German and EU hypocrisy and short memories on Greece : Syriza aren't extremists - they're asking for the same debt relief deal Greece gave Germany in 1953. The EU is handing the banks almost ten times the amount of money Greece is asking written off in debts

Syriza extremists or unrealistic? No, moderates, asking for deal Germany got in 1953

The deal Syriza are looking for is a reasonable one. For their creditors to forgive 50% of their debts, for debt repayments to only have to be made once the Greek economy is growing again, for the EU to stop privatising Greek government assets and services by selling them off for buttons at the bottom of the market, and an end to austerity policies which prevent growth (1).

This is a plan based on the 1953 London Agreement under which Germany was forgiven 50% of its debts incurred during two world wars and from Marshall Plan aid from the US after them. The creditors forgiving half of those debts included the governments of Greece, Ireland and Spain, three of the four countries much derided as ‘PIGS’ over the debt crisis. The London Agreement also included Germany only having to pay back debts out of 3% of its export earnings, so that its creditors imported German products (2).

While saying there will be no more debt reductions for Greece, Angela Merkel and other EU government leaders have approved issuing 1.1 trillion (one thousand one hundred billion) euros of “quantitative easing” money to be handed straight to private banks (3).

How is it that there is infinite money available to the banks, but none to keep ordinary people in work? Or even on benefits while there are more unemployed people than job vacancies?

How is it that one thousand, one hundred, billion euros can be created and handed to the banks, but none of it can be used to reduce Greece’s debt of around 300 billion euros by half (150 billion)? (4)

Syriza’s proposal is that some of the QE money should be used by the European Central Bank to buy bonds not just from private banks, but from governments suffering debt crises, like Greece and Spain’s.

Some Greek and American economists are saying the only problem with Syriza’s proposals are that they’re not radical enough (5) – (6).

While many have tried to paint Syriza as being left wing extremists, mirroring the neo-nazi Golden Dawn party’s right wing extremism, in fact Syriza’s leadership are moderate left wingers. Even the Telegraph newspaper, which favours the right wing of a Conservative party whose centre is right of Thatcher, considers Yanis Varoufakis, Syriza’s Finance Minister, to be a moderate (7).

Far from being ideologically opposed to EU or Euro membership, Syriza leader Alexis Tspiras preferred a coalition with the right wing but anti-austerity Independent Greeks party to one with the radical left KKE party which wants to leave the Euro and the EU (8).

Lazy Greeks? Nope – they work the longest hours in Europe

The supposedly “lazy” Greeks work, on average, the longest hours of any nationality in the EU according to OECD figures, over 2,000 hours per year, and did so even before the crisis. The “hard working” Germans rank 33^rd at under 1400 hours a year .The average employed person in the UK works 1,600 hours a year, 400 less than the average Greek. (9) – (10)

Other studies found that Greeks work on average 38 hours a week, compared to 35 in the UK and Germany (11).

And Germans take  more days of holidays per year than Greeks too (12).

Greece allowed more tax avoidance and corruption?
There are tax havens and corruption in UK dependencies and across Europe

Tax avoidance by Greeks is also often raised to try to justify the conditions imposed by the EU. Tax avoidance is certainly a serious problem in Greece, but the idea that other EU countries have done anything to prevent it is laughable. The UK allows offshore ones in the Channel Islands and in the UK dependencies of Bermuda and Belize, as well as the main party in government in the UK getting more than half its donations to party funds from the financial sector. Both Luxembourg and Switzerland are renowned tax havens.

It’s highly likely that much of the tax money avoided by wealthier Greeks is in those tax havens in other EU countries and territories they control. Since they’re demanding a crack down on tax avoidance and evasion by the Greek government, perhaps they could help out at the other end by closing down their own tax havens?

Mark Field, the Conservative MP for the City of London & Westminster, Mark Field, boasted in 2010 about all the foreign money coming into UK tax havens (13).

Government minister Francis Maude said in 2012 that turning the UK into a tax haven is “exactly what we are trying to do” (14).

Lord Fink, Treasurer of the Conservative party, and director of three firms with subsidiaries in tax havens (the Cayman Island,s Luxembourg and Guernsey) called for the same (15).

And progress has been made towards making the mainland UK a tax haven, with many US firms now relocating their headquarters for tax purposes here (16).

Ireland’s economic “miracle” and then collapse were, like Britain’s , largely down to deregulation (though worse for Ireland as it didn’t have it’s own currency). This included Ireland slashing its corporation taxes to the lowest in Europe in order to get companies to relocate there for tax purposes (17).

That’s why Ireland was able to recover relatively fast from the crisis. But, as Greek government ministers point out, there is not room for every country in the EU to have the lowest taxes, and competition to reduce taxes results in crises for government funding in all of them.

As the firms and banks benefiting most from tax havens also tend to be big donors to party funds for the biggest parties in countries across the EU, corruption is as much a problem in the UK as in Greece, it’s just done in a more formalised way and at a higher level in Britain.
Cash in brown envelopes is for amateurs. Donations to party funds, and jobs as advisers or directors for retiring ministers for favours done in office, are preferred.

Does Greece have any choice but to do what the EU and Germany say?

Yes. It could drop the Euro as a currency and return to the drachma, or adopt another currency, such as the dollar. This would likely cause another crisis and considerable hardship, but with the austerity imposed by the EU having seen average incomes cut 40% and unemployment over 25%, most Greeks are already suffering plenty of hardship and might decide that having control of their own government and economic and welfare policy and budgets again was worth a bit more.

This would likely lead to a run on the Euro, which might well lead to Portugal, Spain and maybe even Italy also dropping the Euro as currencies. The Eurozone benefits Germany most of all. Countries leaving the Eurozone would reduce German export earnings, which have been greatly increased by the Eurozone effectively reducing the price of German exports in countries using the Euro (18).

Sources

(1) = Greek Reporter 28 Jan 2015 ‘Greece: This is SYRIZA’s New Government Plan in Detail’, http://greece.greekreporter.com/2015/01/28/greece-this-is-syrizas-new-government-plan-in-detail/

(2) = EU Observer 07 Jan 2015 ‘Europe's debt revolution: Can Syriza's plan work?’, https://euobserver.com/news/127115

(3) = BBC News 22 Jan 2015 ‘ECB unveils massive QE boost for eurozone’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30933515

(4) Washington Post 30 January2015 ‘Greece really might leave the euro’ =
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/30/greece-really-might-leave-the-euro/

(5) = Truthout 22 Jan 2015 ‘Economist Leonidas Vatikiotis: Syriza's Proposals Don't Go Far Enough for Greece’, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/28661-economist-leonidas-vatikiotis-syriza-s-proposals-don-t-go-far-enough-for-greece

(6) = NYT 26 Jan 2015 ‘Ending Greece’s Nightmare’,  by Paul Krugman, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/26/opinion/paul-krugman-ending-greeces-nightmare.html

