Genocide of British Elderly, Money meant for the poor diverted to the rich - and loads of local and international news from Liverpool Anti-Capitalist group
Pensioners Freeze to death, Poverty gets worse,
But not to worry now we've got more millionaires in the region than anywhere else
Well, well, the freezing weather is on us again and surprise, surprise - the elderly are dying in their thousands, while British Gas, not content with making massive profits, want to make a further killing and have put 10% on gas prices over the last ten months. According to Help The Aged, the UK is the only country in Europe were the Elderly die of cold on such a massive scale. Even in Eastern Europe, where people are poorer and the weather is colder, elderly people don't die on the same scale. You would think in a 'civilized world' that those who bore the brunt of severe hardship, hard labour and child rearing, those that have kept the wealthy in their luxurious lifestyles should, when older, be reaping the rewards of their labour. But no, like child poverty, it is elderly people in the North West who are hardest hit, with a staggering 3,600 more people dying last winter compared to those who died in the summer: (the national figure is 22,000).
The majority of these deaths are avoidable say Help the Aged. And they warn that unless the government tackles the extreme poverty causing elderly people to become vulnerable to illness in winter, then the governments fuel poverty strategy is useless.
Recent research has shown older people need at least £150 per week to continue to live healthily, but 75pc of pensioners in the UK do not have that amount.
Despite the fact that Blair and his war criminal mates can find £billions to bomb the poor, poverty stricken, innocent people in a country far away. Despite the fact that we live in a region that has more millionaires than anywhere else in the country. Despite the fact that we live in a city that for 20 years has seen conmen, calling themselves consultants, accountants or some other professional title, pocketing the millions that was meant to make our lives easier. Despite all that, again it is down to charities like Help the Aged or Age Concern to call for a ‘Fight the Freeze’ campaign; and to appeal to the public to put their hands in their pockets to help the elderly pay their bills. And even then the grubby capitalists still get a portion of the money from the building societies and banks where you deposit the money.
People Not Profit will continue to fight against a world where profit comes before everything: people, cultures, the environment and the planet. And we will fight for a world, of caring, of community, where all we produce and work for will be geared to benefit us all, and not a tiny elite. After September 11th, the message should have been ‘Another world is needed’. Instead what we got was the same war-mongers, the billionaires, the same crooks and gangsters carrying on with even more ferocity, their plans of taking over the world and leaving a trail of destruction, devastation and murder. But despite their threats, their repressive laws, their plans to silence dissenting voices, despite all that – the vibrations of resistance are still spreading throughout the globe, in the hearts of the dispossessed, the landless, the unemployed, the casual workers, and from continent to continent people are striking, blocking, occupying, fighting and shouting: “ We want another world and we believe another world is possible.”
EDITORIAL
So the ‘War on terror’ is well under way, led unsurprisingly by the most powerful terrorist organization in the world - The USA. And sniffing behind them, a terrorist organisation that rampaged, pillaged, robbed, raped and murdered halfway around the globe. That was before it ran out of steam, in the 2nd World War, and was forced to let the USA take over - yes it’s us, The UK. So while we are all suddenly supposed to love the billionaire Christian fundamentalist oil tycoon, whose father was also a murdering oil tycoon, whose father was a funder of the Nazis in Germany, and we are supposed to hate another oil tycoon, who is a fundamentalist Muslim, and while the two hide while thousands of innocent children, women and men are butchered, blah blah and while 33% of us live on or below the poverty line, and while they sell off care homes and leave the elderly in the hands of shifty landlords, out to make as much profit as possible. And then maybe we’ll all put two and two together, and say “Hey the people ordering the bombing which killed 4000 innocent Afghan civilians want us to support them, but they don’t even care about us”, because look what they are doing to their own people. Anyway, sorry for the delay again. Getting the stuff together is hard while trying to deal with all the other stuff capitalism throws at you. But at least it’s a double issue, and we have made the typeface a little bigger cos we’ve had so much stick about that. But it would be good to hear your stories or comments and contributions.
Also can’t report all the activities going on in the newsletter. So if you want to go on the contact list get in touch.
www.peoplenotprofit.co.uk (Also check out Statewatch in our links section, and see if by reading this you have become a terrorist.)
OLD GARDEN FESTIVAL GIVEN TO BUSINESS ELITE
When the businessman came to Liverpool, he promised us many things. He kept but one promise. He promised to take the land and he did. Crazy Tarpy
The International Garden Festival site, like the Albert Dock, was established some 16 years ago, and supposedly given to the people of Liverpool, by then Tory Minister Michael Hesletine, in response to the fact that we had the highest unemployment and the most severe poverty in the country and of course people rioted throughout the city most famously in Toxteth.
Wiggins PLC, a London group of developers were given the lease of the site, which like many such sites, had been left derelict.
The positive side of this is that the area became a wildlife site and is now a designated area of natural conservation, with a biodiverse habitat containing many species, some of which are threatened with extinction.
When some 3 years ago a wide section of the local community was consulted it sparked up an enthusiastic response for the site to be developed as parkland with the emphasis on leisure & wildlife educational facilities. There was very little enthusiasm for a commercial development.
But what do we get once again? Business interests overriding everything else.
The current outline planning application from Wiggins PLC – completely overrides the wishes of the majority of the local community, offering instead an integrated development of new (expensive) housing, a four star hotel, ‘neighborhood’ retail shopping. Its claim that more than 60% of the land is retained as a coastal park is nothing more than a joke, since it says goodbye to any biodiversity or conservation.
The plan, like all the other council/business partnership initiatives is one that will solely benefit the upwardly mobile yuppie scavengers, who seem to be arriving in this city by the jaguar load, here to get some rich pickings – and then leave the rest of us fighting over the crumbs. But merely moaning about the injustices going on before our eyes will not change it: the people of this city must take back this land.
LOCAL ROUND UP
DINGLE RESIDENTS SAY NO!
PLANS to build a 20-storey Yuppie tower block in Dingle could devastate the area
The multi-million pound development by Yuppie flat builders David McLean includes 160 one and two-bedroom apartments. All, they proudly announce “will have a balcony”,
The Dingle, which is already one of the most run down areas, with some of the worst housing in Liverpool - could have its views of the waterfront, the Wirral and the Welsh hills blocked by the Yuppie flats.
Cllr Steve Munby said: “I have never seen so many resident groups opposing a local planning application’.
It seems there is no end to the disrespect and insults these money grabbers give to the people of Liverpool. McLean, the man behind Liverpool’s first £1 million penthouses, has already established ‘Greens Health and Fitness Centre’ on the Herculaneum, site which economically excludes the local community. And his second phase would be the building of some 400 new homes, as well as a huge car park to house all the Jags and Porches. A council meeting was forced to postpone the decision on the flats, due to community pressure. But the local community must not be duped - this tactic is often used, to tire out the opposition.
IS HOUSING DISREPAIR DELIBERATE?
LIVERPOOL City Council has a £450m housing repair backlog, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Cllr Richard Kemp, executive member for housing and neighbourhood services, said “The only way forward is to transfer homes out of council ownership and into the hands of housing associations.”
