Occupy Cardiff

Today, the Occupy movement comes to Wales. From 2pm today, protestors will gather at the Aneurin Bevan Staute in Queen Street in Cardiff to be the voice of the 99%.

In her book Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein shows how the world's rich and powerful, the 1%, love a crisis.

"When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over."

Speaking at Occupy Wall Street, Naomi said:

"today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet...The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological...

The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society—while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take...

I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult."

Thanks Naomi. That covers it.

PCS Union - 5 pledges

The PCS Union in Wales have asked all Welsh election candidates to respond to five pledges as part of their 'Make Your Vote Count' campaign. This is my response.

1. I pledge to oppose all job cuts and proposals to close offices - such as Newport Passport Office and the Driving Standards Agency in Cardiff - and to support the PCS ‘There is an Alternative’ campaign, which prioritises closing the annual £120 billion tax gap, along with investment in jobs & public services.

As chair of the all-party PCS group in the last Assembly, I have actively supported the PCS union in its' campaigns against job losses and office closures. Many of the office closures to date have been from non-devolved departments, carried out by a government in Westminster which places little value in strong public services with a well-treated workforce. Plaid seeks further devolution so that the people of Wales, who value public services highly, have a greater say about public services in Wales. So far in Wales, any job losses at Welsh Assembly Government level have been with the agreement of the relevant unions. I will continue to support this way of doing things and I will continue to condemn those public bodies acting without trades union support, like, for example, the situation in Rhondda Cynon Taf. I fully support the PCS 'There is an Alternative' campaign to close the tax gap. I also support the work of UKUncut.

2. I pledge to support the principle of universal entitlement to welfare services paid for through general taxation and to oppose the UK government’s cuts in welfare and housing, which target the sick and disabled, families with children, those on low incomes, and pensioners.

It is wrong that those who can least afford it, will end up paying for the the problems caused by financiers. The Westminster government works to protect the financial interests of their friends, while pushing through ideological cuts to public expenditure in the name of balancing the books. The political right are setting about reducing the welfare state, Shock Doctrine style. I support comprehensive, universal public services and I believe they should be paid for by progressive taxation.


3. I pledge to address the disproportionate impact of spending cuts on:
• groups who already suffer from entrenched inequalities – such as those covered by the Equality Act 2010;
• economically deprived areas such as Wales, especially its rural and valleys communities, and on the Welsh language.
I will support efforts to overcome the long-term underfunding of Welsh public services - £300 million annually - identified by the Holtham Commission.

I support this statement. Plaid Cymru has called for the full implementation of the Holtham Commission proposals to overcome the funding disparity brought about by the Barnett Formula. We are already seeing the cuts fall disproportionately in Wales's economically deprived areas with faster job losses, fast depreciation of wages and cuts to the benefits on which a greater percentage of the population rely. I have recently published a consultation document which proposes a green jobs creation plan for the valleys. A PDF version can be found here

4. I pledge to support the PCS campaign to protect public sector pensions as affordable and sustainable, including calling on the UK government not to increase pension contributions or make cuts in the value of pension payments.

Agree.

5. I pledge to protect public services and work alongside PCS, other trade unions and community organisations in fighting to ensure that no further services are outsourced or privatised.

If re-elected to the Senedd, I will continue to support Plaid Cymru policy and trade union campaigns against privatisation and outsourcing. I have argued on many occasions that the introduction of a profit margin into public services that previously had no shareholders to pacify, makes no sense economically. Quality or workers' terms or more ususally, both have to be reduced to plug the gap and over time and the lack of investment results in a failed service. I have opposed PFI for similar reasons. I will continue to makes these points whenever I get the opportunity.

Help for Haiti?

The devastation in Haiti caused by the earthquake of January 12 has seen up to 200,000 dead and many more maimed.

Aid in the form of food, medical supplies, clothes and temporary accommodation, is needed as a matter of urgency. Thousands of peoples’ lives are depending on the smooth and rapid flow of cargo into the island to compensate for what the Haitians no longer have or had in the first place due to living in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Rumours of disagreements between the UN and the US Army about who is in charge of the aid operation are worrying. It is evident that aid is not reaching those who desperately need it quick enough. The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has complained that a flight containing 12 tonnes of aid was turned away from the airport at the capital Port-au-Prince on three occasions by the US Army. They believe five patients died as a result of not receiving access to the supplies on board that flight. Furthermore the charity was forced to buy a saw from a local market so they could carry out amputations on survivors. Many Haitians have been left wondering where help is coming from, and what conditions will be attached.

What is the future for Haiti? The country was already in a mess with crushing poverty and massive debt. The IMF is reported to have offered an emergency loan to Haiti with strings attached, but that later, those strings were dropped. However, Haiti is hundreds of millions of US dollars in the red as it is. If the emergency loan is going to be partly used for debt repayments that can never be settled in full, then what is its point? I hope Oxfam's campaign calling on the IMF to cancel the Haitian debt brings some pressure to bear.

Will Haiti end up with unpopular, neo-liberal policies imposed upon its people during its recovery? Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine provides the example of a mass privatisation 'experiment' in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as evidence of vultures being ready to tuck in when people are reeling in shock after a crisis. I hope that she is proven wrong in Haiti's case, the people in that country have already suffered too much turmoil, even before this earthquake.