(7) = Telegraph 26 Jan 2015 ‘Yanis Varoufakis: Greece’s future finance minister is no extremist’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11369851/Yanis-Varoufakis-Greeces-future-finance-minister-is-no-extremist.html

(8) = Guardian 26 Jan 2015 ‘Greece: claims of a far-left victory are nonsense’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/26/greece-claims-of-far-left-victory-are-nonsense

(9) = OECD Stat Extracts ‘Average annual hours actually worked per worker’, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS

(10) = BBC News 26 Feb 2012 ‘Are Greeks the hardest workers in Europe?’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17155304

(11) = Busting the myth of France’s 35-hour workweek, http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20140312-frances-mythic-35-hour-week

(12) = See (10) above

(13) = Bloomberg 03 Nov 2010 ‘Tax Havens Send ‘Massive Capital’ to London, Lawmaker Says’, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2010-11-03/tax-havens-send-massive-capital-to-london-lawmaker-says

(14) = This IS Money 07 Apr 2012 ‘Francis Maude in new row after saying it would be a compliment if Britain were seen as a 'tax haven' under coalition’, http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2126452/Francis-Maude-new-row-saying-compliment-Britain-seen-tax-haven-coalition.html

(15) = Guardian 21 Sep 2012 ‘Tory treasurer wants UK to become more like a tax haven’,  http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/sep/20/tory-treasurer-make-uk-tax-haven

(16) = Reuters 09 Jun 2014 ‘Britain becomes haven for U.S. companies keen to cut tax bills’, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/09/uk-britain-usa-tax-insight-idUKKBN0EK0BA20140609

(17) = Forbes Magazine 06 Nov 2013 ‘If Ireland Is Not A Tax Haven, What Is It?’, http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/11/06/if-ireland-is-not-a-tax-haven-what-is-it/

(18) = Business Insider 20 Nov 2011 ‘Why German Taxpayers Should Be Forced To Bail Out Italians And Greeks’, http://www.businessinsider.com/why-germany-should-bail-out-italy-and-greece-2011-11#ixzz3QRQBjDjw

We need tax havens closed down to avoid another financial crisis and increase revenues , the 50p tax rate is a side issue, the mansion tax a gimmick

Chancellor George Osborne's cut in the 50p top rate of tax is supposed to bring in extra revenue by making the wealthiest pay tax in the UK, while business Minister Vince Cable is calling for a “mansion tax” supposedly to target the “super rich”. Another Lib Dem – Lord Oakeshott – says it’s because otherwise taxing the super rich is like pinning down jelly. In fact the real problem – the thing allowing the super-rich and big firms to avoid taxes; and the thing that caused the financial crisis and will cause another if they’re not closed down –is tax havens. Some will tell you closing them down is impossible – they’re wrong. It’s been done before and it can be done again.

Deputy PM Nick Clegg suggest a minimum tax rate, which is a better idea, but both avoids the main problem – tax havens, including the City of London ‘Square Mile’, which is governed only by the Corporation of the City of London – mostly bank and hedge fund executives.

To listen to most politicians you’d believe that they’ve now re-regulated banks and financial firms as much as is possible and that taxing and regulating big firms, banks and billionaires further is impossible as they’d just go elsewhere .  Nicholas Shaxson’s book ‘ Treasure Islands ’ shows this is a long way from the truth. It should be required reading for every voter in every country in the world (1).

The ‘Mansion Tax’ might get a little extra tax out of some of the super rich (while also e.g punishing widows and people who’ve retired for having a bigger than average house or a house in an area with high property values, the same way the Rates used to). It will barely make the super-rich of big firms blink though. If you want to get significant taxes out of them, you have to close down the tax havens

Bretton Woods

Shaxson shows that after World War Two the Bretton Woods agreement between the western European countries and the US imposed capital controls – i.e limits on how much money could be transferred from one country to another by private individuals and companies, with any large amount requiring an explanation of the reason and approval by government, which would not be granted unless benefits to the country the money was coming from could be shown.

There were also fixed exchange rates between the dollar and other currencies, avoiding currency speculation of the kind that led to Black Wednesday and the Asian Financial Crisis in the 1990s.

(Other aspects of Bretton Woods, such as the Gold Standard, were more questionable)

However from the day Bretton Woods came into force, bankers, the financial industry and politicians they lobbied were looking for ways to get around it and weaken it to the point it would collapse entirely. By 1971 they managed to achieve that.

How tax havens cause financial and economic crises – and will cause more if they aren’t closed down

Their main method has been tax havens, not only because of low (or no) taxes, but also because tax havens provide secrecy, allowing banks and companies to avoid regulation. They do this in several ways. For instance by allowing banks and companies and people to registering their company or shell companies or accounts in tax havens. Tax havens also allow professional front-man directors, managing executives, treasurers etc who are listed as the executives of thousands of different firms registered in that haven. So if anyone tries to find out about who owns and manages that company, they’ll only find the front people. Secrecy is the most important aspect, because if no-one knows who really runs an account or firm or what company or individual is putting money into it or taking it out (e.g to donate to political parties’ or politicians’ campaign funds), no-one can regulate them.

Enron, World.com, Parmalat and Long Term Capital Management for instance were all registered or had shell companies in the Cayman Islands, a British dependency.

While many tax havens are small islands and so ‘offshore’ some of the onshore tax havens like the US State of Delaware Luxembourg, Switzerland and the City of London (Square Mile) mentioned earlier are even bigger centres of corruption. Delaware has more companies registered in it than any other tax haven due to it’s lack of regulation, almost zero taxes and high level of secrecy.

The ‘financial derivatives’ like ‘Collateral Debt Obligations’ which led to the financial crisis were mostly invented and issued by firms registered in tax havens.

The onshore and offshore tax havens are similar in being small, largely being governed by the heads of companies in the tax haven (Jersey, City of London) or by governments so small that they are captured easily by big banks’ and companies’ lobbying and donations (Delaware).

The City of London is governed by the City of London Corporation headed by the Lord Mayor (no relation to the democratically elected mayor of the rest of London). City of London Corporation elections work like those of a medieval city dominated by merchant guilds rather than a modern democracy. There are 9,000 ordinary electors, but 39,000 votes held by companies. The votes held by companies are held by their Chief Executives, who get a number of votes based on their number of employees. (Tony Blair, who dropped the Labour party’s previous policy of abolishing the Corporation in 1996, passed legislation in government increasing the number of votes in it going to company executives from 26,000 to 39,000).

When Labour party member Maurice Glasman stood against one of the candidates in a Corporation election, it was unprecedented. The heads of the companies in the Square Mile are almost always elected unopposed by any other candidate.

This means that, in practice, as many of the UK’s banks and other financial companies are in the Square Mile governed by the Corporation, the UK’s financial industry remains entirely unregulated. Neither the British government nor the Mayor of London, nor the London Assembly, nor the EU, can regulate what goes on inside the Square Mile under their ‘Ancient Charter’ dating to before the Norman conquest of England.