Surprise surprise. Anyone growing up in areas like the Bullring knew that many of the housing repairs were not carried out by previous councils deliberately because they wanted to make conditons so bad for tenants that they would either move out, or the area could be sold off to private developers, or in this case maybe they want to force council tenants to agree to go over to Housing associations.
MISCARRIAGES & INJUSTICE
If you attended the showing of the film ‘Injustice’, about deaths in Police custody, at the ‘Jump Ship Rat’, organised by Jimmy Ashley’s family and yours truly PNP, despite the cops trying to stop it, then you would have had the honour of hearin Jimmy’s sister Pauline speaking, but relatives of Harry Stanley and Christopher Alder (see below) and also Paddy Hill (Birmingham Six). Their bravery can only be applauded. Meanwhile in the Jimmy Ashley case, the Home Office has launched two new investigations into the death of the Liverpool man, killed by the Sussex police in 1998. The earlier trial of four officers collapsed, but now ‘alledgedly’ the actions of the Police Complaints Commission will be scrutinized as well as the killing itself. Watch this space.
There has also been some changes in the Chrispoher Alder’s case (the ‘custody suite’ camera captured the police beating him up and torturing him, then laughing as he was dying). The five officers initially only charged with misconduct will now face manslaughter charges.
Sadly though, the Crown Prosecution Service announced, for the second time in just over 12 months, that neither of the two Metropolitan Police officers who shot dead unarmed man Harry Stanley in Hackney on 22 September 1999 is to face criminal charges over his death.
“ The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. “
Noam Chomsky
COME TO LIVERPOOL, WORK FOR THE COUNCIL AND MAKE A £MILLION
Council executives can now hope to attain millionaire status on the back of public money, a senior union official warned yesterday.
John Gibbons, Liverpool branch chairman of public sector union Unison, said executive salaries had seen huge increases in the past two years.
Gibbons said: “If you had asked someone five years ago if it was possible to become a millionaire working in the public sector, they would have just laughed.
“Now the potential for someone to become a millionaire on the back of public money is just phenomenal. Public sector executives were previously regarded as people who couldn’t hack it in the private sector. That is no longer the case and there is now more and more money in the public sector.”
While executive salaries continue to spiral, the town hall employees represented by Unison won just a 3.5pc pay increase this year, leaving their average salary at £15-£18,000.
David Henshaw, Liverpool’s chief executive, was appointed on a salary of £130,000 two years ago. Natural rises and a 5-10pc performance related bonus mean he is now likely to collect at least £150,000-a-year.
The situation is similar at other Merseyside authorities, including Mr Henshaw’s former employer Knowsley.
A council source said: “When Mr Henshaw left to go to Liverpool, his salary was around £110,000. Now the assistant directors can make that, never mind the chief executive.” So what is ‘fuelling the flames’ of executive salaries in local government?
Liverpool paid PriceWaterhouseCoopers £75,000 to launch a national search for a new chief executive but council leader Mike Storey feels it was money well spent.
Coun. Storey said: “We took the decision to pay high rates to attract the top talent nationwide. Our senior management team is now the best in the country. With a clear management structure and political stability, Liverpool is now attracting the right sort of candidates.”
People Not Profit have appealed before for info - we have even written to Liverpool Vision requesting evidence that the people of Liverpool are benefitting from any of this regeneration, so again can anyone send us details of what we have seen in this city that benefits the majority of its inhabitants?
Better transport, public toilets, affordable cafes, more community centres, better care facilites?
http://www.whistleblower.nstemp.com
WTO AND THE DOSH KEEPS PILING
War on terrorism isn’t about hunting down the man behind the attacks of September the 11th but a pretext for the richer nations to further their dominance over the world affairs and its about maintaining the divisions that underpin globalisation.
In reality 70% of the worlds market is controlled by the G8. International trade is worth ’11.5bn a day. Only 0.4% of this is shared between the poorest countries. However, due to rules about tariff barriers and subsidies these poor countries lose ’1.3bn a day in trade. And their loss isn’t only economical. Every year, due to war and its consequences 13 million children die, 12 million of them under the age of 5.
Despite the fact that the World Bank admits that the poorest countries are worse off under its control than 10 years ago. The number of poor people has increased and people die younger.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has become the world’s government and solely an orgarnisation run by the rich for the rich. Of its 142 members, only 21 of its governments (those with money) have a real say in any of its decisions.
Last November the WTO held a reunion in Quatar. In it they got the rights, or better still the power, to intervene in the economies of poor countries, to demand privatisation and the destruction of public services. They got the right to subsidize exports of meat, grains and sugar, and the right to dump them in poor countries at artificially low prices destroying the lively-hood of millions. Because of this suicide has become an epidemic amongst poor farmers.
Historian and Christian Aid’s head of policy Mark Curtis attended the WTO conference were the delegates of poor countries were threatened with the removal of their few precious goods. He said the issue of multinationals as a cause of poverty wasn’t even on the agenda. This would be similar to a conference on malaria were the mosquito wasn’t mentioned.
SOMEONE MIGHT BELIEVE YOU
MERSEY Partnership chief Thomas O’Brien, not content while he worked for the World Bank, to screw ‘third world’ countries while trying to convince them if they keep quiet and tolerate poverty they will eventually get a few crumbs, has come here to Liverpool to teach the local business elite how to do it to us. Like all the other spongers before him, he has hailed 2001 has a great success for business. He cites a few examples of this success.
Services company 7C is creating 700 jobs at Garston’s old matchworks site.
Supermarket giant Somerfield is recruiting 400 for a new distribution centre in St Helens.
Further good news on the jobs front is that Merseyside’s unemployment rate is falling faster than anywhere else in the UK. (Nothing to do with New Deal or other crap schemes pushing people off the register.)
Visitor spending from tourism is also rising and the current spend of £600m compares with £483m in 1995.
Employment in the tourism sector has also soared from about 16,000 to 22,000 Merseysiders.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport has been officially recognised as Europe’s fastest-growing airport based on passenger numbers.
Looking to the future, Mr O’Brien and his team unveiled an economic strategy for the region in consultation with several partners, including the North West Development Agency, which has handed the Partnership the prestigious role of the regional voice on economic development for the North-West.
Call me cynical or unlightened by the great news - but I don’t see anything but parasites making loads of money and the people of Liverpool being forced into cheap labour jobs. Can anyone out there enlighten me!..
RUNCORN RETURNING TO 1930s
Job cuts and an increase in working hours for remaining workers sound like something from the nineteen twenties or thirties, but they are becoming a fact of life for staff at Ineos Chlor, the Belgian chlorine producer, which has interests across the north Cheshire chemical manufacturing towns.
Ineos bought the giant I.C.I. Runcorn plant last March and within months found itself locking horns with the Environment Agency over failure to build a wall designed to retain chemical spills. Ineos then threatened to begin legal action against I.C.I. over thirty years lack of investment in the Runcorn plant. A recent leak of chlorine gas has done nothing to instil any confidence into local people who, are becoming cynical about promises of improved safety.
Ineos Chlor claim they will need £635m to bring the site up to scratch and even if the legal action is successful, they will still require a very large government handout to make up the necessary funds. Without this money, Ineos Chlor have warned the site will die a slow death. No doubt it will, but not before the employees have been sacrificed on the high altar of unfettered capitalism and cast aside.
