Why hasn't there been a peoples protest?

[Ryoko]

Thinking about this the other day, we have the TUC, NUT etc coming out in force to moan about the treatment they get from the government, often treated with disdain from the masses as "they get paid more then us", "they have pensions I don't" etc.

Where is the protest for the people?, the general all encompassing protest at the incessant increase in taxation and drop in living standards that is keeping the economy down by ensuring we all keep our cash in our pockets (what little we have left).

Just a thought.

have always sent emails to our MP. i rarely get a reply though

she's far too important and on too many TV chat/game shows to bother

Funnily enough mine called me after i wrote a letter to him about CB. I expected the usual "I've forwarded it onto the ministers" rubbish then later a reply from some civil servant with a non-answer so it was nice to speak to him.

He's a self confessed raving socialist but as I told him, at least I know where he stands and he seems an honest chap. So on balance I'd rather he was in place than someone who will tell me what I want to hear just to get a vote.

Claig's on top form today

I think he is wrong because he doesn't understand that capitalism is not a clockwork system; it is a system run by people and some of those people are only interested in maximising their own riches. The asset bubbles and crises are created deliberately in order to enrich the elite and impoverish the people I concur, the asset bubbles and the crashes are caused by others, who's behaviour is endorsed, encouraged and made possible under this neo-liberal free market global economy. People can not act outside of the system, only within it.

I also think the climate change obsession is partly driven by the fact that capitalists having burst previous bubbles are looking to create new markets to exploit and generate wealth.

Kal, you right but then I think the press is the mouth piece for capitalism, controlled by individuals who's social and economic status relies on their ability to sooth the public into supplicant and misinformed putty. We all know the industry is up to it's neck in "suppers" with ministers just as the wealthy business owners are.

Why hasn't there been a peoples protest? because the only opposition party are the ones who got us into this mess & they are lead by someone who looks like...is it Wallace, or Grommit?

ttosca The students where protesting against something that is their self interest, doesn't interest me at all, didn't get EMA in my day, it was £14 a week income support and I never had the chance to go Uni so it's as much, interest to the general public as the other examples I gave.

Everyone is affected by taxation, I'm not talking about income tax, just everything, VAT, fag tax, booze tax, Hot snack tax, it's just tax upon tax, upon tax.

You get taxed on your wage (if you work) then you get VAT on everything, Council Tax etc. Tax, tax and more bloody tax.

(our family income is 23k a year BTW and we live in a privately rented flat).

Ryoko-

Saying the EMA "doesn't affect you" because you don't claim EMA is like saying that Rail Fares don't affect you because you walk or drive to work.

First of all, the EMA affected many students. They are not separate from society, but a part of society. Secondly, denying kids opportunities to get a good education - which is precisely what scrapping the EMA has done - affects all of society in very profound ways.

In the short term, anger, alienation, and not being at Uni or having a job can lead to being completely disconnected from society. When kids feel they have no stake in society, they act without thoughts of any repercussion or consequences. The recent London riots are an example of this.

In the long term, having a poorly education populace is bad for the entire country for very obvious reasons, which I hope I will not have to enumerate.

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RE: Tax. You're right, the average person is taxed too much, and the cost of living is too high. As I mentioned before, this is the result of neo-liberal policies Western governments have pushed through since the early 80s.

The total share of the tax burden has shifted away from corporations and on to individuals. The excuse is to make corporations 'more competitive'. Well, firstly, corporate tax in Germany is much higher than the UK, and it is the economic powerhouse of europe. Secondly, you will never be able to compete with China unless you drag the UK down to the standard of living of the Chinese. This must obviously be resisted.

Furthermore, rich individuals are good at evading tax. They start fake companies and then claim tax exemptions or lower rates when they make expenses in the name of the companies. The non-domicile status for the UK also means that 'non-doms' (even though they reside here) pay a lower rate of tax.

The end result is that the majority of the tax burden falls on working class and middle-class individuals earning low and median wages. The rich individuals and corporations are paying less and less.

The Tory scum are not helping the situation. They are making things worse. They are reducing corporation tax further, reducing the top rate of tax, and cutting down on HMRC funding in order to go after tax evaders.

People's standard of living and wages have remained stagnant or declined since the 1980s in real terms. This is due to downward pressure on wages, through attacks on unions, outsourcing, workers rights, etc. Meanwhile, the cost of living has increased due to privatization of public assets: the Rail system is a good example.

People are right to be angry. The average person is really struggling. Wealth inequality has never been greater. Unfortunately, neither party is offering a real solution, and the Tories are only doing the typical nasty Tory things which they always do and making things worse.

Protest is the only thing left to do.

Those who think EMA was a waste of money - 'if you think education costs too much, try ignorance'

Torrys play lip service to education, only too happy to scrap the EMA, I suspect too many well educated working class people would pose real problems for them.

Re EMA there no jobs for 16 year olds, they need financial help to stay on at school especially if they live in rural areas as they have to contribute to transport costs and poor families on very low wages just are unable to support their child. No wonder they rioted. We were so lucky and we got free university education.

Families of 16 year-olds still in education get CB of £20/week and, if they are on low wages, also get CTC for their children. If the child has been travelling to school from age 11, they can continue their studies in the school's sixth-form and have no additional travel expenses.

I think you are wrong our LEA charge about £350/year post 16 towards travel costs and most of the pupils have been at the school since they were 4. They still pay despite having comple needs
Also around here not all senior schools have a 6th form our nearest is 9 miles away.

What a lot of people on MN seem to forget, is that while the conservatives didn't win an absolute majority at the last election, they still got far and away the majority of the votes.
And when you vote Tory you know what you are voting for, so we have to assume that the majority of the population are happy with the broad direction the government are taking.