What’s more the City of London Corporation and the firms that make it up are in denial about CDOs and other financial derivatives having caused the crisis and continue to lobby the government to avoid ‘unnecessary’ regulation of the financial sector and to allow it to continue to create now and ‘innovative financial products’ of the kind that caused the crisis.

If the tax havens aren’t closed down another crisis is not just a possibility – it will almost inevitably happen again, because the banks and firms involved are so big they can always extort a bail-out to avoid taking down the entire economy with them – and then re-invest some of the money they get from that in lobbying and donations to party funds.

How Tax Havens push up taxes for the majority

Shaxson found that an estimated $12 trillion – a quarter of the world’s wealth – is untaxed in tax havens, put there by individual people or their financial advisors. The amount put in them by banks and big companies is not known, but we do know that every major company and bank in the UK, from RBS to Tesco has dozens of subsidiaries, ‘joint ventures’ or ‘associates in tax havens like Jersey – and that the purpose of these subsidiaries and other agreements is to avoid tax. So at a guess at least half the world’s wealth is going untaxed in tax havens.

We also know that the Inland Revenue, which would jail ordinary people or heads of small businesses for evading or avoiding tax, instead negotiates ‘sweetheart deals’ with big banks and firms, allowing them each to avoid tens to hundreds of millions each a year – and that’s only from the accounts the Inland Revenue knows about.

That pushes taxes up for everyone else – all the ordinary people and small businesses who can’t afford the lawyers and accountants they’d need to avoid tax.

If that money was taxed, so those who can afford to pay paid what they can afford, taxes for everyone else would fall, extreme cuts in public spending would be unnecessary as tax receipts would rise and the kind of fraud that allowed the financial crisis to happen could be prevented.

How Tax Havens allow developed and developing world corruption

It also helps corrupt governments and dictatorships around the world – including in the poorest countries – to divert taxes and aid money into secret accounts in tax havens. So the next time you hear someone complain about how corruption makes aid pointless, point out that it couldn’t happen on the scale it’s happening without the tax havens and lack of controls on capital transfers, which are the result of the actions of developed world governments like the US, Britain, France and Switzerland. The centres of corruption are tax havens in the developed world.

Tax Havens launder drug , criminal and terrorist money

The secrecy which tax havens provide which is designed to allow people and companies to avoid or evade tax also allows drug traffickers, organised crime and terrorist groups to launder money. Shaxson provides several concrete examples including the BCCI affair and the Florida mafia

The Fiction that most Tax Havens are independent

The British government maintains a fiction that it has no control of what goes on in it’s tax haven dependencies – especially the Cayman Islands, Jersey and the Isle of Man. Shaxson’s book provides plenty of examples of them being able to get their way when they want something in these places – and plenty of quotes showing the British government giving their dependencies a nod and a wink on how it would be better if matters were ‘resolved’ without the UK government having to act itself and end the convenient fiction.

The biggest threat from tax havens – and how they can be closed down, as they were under Bretton Woods

The most frightening thing about tax havens though is that they are all still operating, providing secret accounts and shell companies for banks and firms worldwide – and as long as that’s the case another global financial crisis could happen tomorrow.

The ‘nothing can be done’ excuse – and why it’s false

Most of the politicians and bankers and billionaires will tell you that there is nothing that can be done about this – that modern technology and business practices have gone beyond the ability of governments to regulate them. That’s nonsense. It was possible to transfer money between countries fairly rapidly in 1945-1970, but Bretton Woods prevented it being done constantly without good reasons – and growth rates in that period were far higher (at an average of 4% a year) in the developed world than they have been since 1970. Before 1945 there was the same chaos in international finance, leading to the same problems – the 1929 Great Crash and the global Great Depression. So this is not a matter of new developments making new capital and exchange rate controls impossible – they are just as possible as they were in 1945 to 1970.

The ‘lack of political will’ excuse – and how to create the political will

Many will tell you that the problem is a lack of political will – again, nonsense. If enough people demand that their governments close down tax havens and impose regulation on them, it can be done, just as it was done after World War Two. Tax havens rely on money being able to get in and out. Simply ban all money transfers in and out of them until new regulations are in force and enforce full sharing of all information on accounts and companies registered in them.

The problem is that the billionaires and big firms and the newspapers and TV stations they own and the politicians they lobby and donate to have persuaded everyone that the people costing them money are fraudulent welfare claimants, when in fact, for instance, only 0.6% of benefit claims in the UK are estimated to be fraudulent. As long as the majority allow themselves to be conned in this way there certainly won’t be the political will to do anything about the tax havens that are really pushing taxes up for the majority and causing economic crises. If they are informed and persuaded of the real problems – and that allowing the tax havens to remain will result in another financial crisis and recession if they’re not closed down, that will rapidly change though.

Politicians lack the ‘political will’ to do anything about tax havens as long as the majority don’t realise how they’re suffering due to them because the same big firms and super rich people benefiting most from tax havens are also the ones donating most to the funds of the big parties and spending most on lobbying government.

The ‘requires an international agreement we can’t get’ excuse – and the alternative of leading by example

Then there’s the excuse that it would require an international agreement and that that’s not possible. In fact it’s been done before (Bretton Woods) and progress can be made even without one – because if one country starts closing down it’s tax havens then the voters in others won’t accept that closing down tax havens is impossible any more -  and the dominoes will start to fall.

Sources

(1) = Michael Shaxson (2011) ‘Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World’ Bodley Heads, London, 2011

(2) = Guardian DataBlog October 2011 ‘Tax havens and the FTSE 100: the full list’- The top 100 British multinationals have declared full or joint ownership of 34,216 companies - 25% of which are located in jurisdictions classed as tax havens. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/oct/11/ftse100-subsidiaries-tax-data

(3) = Guardian 20 Dec 2011 ‘HMRC hid 'sweetheart' tax deals for big business, MPs say’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/dec/20/inland-revenue-sweetheart-tax-deals

Not everyone working in finance or banking is to blame; but we're not all equally responsible for the financial crisis either

Some of my posts might give the impression I blame all London financial workers for the financial crisis and think any employment in that sector is morally wrong. That’s not the case of course.

The top management of banks are responsible; anyone involved in futures trading in food and then buying up food supplies to drive up the price is doing something immoral; and futures trading and currency trading for profit should be banned.

Anyone taking commissions or fees to get people to take out mortgages they couldn’t afford was doing something wrong. So was anyone taking payments to buy or sell ‘collateral debt obligations’ or other dodgy financial instruments.

There are plenty of people employed in banks or as financial advisers who weren’t involved in any of this though and should not be blamed for the actions of others.

I don’t accept the argument that everyone is equally responsible for the financial crisis, or that only governments were responsible for de-regulating.

A bank manager or mortgage broker will usually be better educated and have far more inside knowledge to judge whether a mortgage or loan can be repaid than desperate people trying to get their own home or a loan to tide them over. Many of the former also took commission payments or fees on these transactions, so they knew they would benefit personally from it no matter what happened in the long run.

The top management of the banks and hedge funds and others – and their lobbyists- lobbied for deregulation and then used it to committ fraud on a massive scale; and they’ve not stopped lobbying against re-regulation.

