Brown: some timid reformism, please!
“Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, yesterday announced an 88 per cent jump in its pre-tax profits to £2.97 billion for the first half of this year.
“It came the day after the company raised gas prices for 10 million households by 35 per cent.
“The average annual gas bill for British Gas customers is now more than £1,300 and it emerged yesterday that the four million customers paying by direct debit will see an increase of 42 per cent on their annual bill.
“However, shareholders are set to enjoy a 16 per cent jump in their dividend pay outs.” – Daily Telegraph, 05/09/2008.
And yet Brown, terrified of upsetting the bloated capitalists, insults working class people by rejecting a windfall tax on the fuel companies’ huge profits, and getting young Benn to lecture us about having our lofts insulated! This after having slashed the “Warm Front” scheme!
‘Unite‘’s Tony Woodley is, of course, 100 per cent correct when he says that the poor and the elderly will die as a result of Brown’s grovelling to big business. But what will Woodley do about it? Threaten to withold finance from the Labour Party? After all, that’s all he can do, if he means business, and can persuade the rest of ‘Unite’ and the seriously unhinged Derek Simpson, to agree to take action.
Red Maria said,
September 6, 2008 at 12:25 am
The “seriously unhinged Derek Simpson”? How so? Do elaborate.
charliethechulo said,
September 7, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Maria, Simpson’s vindictive campaigns against all who cross him and the series of sackings of former supporters that he has been personally responsible for (the latest being some poor sod in the Amicus IT department who made the mistake of having a chat with Tony Woodley about a possible job transfer), are not political: they can only be explained by a very strange and ultra-defensive personality. This is compounded by his strange loyalty to Gordon Brown and his hiring of former Brown aid Charle Whelan as political advisor. Simpson’s latest rantings against David Miliband (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/sep/07/tradeunions.labour?gusrc=rss&feed=uknews) are nothing to do with any sort of healthy hatred of Blairism: they’re all about his misplaced loyalty to Brown.
Woodley has so far been reluctant to confront Simpson, and many within both the old T&G and the serious left of the old Amicus are now calling for a show-down with Simpson and his allies like Steve Davidson (who recently split the so-called Amicus Unity Gazette group). In particular the new Unite Exec needs to wake up to the fact that people like Charlie Whelan are their employees and servants – not the other way round.
Hamster said,
September 7, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Yes, Charlie Wheelan: what an obnoxious little creep. The sort of person I love to hate.
voltairespriest said,
September 7, 2008 at 2:32 pm
In fact, the united left in UNITE is probably better off without Davison et al. Still got a GEC majority (albeit smaller) and no need to deal with a group of John Aitken clones.
UK Voter said,
September 7, 2008 at 3:49 pm
A windfall tax will just encourage the energy companies to increase the charges to claw the money back over the next couple of years. It is easy to apply, but is it not free money, it is just borrowed money.