Now that is not to say that aren't specific areas which are being handled badly and which we need to write to MPs etc about.

Aliba-

What a lot of people on MN seem to forget, is that while the conservatives didn't win an absolute majority at the last election, they still got far and away the majority of the votes.

'Far and away'? The Tories got 36% vs 29% of the votes for Labour. Hardly overwhelming.

And when you vote Tory you know what you are voting for, so we have to assume that the majority of the population are happy with the broad direction the government are taking.

You make two mistakes here. The first an absolutely fundamental mistake:

a) The majority of voters does NOT equal the majority of the population.

b) In fact, you quite clearly don't know what you are voting for when you vote Tory scum (or Lib Dem, for that matter). Nobody voted for the privitisation of the NHS. In fact, the Tories explicitly made a promise there would be no top-down re-organisation of the NHS. They did the exact opposite. The Lib Dems did a complete U-turn over tuition fees and broke their manifesto pledge.

So both parties in government actually did a complete U-turn on policies for which they were supposedly elected. Neither one of the parties discussed the brutal austerity measures which they would put in place, because they knew it would be an election loser.

Here's a "People's Protest" in Spain:

Eurozone crisis live: Spanish general strike kicks off

www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/29/eurozone-crisis-spanish-general-strike?fb=native

Expect more of this sort of thing during the coming spring and summer months, throughout europe.

Greek unions are watching events in Spain closely today, says Helena Smith our correspondent in Athens.

Greek unionists from both the public and private sector have told her they see today's general strike as the beginning of a Pan European revolt against the self-defeating policies of austerity

Helena writes:

Trade unionists representing civil servants n Greece, who have been hardest hit by repeated rounds of austerity over the past two years, said they were in "constant touch" with comrades in Spain and were monitoring the situation closely.

"Today's strike shows that it's not just us Greeks, there's a groundswell of aggression against policies whose ultimate aim is to turn Europe into a place of exploitation," said Ilias Iliopoulos general secretary of ADEDY which represents public sector employees. "Together we are determined to stop policies that are being enforced on us by a very small group of people."

Preparations for a major international conference in Athens of trade unionists from the EU and Mediterranean countries were underway, he told me.
"It will take place a few weeks after the [general elections] in May and everyone will be there, the Spanish, the English, the Belgians, the Germans. They all want to come to discuss ways of fighting these totally unjust, totally counter-productive policies. Greece is small and it can't do things alone but from the beginning we've been the laboratory for these measures and are seen as the country on the front-line. "

There was also industrial action in Athens today, with at least 5,000 protestors, including doctors, nurses and administrative staff in hospitals, marching on the Greek parliament today in a demonstration denouncing cuts to the country's increasingly weakened public health system.

"Every day there is a protest in Athens," said Iliopoulos. "People are slipping deeper and deeper into poverty and at some point things will come to a head. June will be a very hot month when we are expecting the announcement of even more measures to cover the budget's ?11.5bn fiscal hole."

I don't care how much it costs I still think the only fair elections are ones where you need to get more then 50% of the vote. Just keep knocking off the bottom scoring party in each round of votes until you get a winner.

Here's your People's Protest:

Valencia, Spain:

tinypic.com/view.php?pic=wanbc7&s=5

The cause of the problems which Spain is experiencing is very different to UK & Greece.

The Spanish government has been a model member of the EU and has always controlled their budgets in recent years. In fact I think i read somewhere once that they were more disciplined than the German government were.

The problem in Spain was not excessive government borrowing but excessive private borrowing. There was a HUGE property boom and it's citizen's also gorged themselves on cheap credit like many Brit's did.

In the end though it all came to an end and now the government has been hit by a massive rise in unemployment which lowers tax receipts and increases welfare spending.

So whilst I can totally understand the people's anger, in the Spanish case it's not the government's fault. Not unless you say that failure to control excessive borrowing in the private sector is their fault.

But the bottom line is that the Spanish can protest all they like. There's no money and no amount of protest can change that.

Oh my gawd. Oxymoronically named niceguy still strutting it round the hen coop telling the silly lickle wimmin how to (not) think. We (the peeps) ARE protesting and WILL protest even more. Any amount of protest can change EVERYTHING. That's what gets spineless niceguys quaking in their ministry of information issued boots.

glasnost - By parents for parents. either gender is welcome. shut up with your sexism (his gender is not relevant) & put forward a proper argument....because if you dont, it just looks like you dont have one & i am sure you dont want that.

Quite a few pairs of ministry of information issued boots stomping round here. Portest is everything Wsabiwhatever. Not enough of an argument I'm sure for someone whose idea of insight is comparing Miliband to Wallace or Grommit. And telling other posters to shut up. Ooh nice (guy). Dipping one's toe into the blinkered ideological cesspool of MN politix is an education in flimflam and spin. Resist it truthseekers.

at least the sexism has dropped. people are not protesting. labour are not an effective opposition at moment. even george galloway beat them & he is a friend of dictators.

Galloway has made some unfortunate alliances. He's also anti-choice. Same goes for many Labour/Tory/Libdems
Maybe they wanted an anti-cuts MP. They got one. Good.

Friends of dictators Wasabi are your mainstream politicians when they've cheap resources to buy or arms to sell. Saddam's besties were the "allies" til he got all uppity and decided to sell his oil in euros and not petrodollars.

I believe the Brits are at this very minute advising the Bahraini dictators on how best to suppress their ongoing revolution. Hey ho. Do keep trying.

'Gorgeous George' acknowledges the adoration of a grateful nation