Ineos Chlor have just announced ninety redundancies at those parts of I.C.I. which produce the chemicals used in plastic manufacture, known as European Vinyls Corporation.
The job losses will include scientific research posts as well as production workers and will affect Runcorn and the nearby village of Helsby. Another 300 staff will face changes in their terms of employment which will increase their working week from 36 to 40 hours. E.V.C. will also look at changes in salaries, bonus schemes, health insurance and pensions.
This ‘restructuring’ will save the grasping parasites who currently run the operation £3 million a year. A spokesman for the firm said the moves were designed to streamline the company and help it survive difficult market conditions. No mention of any sacrifices being made by the bosses who have managed to poison the village of Weston, which is old enough to have been mentioned in the Domesday book and a section of marshland which was a haven for wildlife.
G.M.B. union officials fear these job losses will be the first in a chain reaction which will affect the interdependent chemical companies in the north west.
Not one local councillor or Blairite M.P. for the area has yet seen fit to utter a word of condemnation about the job losses or the greed of the company’s directors. That would be asking too much.
In the meantime, two sizeable leaks of chlorine gas have brought Runcorn to a standstill and there is now a fear that work to construct a second road bridge across the Mersey will stir up what has been described as a cocktail of dangerous chemicals which have lain on the river bed for decades and threaten resurgent wildfowl colonies.
People who are sophisticated enough to apply class analysis and trace actions to their economic roots should apply the same kind of analysis to intellectuals and their interests... If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change. Noam Chomsky
MILLIONAIRES PREFER NORTH WEST TO SOUTH
Recent research suggests that parts of Cheshire and Wirral boast a higher percentage of millionaires than traditionally exclusive areas of London and Surrey, such as Kingston-upon Thames, Guildford and Kensington, according to a market research company Experian.
Quality of life and ease of access to major business centres such as Liverpool and Manchester are believed to be among the reasons for attracting the super-rich.
The village of Burton in Cheshire heads the North West and is placed eigth overall, with millionaires making up 16pc of the population in its postal district.This is followed by Windle Hill, Cheshire (15pc), Heswall (14pc), and Frankby/Caldy (12pc).
Clive Watkin, who runs a chain of estate agents in Wirral - which include the three most exclusive areas identified in the survey -said “It all starts with the fact that Wirral is the residential area for people in Liverpool with a bit of money’. Other North West locations which featured lower down in the survey include Halebarns in Warrington, and several areas in Merseyside, including Crosby, Formby, and Mossley Hill.
Stephen Cheshire, a director of Jackson-Stops & Staff which deals with upmarket properties in Cheshire, ranging in price from £250,000 up to £5m, said the rural environment, combined with good business links, made the area appealing to those who could afford it.
So there you have it: while the majority of people in Liverpool have been trying to see how all this talk of great regeneration affects them, it seems we have the answers straight out of the bragging horse’s mouth. Word gets around there is a gravy train in Liverpool, coupled with a cheap labour force.
WHAT TRICKLE DOWN?
RECORD-breaking profits in Liverpool and the North West of one firm is evidence of how well consulting firms are doing. One of the world’s leading business advisers Ernst & Young announced a 15% growth in fee income. Despite the present ecomomic climate with thousands being thrown out of work E & Y announced the average profits per partner rose as of June 2001 to £449,000. Alan Barton, Regional Managing Partner, had this to say “This has been an excellent year for our Northern practice, across all service lines. In particular, our northern Consultancy Firm practice has achieved record-breaking results, with growth of 23pc, and has played a crucial role in some of the region’s most exciting deals.” Well done Alan - keep shafting us.
This firm have also been cashing in on the area of ‘Employment Zones’. which in reality means trying to get the long-term unemployed off the register - into cheap labour jobs, or anywhere else. They have teamed up with the Employment Services and Manpower PLC to try and make sure we get exploited.
WE’RE NOT CYNICS, HONEST?
But What’s All this Hush Hush about Corruption
It is difficult to know what to be most angry about when discussing the regeneration of Liverpool. There are several layers of corruption, cynicism and incompetence, and it seems the sheer amount of bureaucratic jargon has subdued the level of protest.
We need to be clear about the overall picture and not be drawn by one body and another pointing at the rules they are working under. Social regeneration should mean dramatically improved housing, facilities and opportunities across the city. Liverpool’s confidence and living conditions have been attacked for several decades now and to start to put this right requires not just money but the involvement of the community in deciding how this money needs to be spent. Many cities that have received European money would complain of mainly superficial changes, Liverpool couldn’t even do that.
We are not poor solely by British standards, we are poor by European standards, and were allocated money to begin to remedy this. Instead we are dealing with levels of business and political corruption normally associated with ‘third world’ cities. The more you look around and the more you read it becomes obvious that Liverpool has been written off and its own council and press are chief conspirators.
It is easy to get lost in a blur of mind-boggling statistics when discussing the supposed regeneration of Liverpool, but the easiest way to judge the success of a regeneration scheme is to view for yourself how well their objectives have been met. Ropewalks attracted £17m of Objective 1 money, plus another £25m of public funds, which were designed to draw in further private money, bringing the total to £110m. Its purpose was to provide a complete social and cultural transformation in Duke St. and surrounding areas. Under European rules, all public funds had to be committed by December 1999, and spent by December 2001. A small walk around the area will reveal how successful they have been.
Having committed themselves to a number of far-reaching and glorious ideas, they have not only clearly failed to deliver, but seemed to have completely redefined what social and cultural regeneration means, in order to justify to the public and corruption investigators how this vast amount of money has been spent.
Collusion with the local press has meant that luxury flats and expensive office space has become the main focus of social change.
The Ropewalks fiasco may yet prove to be the main turning point, as they have almost certainly been the most stupid. The level of back scratching and fraud involved has led to an investigation by the European Commission fraud squad, OLAF, although even this may lead to more problems. What will be interesting about the corruption investigation taking place is how far our own council will be implicated in this case and how it is decided to punish those involved. It appears the main victim could well be the people of Liverpool, as the council refused to freeze funding to Ropewalks in view of the investigation; the money is now owed by the city. This will come out of council expenditure, not councillors’ pockets. In a clear reflection of what has happened in the ‘third world’ we may lose out twice.
An indication that the council has not changed its policy following the Ropewalks’ experience can be found in the criticisms of Liverpool Vision. Liverpool Vision was the flagship of the UrbanRegenerationCommitee and was set up in a fanfare of publicity in 1999 with the aim of creating a hub of growth in the city centre. It was one of three pilot schemes, along with Manchester and Sheffield. Yet it never had a single local person on its committee, and like the colonialists and missionaries who entered Africa, they pretended they knew what was best for us, tried to tell us what was best for us, when all the time they have been serving their own interests. We closed our eyes and they had the land.
Professor Brian Robson, of Manchester University, a regeneration expert stated: “It’s important to hear the voice of ordinary people, it would give Liverpool Vision better feedback and balance. “
He continued: “Liverpool Vision ought to include community representatives. Manchester and Sheffield have community representatives on their boards, while Liverpool does not.”
