My neighbours and I have campaigned for 4 years to have the dangerous Currock-Denton Holme footbridge replaced with a family-friendly ramp, only to see the couldn’t-care-less councillors blow the funding by not doing their work on time.

I asked them years ago to look for alternative funding but they’ve done nothing.

They have utter contempt for the people of Currock – like the pensioner from Jubilee Rd who smashed her face on the broken steps or the medic who slipped on the still untreated stairs and broke his back. Well now its time to make them pay the political price by voting them out next week.

Brent Kennedy
Trade Unionists and Socialists against Cuts,
Candidate for Currock ward.

Anti-cuts campaigners brought a national protest to the streets of Cumbria when they demonstrated outside the Carlisle branch of mobile phone giant Vodafone.

Protests have been held outside branches of Vodafone in recent months following allegations that the company has avoided paying a £6bn tax bill.

Campaigners argue that if such bills were paid then there would be no need for huge cuts in public services.

On Saturday, members of the Carlisle Socialist party were among a group of protesters outside the Scotch Street store waving placards and collecting signatures from shoppers for a petition against spending cuts.

The group’s secretary Brent Kennedy said: “This is an example of what the government is doing.

“Not a single penny of the £81bn of unfortunate or unnecessary cuts would be necessary if the big businesses and the rich paid the tax they should. We’ve presented staff with letters explaining that the action here is not personal against them – it is the bigger picture.”

Branches of Vodafone elsewhere in the country have been forced to close while demonstrations were held. Carlisle’s remained open.

A spokesman for Vodafone said: “As a responsible, UK-based company we pay all the taxes we’re required to in this country. In fact, we pay over £700 million into the UK coffers every year in tax, VAT, PAYE, national insurance and the fees we pay for our mobile phone spectrum.

“Vodafone has no unpaid tax bill. HM Revenue & Customs has branded the £6bn figure being used by protesters an ‘urban myth’.

“Last year Vodafone and HM Revenue & Customs agreed to settle matters surrounding their legal dispute over ‘controlled foreign companies’ law for £1.25bn, the largest corporate tax settlement in UK history, which we are paying.”

For more info on Vodafone’s tax dodging, see here.

The shocking way the Cumbria County Council is mistreating its loyal employees – “accept our one-sided contract with a massive wage cut or you’re sacked” – would be bad enough from the worst employers even in America. But this is being done by a so-called “Labour” party in coalition with the Tories. (N&S April 15th)

Shame on all those Labour councillors who are responsible for causing worry and future misery to so many hard-working women and their families. They deserve to be kicked out in the next local election just like the Tories and Lib-Dems at Westminster.

The council is unilaterally imposing an “offer you can’t refuse” over the head of the unions, without real collective bargaining, just like the right-wing Republicans in Wisconsin.

Unison is right to accuse the employers of holding a gun to their heads, but the finger on the trigger is held by the Labour Party. Why on earth do Unison, the GMB and Unite still each waste £1m a year of their members’ money financing an out-and-out big business party which directly attacks the jobs, wages, pensions and even democratic trade union rights of their members?

The officials of these unions, members of the misnamed “Labour” Party, are put into an uncomfortable dilemma caused by a conflict of interests between their party friends, these ruthless employers, and the members who pay their wages.

To resolve this, I believe they should immediately stop financing the enemy and doing their election work for them, and form a genuine party to represent the working class, which Labour no longer is. Public sector workers and all of us who rely on vital public services have the opportunity to vote for the Trade Unionists and Socialist Against Cuts list in several Carlisle wards. Our position is absolutely clear: No ifs, no buts, NO public sector cuts!

Brent Kennedy,

Currock, Carlisle.

Castle – Joanne Beattie

As a working single mam from Caldewgate I’m worried about the rising cost of living cutting our real income, while the bankers give themselves obscene bonuses.

Workers and young people facing the nightmare of unemployment are told to become “entrepreneurs” otherwise its all their own fault. Well I am “self-employed”, but a lot of private sector work is also threatened by public sector cuts, as I see on sites all around Carlisle.

Now they’re cutting working- and child tax credits while nursery costs rise, making it harder for working families. Even worse, they are robbing the youth of a future, cutting EMA, job schemes and making it impossible for working class kids to study.

Currock – Brent Kennedy

Denton Holme – Amanda Jefferies

Cameron says, “we’re all in this together.” Rubbish! There is a clear divide between working class and young people on the one hand and those fat cats on the other, none of whom will be worrying if they are going to eat next month because their rent is due.

As a student I’m directly affected by the coalition cuts, with job prospects after graduation becoming far less likely by the day. Working with TUSC has made me confident that an alternative is possible.

I helped organise the fight by young people in Carlisle for EMA, against education cuts and fee increases which will stop working class kids going to university. Now it’s time for everyone to get together and organise against ALL cuts to our jobs and living standards. None of the politicians will! We have the power if we fight together.

Upperby – Daniel Thorburn

The politicians are destroying our future. They have axed schemes to find work and training for unemployed school leavers when youth unemployment is 20%. Now they want to farm us out to cowboy firms to work for NO pay, undermining the jobs and wages of adult workers too. Its just divide and rule. But the only division which matters isn’t between young and old, gender or race, its between the millionaires and the rest of us.

Higher education fees will just prevent many working class people going to university. Labour shouldn’t have introduced them in the first place. The government has even taken away the Education Maintenance Allowance, which helps 16-19 year-olds to study. We demand that the County Council continues to pay EMA, but the Tory-Labour coalition aren’t prepared to help us. Let’s punish them on election day!

There is more info about TUSC candidates elsewhere in the country here.

How more blatant could it be that this government of millionaires rules only in the interests of a rich minority at the expense of the majority?

It was bad enough that they allowed Vodaphone to escape paying up to £6bn in taxes, but now they are assisting thousands of wealthy people to avoid paying tax by stashing away £100bn-125bn in secret Swiss bank accounts.

Instead of using these billions to cut the budget deficit, Treasury minister David Gauke wants to make this theft “legal”. The accounts will remain secret to Britain, but they will pay 20% tax – to Switzerland! In return, these parasites will pay just £1bn tax to Britain – yes, less than 1%!

According to Richard Murphy, head of Tax Research, if the government pursued this money, with penalties and interest, it is likely that all these assets would be due to the Treasury. “But Gauke looks like he will give away the whole lot.”

Even worse, “Under this agreement the Swiss are granted the right to decide how many inquiries may be made and whether they are appropriate or not.” This handing over of tax sovereignty will lead to even more millionaires hiding their loot away in Switzerland.

This makes a mockery of the Tory lie that they don’t want to cut public services but are forced to, because this £125bn alone would nearly cover the £155bn deficit. The disabled, the children, the old folk and the 1.7m about to lose their jobs will pay the price for letting the rich off the hook.

Brent Kennedy

For more details on tax dodgers, see UK Uncut.

We on the Labour Group on Cumbria County Council to break its coalition (“partnership”) with the Tories, in order to introduce a no-cuts, needs budget to protect jobs and public services in Cumbria.

If you don’t take this step, you will be forced to follow the logic of Tory cuts, attacking your own loyal workers and the poorest and most needy in society whose interests you claim to represent.

As you know, all councils have the option of resisting funding cuts from national government by introducing a “needs budget” – in other words, a budget that refuses to carry out the cuts by maintaining spending on the existing level of services – and calling on the government to provide the necessary funding. A Labour council, Liverpool, did this successfully in the 1980s. By going to the people of Liverpool and explaining the truth to them, they were able to mobilise their support and forced even Thatcher to back down and agree a settlement which gave ￡60m extra in direct grants and borrowing facilities to Liverpool, enabling the council to create new jobs by building homes, schools, youth centres etc.

Had other Labour councils followed this example, Thatcher’s policy of cutting local government funding would have been defeated. This is what we are asking you, and Labour Groups on all councils, to do.

The Liverpool Labour councillors were NOT surcharged for introducing a deficit budget, as we ask you to do, but for delaying setting the budget by one month. A subsequent change in the law has since removed even this sanction: councillors cannot be made personally liable for any loss of income (unless they stand to gain personally).

