - out of our public services. No more making money out of people being ill. The only way to cut bureacracy without cutting services is to run the NHS democratically, controlled and managed by health workers who know the job best and the working-class communities who rely on the services. No cuts in Hospitals to pay for MPs' Expenses and Bankers' Bonuses.

Sir Peter Gershon, the Butcher of the Public Sector, has been taken on by the Tories and is calling for £12billion more cuts and another 40,000 job losses in the public sector. Cameron's also calling for a pay cut for public sector workers and higher tuition fees and also for a longer working life.

In other words, the tories will try and make working class people pay for the recession with unemployment, lower wages, cuts to public services, a higher retirement age and by reversing the access to higher education they gained in the past.

Even this, however, doesn't mount up to their full programme of cutbacks. Labour has said that there is a £22bn whole in the Tories' plan and the Tories haven't denied it! They've countered by saying there's a massive hole in Labour's plans too. Both are right, because both Labour and Tories (and Lib Dems, who have refused to rule out cutbacks in the NHS after the election).

But - as a start - why not spend the £4.5bn a year spent on Afghanisan and Iraq by Britain and the £76bn pledged to renew Trident on public services instead? Why not stop private companies from squeezing profits out of cash-strapped public services? These are the real "efficiency savings" that need to be made, but it's only Socialists who are willing to make them.

Liberals show their true colours.

The rally outside the Welsh Assembly this afternoon demonstrated how determined PCS members are to defend their entitlements. Good luck to them.

Article below from Dave Reid (See full roundup of reports from around the country here):

Despite never failing to speak on PCS platforms in previous disputes to gain a few votes posing as the left alternative to New Labour, Liberal AMs contemptuously crossed PCS picket lines manned by government workers to go ahead with a debate in a largely empty Senedd. The Liberals made it clear which side of the divide they are on as New Labour and the Tories make it clear that public sector workers and public services should pay for the crisis triggered by rich bankers.

For the third strike day in a row the proceedings of the Welsh Assembly were disrupted by the strike called by PCS. Over 200 members rallied outside the Assembly building in Cardiff Bay to hear Chris Baugh assistant general secretary of PCS and Peter Harris, Wales secretary of PCS condemn the current government for its attacks on public sector workers to pay for the crisis in government finances.

Labour and Plaid Cymru members of the Assembly have been prevented from taking part in the Assembly business by the PCS pickets outside the Senedd. In the last strike the plenary session was cancelled, but this time the Liberal Democrat assembly members joined the Tories in making a point of crossing PCS picket lines to go ahead with the session of the Assembly in a largely deserted Senedd.

Speaker after speaker at the rally asked why public services and public sector workers should pay for the crisis caused by the bankers. Meanwhile the main parties are preparing to take an axe to public services. Most worker see this action as the opening shots in the war between the capitalist parties and public sector workers.

Will they get away with it?

We're at risk of being overwhelmed by tidal wave after tidal wave of MPs' corruption scandals.

Full details were finally released yesterday of how Tory Lord Ashcroft was able to buy his way into the House of Lords, even though he doesn't pay taxes in the UK. I think we should call him "The Enemy Not-exactly-within".

After Cash for Honours, Cash for Questions, secret donations from millionaires and countless other examples of corruption, perhaps the footage released by the Sunday Times last weekend of MPs selling their services to private companies should shock us less, but this is the most explicit example I've ever seen of what we've know all along - that the politicians of the main parties are in it for themselves and for what they can do for big business. Stephen Byers described himself as a "Cab for hire" and boasted he'd already helped out Tescos and National Express.

It's wrong to imagine, however, that the corruption is limited to three former ministers from one party. Actually, it's general. The expenses scandal, which implicated all the main parties, showed us that. (I noticed, by the way, that Jenny Willott, Liberal Democrat MP for Cardiff Central, handed us a bill for £23,083 - on top of her £64,766 basic salary - including £499 for a tv and a £933.50 contribution towards her £1,709.60 four-poster bed.)

In reality, all the main parties are touting for (big) business.

I heard during the PCS strike rally on the 8th March that no fewer than 27 Labour ministers who forced through privatisation when in office have been rewarded with grossly overpaid jobs with the companies to which they handed over our public services.

Personally, I don't think people are angry enough; or, rather, the angry people aren't focussed and organised enough so that they can change things. But Ms Willott is concerned about something else - that the tidal wave of public anger at MPs will put some people off the job. But ordinary working class people don't need representative that bury their noses in the trough, and if these people are put off by the spotlight that's been shone onto their corruption, then that's a good thing and good riddance to them.

We need MPs like Dave Nellist, a Socialist MP who took an ordinary worker's wage when he was in Parliament, donating the rest of his pay to local, trade union and labour movement campaigns. He was already publishing his expenses in the eighties, and managed to cope without demanding the working class pays for luxury goods for "their" MP that they could never hope to own themselves. Like me, Dave's been selected as a candidate for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition for the upcoming general election. Now, are we going to let them get away with their corruption or are we going to vote for workers' MPs on a worker's wage?