On the eve of the London Labour Party Conference this weekend, I have set out
my manifesto for London, which you can download.
This alternative programme for London would dramatically improve the quality of life for Londoners by striking at the roots of the Capital's environmental, social, and economic problems.
London is one of the richest cities in the world but Londoners don't share in its wealth and opportunities. By using the wealth created in London to invest in its transport, environment, housing and industries we could transform the life of many of its citizens.
Central Government forced the disaster of tube part-privatisation on a resistant Mayor and Londoners. That disaster is now forecast to cost an extra £750m – money that would be better spent reducing fares and expanding the public transport network.
Fares Fair was an extremely popular policy that slashed public transport fares for Londoners and hugely reduced traffic congestion in the Capital before it was ruled illegal in the courts.
City bonuses this year are expected to total £8.8bn. A windfall tax of just 10% on these grotesque payments would cover the £875m that Londoners will contribute towards the Olympics. A similar tax in five years' time could fund free tickets to the Games for Londoners.
The ten points in full are:
The main 10 points of the London manifesto are:
1. A new 'Fares Fair' policy for the 21st Century, slashing fares for Londoners
2. End privatisation of the London Underground, including the East London Line, restoring the tube to public ownership
3. Windfall tax on City bonuses to pay London's contribution to the Olympics and ensure free access to Londoners
4. Restore control of business rates to local councils and abolish the Corporation of London, transferring its functions and resource base to the GLA
5. A real living wage of at least £7 per hour, plus a London weighting of 20%
6. Decentralised London energy system, based on alternative energy sources
7. No further expansion at Heathrow and no third runway
8. Halt hospital cuts and NHS privatisations
9. Emergency house-building programme, and allow 4th option, to tackle London's housing crisis
10. Support free and comprehensive education and an end to Trusts, City Academies and tuition fees
16 Comments:
Do you support Ken Livingstone's re-election as mayor John?
I think you need to be careful when talking about 'City Bonuses' John & examine your prejudices. Yes, the total amount's large but this is the main means of remuneration for some (who may be on a smallish City salary), moreover talking about only bonuses misses out the City professions that earn massive wedges by means of salary alone. I agree with income redistribution to an extent but what you've said just doesn't make sense. Don't just go by the headlines.
finances aside I think the city needs to clean up it's act and modernise as I've heard quite a bit about the working conditions there from friends who've had to work anything up to twenty four hours a day and many women can't go back after having children as htey are expected to give this kind of commitment. One was told she would "have to have a day and night nanny available" if she did; so they must lose a lot of parent and particularly female talent. Another friend had a miscarriage which could have been caused by her excessive overtime and as in many other jobs pregnant women in the city tend to feel they have to work till the last minute to prove themselves and it's amazing how many of them I read about in magazines etc that then go into premature Labour or have other complications. I heard on Radio 4 that the city used to have a sort of code of honour that prevented people getting too greedy and I've read ficiton books where this sort of attitude is described but since Thatcher and the eighties this was lost in place of sheer greed. Also when I graduated eleven years ago fellow graduates were so gratedul to get a job at all as there ahd been a recession that they, especially those that went in City jobs put up with terrible hours and although the money was good they had a very bad work-life balance as they were always at work. They were supposed to "work hard, play hard" but it isn't actually like this in all jobs, often they are too tired after working till 9p.m. on a Saturday to go out, so much for the great social life! The city no doubt will say it's embracing flexible workig these days but as I've just explained above it effectively excludes a lot of people and also as our trade union and employment laws are so weak in this country they will find ways round this such as I am ashamed to say as a socialist that I once unthinkingly signed the opt out to the woking time directive (48 hour week) while working at Harmondsworth detention centre because I thought my colleagues might need the money they'd get if they were allowed to do overtime over this time limit as the salary was very low and I knew they needed the money (my job could be done within normal hours limits so it didn't affect me personally but I'd worked as a shift worker before and I know that many people only get by or feel that they'll only get by with the addition of their overtime money and I'd done it myself when necessary and money was short).I didn't envisage people doing as much as seven days a week though but I now know that can happen, I have a Spanish friend who was doing seventy hours a week recently as a temp chemist making asprins as she was ignorant of the law and her agency obviously didn't see fit to tell her and she really needed the money at the time to buy a car. This is why we need decent working rights and a decent minimum wage as then there would be no need for these excesses, you can see from my examples that the private sector is cleaning up as it is recieiving fees for the temps and and so on while the workers are heading for burnnout and God help the ones who have families to care for as well. Those that do receive bonuses tend I think to effectively spend them on more expensive houses from what I've seen or lots of holidays probaly pushing up house prices and emitting large carbon footprints whereve they go! Yet they say they work harder than anyone else and deserve the bonuses, this is a total myth of course as I found out when a partent agent friend had to write out his diary for the day, he did work but went for his tea break etc just like anyone else so he said it made quite boring reading and they often go to teh pub on bithdays/to watch cricket etc on Friday afternoons, so much for the long hours culture, I think the old boys'netwotk is still going strong in some of the older firms but in some of the newer firms the workers are just manic as they are so competitive to get into in the first place. Back in the seventies I believe people didn't have this fear of being unelpoyed even we they had good qualifiactions and degrees and simply went for what they wanted to do in the first place where as now there are a lot of people in totally the wrong jobs and a lot of workplace bullying and other employment problems to add to the long hours culture and if we are to turn it round then we have to start from the top i.e. the most influntial employers like the City ones will have to change just as they are all havign to become "green" at last and increasing use ethical suppliers, well they also need to "start at home" (like charity beginning at home) and look at how they treat and pay their own staff! The Blairite excuse of gllobalisation meaning we all have put up with rubbish conditions that may even endanger our health and safety (some of my temp jobs have endangered mine) or active just dosen't wash. Any supporter of John McDonnell should make sure they join the relevant trade union as well to join the fight for decent rights at work.