Mike Storey, leader of the council, in response to these criticisms stated that; “Myself and Gideon Ben-Tovim are on the board. Aren’t councillors community representatives, elected by the people of Liverpool?”
This level of arrogance and bloody mindedness is reflective of the kind of dictatorial control we have been witnessing throughout the history of regeneration funding. An attempt to become the city of culture now seems destined to fail and the lack of community involvement is the stated reason. Fingers will be pointed amongst the press when we lose out, but the real reasons will be ignored, as anyone who has been involved with the proposals for the city of culture will tell you this has been another attempt to draw funding in for corporations looking to use Liverpool to feed its own interests.
Liverpool has now seen billions of pounds wasted, which means we are still living in some of the worst living conditions in Europe with little or no opportunity for anything other than low paid and unsustainable unemployment. It may be naïve to think there was ever a possibility that the money that was ours would all be spent on decent housing and decent work training, but the sheer lack of any worthwhile expenditure and the total lack of involvement of those living and working in the poorer communities, displays major corruption within the city, not just inefficiencies of the system. The most telling statistic is that Objective One funding is only available to those cities whose gross domestic product (GDP) means the majority of its people are living way below the poverty line. Somehow having received this massive injection of money we are still eligible and are uniquely the only city where GDP has actually fallen in this period.
It is time for the levels of protest to match the crimes committed, and for a proper positive programme of change to be put forward from grass roots level.
THE WORLD’S ON FIRE
GLOBAL ROUND UP
The rich governments of the west, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and IMF (International Monetary Fund) were under the illusion, that after September 11th, the anti-capitalist movement would cease. But what they fail to understand is that the conditions that created the movement, are not only here, but they are intensifying. So while Bush and his thugs roam the globe - trying to kill or silence anyone who objects to their barbaric money-grabbing ways, they will create the conditions that will not only make us bigger but also more determined - and fight harder for a better world.
Check out:www.thirdworldtraveler.com
ARGENTINA EXPLOSION
In the face of a worsening economic crises, Argentina’s working and poor people are mobilizing for action. The newly-unemployed are joining road blockades around a “Workers’ Area” in La Matanza and the southern area of Buenos Aires. Teachers and government workers are resisting plans for privatisation, delayed salary, and payments in bonds. And mine workers in Río Turbio have occupied their mine in solidarity with their fired co-workers. Four successive presidents have fallen under the pressure and although the free market IMF policies largely responsible for the trouble may have been discredited, the current man on the job, Duhalde, is no stranger to corruption. It’s not over yet. Meanwhile anarchists in London occupied the Argentina embassy, in support at the masses of Argentinans who are refusing the impositon of new leaders. The anarchists even managed to change the Argentine national flag on the embassy and replace it with a red & black one, as they demanded the Argentina people the right to run the country without leaders.
www.indymedia.org
EU CONFRONTED AGAIN
For three days a broad cross-section of European citizens said ‘No!’ to the neo-liberal policies of the heads of the European Union at their conference in Brussels.
Trade Unionists, No Borders activists, anti-globalisation protesters, Black Bloc, Rhythms of Resistance, student groups along with many other groups from around the globe were out in force to demonstrate their resistance to the repressive policies of the European parliament. All in all around 150,000 demonstrated, danced, occupied and it some cases rioted.
WTO CONFRONTED AGAIN
Meanwhile a month earlier, worldwide protests against the WTO conference in Quater, saw thousands throughout the globe protesting, as a world-wide 24 hour radio link was established. Most notable demo was in Rome, where 130,000 marched. Meanwhile the middle Easts own Anti-capitalist group held their first demo, outside the meeting venue.
OPERATION ENDURING NONSENSE
Somalian phone and internet users have become the latest target of the ‘war on terror’, Somalia Internet Company and the countrie’s largest company al-Barakaat which runs phones and post among other things, are suspected by the US of funnelling money to al-Qaida. Their assets have been frozen and their international communications shut down, forcing them to close and leaving Somalis without internet access and many without the phone. Many Somalis rely on money being wired from relatives abroad, making this extra bad news. The companies deny the accusations.
THEY KILL EACH OTHER, WE MAKE £££
Meanwhile, Blair’s peacekeeping efforts and foreign trips are once again undermined by Britain’s busy arms trade. Since Jan 1999, £122 million of arms exports have been licensed by government for sale to India, while Pakistan have bought £18 million. One is a military dictatorship and the other is getting flak for human rights abuses in Kashmir. Both countries have much poverty and perhaps better things to spend their money on, although the same could be said for Tanzania which will soon be the proud owner of a shiny new, made in Britain, military communication system.
WORKERS TAKE ON OIL BOSSES
Nigeria’s trade unions are resisting fuel price increases of between 18% and 29%. The government plans to deregulate the petroleum market and attract investment, but its methods threaten the welfare of many and the NLC (union umbrella group) are threatening a general strike, similar to the successful one of 2000.
COLOMBIA HEATS UP
After 3 years of negotiations aimed at ending the 37 years of conflict in Colombia, President Andres Pastrana has just announced the end of the so called peace process between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest rebel group. The 17,000 strong FARC who control some 40% of the land were given 48 hours from Saturday 12th January 2002 to leave the demilitarized zone, handed over by the government in 1998 as a condition for peace talks. The army and their right wing paramilitary death squads are now, after more than 3 decades of failing, preparing to try and defeat FARC. This new-found confidence of the government and the right-wing death squads comes alongside the US-led ‘war on terrorism’, which has given the go ahead to right-wingers to intensify their attacks not only on FARC, but on trade unions, social and popular movements. It is no coicidence that the USA military aid to both the Colombian government and the right wing death squads (known as theplan Columbia) has gone hand in hand with the massive increase in human rights abuses. What the US and their puppets in Colombia fail to realise is that FARC would rather fight and die, than live on their knees.
www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Colombia/colombiatop.htm
SCHOOL OF ASSASINS
There is a place in the USA, based at Fort Benning, Georgia called ‘ THE US ARMY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS’ (SOA) were USA Military and Police experts have trained and continue to train thousands of Latin American military and Police. They train them in combat, counter insurgency and interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned. Of the 60,000 Graduates from the school many have become notorious dictators like Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Many others have been responsible for the murders of thousands of civilians, and for Americas worst human rights crimes. What’s more the fees for students are free. Students at the school will attend such trying academic classes like ‘how to spot a communist/terrorist (they are viewed as the same thing). The school has been known throughout Latin America for years as ‘escuela de golpes’ or Coup school. Last January due to years of bad publicity, the US congress decide to reform the school, they called it the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) Since then, countless children, women and men have been forced into exile or made refugees in their own country. Union organizers, student activists and others working in solidarity with the poor have been assassinated. Across Latin America, thousands continue to suffer rape, torture, murder, disappearance and arbitrary detention at the hands of SOA graduates and their cohorts in the paramilitaries. You’ve guessed it - the US thought be changing the name it would dupe people.
