Wednesday, February 08, 2012

The world turned upside down

For good left-wing views on current affairs there is only one place. Er ... The Daily Telegraph??

First, some trenchant opposition to neoliberalism that the mainstream left is signally failing to articulate, especially when commenting on Cameron's stance in the EU.
Very quickly: some of you will have seen that Greece’s tax revenue from VAT collapsed by 18.7pc in January from a year earlier.
Nobody can seriously blame tax evasion for this. It has happened because 60,000 small firms and family businesses have gone bankrupt since the summer.
The VAT rate for food and drink rose from 13pc to 23pc in September to comply with EU-IMF Troika demands. The revenue effect has been overwhelmed by the contraction of the economy.
Overall tax receipts fell 7pc year-on-year.
This is a damning indictment of the EU-imposed strategy. Greece is chasing its tail. The budget deficit is stuck near 8pc to 9pc of GDP because the economic base is shrinking so fast.
Secondly, a forensic dissection and comprehensive demolition of the latest drivel from Seumas Milne on Syria.
But Milne’s suffocating “anti-imperialist” worldview leads to a deeply unpleasant moral equivalence between a reluctantly militarising opposition and unyielding regime. This leads to some absurd conclusions. Such as the idea that poor, misunderstood Russia is simply protecting itself from Western depredations. “Russian officials have privately assured opposition leaders that the quarrel is with the US, not them,” Milne tells us. That’s a relief, then. Those being slaughtered in Homs don't know how lucky they are.
Supporting revolutions, opposing neoliberalism; that's the Telegraph for you. Really.

1 comment:

lostmysocks said...

Never thought it would come to this D: