Tag: austerity

We’re Constantly Distracted by Crisis

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (7.4.26), where I write a piece, edit it down to the maximum of 600 words, and then it’s edited again to meet the so-called “standards” of the corporate media. Little surprises me these days, but to see my phrase “Distracted from paedophile Presidents and Princes…” have the term “paedophile” edited out did raise my eyebrows. I thought, at least, that Trump has had a court case rule him as such, and that Randy Andy had been stripped of all titles and wealth because his alliance with Epstein. Oh well, there we go, the article is about the Climate crisis anyway!

The unedited version below, or read the published article by expanding the picture.

The latest HD pictures of the Earth from space are undeniably moving. An expressed emotional response often includes something about vulnerability.

So it should. One look at the globe and its obvious that everything is connected. The question is, what should we focus upon? Is there a first priority if we are to protect and sustain life on Earth?

Where should we start? Right now, moonshots are distracting from illegal wars and genocide distracting from the rise of fascist organisations distracting from paedophile Presidents and Princes distracting from corrupt exploitative billionaires and all distracting from the climate crisis.

And there it is. One look at our world and it should be clear that climate and environment are top and centre.

“Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits”, announced United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reporting on the 2025 State of the Global Climate Report, completely eclipsed in its urgency and warnings by the war in the Middle East. The Earth’s energy imbalance – the gap between heat absorbed and heat released – is the highest on record. The vast majority of the heat, 91%, is absorbed by the ocean, harming marine life, fuelling storms and causing ice melt. Arctic and Antarctic ice loss together with melting glaciers are driving sea-level rise. Our weather has become more extreme. In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding impacted hundreds of millions of people and caused billions in economic losses.

In February this year, the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, on which heads of MI5 and MI6 sit, released a heavily edited version of its national security assessment of the climate crisis. It came with a stark warning: “some ecosystems will start to collapse by 2030 or sooner”, suggesting an immediate threat to national security, prosperity, food systems and public health.

Government intelligence agencies have compiled full scientific reports on the imminent national security implications of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse.There’s talk across the Establishment of adaptation to a world at an average temperature 3C higher than 150 years ago. We are locked-in to a return to Pliocene conditions, 3C hotter and, eventually, a 20m sea-level rise.

You may expect the government to share this knowledge with everyone so we can all make important life decisions. But the UK’s Defra has refused a Freedom of Information request to see the full, uncensored report prepared by the Joint Intelligence Chiefs in connection with national security threats associated with climate and ecological breakdown.

The question remains unanswered: what do we need to do to be able live in these conditions? Perhaps die in our billions? Those who have significant resources to build away from floods and fires, insulate our homes against severe temperatures, access nutritious foods that are grown despite soil-depletion and chemical pollution, will live. But that’s not the most of us.

It is no coincidence that the far-Right is being sponsored to call-out climate science as false conspiracy, and oppose net-zero targets at the ballot box. “Drill, Drill, Drill!” Is the cry of the oil industry lobbyists, echoed by far-Right idiots hoping for crumbs of cash and power from the Billionaires’ tables. The barbaric decadence at the top of global capitalist society has never been more obvious, now funding climate denial to a greater extent than their previous campaigns denying cancer from smoking or asbestosis from unsafe chemical production. Starmer complies with support for new drilling at the Rosebank field in the North Sea.

The global North is being lulled into believing we’re safe from the climate crisis. Those in the tropics and Earth’s southern regions are already suffering climate chaos. As Jane Fonda said last week, “There’d be no climate crisis without racism!” This is probably the main reason behind Trump and Farage opposing net zero goals away from fossil fuel dependency: in the first instance, stopping climate chaos will be of primary benefit to the countries of the global south, non-white populations! To hell with that, let them die first! Racist it is, but also very short sighted – the worse chaos global heating causes the tropics, the more likely the temperate zones will suffer seasonal dissonance, extreme weather and food shortages. The climate does not recognise national boundaries or human cultural differences.

The climate crisis is not a matter of opinion. The real conspiracy is the opposite of that spouted by The Deniers – governments have compiled the information on the Climate Crisis already – they’re just not letting us see it, preferring to distract us with photos from space. We should each make the links and act now.

We are each at liberty, for now, to submit a Freedom of Information request to government to release the full report produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the national security implications of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse. Email your Freedom of Information (FoI) to informationrequests@defra.gov.uk

In the meantime, stop war to stop the murder, massive environmental destruction, pollution and global heating carbon emissions, and campaign against the opening of any and all oil and gas fields, most urgently, Stop Rosebank!