On November 20th some 10,00 people marched on the school, with over 3000 breaking through its fences and marching on its grounds. It’s good to know we got a lot of friends doing stuff over the other side of the Atlantic.
http://www.soaw.org/
But not to worry now we've got more millionaires in the region than anywhere else
Well, well, the freezing weather is on us again and surprise, surprise - the elderly are dying in their thousands, while British Gas, not content with making massive profits, want to make a further killing and have put 10% on gas prices over the last ten months. According to Help The Aged, the UK is the only country in Europe were the Elderly die of cold on such a massive scale. Even in Eastern Europe, where people are poorer and the weather is colder, elderly people don't die on the same scale. You would think in a 'civilized world' that those who bore the brunt of severe hardship, hard labour and child rearing, those that have kept the wealthy in their luxurious lifestyles should, when older, be reaping the rewards of their labour. But no, like child poverty, it is elderly people in the North West who are hardest hit, with a staggering 3,600 more people dying last winter compared to those who died in the summer: (the national figure is 22,000).
The majority of these deaths are avoidable say Help the Aged. And they warn that unless the government tackles the extreme poverty causing elderly people to become vulnerable to illness in winter, then the governments fuel poverty strategy is useless.
Recent research has shown older people need at least £150 per week to continue to live healthily, but 75pc of pensioners in the UK do not have that amount.
Despite the fact that Blair and his war criminal mates can find £billions to bomb the poor, poverty stricken, innocent people in a country far away. Despite the fact that we live in a region that has more millionaires than anywhere else in the country. Despite the fact that we live in a city that for 20 years has seen conmen, calling themselves consultants, accountants or some other professional title, pocketing the millions that was meant to make our lives easier. Despite all that, again it is down to charities like Help the Aged or Age Concern to call for a ‘Fight the Freeze’ campaign; and to appeal to the public to put their hands in their pockets to help the elderly pay their bills. And even then the grubby capitalists still get a portion of the money from the building societies and banks where you deposit the money.
People Not Profit will continue to fight against a world where profit comes before everything: people, cultures, the environment and the planet. And we will fight for a world, of caring, of community, where all we produce and work for will be geared to benefit us all, and not a tiny elite. After September 11th, the message should have been ‘Another world is needed’. Instead what we got was the same war-mongers, the billionaires, the same crooks and gangsters carrying on with even more ferocity, their plans of taking over the world and leaving a trail of destruction, devastation and murder. But despite their threats, their repressive laws, their plans to silence dissenting voices, despite all that – the vibrations of resistance are still spreading throughout the globe, in the hearts of the dispossessed, the landless, the unemployed, the casual workers, and from continent to continent people are striking, blocking, occupying, fighting and shouting: “ We want another world and we believe another world is possible.”
EDITORIAL
So the ‘War on terror’ is well under way, led unsurprisingly by the most powerful terrorist organization in the world - The USA. And sniffing behind them, a terrorist organisation that rampaged, pillaged, robbed, raped and murdered halfway around the globe. That was before it ran out of steam, in the 2nd World War, and was forced to let the USA take over - yes it’s us, The UK. So while we are all suddenly supposed to love the billionaire Christian fundamentalist oil tycoon, whose father was also a murdering oil tycoon, whose father was a funder of the Nazis in Germany, and we are supposed to hate another oil tycoon, who is a fundamentalist Muslim, and while the two hide while thousands of innocent children, women and men are butchered, blah blah and while 33% of us live on or below the poverty line, and while they sell off care homes and leave the elderly in the hands of shifty landlords, out to make as much profit as possible. And then maybe we’ll all put two and two together, and say “Hey the people ordering the bombing which killed 4000 innocent Afghan civilians want us to support them, but they don’t even care about us”, because look what they are doing to their own people. Anyway, sorry for the delay again. Getting the stuff together is hard while trying to deal with all the other stuff capitalism throws at you. But at least it’s a double issue, and we have made the typeface a little bigger cos we’ve had so much stick about that. But it would be good to hear your stories or comments and contributions.
Also can’t report all the activities going on in the newsletter. So if you want to go on the contact list get in touch.
www.peoplenotprofit.co.uk (Also check out Statewatch in our links section, and see if by reading this you have become a terrorist.)
OLD GARDEN FESTIVAL GIVEN TO BUSINESS ELITE
When the businessman came to Liverpool, he promised us many things. He kept but one promise. He promised to take the land and he did. Crazy Tarpy
The International Garden Festival site, like the Albert Dock, was established some 16 years ago, and supposedly given to the people of Liverpool, by then Tory Minister Michael Hesletine, in response to the fact that we had the highest unemployment and the most severe poverty in the country and of course people rioted throughout the city most famously in Toxteth.
Wiggins PLC, a London group of developers were given the lease of the site, which like many such sites, had been left derelict.
The positive side of this is that the area became a wildlife site and is now a designated area of natural conservation, with a biodiverse habitat containing many species, some of which are threatened with extinction.
When some 3 years ago a wide section of the local community was consulted it sparked up an enthusiastic response for the site to be developed as parkland with the emphasis on leisure & wildlife educational facilities. There was very little enthusiasm for a commercial development.
But what do we get once again? Business interests overriding everything else.
The current outline planning application from Wiggins PLC – completely overrides the wishes of the majority of the local community, offering instead an integrated development of new (expensive) housing, a four star hotel, ‘neighborhood’ retail shopping. Its claim that more than 60% of the land is retained as a coastal park is nothing more than a joke, since it says goodbye to any biodiversity or conservation.
The plan, like all the other council/business partnership initiatives is one that will solely benefit the upwardly mobile yuppie scavengers, who seem to be arriving in this city by the jaguar load, here to get some rich pickings – and then leave the rest of us fighting over the crumbs. But merely moaning about the injustices going on before our eyes will not change it: the people of this city must take back this land.
LOCAL ROUND UP
DINGLE RESIDENTS SAY NO!
PLANS to build a 20-storey Yuppie tower block in Dingle could devastate the area
The multi-million pound development by Yuppie flat builders David McLean includes 160 one and two-bedroom apartments. All, they proudly announce “will have a balcony”,
The Dingle, which is already one of the most run down areas, with some of the worst housing in Liverpool - could have its views of the waterfront, the Wirral and the Welsh hills blocked by the Yuppie flats.
Cllr Steve Munby said: “I have never seen so many resident groups opposing a local planning application’.
It seems there is no end to the disrespect and insults these money grabbers give to the people of Liverpool. McLean, the man behind Liverpool’s first £1 million penthouses, has already established ‘Greens Health and Fitness Centre’ on the Herculaneum, site which economically excludes the local community. And his second phase would be the building of some 400 new homes, as well as a huge car park to house all the Jags and Porches. A council meeting was forced to postpone the decision on the flats, due to community pressure. But the local community must not be duped - this tactic is often used, to tire out the opposition.
IS HOUSING DISREPAIR DELIBERATE?
LIVERPOOL City Council has a £450m housing repair backlog, the Liverpool Echo reported.
Cllr Richard Kemp, executive member for housing and neighbourhood services, said “The only way forward is to transfer homes out of council ownership and into the hands of housing associations.”
Surprise surprise. Anyone growing up in areas like the Bullring knew that many of the housing repairs were not carried out by previous councils deliberately because they wanted to make conditons so bad for tenants that they would either move out, or the area could be sold off to private developers, or in this case maybe they want to force council tenants to agree to go over to Housing associations.