However responsibly advising people on investments is not immoral; nor is organising loans on reasonable interest rates to people or businesses, nor working as a cashier in a bank.

The average figures for city of London financial sector pay and bonuses almost certainly hide big gaps between people at the top and bottom of many banks and other institutions too.

If you’re blaming public sector employees, the unemployed or immigrants, you’re being divided and conquered by the real culprits

While the majority of people in employment in the UK have had pay rises below inflation,  effective cuts of an average of 4.5% ; the average city (i.e London financial sector) employee has seen their pay increase by 12% in the last six months, while managing directors have had a 21% increase (1) – (2). That’s equivalent to 19% and 37% rises in a year, after inflation. So the real division on pay and conditions is not public vs private sector, but ‘the city’ and top bank executives versus everyone else.

The endless rhetoric about supposedly ‘privileged’ public sector workers and unemployed ‘scroungers’ (while there are at least 6 people unemployed for every job vacancy) is just crude divide and conquer tactics.

The average London financial sector employee will get paid £83,000 plus a £20,000 bonus – or £103,000, compared to a median wage of £26,000 for the UK as a whole (3) – (4).

Around 710,000 public sector workers have either lost their job or are about to lose it, along with many people in the private sector  who’ve lost their jobs due to the knock on effects of a fall in consumer demand caused by the reduced income of the now unemployed public sector workers, or because banks have refused their business routine bridging loans.

It’s not so good either, if you are on a low income and live in socially rented housing, with the government having capped housing benefit and allowed rents in the social sector to rise to 80% of private sector rates, which are also rising as less people can afford to buy their own house, resulting in more renting (5) – (7). In fact many people who relied on social housing are being made homeless – and in the case of the others taxpayers are being forced to pay more to support them by the lifting of the cap on how much landlords in the ‘social’ sector can charge.

So the Coalition’s policies are good for a small minority – mostly in the markets or the city, advertising, public relations and media ownership, at the expense of the vast majority. It talks about the need to ‘protect’ the city and ‘maintain market confidence’, rewarding the people who caused the crisis, while punishing people who do jobs that benefit other people (8).

That’s why it’s been vital for the political success of the Conservative party (and their allies in the ‘city’ or ‘markets’ and banks) that the majority who are suffering should be divided from one another to eliminate the risk of the majority uniting against the small minority in whose interests the Conservatives are acting.

The unemployed as ‘scroungers’ – even though there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all of them

Decades of propaganda from tabloids owned by billionaires and from a Conservative party (and sometimes a New Labour party) largely funded by billionaires and multi-millionaires has been devoted to creating scapegoats – targets to divert blame away from the people who have the actual power and wealth.

One target has been the unemployed – supposedly all parasites who don’t want to work, despite the fact that the figures show there have never been enough jobs for all the unemployed during economic booms never mind during the worst recession since the 1930s.

The Office for National Statistics figures for July to October 2011 show that there were 462,000 job vacancies,  compared to 2.62 million people unemployed – around 6 people unemployed for every job  (and due to many methods of fiddling the figures developed by governments over the years, that is almost certainly an underestimate of the number of people unemployed) (9) – (10).

It’s undoubtedly true that a minority don’t want to work. If there are no jobs available for them even if they did want to, that’s pretty academic though.

The Daily Mail was outraged that Chancellor George Osborne increased benefits in line with inflation – by 5.2%, talking about this as a ‘big rise’ – it’s not. It only stops them being reduced by inflation – in practice they stay at the same level – about £60 a week – rather than being cut.

The propaganda seems to work as intended though, dividing the employed from the unemployed and even getting some of each to vote entirely against their own interests in and in the interests of billionaires and big multinational companies, on the assumption that any ‘benefit reforms’ will target only the undeserving, lazy unemployed and not them.

Which is more of a parasite? Someone on unemployment benefit getting £60 a week? Or a large company, a primary PFI contractor, which gets taxpayers to pay it dozens of times the amount they would pay in interest on a loan to fund construction of a new hospital or school? There’s no doubt the latter get a lot more public money for nothing.

Immigrants and the EU

Then there are immigrants – who don’t get any benefits unless granted refugee status – and then get benefits well below those given to British citizens. They, like the EU, are foreign – and so an easy target to deflect blame on to. The city traders who helped cause the crisis are British; and so supposedly on our side, even after causing the entire problem and being grossly over-paid for jobs many of which harm the majority of people.

Public sector Vs Private Sector

Finally there are the supposedly ‘cushy’ jobs held by public sector workers with ‘gold plated’ pensions. Osborne talks about public sector workers being ‘paid for’ by workers in the private sector, as if public sector workers aren’t doing vital jobs looking after NHS patients, saving people from fires, arresting criminals, teaching children; and as if public sector workers don’t pay tax at the same rate as private sector employees.

While Cameron and Osborne sack hundreds of thousands of these people to keep ‘the markets; who caused the crisis happy, Cameron has pledged to protect ‘the city’ against any EU actions that might reduce their profits.

There are some private sector workers who do vital jobs – there are a lot who fit the description ‘parasite’ very well though – the hedge fund managers trading in food futures traders in  ‘the city’ who effectively spend their time betting that the price of food will rise, then buying up food to ensure it does, causing starvation for many of the poorest people in the world and hunger even for some of the poorest here.

What I don’t understand is how so many people are so easily conned over and over again? How long will they continue to fall for such obvious divide and conquer tactics and be diverted into pointless arguments between the middle class and the working class, between the employed and the unemployed, between public sector workers and private sector workers?

(New Labour government ministers who were on a pay of over £100,000 a year and many of them – including Tony Blair – formerly lawyers – also played the ‘middle class’ vs ‘working class’ divide and conquer card, pretending that lawyers turned MPs and government ministers were working class heroes.)

The vast majority of people working in the public and private sectors, even up to the managers of small and medium sized businesses, are doing work that does benefit society as a whole and are paid a fraction of what the bank and hedge fund managers get.

Yet while bank managers and the heads of the biggest firms are paying themselves between millions and tens of millions a year, plus the same again in bonuses, often at taxpayers’ expense in bailed out banks, the Conservatives’ tactics of divide and rule ensure many peoples’ anger is directed not at the real parasites, but at other people who are also their victims.