forgot to say when I said "finances aside" that I do completely agree with John's line on fat cat bonuses, I just think that every aspect of these fat cat workplaces needs reform!
According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, top corporate financiers will receive bonuses of £5.5m each - I wouldn't lose too much sleep over depriving them of 10%.
Who cares if their basic is a mere £100k - I'm sure they won't spend Xmas in the gutter due to 'McDonnell's prejudice'.
Average salary in the City is £100,000. See http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,,1951464,00.html
interesting article on the CBI conference on Radio 4 just now - it said that the reason that Britain was not competitive came down to bad management in some of it's companies and that despite the companies represented there's protestations to the contary they were still creaming off huge profits and paying these to their fatcats!
Great stuff, John. My tuppence worth...
1. The first step toward a fares fair policy would be to allow tube season tickets to be offset against income tax.
2. The success of Network Rail earning £747M after only 4 years proves that public ownership can work and return all profits back to the users of the system rather than to well-heeled shareholders.
3. The windfall tax sounds like an excellent idea. It is businessmen who will gain from the Olympics and so it's only fair that they fund it.
5. London Weighting is so important. The cost of travel and even a lunchtime sandwich takes up a good part of the take-home pay - many of us walked away from good jobs in central London because of the pure exhaustion of commuting and not being able to afford a home closer to work.
7. Watching the skies over the west M25 last week, I saw at least 5 aeroplanes in the same patch of sky, no more runways unless they can provide more sky!! That part of West London cannot take any more pollution, it is motorway bound (M25,M40,M4), local traffic is congested and aircraft from both Northolt and Heathrow are churning out pollution non-stop. Please let these residents breathe.
9. We have now reached the nadir of Maggie's right to buy policies and attack on social housing. These must be reversed with local authorities taking responsibility for housing their electorate - but of course some of them may wish to move Tory voters into their constituencies. :-(
10. London will fail without an educated workforce, I still can't believe that a Labour government, having scrapped maintenance grants now charges its electorate for the skills that modern business needs. The new initiative floated recently regarding raising the school age reminds me of the Thatcher manifesto of 1987 when YTS was first proposed. http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/man/con87.htm. Reading this may not be good for your health. Some of it reminds me much of what Tony Blair is proposing now.
Another thought to resolve the transport problem : Provide a tax incentive to those companies who allow their staff to log-on and work from home?
My only quibbles here are- it is unfair on other parts of the country which also have high living costs to just give London an extra weighting.
I support the expansion of Heathrow because we won't keep up with the world, we will only regress, forwards is the only policy.
10 is a complete joke, usual mcdonnell uncosted rubbish.
For some of John's supporters :-
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Heathrow/
To prevent the UK from becoming AirStrip One
Slashing bus fares for Londoners. Hey, you have better public transport than the rest of us already.
most of what the BA chief came up with to improve Britans' transport was a load of baloney but he has a point about road tolls; the rest of Europe tends to have them I think; I know if you drive to teh South of France you have to cough up about every two hours, it was seven pounds per toll when I was there in 1991 so it added up The tolls should be made into a green tax (like the congestion charge which was always intended to be expanded to other areas anyway, well done Ken there (though please don't privatise the East London line, resist the Blairite pressure!) and the railways renationalised in order to improve them so that richer and busier areas could subsidise poorer and more rural areas which would solve the London centric problemn and saftey should improve so no more train crashs due to contractors taking shortcuts and risks with our safetywhich has been happening more and more I've heard from those who drive the trains and work on the track etc since the Tories first privatised it. If the trains were improved there would eb less need to drive; here in Marlow many people don't even know where the station is yet we have a branchline to Paddington through Maidenhead! Slight snag that it only goes once an hour.... and Channel 4 are doing a documentary about how bad the traffic is in Marlow! Well no wonder!
Ranted enough so next blog had better be a rave about something!
Did I mention that Tory Bucks County council is too mean to provide hot dinners for our kids so we have to cook for them far too late in the day so they are late to bed and tired for school. We can't Jamie Oliver lunches until they can build us soem kitchens, yet the kids at my friends schook in Reigate have an organic hot dinner!
Ranted again just to get it off my chest
London should be raved about; it's much better under Ken
we don't want Stephen Norris now do we?!
In Machester where Labour conference was the privatised buses were lunatic - I was charged 60p to go two thirds of the way back to my hotel, then £1.20 for the last third after I'd stopped off to get a curry!
At least Ken has sorted the bused out and he would have sorted out the tubes better had his hand not effectively been tied on this if you look at the Mayor's actual powers.
Also you have to admit that he has boosted London's international reputation so there!
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