Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/692/13073
From The Socialist newspaper, 2 November 2011
Liverpool council 'does its best' for the bankers
Tony Mulhearn
In rejecting the option to stand up and fight for Liverpool's hard-pressed working families, council leader Joe Anderson, at Liverpool council's Question Time public consultation on 27 October, claimed that he was doing his best for the people of the city.
He asked how to make £51 million in spending cuts next year. This is an outrage when bankers are trousering billions in bonuses, when CEOs' pay increased by 50% this year, when an estimated £150 billion of fat cats' tax is uncollected and when it is revealed that the senior tax collector Mike Clasper, after being wined and dined, has cut a deal with billionaires which allows them to avoid paying much needed mega-loads of tax.
The meeting was an exercise in obfuscation and misinformation.
Joe, responding to robust criticism for his lack of leadership, claimed he was building thousands of homes and creating thousands of apprenticeships.
A peculiar claim when the city council has no house-building programme and is currently shedding hundreds of jobs.
And what type of apprenticeships are these? Are they for engineers, joiners, bricklayers, who will then have full-time jobs building the houses, schools and hospitals we need? Joe's answer should be interesting.
The fact is that they are not real apprenticeships and the house building is being carried out by agencies other than the council.
In response to demands to set a 'needs budget', he retorted that he was not prepared to go illegal nor was he prepared to 'martyr the city'.
But he is prepared to martyr those in need of council services and jobs which are being demolished.
He boasted that the 67% of the vote Labour received in the last elections was an endorsement of his cuts policy. No Joe. That vote was a clear signal from the workers of the city telling Labour to protect them from the Tory/Liberal onslaught.
Joe's stance confirms that the Labour Party has morphed into a party which is no different to the other two main parties.
That underlines the desperate need to intensify the campaign to defeat the Con-Dem government by joining the industrial action on 30 November and to link that movement to establishing a new mass party of the working class.
See Liverpool city council and its 'consultation' for more on Liverpool council's consultation sham
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In The Socialist 2 November 2011:
Building anti-cuts action
Bosses prosper, workers suffer...
Workers can show their power in 30 November strike
Socialist Party workplace news
Socialist Party
Why you should join the Socialist Party
Read the Socialist - the paper that fights all the cuts
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Bradford joins the 'Occupy' movement
Jarrow marchers in solidarity action at Northampton university
Liverpool council 'does its best' for the bankers
Lansley closes another hospital A&E department
Socialist Party news and analysis
As the Jarrow March for Jobs arrives in London... Youth demand their future!
No return to hire and fire - Tories consider abolishing more workers' rights
International socialist news and analysis
Tunisia: Elections mask the growing anger from below
Ireland: Spectacular election result for socialists
Tony Blair advises Kazakhstan's dictatorial regime
Socialist Party reviews
1985 school strike exhibit shows how young people can organise to fight back
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