Austerity is not a necessity. It has been constructed, like the idea of “terrorism”, to coerce people. The 1% have to let be known that the other 99% know their place in the world while they indulge. Not that even they will be any different on the day of reckoning. However while they have the power they are using it to impose austerity on us. It is a crime.

Local authorities are under threat as never before. They were given by central government for providing local services including the vital safety nets needed. These have been hard won over decades, if not centuries. Local councillors being asked what they can do wring their hands and say that nothing can be done. The dictatorship of Government is all powerful and there will be dreadful consequences. Well that’s certainly what they’ve been told. Who is standing up? If they won’t then we’ll have to. The great unwashed, the rabble. Who does this include? Apparently Dave’s Mum! It his reported that she has signed a petition against closure of children’s homes.

Cameron’s Mum isn’t the only one to complain. Tory MPs facing cuts in their locality are moaning and href=”http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/feb/09/cameron-buying-off-tory-mps-theatening-to-rebel-over-council-cuts”>money is being found to ease the pain. According to Labour 83% is in Tory land.

I met an acquaintance in my local Co-op store on Saturday. He stopped to tell me about the proposal to have just one homeless centre in Birmingham placed in Erdington. He told me how he loved
his job over decades of involvement. With the daunting prospect of around 300 people turning up each night he felt it was time to get out.

Austerity is necessary we are told by not only the Tories. Their former pathetic Lib-Dem partners believed the lie, and so did Labour who wanted a watered down version. Far from being a necessity, it is a crime being perpetrated by and elite on the majority with the most vulnerable at particularly high risk. The fair Britain we had battled for is being systematically dismantled. The money that should be used for what we have called “essential services” goes to maximising profit. Not only money but public assets are transferred at low or no cost to companies so that bosses of school chains have six figure salaries. Has education improved. Short of teachers children education is going to suffer. In the health service A & E and services are in decline as private firms cherry pick the services that they can control and profit from. Do MP’s benefit? The revolving door system in place at Westminster makes it inevitable as MPs are offered directorships for themselves and families on the first day through the door. The whole system is corrupt, designed to serve an elite supposedly put into power by us.

David Cameron, Prime Minister, tried to bat away a question asked 6 times by the Leader of the Opposition beginning with reference to an alliance of “unelected” and “unelectable” during Prime Minister’s Question Time in the House of Commons. It seems that once again the PM is in danger of being a hostage to fortune. His derision combined with his inbred Etonian cockiness have left him off his guard.

The “unelectable” asked his own question today instead of his earlier tactic of using questions from crowd sources, which had been effective in putting Cameron off guard and from comments made by The Independent it appeared his best performance to date in this hot seat.

Earlier this week it was the “unelected” who delivered the coup de grace to PM and Chancellor, who responded by brazening it out, but with a much softer subtext claiming that someone was listening – not the usual modus operandi for the Bullingdon Club chums.

In the last coalition government the Conservatives went out of their way to prevent an advance in reformation of the Lords, against the wishes of their Lib-Dem partners. As the Telegraph noted it was because there are no votes in doing this.

So now hopefully the second chamber will cease to be “unelected” and Jeremy Corbyn will continue to draw in more people who haven’t habitually voted because of their disenchantment with the established elite.

Jeremy Corbyn’s thanks were highlighted in the Morning Star. Just this fact shows how moderate is portrayed as extreme. There was absolutely nothing there that should not be part of mainstream politics today. It appears it is in many people’s beliefs and that has been realised in the result of a democratic election of leader of the Labour Party. A veil of deception has been lifted from our eyes, although media and all those politicians personally benefitting from a corrupt establishment are going to overdrive to maintain the fog.

The first day left Corbyn battling to establish a front bench, difficult in any circumstances, but impossible if some of those nursing defeat had their way. It was achieved with criticism over the inclusion of women. This was surely a denial of all Corbyn was about. Two of the top places, his own and his deputy’s, were already decided in the ballot, leaving the Shadow-Chancellor. Cries of cronyism here. Continuing comment that his supporters were young and needed to grow up. Thus a commentator on radio 4 explained how she had been on demonstrations and shared the excitement. Then she grew up and saw that she had to accept things as they were. Clearly she missed the opportunity to stop and think about the alternatives that exist to austerity because those like George Osborne had said there was none. Labour largely agreed coming up with it’s own watered down version. This in spite of the fact it was the Tory intention all along to dispense with the state and its provision. Ideological and entirely unnecessary. So many see and understand this and its apparent consequences. Fed up with the response of the careerists in politics so many have decided that enough is enough.

Hope across austerity-ridden Europe has been expressed with Podemos in Spain commenting on Corbyn’s victory seeing it as a reaction to the damage neo-liberalism is intensifying glaring inequality on populations. Back home those who didn’t support Corbyn have been thinking it through, moving from “it will never work” to “it certainly won’t if we all say so. If we don’t try we’ll all be blamed.” Moving along from restating her position, Polly Toynbee makes a case for support in order to deal with the rampant and vindictive Tory agenda.

The appearance together at a gathering focussing on Israel is revealing the depth of the Labour candidates’ poverty. This is with the honourable exception of the previously discounted candidacy of Jeremy Corbyn. The other three vied with each other in their sycophancy saying that support for that state was eternal and unconditional. Trashing Gaza, seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank and holding prisoners, including many children, in abject conditions is not on their radar. Neither is the continuing trauma of so many children, both Palestinian and Israeli, not there for consideration. Of course we’ve seen this all before with Middle East Peace Envoy Blair. They’ll all say that they need to uphold such unspeakably inhumane ideals as necessary to get them and Labour elected. Support for Corbyn in anti-austerity suggests that his contrary stance is appreciated by rather more than elitist Britain’s corporate power admit.

If nothing else Jeremy Corbyn’s entry into the debate has opened crucial areas of debate that wouldn’t have been had if confined to the dire poverty of the rest. Not that any areas of the establishment believe in making it easy with interviewers lowering the pitch by asking him and others if they believed that his inclusion would make Labour unelectable. Well it most certainly will be if it doesn’t involve itself in such a serious debate and then translate this into serious politics. The people of Scotland told Labour clearly what they thought, regrettably by voting in a nationalist party. (Others using such a term are considered taboo – as in BNP, NF and National Socialists in Germany.) Corbyn has proved himself well able to deal by contesting those who have tried to draw him into their vacuous debate by referring to the pressing issues needing their, and our, attention.

Blair talks about Corbyn’s supporters requiring “a heart transplant”. Judging by this display of hard heartedness by the other contenders, like their spokesman, hearts would be replaced by stones!

Looking at an outside,informed view from an economist, Joseph Stiglitz, indicates how such central issues as austerity are sidelined by those inside the “Westminster bubble” but, as in the US, the feelings of the majority who have watched wealth increase exponentially in the hands of an elite. It is just this elite which is misusing the power that this wealth and influence give. Vested interests incorporations dealing with our essentials like food and drink and inessentials like increasingly sophisticated war materials dominate them. The revolving door in our parliament ensures that those we elect are seduced by their power far than by the vote we gave them. It’s easy to see why the Israeli lobby (not supported by many Jewish people) became a place where candidates fell over each other to please. Another US commentator, journalist Eileen Fleming, makes a comment on the issue. (See comments).