MISCARRIAGES & INJUSTICE
If you attended the showing of the film ‘Injustice’, about deaths in Police custody, at the ‘Jump Ship Rat’, organised by Jimmy Ashley’s family and yours truly PNP, despite the cops trying to stop it, then you would have had the honour of hearin Jimmy’s sister Pauline speaking, but relatives of Harry Stanley and Christopher Alder (see below) and also Paddy Hill (Birmingham Six). Their bravery can only be applauded. Meanwhile in the Jimmy Ashley case, the Home Office has launched two new investigations into the death of the Liverpool man, killed by the Sussex police in 1998. The earlier trial of four officers collapsed, but now ‘alledgedly’ the actions of the Police Complaints Commission will be scrutinized as well as the killing itself. Watch this space.
There has also been some changes in the Chrispoher Alder’s case (the ‘custody suite’ camera captured the police beating him up and torturing him, then laughing as he was dying). The five officers initially only charged with misconduct will now face manslaughter charges.
Sadly though, the Crown Prosecution Service announced, for the second time in just over 12 months, that neither of the two Metropolitan Police officers who shot dead unarmed man Harry Stanley in Hackney on 22 September 1999 is to face criminal charges over his death.
“ The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate. “
Noam Chomsky
COME TO LIVERPOOL, WORK FOR THE COUNCIL AND MAKE A £MILLION
Council executives can now hope to attain millionaire status on the back of public money, a senior union official warned yesterday.
John Gibbons, Liverpool branch chairman of public sector union Unison, said executive salaries had seen huge increases in the past two years.
Gibbons said: “If you had asked someone five years ago if it was possible to become a millionaire working in the public sector, they would have just laughed.
“Now the potential for someone to become a millionaire on the back of public money is just phenomenal. Public sector executives were previously regarded as people who couldn’t hack it in the private sector. That is no longer the case and there is now more and more money in the public sector.”
While executive salaries continue to spiral, the town hall employees represented by Unison won just a 3.5pc pay increase this year, leaving their average salary at £15-£18,000.
David Henshaw, Liverpool’s chief executive, was appointed on a salary of £130,000 two years ago. Natural rises and a 5-10pc performance related bonus mean he is now likely to collect at least £150,000-a-year.
The situation is similar at other Merseyside authorities, including Mr Henshaw’s former employer Knowsley.
A council source said: “When Mr Henshaw left to go to Liverpool, his salary was around £110,000. Now the assistant directors can make that, never mind the chief executive.” So what is ‘fuelling the flames’ of executive salaries in local government?
Liverpool paid PriceWaterhouseCoopers £75,000 to launch a national search for a new chief executive but council leader Mike Storey feels it was money well spent.
Coun. Storey said: “We took the decision to pay high rates to attract the top talent nationwide. Our senior management team is now the best in the country. With a clear management structure and political stability, Liverpool is now attracting the right sort of candidates.”
People Not Profit have appealed before for info - we have even written to Liverpool Vision requesting evidence that the people of Liverpool are benefitting from any of this regeneration, so again can anyone send us details of what we have seen in this city that benefits the majority of its inhabitants?
Better transport, public toilets, affordable cafes, more community centres, better care facilites?
http://www.whistleblower.nstemp.com WTO AND THE DOSH KEEPS PILING
War on terrorism isn’t about hunting down the man behind the attacks of September the 11th but a pretext for the richer nations to further their dominance over the world affairs and its about maintaining the divisions that underpin globalisation.
In reality 70% of the worlds market is controlled by the G8. International trade is worth ’11.5bn a day. Only 0.4% of this is shared between the poorest countries. However, due to rules about tariff barriers and subsidies these poor countries lose ’1.3bn a day in trade. And their loss isn’t only economical. Every year, due to war and its consequences 13 million children die, 12 million of them under the age of 5.
Despite the fact that the World Bank admits that the poorest countries are worse off under its control than 10 years ago. The number of poor people has increased and people die younger.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) has become the world’s government and solely an orgarnisation run by the rich for the rich. Of its 142 members, only 21 of its governments (those with money) have a real say in any of its decisions.
Last November the WTO held a reunion in Quatar. In it they got the rights, or better still the power, to intervene in the economies of poor countries, to demand privatisation and the destruction of public services. They got the right to subsidize exports of meat, grains and sugar, and the right to dump them in poor countries at artificially low prices destroying the lively-hood of millions. Because of this suicide has become an epidemic amongst poor farmers.
Historian and Christian Aid’s head of policy Mark Curtis attended the WTO conference were the delegates of poor countries were threatened with the removal of their few precious goods. He said the issue of multinationals as a cause of poverty wasn’t even on the agenda. This would be similar to a conference on malaria were the mosquito wasn’t mentioned.
SOMEONE MIGHT BELIEVE YOU
MERSEY Partnership chief Thomas O’Brien, not content while he worked for the World Bank, to screw ‘third world’ countries while trying to convince them if they keep quiet and tolerate poverty they will eventually get a few crumbs, has come here to Liverpool to teach the local business elite how to do it to us. Like all the other spongers before him, he has hailed 2001 has a great success for business. He cites a few examples of this success.
Services company 7C is creating 700 jobs at Garston’s old matchworks site.
Supermarket giant Somerfield is recruiting 400 for a new distribution centre in St Helens.
Further good news on the jobs front is that Merseyside’s unemployment rate is falling faster than anywhere else in the UK. (Nothing to do with New Deal or other crap schemes pushing people off the register.)
Visitor spending from tourism is also rising and the current spend of £600m compares with £483m in 1995.
Employment in the tourism sector has also soared from about 16,000 to 22,000 Merseysiders.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport has been officially recognised as Europe’s fastest-growing airport based on passenger numbers.
Looking to the future, Mr O’Brien and his team unveiled an economic strategy for the region in consultation with several partners, including the North West Development Agency, which has handed the Partnership the prestigious role of the regional voice on economic development for the North-West.
Call me cynical or unlightened by the great news - but I don’t see anything but parasites making loads of money and the people of Liverpool being forced into cheap labour jobs. Can anyone out there enlighten me!..
RUNCORN RETURNING TO 1930s
Job cuts and an increase in working hours for remaining workers sound like something from the nineteen twenties or thirties, but they are becoming a fact of life for staff at Ineos Chlor, the Belgian chlorine producer, which has interests across the north Cheshire chemical manufacturing towns.
Ineos bought the giant I.C.I. Runcorn plant last March and within months found itself locking horns with the Environment Agency over failure to build a wall designed to retain chemical spills. Ineos then threatened to begin legal action against I.C.I. over thirty years lack of investment in the Runcorn plant. A recent leak of chlorine gas has done nothing to instil any confidence into local people who, are becoming cynical about promises of improved safety.
Ineos Chlor claim they will need £635m to bring the site up to scratch and even if the legal action is successful, they will still require a very large government handout to make up the necessary funds. Without this money, Ineos Chlor have warned the site will die a slow death. No doubt it will, but not before the employees have been sacrificed on the high altar of unfettered capitalism and cast aside.
Ineos Chlor have just announced ninety redundancies at those parts of I.C.I. which produce the chemicals used in plastic manufacture, known as European Vinyls Corporation.