 (1) = Astbury Marsden Compensation Survey 2011 – Banking Infrastructure London,http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tN8-iJkGpa8J:www.astburymarsden.com/documents/Astbury%2520Marsden%2520Compensation%2520Survey%25202011_Banking%2520Infrastructure%2520London%2520small.pdf+Astbury+Marsden+report+city+pay&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjCp35WxasQC0uKU6hyPufcF3PKQgqywr0k1qNAEGK_4wMSeFBhohPhKrGo7oTiY4RLukF4E51KGYTxH6kmRfhX-1zs80hIKdv6Ckao6ZzZxFrjD6HI5anmt52lZR3QiNTc0ttx&sig=AHIEtbS9vlPCGJzgvi4HFde7s45wAlnw_w

(2) = guardian.co.uk 23 Nov 2011 ‘UK incomes fall 3.5% in real terms, ONS reveals’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/nov/23/uk-household-earnings-fall?commentpage=last#end-of-comments(including people in part-time jobs, fall is 4.5% including inflation – a 0.5% rise minus 4.5% inflation)

(3) = Guardian 28 Nov 2011 ‘Banks under fresh pressure to curb bonus and dividend payouts’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/banks-curb-bonuses-dividends

(4) = Office for National Statistics ‘2011 Annual Survey of Hours and Earning -Median full-time gross annual earnings’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/ashe-results-2011/ashe-statistical-bulletin-2011.html#tab-Annual-earnings

(5) = BBC News 27 Oct 2010 ‘No change to housing benefit plan – Cameron’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11633163

(6) = guardian.co.uk 22 Nov 2011 ‘Housing strategy prices people out of homes’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/22/housing-strategy-prices-people-homes

(7) = guardian.co.uk 16 Sep 2011 ‘UK rents rise by record amount in August’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/sep/16/rents-rise-record-amount-august

(8) = Guardian 07 Dec 2011 ‘David Cameron threatens veto if EU treaty fails to protect City of London’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/07/cameron-threatens-veto-eu-treaty

(9) =  Office for National Statistics ‘Labour Market Statistics, November 2011’, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/index.html

(10) = Labour market statistics: 16 Nov 2011 – Vacancies - http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/november-2011/statistical-bulletin.html#tab-Vacancies

Neither Cameron’s concern for the City of London financial traders who caused the crisis nor Eurozone balanced budgets will solve the real problems

It’s hard to know which is worse between David Cameron’s concern for regulations that might harm the ‘City of London’  - i.e the stock market traders, hedge fund managers and bank executives who caused the crisis - at the expense of everyone else; or the Eurozone governments’ fantasy that balanced budgets will solve everything.

Both ignore the actual causes of the crisis – deregulation of the financial sector leading to massive fraud causing a crisis when it was discovered and global recession.

In addition the Eurozone ‘fiscal unity’ plan ignores the fact that trade between countries with stronger and weaker economies will inevitably lead to trade imbalances and so deficits in the governments of the weaker economies unless there is major redistribution from wealthier to poorer economies, invested in development.

The Franco-German plan at least recognises that re-regulation of the financial sector is necessary to avoid another crisis, even if it doesn’t go far enough in re-regulating.

Balanced budgets will do nothing to prevent another banking crisis, because it doesn’t prevent debts being run up by the banks and other ‘financial institutions’ in the private sector again, nor does it stop them developing and fraudulently trading new ‘financial instruments’.

A balanced budget does nothing to guarantee a strong economy either. In fact it may prevent borrowing to invest in developing new technologies and infrastructure that would lead to development in the future; and it prevents governments ending recessions through stimulus packages.

Why would any national government give up control of how much it taxes and borrows to the Euro-zone?

Even states of the US in a federal system don't give up that power (though extreme free market ideology has led many of them to practically abolish taxes, leading to bankruptcy at the state level in California and elsewhere).

There is pretty much no chance of the Greek, Spanish, Portugese or Italian public approving of the fiscal unity plan in referenda even if it gets through their parliaments; and even the French are intensely nationalistic and unlikely to give up that much sovereignty.

Some French and German politicians have already suggested Greece might wish to leave the euro - so perhaps the fiscal unity plan is intended to force the weaker economies out of the euro-zone, leaving it with maybe France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Holland, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Why is there a focus solely on levels of debt when Germany's debt as a percentage of GDP in 2011 is expected to be 81.1% of GDP according to German government projections (1). So how can it lecture Greece or Italy on debt? Like other European countries, it's debt only became a critical problem due to the recession which resulted from the financial crisis.

So I don’t blame Cameron for refusing to sign up to the fiscal unity deal – I blame him for only defending the interests of city traders who have retained incomes including bonuses averaging over £100,000 a year , including a 12% average pay increase in the last six months (equivalent to 19% in the last year when 5% inflation is taken into account), while he sacks hundreds of thousands of public sector employees on a fifth or less of that wage who provide healthcare, education, policing and emergency services while many city traders profit from the suffering of others and are grossly over-paid for jobs that do more harm than good to other people (2) - (3).

City of London financial traders are the last people who need protected from ‘bureaucracy’ – they need reined in hard, with regulators coming down on them like a ton of bricks to prevent them causing another crisis - and if the government really want to tax the 'haves' and not the 'have nots', they'd be better raising taxes on city traders rather then sacking teachers and nurses.

(1) = Wall Street Journal 28Oct 2011 ‘German Government Now Sees '11 Debt-To-GDP Ratio At 81.1%-Spokesman’, http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20111028-713887.html

(2) = Astbury Marsden Compensation Survey 2011 – Banking Infrastructure London,http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:tN8-iJkGpa8J:www.astburymarsden.com/documents/Astbury%2520Marsden%2520Compensation%2520Survey%25202011_Banking%2520Infrastructure%2520London%2520small.pdf+Astbury+Marsden+report+city+pay&hl=en&gl=uk&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjCp35WxasQC0uKU6hyPufcF3PKQgqywr0k1qNAEGK_4wMSeFBhohPhKrGo7oTiY4RLukF4E51KGYTxH6kmRfhX-1zs80hIKdv6Ckao6ZzZxFrjD6HI5anmt52lZR3QiNTc0ttx&sig=AHIEtbS9vlPCGJzgvi4HFde7s45wAlnw_w

(3) = Guardian 28 Nov 2011 ‘Banks under fresh pressure to curb bonus and dividend payouts’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/28/banks-curb-bonuses-dividends

Police are not confused about how much force they can use in what situation - given past abuses of their authority they can't get a blank cheque

Claims made by police spokesmen on BBC News 24 that police are “confused” about what level of force they can use and that this is making it difficult for them to deal with rioters need to be taken with a huge pile of salt. The line they’re pushing is that in the past police have ended up in court for simply trying to prevent crimes. They know that’s a lie. The only police who ended up in court or fired were those involved in the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes after massive incompetence by senior officers given the power of life and death over others; and others like the officer who repeatedly assaulted bypasser Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests; the officer who attacked the loud but tiny environmentalist protester Nicola Fisher with a baton (and got off with it) ; and the officer who dragged a prisoner across a police station before throwing her face down into a cell.

Others who should be facing charges of grievous bodly harm and endangering lives have got off with it. They include the policeman who beat peaceful student protester Alfie Meadows so hard with a baton that he would have died if he hadn’t had emergency brain surgery – and the officers who tried to turn the ambulance carrying him away from the nearest hospital as protesters being treated in the same hospital as injured police offended their sensibilities (presumably on the usual theory held by the stupidest and worst police officers that all protesters are criminals).

