Nationalise Vauxhall!

Car production in the UK is efficient, let no one fool you about this. Plants which produce cars are linked to plants which produce parts – there’s a supply chain to consider. Also, many work in other services which are dependent upon skilled workers spending their wages.

We need to have cars which are energy efficient – though effective demand has slumped globally, we all know this is due to our chaotic economic system, not to the car being made obsolete.

It’s not Rover!

Four years ago Rover went under – the government could have nationalised the company and set up a joint-venture with the Chinese, the company ended up in China selling to their domestic market.

Instead the government let Rover go, and now many of the skilled workers formerly employed by the company are in lower skilled and lower paid jobs.

The same mistake cannot be made again – the government has bailed out the banks which have failed to get lending again.

There’s no doubt that if Vauxhall is bailed out, we’ll see a return – with new energy efficient cars being made at UK plants for sale across the world as demand recovers.

Protected?

Whilst other EU govts get their checquebooks out, the UK govt is nowhere to be seen. At the negotiations, there’s no one to represent car workers in Luton and Ellesmere Port – remember, UK workers are easiest for big businesses to sack in the EU.

It’s a sickening sight – “Lord” Peter Mandelson pretending he’s got a guarantee against mass lay-offs and blaming unions for scaring workers when he knows that’s what will happen.

At least he’s the sense to stop wittering on about protectionism – we all know that when the rich cry poverty the money flows from the government to protect their corrupt system.

But when thousands of skilled workers face uncertainty, New Labour are too spineless to step up to defend them, fearful of a backlash from the super-rich. Mandelson and co. are so eager to please them that they will allow no concessions to working people – look at his actions over Royal Mail where most people oppose privatisation, even within New Labour.

The threat of a good example!

Car workers at Luton and Ellesmere Port can follow the example of the Visteon workers who occupied their plants to demand justice.

There would be no shortage of support, no limit to the solidarity that others would demonstrate.

We own the banks now – we can get them to invest in the car industry.

Don’t despair – organise, occupy, nationalise!

Middle income workers shafted by super-rich

It used to be known as Middle England, but a few years ago it got changed to Middle Britain (Try the Middlebritainometer to see how you compare.)

Supposedly this Middle was deferential to the rich and looked down on those below. Not any more…

Britain’s middle earners have lost ground to the ­better-off and the rich, seen their relative status in society decline and been let down by politicians, the Trades Union Congress argues in a report on Thursday.

Thirty years after Margaret Thatcher first targeted voters in middle England, and 12 years since New Labour made its winning appeal to “middle Britain”, the TUC draws a sharp contrast between the fortunes of that group and those of people on comfortable professional incomes. However, this richer group has increasingly been seen, by commentators and politicians alike, as “middle Britain”

The result is that successive governments have failed to deliver what true middle-earners want – a dissonance that helps to explain outrage about the MPs’ expenses scandal, says the TUC.

The findings may make alarming reading for Labour. The high command is aware it cannot win the next general election without the support of this group of voters – normally termed C1s and C2s by psephologists.

The TUC defines “middle income Britain” as the fifth of the population straddling median income, the level that divides the population in two. Median household income was £377 a week, just under £20,000 a year, in 2007.

Median earners have seen their income rise by less than the average, or mean, income over the past 30 years, the TUC says. The mean is calculated by dividing total incomes by the number of people in the UK.

Since 1979 the income of median earners has risen by 60 per cent, while much bigger increases for the better-off have pushed up mean earnings by 78 per cent, according to the report.

While median income fell behind more sharply under the Conservatives as society became more unequal, the TUC says the gap has grown under Labour. Mean net household income in 2007 stood at £463 a week, 23 per cent higher than the median.

“Middle income Britons” who have jobs are concentrated in white-collar and skilled manual roles, including dispatch clerks, retail managers, information technology workers and teaching assistants.

Their experience of life is likely to be marked by econ­omic insecurity – rather like members of the struggling middle class in the US who have been dubbed “the anxious middle” by economists.

Compared with those just above them on the income scale, median earners are less likely to have had a university education, to enjoy a final salary pension scheme, to hold shares or to have significant savings. They are more likely to have experienced unemployment.

They are frustrated, says a YouGov survey for the report. While they have aspirations for more fulfilling work and better living standards, they feel keenly their inability to fulfil society’s rising expectations. Four in 10 people on median incomes believe their job has a lower status than their father’s.

Stewart Lansley, the report’s author, said one of the big failings of the past 30 years was that the middle income Britain of the 1970s and 1980s had not been transformed into the well-to-do middle Britain of politicians’ recent imagination.

“Maybe because of this, middle income Britain holds noticeably different values than those above them in the income hierarchy. They are more pro-state and strongly support government action to tackle in­equality,” he said.

Flashback: Cameron ready for “unpopular” rule

Lest you think David Cameron has become a radical constitutional reformer, what with his talk of fixed-term parliaments – only maybe, he’ll think about it – recall his speech at last year’s Tory conference:

Preparing the party for a hard grind in government, he insisted he had “the grit and determination to impose discipline on government spending, keep our nerve and say ‘No’ – even in the teeth of hostility and protest”.

Mr Cameron’s speech, largely stripped of jokes and partisan attacks on Mr Brown, was designed to reflect the mood of the times. Unlike his “walk-about” speech at last year’s conference, he spoke at a podium with notes.

The connecting strand of Mr Cameron’s vision was the building of a “responsible” society, although at times the speech was disjointed and was clearly the result of a rapid rewriting exercise to take account of the fast-changing financial environment.

[Emphasis added.]