The job losses will include scientific research posts as well as production workers and will affect Runcorn and the nearby village of Helsby. Another 300 staff will face changes in their terms of employment which will increase their working week from 36 to 40 hours. E.V.C. will also look at changes in salaries, bonus schemes, health insurance and pensions.
This ‘restructuring’ will save the grasping parasites who currently run the operation £3 million a year. A spokesman for the firm said the moves were designed to streamline the company and help it survive difficult market conditions. No mention of any sacrifices being made by the bosses who have managed to poison the village of Weston, which is old enough to have been mentioned in the Domesday book and a section of marshland which was a haven for wildlife.
G.M.B. union officials fear these job losses will be the first in a chain reaction which will affect the interdependent chemical companies in the north west.
Not one local councillor or Blairite M.P. for the area has yet seen fit to utter a word of condemnation about the job losses or the greed of the company’s directors. That would be asking too much.
In the meantime, two sizeable leaks of chlorine gas have brought Runcorn to a standstill and there is now a fear that work to construct a second road bridge across the Mersey will stir up what has been described as a cocktail of dangerous chemicals which have lain on the river bed for decades and threaten resurgent wildfowl colonies.
People who are sophisticated enough to apply class analysis and trace actions to their economic roots should apply the same kind of analysis to intellectuals and their interests... If it is plausible that ideology will in general serve as a mask for self-interest, then it is a natural presumption that intellectuals, in interpreting history or formulating policy, will tend to adopt an elitist position, condemning popular movements and mass participation in decision making, and emphasizing rather the necessity for supervision by those who possess the knowledge and understanding that is required (so they claim) to manage society and control social change. Noam Chomsky
MILLIONAIRES PREFER NORTH WEST TO SOUTH
Recent research suggests that parts of Cheshire and Wirral boast a higher percentage of millionaires than traditionally exclusive areas of London and Surrey, such as Kingston-upon Thames, Guildford and Kensington, according to a market research company Experian.
Quality of life and ease of access to major business centres such as Liverpool and Manchester are believed to be among the reasons for attracting the super-rich.
The village of Burton in Cheshire heads the North West and is placed eigth overall, with millionaires making up 16pc of the population in its postal district.This is followed by Windle Hill, Cheshire (15pc), Heswall (14pc), and Frankby/Caldy (12pc).
Clive Watkin, who runs a chain of estate agents in Wirral - which include the three most exclusive areas identified in the survey -said “It all starts with the fact that Wirral is the residential area for people in Liverpool with a bit of money’. Other North West locations which featured lower down in the survey include Halebarns in Warrington, and several areas in Merseyside, including Crosby, Formby, and Mossley Hill.
Stephen Cheshire, a director of Jackson-Stops & Staff which deals with upmarket properties in Cheshire, ranging in price from £250,000 up to £5m, said the rural environment, combined with good business links, made the area appealing to those who could afford it.
So there you have it: while the majority of people in Liverpool have been trying to see how all this talk of great regeneration affects them, it seems we have the answers straight out of the bragging horse’s mouth. Word gets around there is a gravy train in Liverpool, coupled with a cheap labour force.
WHAT TRICKLE DOWN?
RECORD-breaking profits in Liverpool and the North West of one firm is evidence of how well consulting firms are doing. One of the world’s leading business advisers Ernst & Young announced a 15% growth in fee income. Despite the present ecomomic climate with thousands being thrown out of work E & Y announced the average profits per partner rose as of June 2001 to £449,000. Alan Barton, Regional Managing Partner, had this to say “This has been an excellent year for our Northern practice, across all service lines. In particular, our northern Consultancy Firm practice has achieved record-breaking results, with growth of 23pc, and has played a crucial role in some of the region’s most exciting deals.” Well done Alan - keep shafting us.
This firm have also been cashing in on the area of ‘Employment Zones’. which in reality means trying to get the long-term unemployed off the register - into cheap labour jobs, or anywhere else. They have teamed up with the Employment Services and Manpower PLC to try and make sure we get exploited.
WE’RE NOT CYNICS, HONEST?
But What’s All this Hush Hush about Corruption
It is difficult to know what to be most angry about when discussing the regeneration of Liverpool. There are several layers of corruption, cynicism and incompetence, and it seems the sheer amount of bureaucratic jargon has subdued the level of protest.
We need to be clear about the overall picture and not be drawn by one body and another pointing at the rules they are working under. Social regeneration should mean dramatically improved housing, facilities and opportunities across the city. Liverpool’s confidence and living conditions have been attacked for several decades now and to start to put this right requires not just money but the involvement of the community in deciding how this money needs to be spent. Many cities that have received European money would complain of mainly superficial changes, Liverpool couldn’t even do that.
We are not poor solely by British standards, we are poor by European standards, and were allocated money to begin to remedy this. Instead we are dealing with levels of business and political corruption normally associated with ‘third world’ cities. The more you look around and the more you read it becomes obvious that Liverpool has been written off and its own council and press are chief conspirators.
It is easy to get lost in a blur of mind-boggling statistics when discussing the supposed regeneration of Liverpool, but the easiest way to judge the success of a regeneration scheme is to view for yourself how well their objectives have been met. Ropewalks attracted £17m of Objective 1 money, plus another £25m of public funds, which were designed to draw in further private money, bringing the total to £110m. Its purpose was to provide a complete social and cultural transformation in Duke St. and surrounding areas. Under European rules, all public funds had to be committed by December 1999, and spent by December 2001. A small walk around the area will reveal how successful they have been.
Having committed themselves to a number of far-reaching and glorious ideas, they have not only clearly failed to deliver, but seemed to have completely redefined what social and cultural regeneration means, in order to justify to the public and corruption investigators how this vast amount of money has been spent.
Collusion with the local press has meant that luxury flats and expensive office space has become the main focus of social change.
The Ropewalks fiasco may yet prove to be the main turning point, as they have almost certainly been the most stupid. The level of back scratching and fraud involved has led to an investigation by the European Commission fraud squad, OLAF, although even this may lead to more problems. What will be interesting about the corruption investigation taking place is how far our own council will be implicated in this case and how it is decided to punish those involved. It appears the main victim could well be the people of Liverpool, as the council refused to freeze funding to Ropewalks in view of the investigation; the money is now owed by the city. This will come out of council expenditure, not councillors’ pockets. In a clear reflection of what has happened in the ‘third world’ we may lose out twice.
An indication that the council has not changed its policy following the Ropewalks’ experience can be found in the criticisms of Liverpool Vision. Liverpool Vision was the flagship of the UrbanRegenerationCommitee and was set up in a fanfare of publicity in 1999 with the aim of creating a hub of growth in the city centre. It was one of three pilot schemes, along with Manchester and Sheffield. Yet it never had a single local person on its committee, and like the colonialists and missionaries who entered Africa, they pretended they knew what was best for us, tried to tell us what was best for us, when all the time they have been serving their own interests. We closed our eyes and they had the land.
Professor Brian Robson, of Manchester University, a regeneration expert stated: “It’s important to hear the voice of ordinary people, it would give Liverpool Vision better feedback and balance. “
He continued: “Liverpool Vision ought to include community representatives. Manchester and Sheffield have community representatives on their boards, while Liverpool does not.”