 Some police spokesmen are trying to use the riots to reverse planned job and funding cuts. That’s fair enough. I support increasing the number of police and i'd guess most people do. However they’re also using them to try to demand a blank cheque to use any amount of force they feel like in any situation and to try to get the public to place them above the law. That won’t wash.

If they’re confused about how much force they can use when they’re not up to the job – they can use what the law allows – the amount required to defend themselves and others and to prevent serious crimes – and no more.

No blank cheques to beat up anyone they like.

The initial rioting in Tottenham seems to have been caused by police shooting Mark Duggan (who may or may not have been armed but we now know definitely did not fire first – or at all) and by fifteen riot police subsequently beating a single 16 year old girl who was one of a large group of family, friends and neighbours of Duggan demanding answers from them, after she threw a leaflet and possibly a stone. That underlines the fact that giving the police a blank cheque to do as they please and believing them without question (even though their spokespeople lied about De Menezes , Tomlinson and other cases) will not make the public safer or reduce crime, but is likely to cause it instead.

The police know that when they act in self-defence or the defence of others with the amount of force necessary in the situation they’ll have public support and be acting within the law. They have to be in no more doubt than the rioters that they can’t launch random attacks on people or break the law without facing consequences. If the police were allowed to be above the law, it would only breed contempt for it and them, which would be bad for everyone.

Riot police beating 16 year old girl protesting Duggan shooting may have sparked the first riots - in Tottenham , London

The riots across London and other English cities have obviously involved a lot of opportunist theft and violence many actions that can’t be justified in any way, like the burning of public housing and three men run over and killed by a hit and run driver in Manchester – and far from it all being children out of control, there are plenty of looters in their 20s and some parents sending their children to loot shops according to eyewitnesses.

The shooting of Mark Duggan doesn’t seem to have been the only spark that started the first riots, in the Tottenham area of London, though. Reports by eyewitnesses  quoted on the Guardian website say that after Duggan was shot and killed by armed police, Tottenham community leaders and Duggan’s partner, family, friends and neighbours, among others, came on to the street to demand to know exactly what had happened. Hours later, with no answers provided, a 16 year old girl approached a line of riot police saying “We need answers, talk to us” and throwing a leaflet and possibly a stone at them. Fifteen riot police then jumped on her with shields and batons and began to beat her, triggering a riot (1).

Various eye-witnesses all agree that the initial gathering in the street was peaceful. Some claim some of the group were armed and carrying petrol, ready for looting and burning, though others deny this (2).

The media has quoted Metropolitan police spokespeople as saying Duggan was a “well-known” “major player” (i.e senior gangster) who was armed with a gun at the time he was shot (3).

This might be true. Or it might not. Metropolitan police spokespeople have said many things that turned out to be completely untrue about people they’ve shot the wrong people dead in the past, most notably Jean Charles De Menezes, the Brazilian electrician shot as a suspected suicide bomber in in an operation involving unbelievable levels of incompetence, carelessness and stupidity from people trusted with the powers of life and death over others.

Met spokespeople claimed De Menezes ‘jumped the ticket barrier’ on entering an underground station (CCTV footage and eye-witnesses disproved this), claimed he was wearing a bulky jacket with wires coming out of it (again proven false) and that police had called in medics by helicopter to try to revive him after the shooting (which seems pretty unlikely since they’d shot him 8 times in the head).

Similar lies by police came in the case of Ian Tomlinson, a newsagent walking home, who was ‘kettled’ along with (mostly peaceful) G20 protesters after a handful of protesters smashed a bank window. Police then set a dog on him and one officer hit him with a baton and shoved him twice, resulting in his death. They then invented stories about protesters pelting them with bottles as they tried to save the life of Tomlinson, who had supposedly had a heart attack due to the protesters’ actions. They went on to employ a coroner known to be dishonest to deal with the post-mortem. (In this case the policeman involved was eventually fired).

This does not prove they are lying about Duggan having had a gun, but it means the word of the police can’t be automatically trusted and we have to wait for a full investigation to find out the facts.

Initial investigations by the Independent Police Complaints Commission have found that the police’s original claim that Duggan was shot after firing on armed police officers is wrong. IPCC investigators found the bullet lodged in one officer’s radio, which Duggan had supposedly fired,  was a police issue one, not the kind of ammunition in the gun they claim Duggan had (4). This suggests that the police fired first, the police were the only ones who fired ; and at least one police officer lied about this, though it’s possible other police genuinely believed Duggan had fired the shot that hit the radio.

We can’t be certain whether either side is telling the truth or the whole truth here of course, about the shooting or the beating, but given the extremely poor record on honesty of Metropolitan Police spokespeople, anyone taking claims as fact without waiting for an inquiry will be relying on a source that has proven less than reliable in the past.

(1) = Guardian.co.uk 07 Aug 2011 ‘Tottenham riots: a peaceful protest, then suddenly all hell broke loose’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/07/tottenham-riots-peaceful-protest

(2) = See (1) above

(3) = Telegraph 08 Aug 2011 ‘London riots: Dead man Mark Duggan was a known gangster who lived by the gun’, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8687403/London-riots-Dead-man-Mark-Duggan-was-a-known-gangster-who-lived-by-the-gun.html

(4) = Guardian.co.uk 09 Aug 2011 ‘Mark Duggan did not shoot at police, says IPCC’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/09/mark-duggan-police-ipcc

Police violence against the peaceful majority of student protesters and passers-by should be punished too - they shouldn't be above the law

Student protesters have come in for a great deal of criticism in the media lately, but a lot of it has been less than balanced – with a ridiculous fixation on the relatively minor incident involving Prince Charles and Camilla. The minority of protesters who have made serious attacks on police, for instance throwing snooker balls, often causing serious injuries to officers, will get little sympathy and will likely get jail sentences. However the majority of non-violent protesters are not responsible for the actions of this minority – and, with a few exceptions, too little attention has been paid to the continuing and increasing instances of random police violence against non-violent protesters and passers-by, which so far follow a long established pattern of police being above the law. This too often turns the police uniform from what it should be – and still is when worn by many decent officers – a uniform whose wearers uphold the law and only act in self-defence or defence of others – to a shield which allows those who have let power go to their heads, or who want to be able to attack others without consequence, to be immune to prosecution for their actions.

 “Kettling” for short periods to identify and arrest those responsible for violence or serious criminal damage may be legitimate. However when extended for long periods - up to 7 hours in sub-zero temperatures in London recently and in the G20 protests, it becomes effectively illegal detention without trial (1).

Non-violent protesters like Alfie Meadows, seriously injured last week by a baton strike to the head, have been attacked by police for no apparent reason. Meadow’s life was only saved by an ambulance crew refusing to cave to police pressure and 3 hours of brain surgery. Meadow only survived because his mother was nearby and both had mobile phones. She said she remembered the Blair Peach death and knew he needed treatment fast. Meadows’ mother said that despite police claims that they would allow clearly peaceful protesters to leave the police were “The police had been very violent all day. Whoever was trying to get out, they weren't allowing them.”. Police initially refused to allow a Professor to accompany Meadow out of the “kettling” to get an ambulance; and tried to turn the ambulance carrying him away from the nearest hospital , as police were also being treated there (2) – (4).  This was illegal and suggests an unacceptable attitude among some police that all protesters, peaceful and violent, are the enemy in a war.