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The Time has Come to Revolt Against Inequality!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (12.3.24) saying less than enough about the vile and cynical use of Parliament by the super-rich to continually fund their lifestyles on the backs of mass poverty. Their propensity for exploitation has no bounds, their audacity to extract billions of taxes paid by us to ensure the services we need only to be pocketed into offshore personal accounts is beyond criminal – extortion and corruption do not explain it well enough. The gangsters are in charge of the World.

The idea of One Nation is absurd. We live in a class society, layers upon layers of strata, of groupings, based upon wealth and power. Britain’s Capitalist class is one of the very richest in the world, and three times as rich as 15 years ago.

This is why we have political groups, Parties, purporting to represent the interests of each of the competing classes. Democracy is meant to replace open conflict by representing the tensions through debate in Parliament and local Councils, right down to neighbourhood forums

These structures are weaker now, wielding less representation of the people and demanding less accountability of those with power than anytime in the last eighty years. The adoption of free market economics, replacing the post-war mixed economy with overt competition and privatisation, has led all Parliamentary parties to value growth in profitability over social infrastructure. That’s the basis of the common political sense that “they’re all the same”. Politicians all subscribe to neoliberalism.

There are a range of very good reasons as to why most people have little faith in politicians. In recent years it has become apparent that government policies are more based upon the influence from corporate lobby groups than the People. 

It is the owners of big business who are actually in control, Parliament no longer offering even a mediating role between the needs of the bosses and the needs of the workers. 

Protection of corporate profits is now the observable purpose of government, the success rate proven by the record profits of the biggest lobbyists – banks, fossil fuels, supermarkets and arms manufacturers.

The end result is more akin to a nation of citizens and slaves than universal suffrage. The wealth is so accumulated into primarily the top 1% and minimally to the next 30%, that the bottom 70% of those in the UK have a a sliding scale of disposable income, no chance of accumulating real wealth, and a diminishing say in society. The bottom 50% (over 30 million of us), are without any honest representation or wherewithal independent of our week-by-week wage.

Last week’s budget was a stark illustration of this. A government preaching to its core supporters, giving away more tax money to the super-rich whilst trickling some crumbs to its voter-base, the formal opposition party barely disagreeing with that general political approach.

The result. Political spin and bluster on the one hand, more unending Austerity on the other.

The headline cut of another 2p in the £ off National Insurance will benefit higher earners the most: someone on £50,000 a year will save £1,310 — five times more than a worker on £20,000 and 15 times more than somebody on £15,000. It will cost the Treasury an extra £10 billion a year that could have been earmarked for State schools and the National Health Service.

But the frozen tax thresholds will actually mean those on a salary io £25,000 a year will take home £20 less a month. The tax allowance freeze disproportionately impacts the poorest workers because a larger proportion our income being taxed, our wages being low and insufficient. Similarly, pensioners with a small employment pension (they’re mostly very small) will pay more tax.

The pre-election government propaganda was a complete lie, the Chancellor shouting “Lower Taxes” pretending to help hard working people whilst actually giving handouts for bosses and the rich. Hunt increased the VAT tax threshold for small businesses from £80,000 to £90,000 and reduced the higher tax rate on property capital gains—the amount you make from selling property—from 28 percent to 24 percent.

This means more money for bosses and for rich people with big houses at the expense of all the essential services that the working classes rely upon.

The Budget announced huge public spending cuts – £20 billion in cuts by 2028, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Health & Education will see 1% above inflation increases, not matching the increase in need. Public transport, universities and councils will all see devastating new austerity measures, on top of the past fourteen years of Austerity.

Successive governments have stolen, yes, held back and clawed back, some 65% of council funding compared with twenty years ago. Local services – essential services – have been slashed, those that can make a profit sold-off, the rest devastated or demolished completely. 

We have local Councils going bankrupt and forced to raise taxes, a health crisis, a housing crisis, a crisis of our children’s nutrition and mental health, a cost-of-living crisis engineered to maximise the living standards of the richest.

Working class people are not stupid. We see and understand what’s happening. And we know when we’re being lied to. In advance of the general election, few believe it will result in the fundamental changes needed for improvements to the conditions of the mass of the working class. In historical periods of such lack of trust in our leaders there is usually revolt, sparked by the experiences of inequality and injustice. Now is that time.