We know that the Tory councillors won’t agree to this, because they support Cameron’s and Clegg’s policy of making the working class and middle class pay the cost of the bankers’ bailout and their war on the welfare state and local government. That’s why we are calling on you to break with them. Otherwise, do you really think the Tories on Cumbria County Council will be carrying out a Labour policy, or won’t you in fact be carrying out a Tory policy?

Those criticising the idea that a class war is being waged have missed the point: That this war was launched against working and middle class people by the wealthiest few, and that we should defend ourselves.

For some people this truth is just too uncomfortable to accept, because it challenges all of us either to respond or to be subservient. But if you don’t believe us, then listen to the renowned investor and the world’s third richest man, Warren Buffett:

“There’s class warfare, alright, but its my class, the rich class, that’s waging war – and we’re winning.”

It couldn’t be any clearer, could it?

And unfortunately his class IS winning. In the last 30 years, 58% of all new wealth created in America was pocketed by the richest 1%. The share of British national income going to wages fell from two-thirds to just over half, the other half going to the profits of the rich.

But now its getting worse. Since the recession most workers have sacrificed their real wages, hours or even jobs, and pensions “to save the firm”. They have been conned. The result? In the 9 months of recovery from July last year the National Income grew by over £26bn, but while a handful of bosses took £24bn of this in profits, all 30 million wage and salary earners in the country had to share the remaining £2bn.

No wonder the gulf of inequality in this country is twice as wide as in other European countries. And now the “fair” Con-Dem cuts will hit the low paid ten times harder than the richest 10%.

There is no use denying the reality of this class war, the only question is, do you want to win or lose?

Brent Kennedy

So Anne Pickles got mugged – by her boss. But instead of standing up to him she would feel a whole lot better just to see everyone else get mugged. That’s the analogy to her cynicism about workers defending their pension rights (N&S, March 15th).

Feeling “betrayal, unfairness, injustice” but then exhorting others to drag down their aspirations and “get used to it” has nothing to do with the1970s but the 1870s. Anne should get up off her knees and stop pulling her forlock at the Master.

In the 1970s two-thirds of the National Income went to wages and one third to profits; today its nearer 50:50, as wages have stagnated, conditions of employment worsened, public services privatised, union rights weakened and decent pensions scrapped. The latest attack on pensions is just the latest step on this road to ruin.

During the boom employers were granted pension payment “holidays” because the funds were apparently overflowing. They got greedy and decided on a permanent holiday. Its just the rich stealing from workers.
Public sector workers are being scapegoated. In fact, the average male local government worker only gets an annual pension of £4,000, a woman only £2,800. If this is gold plated, what about the heads of banks and companies who get £millions?

These attacks on public sector workers are a cynical attempt to con private sector workers – one third of their bosses are planning to cut their pensions even more, and next week the millionaire Tory ministers are going to attack their conditions of work again. Wouldn’t it be more effective to fight back together? United we are strong, divided we are lost – that’s a much more positive lesson to teach the young.

Brent Kennedy,

If “we’re all in it together”, how come while workers’ real wages are falling, top bosses have just awarded themselves a whopping 55% extra income?

I’ve heard of greed, but this is ridiculous.

The average income of the top 100 companies’ chief executives has now risen to £4.9m a year. That’s 200 times more than the average wage! Do they have absolute contempt for the rest of us?

If 200 workers on PAYE had their wage doubled, they would at least make a bigger tax contribution, but this elite will just fiddle it as usual.

These guys think they are so good the country can’t do without them. Well let them explain this: If they are so clever that they deserved to have their pay and bonuses increased by 160% over the last ten years, how come the share value of their firms actually fell by 19% in that time?

This wealth bears no resemblance to reality. One of them “earned” £93m. Someone on the average wage would need to work  nearly 4,000 years to reach that.

The second-highest paid, on £38m, runs a firm which is only ranked the 178th in value. Obviously its not what you do but what you can get away with, and in unequal, class divided Britain today, that’s a lot.

Daniel Thorburn