Passer-by Ian Tomlinson, who wasn’t even a protester but trying to go home from work, died after repeated assaults by the same police officer during “kettling” in the G20 protests, seen by witnesses and recorded on video, with his attacker never charged (5) – (6). The officer will face a disciplinary hearing held by the Metropolitan Police, but such hearings usually lead to all charges being dismissed (two examples later) (7). 

Police have continued to sweep up passers-by along with journalists and non-violent protesters in “kettling” the recent student protests in London and in many cases to attack them with batons and mounted charges and even refuse them medical treatment (8) – (10).

For instance Guardian journalist Caroline Davies emailed a colleague on the first day of the protests in London saying that another journalist, Shiv Malik, had told her the following

‘The crowd surged in an attempt to break through the police line, and I was caught on the same side as the police but facing towards them with the fence behind me. The fence came right up to the police line. The police started to push back then they started using their batons on protesters. I was caught then and pushed up towards the front. I ducked, my glasses were knocked off my face so I was trying to hold them. Then, basically, a baton strike came to the side of my face and then onto the top of my head. Directly onto the crown of my head.  I felt a big whacking thud and I heard it reverberating inside my head. I wasn't sure whether I was bleeding or not. I moved off to the side and asked a police officer if I was bleeding. But he just said 'Keep moving, keep moving". Then I put my hand to the top of my head and looked at my palm and I could see there was blood everywhere. I then asked another police officer, who was wearing a police medic badge, if he could help me. And he told me to move away as well and told me to go to another exit.’ (11).

Witnesses and a video also seem to show police dragged a disabled protester from his wheelchair and struck him and others trying to stop them with batons (12).

When some police are placed above the law public safety is lost. When police killed protester Blair Peach in 1979 through a baton strike to the head, no-one was ever tried. When a joint police and British military intelligence operation killed Brazilian electrician Jean Charles De Menezes due to stunning carelessness and disorganisation – and police spokespeople churned out a series of rapidly disproven lies to try to justify the action - no-one even lost their job. Metropolitan Police Chief Sir Ian Blair later resigned over a dispute with Mayor Boris Johnson (13) – (14).

When 6 foot plus, body armoured, police officer Sergeant Delroy Smellie was approached by 5 foot tall protester Nicola Fisher at a vigil for Ian Tomlinson, he turned, first told her to go away, then , as she continued to argue with him, hit her twice with his hand and then took out his baton and struck her hard across the leg with it twice – all caught on video (15). Whatever your view of whether Fisher was justified in haranguing or challenging him or not Smellie’s response was un-necessary, violent and in no way defence of himself or anyone else. Yet his force and a District Judge both decided he had no charges – criminal or disciplinary to face.

Another officer, caught on CCTV video dragging a female prisoner across the floor of a police station before picking her up and throwing her face down onto the floor of a cell, causing injuries and bleeding to her face, was similarly cleared of all charges on appeal after being convicted at his initial trial (16).

We can’t afford to let police forces, judges or politicians misguidedly protect a minority of thugs within police ranks the way the upper hierarchy of the Catholic Church has protected paedophile priests – and make no mistake, a minority of those who join the police do so in order to abuse that position and hurt people, just as with those paedophiles who become priests or teachers or nursery staff for the same reason. If we do the rot will spread and we will risk a police state. Police forces only enhance public safety when they are strictly required to obey the same laws they enforce.

There are police who uphold the law and only use force when there’s no other option, proportionate to that used by others - and only in self-defence or the defence of others, often in the face of provocation, threat, or attacks which can or have caused serious injuries. They deserve our full support and respect.

However those who lash out at random – or because they think they can make violent attacks themselves, shielded from prosecution by their uniform – should be charged, tried and sentenced like any other suspect– and expelled from the force if found guilty. The latter are unfortunately too common, largely because politicians, judges and senior police officers are often so biased or so fearful of being seen as “soft on crime” or as “not supporting the police” that they will not uphold the law when police officers break it – even when deaths result.

We should not always place the blame solely on the lowest ranks either. Politicians and senior police officers making strategic and tactical decisions must bear responsibility for some of the results of those decisions.

Governments and big parties also give seemingly unconditional support to police most of the time for another reason – they rely on the police to crush opposition to their policies, especially when, as is often the case, those policies benefit a minority at the expense of the majority or a larger minority (usually the poorest and those on middle incomes). The police, granted secure jobs by the state, have a traditional alliance with the government in crushing the poor and the newly unemployed when the government sacks public sector employees and cuts benefits for the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.  In the 1980s the main target were the miners. In the 1990s, poll tax resisters.

Many people who witnessed the trouble at the student protests at Millbank, when student protesters occupied Conservative Party headquarters and smashed windows, believe that either the police were hugely incompetent in their estimates of likely demonstrator numbers and so police numbers required ; or else they were sending the Coalition government a subtle message – don’t keep threatening us with cuts along with the rest, because you’ll need us to protect you from public anger against those cuts.

(Only a few dozen students cheered the idiot who dropped the fire extinguisher – with the majority on the ground booing at the dropping of it and chanting “stop throwing shit” (16))

Nor has the Coalition delivered on it’s claims to be restoring civil liberties. Instead anti-terrorism police, who might have been better focusing on actual threats, have questioned a 12 year old schoolboy for attempting to organise a picket of David Cameron’s constituency offices to protest the planned closure of their youth centre. It’s not clear whether the police were acting on the orders of some superior or member of government or on their own initiative.

 

(1) = guardian.co.uk 10 Dec 2010 ‘Being kettled was a shocking experience’, by Jaqui Karn,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/10/kettled-shocking-experience

(Karn is a researcher on crime ethnography whose work has been published by the London School of Economics –http://www.willanpublishing.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=1843921952 )

(2) = Kingston Guardian 10 Dec 2010 ‘Kingston professor says protester with serious injuries was "hit by police"’,
http://www.kingstonguardian.co.uk/news/8731809.BREAKING_NEWS__Uni_professor_says_protester_with_serious_injuries_was__hit_by_police_/

(3) = Independent 10 Dec 2010 ‘Police investigate truncheon attack’,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/brain-op-for-student-hit-by-truncheon-2156207.html

(4) = Observer 12 Dec 2010 ‘Police officers 'tried to stop hospital staff treating injured protester'’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/12/police-injured-protester-hospital

(5) = Guardian 07 Apr 2009 ‘Video reveals G20 police assault on man who died’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/video-g20-police-assault (also gives eye-witness statements contradicting the Metropolitan police’s initial version of events which was reproduced in many newspapers)

(6) = Guardian 22 Jul 2010 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: police officer will not face criminal charges’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/22/ian-tomlinson-police-not-charged