Mike Storey, leader of the council, in response to these criticisms stated that; “Myself and Gideon Ben-Tovim are on the board. Aren’t councillors community representatives, elected by the people of Liverpool?”
This level of arrogance and bloody mindedness is reflective of the kind of dictatorial control we have been witnessing throughout the history of regeneration funding. An attempt to become the city of culture now seems destined to fail and the lack of community involvement is the stated reason. Fingers will be pointed amongst the press when we lose out, but the real reasons will be ignored, as anyone who has been involved with the proposals for the city of culture will tell you this has been another attempt to draw funding in for corporations looking to use Liverpool to feed its own interests.
Liverpool has now seen billions of pounds wasted, which means we are still living in some of the worst living conditions in Europe with little or no opportunity for anything other than low paid and unsustainable unemployment. It may be naïve to think there was ever a possibility that the money that was ours would all be spent on decent housing and decent work training, but the sheer lack of any worthwhile expenditure and the total lack of involvement of those living and working in the poorer communities, displays major corruption within the city, not just inefficiencies of the system. The most telling statistic is that Objective One funding is only available to those cities whose gross domestic product (GDP) means the majority of its people are living way below the poverty line. Somehow having received this massive injection of money we are still eligible and are uniquely the only city where GDP has actually fallen in this period.
It is time for the levels of protest to match the crimes committed, and for a proper positive programme of change to be put forward from grass roots level.
THE WORLD’S ON FIRE
GLOBAL ROUND UP
The rich governments of the west, the WTO (World Trade Organisation) and IMF (International Monetary Fund) were under the illusion, that after September 11th, the anti-capitalist movement would cease. But what they fail to understand is that the conditions that created the movement, are not only here, but they are intensifying. So while Bush and his thugs roam the globe - trying to kill or silence anyone who objects to their barbaric money-grabbing ways, they will create the conditions that will not only make us bigger but also more determined - and fight harder for a better world.
Check out:www.thirdworldtraveler.com
ARGENTINA EXPLOSION
In the face of a worsening economic crises, Argentina’s working and poor people are mobilizing for action. The newly-unemployed are joining road blockades around a “Workers’ Area” in La Matanza and the southern area of Buenos Aires. Teachers and government workers are resisting plans for privatisation, delayed salary, and payments in bonds. And mine workers in Río Turbio have occupied their mine in solidarity with their fired co-workers. Four successive presidents have fallen under the pressure and although the free market IMF policies largely responsible for the trouble may have been discredited, the current man on the job, Duhalde, is no stranger to corruption. It’s not over yet. Meanwhile anarchists in London occupied the Argentina embassy, in support at the masses of Argentinans who are refusing the impositon of new leaders. The anarchists even managed to change the Argentine national flag on the embassy and replace it with a red & black one, as they demanded the Argentina people the right to run the country without leaders.
www.indymedia.org
EU CONFRONTED AGAIN
For three days a broad cross-section of European citizens said ‘No!’ to the neo-liberal policies of the heads of the European Union at their conference in Brussels.
Trade Unionists, No Borders activists, anti-globalisation protesters, Black Bloc, Rhythms of Resistance, student groups along with many other groups from around the globe were out in force to demonstrate their resistance to the repressive policies of the European parliament. All in all around 150,000 demonstrated, danced, occupied and it some cases rioted.
WTO CONFRONTED AGAIN
Meanwhile a month earlier, worldwide protests against the WTO conference in Quater, saw thousands throughout the globe protesting, as a world-wide 24 hour radio link was established. Most notable demo was in Rome, where 130,000 marched. Meanwhile the middle Easts own Anti-capitalist group held their first demo, outside the meeting venue.
OPERATION ENDURING NONSENSE
Somalian phone and internet users have become the latest target of the ‘war on terror’, Somalia Internet Company and the countrie’s largest company al-Barakaat which runs phones and post among other things, are suspected by the US of funnelling money to al-Qaida. Their assets have been frozen and their international communications shut down, forcing them to close and leaving Somalis without internet access and many without the phone. Many Somalis rely on money being wired from relatives abroad, making this extra bad news. The companies deny the accusations.
THEY KILL EACH OTHER, WE MAKE £££
Meanwhile, Blair’s peacekeeping efforts and foreign trips are once again undermined by Britain’s busy arms trade. Since Jan 1999, £122 million of arms exports have been licensed by government for sale to India, while Pakistan have bought £18 million. One is a military dictatorship and the other is getting flak for human rights abuses in Kashmir. Both countries have much poverty and perhaps better things to spend their money on, although the same could be said for Tanzania which will soon be the proud owner of a shiny new, made in Britain, military communication system.
WORKERS TAKE ON OIL BOSSES
Nigeria’s trade unions are resisting fuel price increases of between 18% and 29%. The government plans to deregulate the petroleum market and attract investment, but its methods threaten the welfare of many and the NLC (union umbrella group) are threatening a general strike, similar to the successful one of 2000.
COLOMBIA HEATS UP
After 3 years of negotiations aimed at ending the 37 years of conflict in Colombia, President Andres Pastrana has just announced the end of the so called peace process between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s largest rebel group. The 17,000 strong FARC who control some 40% of the land were given 48 hours from Saturday 12th January 2002 to leave the demilitarized zone, handed over by the government in 1998 as a condition for peace talks. The army and their right wing paramilitary death squads are now, after more than 3 decades of failing, preparing to try and defeat FARC. This new-found confidence of the government and the right-wing death squads comes alongside the US-led ‘war on terrorism’, which has given the go ahead to right-wingers to intensify their attacks not only on FARC, but on trade unions, social and popular movements. It is no coicidence that the USA military aid to both the Colombian government and the right wing death squads (known as theplan Columbia) has gone hand in hand with the massive increase in human rights abuses. What the US and their puppets in Colombia fail to realise is that FARC would rather fight and die, than live on their knees.
www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Colombia/colombiatop.htm
SCHOOL OF ASSASINS
There is a place in the USA, based at Fort Benning, Georgia called ‘ THE US ARMY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS’ (SOA) were USA Military and Police experts have trained and continue to train thousands of Latin American military and Police. They train them in combat, counter insurgency and interrogation techniques like torture, execution, blackmail and arresting the relatives of those being questioned. Of the 60,000 Graduates from the school many have become notorious dictators like Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Many others have been responsible for the murders of thousands of civilians, and for Americas worst human rights crimes. What’s more the fees for students are free. Students at the school will attend such trying academic classes like ‘how to spot a communist/terrorist (they are viewed as the same thing). The school has been known throughout Latin America for years as ‘escuela de golpes’ or Coup school. Last January due to years of bad publicity, the US congress decide to reform the school, they called it the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC) Since then, countless children, women and men have been forced into exile or made refugees in their own country. Union organizers, student activists and others working in solidarity with the poor have been assassinated. Across Latin America, thousands continue to suffer rape, torture, murder, disappearance and arbitrary detention at the hands of SOA graduates and their cohorts in the paramilitaries. You’ve guessed it - the US thought be changing the name it would dupe people.
On November 20th some 10,00 people marched on the school, with over 3000 breaking through its fences and marching on its grounds. It’s good to know we got a lot of friends doing stuff over the other side of the Atlantic.
http://www.soaw.org/ 
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