Tackling symptoms rather than cause of crisis

Mainstream political parties are now falling over themselves in an attempt to assist “hard-working” families.

I fear they are tackling symptoms rather than the root causes.

Over the last three decades the old settlement between capital and labour has been destroyed. The gulf between general price inflation in the economy as a whole and wages continues to grow at an alarming rate. This is the “new normal” for a large proportion of the citizenry and the process seems to be intensifying.

For many years the impoverishing of workers was masked by the abundance of credit but for those that bothered to look behind media misinformation the situation had been evident for at least a decade.

Since the start of the current depression, incomes have grown by 10% while the cost of essentials has leapt by 33%.

The factors that are contributing to this crisis are: technological change leading to the commodification of ever more products and services, unfettered labour mobility across Europe, the emasculation of the trade union movement, the continuing devaluation of the Pound and our dependence upon large amounts of imported fuel and food.

The majority of these factors are firmly entrenched and quite frankly it’s difficult to see these reversing any day soon.

The mainstream parties have yet to acknowledge the root causes of our travails.

In truth, they dare not do so, for this would reveal both the error of their ideology and the inadequacy and inapposite nature of current policies.

Kevin Hey

Colne