(7) = guardian.co.uk 27 Jul 2010 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: police officer faces disciplinary hearing’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jul/27/ian-tomlinson-death-paul-stephenson

(8) = Guardian 27 Nov 2010 ‘Letters : Police kettling stirs the pot of student unrest’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/nov/27/police-kettling-stirs-student-unrest (see 1^st, 3^rd and 4^th letters)

(9) = guardian.co.uk 10 Dec 2010 ‘Being kettled was a shocking experience’, by Jaqui Karn,http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/10/kettled-shocking-experience

(Karn is a researcher on crime ethnography whose work has been published by the London School of Economics –http://www.willanpublishing.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=1843921952 )

(10) = Guardian 26 Nov 2010 ‘Student protests: Met under fire for charging at demonstrators’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/26/student-protests-police-under-fire

(11) = Guardian News Blog ‘Student protests – as they happened’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/blog/2010/dec/09/student-protests-live-coverage ; see entry for 4.31 p.m

(12) = East London Lines 10 Dec 2010 ‘Disabled journalist describes “violent” police as opponents of tuition fee rise vow to fight on’, http://www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2010/12/disabled-journalist-speaks-out-about-violent-police-as-dust-settles-on-student-demonstration/

(13) = see this article on my website and the source links at the bottom of it, http://www.duncanmcfarlane.org/menezes

(14) = BBC News 17 Aug 2005 ‘Police shooting - the discrepancies’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4158832.stm

(15) = Independent 17 Jun 2009 ‘No disciplinary action for G20 assault case officer’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/no-disciplinary-action-for-g20-assault-case-officer-2003173.html

(16) = guardian.co.uk 18 Nov 2010 ‘Police sergeant cleared of assaulting woman suspect in custody’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/18/police-sergeant-andrews-freed-appeal

(17) = New York Times 10 Nov 2010 ‘Video of Student Protests in London’,
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/video-of-students-protests-in-london/

Join the police and get away with murder

Ian Tomlinson lies dead or dying after being hit with a baton and then knocked to the ground by policeman Simon Harwood. As in the Jean Charles De Menezes case the Crown Prosecution Service refused to bring any charges.

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, claims there is no realistic prospect of a prosecution against Police Officer Simon Harwood for the death of Ian Tomlinson succeeding despite video evidence and many eyewitnesses (1) – (3). Two reputable pathologists also say Tomlinson died of internal bleeding caused by “blunt force trauma”. They say the likely cause is the baton attack on Tomlinson by Harwood and/or him pushing Tomlinson over onto the pavement (4) - (5).

Liver disease caused by Ian Tomlinson's alcoholism made him more vulnerable to these kind of injuries according to the pathologists. It's also unlikly Harwood was deliberately trying to kill Tomlinson, but his actions were clearly assault - and since they also caused Tomlinson's death - manslaughter

Mr Starmer claimed the lack of a prospect of a successful prosecution was due to the “fundamental disagreement between the experts about the cause of Mr Tomlinson's death”, as if the word of Dr. Patel, who is facing multiple disciplinary hearings from the General Medical Council over his conduct of previous pathological reports – and is banned from carrying out further ones for the Home Office, is testimony as reliable as that from two other pathologists, neither of whom are facing any charges (5).

The delay of over 6 months by the DPP in coming to a decision on whether to bring charges against the policeman involved is very convenient for that officer as it means no assault charge can be brought against him (6).

The Crown Prosecution Service’s website claims that “The CPS exists to ensure that wrongdoers are brought to justice, victims of crime are supported and that people feel safer in their communities.” (7)

After going out of their way to prevent anyone being brought to justice for the killings of Jean Charles De Menezes or Ian Tomlinson, perhaps they should add the qualification “unless those responsible are police officers, in which case we’re here to make sure they get off with it”.

They might as well put up recruitment signs saying “Join the police and get away with assault, GBH, mansalughter, maybe even murder!”.

Those newspapers which reported false police claims that officers had tried to help Tomlinson while being pelted with bottles and bricks by protesters should be made to correct those false claims with headlines just as prominent (8). Multiple eye-witnesses say Tomlinson was helped by protesters who phoned an ambulance while police ordered them to “move on”. They also said the only bottles thrown were plastic ones, by people in the centre of the crowd who didn’t know what was going on – and stopped when they were told (9).

In China a woman was beaten for 15 minutes by police officers for trying to petition a Communist Party Official about a problem. The beating stopped when police realised she wasn’t a petitioner but the wife of the official, which, apparently, is the only reason it’s news, as it’s common to assign police to beat up petitioners to discourage them from complaining to officials (10). So much for free market reform bringing democracy to China. So far, at least, it’s clearly not working.

In the US something similar happened to a black man suspected of being on drugs when he refused to change into a medical gown in a hospital. Hospital security guards began beating and tasering  him until they found out he was the nephew of Supreme Court Justice Thomas Clarence (11).

It seems that wherever you go in the world, democracy, dictatorship or one party state, police can break the law by beating people for little or nothing, even commit manslaughter or murder, and get off with it. That doesn’t seem that democratic.

(1) = CPS ‘The death of Ian Tomlinson - decision on prosecution’, http://www.cps.gov.uk/news/articles/the_death_of_ian_tomlinson_decision_on_prosecution/ , (for summary see BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 )

(2) = Guardian 07 Apr 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: Guardian video reveals police attack on man who died at G20 protest’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video

(3) = Guardian 08 April 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of dogs, batons and an attack by police’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/g20-ian-tomlinson-death-witnesses

(4) =  BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 - see sub-section headed ‘Analysis’ half-way down the page and to the right of the main report, which says ‘In the case of Mr Tomlinson, two pathologists - one instructed by the police and the other by his family - agreed that he died partly from internal bleeding caused by "blunt-force trauma".But the first examination was carried out by Dr Freddy Patel, a Home Office pathologist, who says Mr Tomlinson died of a heart attack. ‘

(5) = BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘Tomlinson pathologist facing GMC’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10729545

(6) = BBC News 22 July 2010 ‘G20: No charges over Ian Tomlinson demo death’,http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10723274 ‘Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority, said......."If everybody had moved a bit faster wemight have actually been in the time-frame for an assault charge to be brought," ‘

(7) = Crown Prosecution Service ‘Your CPS’, http://www.cps.gov.uk/yourcps.html

(8) = e.g Evening Standard 02 Apr 2009 ‘Police pelted with bricks as they help dying man’, http://www.chickyog.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/esp67-02042009.pdf

(9) = Guardian 08 April 2009 ‘Ian Tomlinson death: G20 witnesses tell of dogs, batons and an attack by police’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/08/g20-ian-tomlinson-death-witnesses

(10) = Guardian 22 July 2010 ‘Chinese police beat official's wife by mistake’,http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/22/china-police-beat-wife-official

(11) = ABC News 09 July 2010 ‘Judge Clarence Thomas' Nephew Derek Tasered by Hospital Staff, Family Says’, http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/07/judge-clarence-thomas-nephew-derek-tasered-by-hospital-staff-family-says.html