Event EndedNewcastle/Durham coach to NO MORE AUTERITY 2.0 march/rally

Central London

central, WC2N 5DU, London, England, United Kingdom

North East People's Assembly

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Campaigning against all cuts, not less or slower cuts.No privatisation. No racist scapegoating. No evictions.Mission1. A fairer economy for a fairer BritainThe amount of wealth that is spent on wages and incomes has generally been declining as a proportion of GDP since the1980s. Since 2008, 90% of incomes have faced severe reductions. It must be a top priority of any new government to reverse this trend and to measure progress, year on year, in the name of every citizen.Most now agree that wealth is unfairly distributed. Those with great wealth disagree. These are the financiers, bankers, big capitalists and their top managers whose profit system brought the world to the brink of melt down in 2008. The gap between the rich and the rest is now greater in the UK than at anytime since the mid 19th century. A new government must challenge this by progressive tax reform and repatriation of the vast wealth held in tax havens.The City of London has led the British economy into its greatest disaster since the 1930’s. The government spent our money saving the banks from ruin. Rather than selling banks back to the people who nearly destroyed the country any new government should consolidate all current banking institutions into a new publically owned banking system, which makes long term investment in future technology and green production. This means defending pensions funds and repudiating all the US and EU agreements to force open public services to private gain.A million young people are unemployed and face a bleak future. Any new government needs to set up a national scheme providing real jobs on full wages with work-based training. Further and higher education should be free.2. More and better jobsWhile the crisis continues any new government needs to protect existing jobs and intervene to ensure full employment. All work should attract at least the Living Wage, which will be legislated as the new minimum wage, regardless of age, accompanied by guaranteed holiday and pension provision. Zero hour contracts should be banned.New technology and green production should guide general economic development in the interests of the majority of the people. The workforce must be a key participant in the direction of economic activity. Financial support for collective and community-based enterprises can open out new types of production, distribution and services, providing a different model to corporate domination, rooted in new principles of common and social ownership spreading throughout the economy.3. High standard homes for allA new government needs a 2 part emergency plan to address the housing crisis.1) a programme to build at least 250,000 new social homes a year (see 2011 census) and to refurbish existing housing stock.2) to reform the private and public rented sector using rent controls and the implementation of national standards of accommodation and security of tenure.It is a priority to expand community owned and managed social housing, through cooperatives, tenant management organisations and community land trusts. The bedroom tax must be abolished.4. Protect and improve public servicesThe involvement of private companies in public utilities and services has created a terrible mess for the majority and any new government must reverse this damage. The privatization policy is designed to create profit, not serve the people. The people as a whole should own energy, post, telecommunications, water and transport – with profits ploughed back into investment.Profit making is the wrong principle for developing health, education and social services. It leads to post code lotteries for treatment, uneven and unfair access to education and poorly maintained and managed social services, as well as being vastly more costly (e.g. transaction costs in the NHS have risen from 7% to 12% since private companies got more involved and are rising rapidly. The figure in the US is 35%).5. For fairness and justiceA new government needs to establish an agreed national proportion of not more than 5 to 1 between the size of top incomes and the median wage and salaries and join the Swiss peoples’ attempt to abolish poverty by supporting the ‘Citizens initiative for an unconditional basic income.’Unions need to be freed to be able to act in defence of members’ rights and conditions, to be able to bargain collectively and nationally in the fight against poverty, and to be able to campaign for political, economic and social change if needed.Disabled citizens must have automatic and autonomous access to the full rights of any other citizen, including access to work, transport etc.Women in particular bear the brunt of austerity, both in work and in managing the fall out of cuts to services in communities. The over-representation of women among both the poor and the lowest paid must be treated as the national emergency it is. Equal pay must be enforced and child-care should be free at the point of need.Any new government should lead the challenge to all attempts to scapegoat immigrant workers for inequality, poverty or limits to public resources.All state benefits and pensions should be tied to inflation and start at Living Wage levels. Pension age should be fixed between unions and employers depending on the character of the job, with a maximum legal limit of 65.6. For a secure and sustainable futureThe dramatic damage to our world, our climate and weather stems from the same sources as international poverty and war. Brutal greed and the search for profit at all costs must be replaced by investment in a sustainable future.Any new government must start by a public audit of all debt, canceling of the debt of the poor of the planet and getting rid of the debt economy in Britain and abroad. This implies serious financial regulation and a transaction tax of the international movement of capital and wealth by banks and corporations.Government must end the cost of war in blood and money. Bring the troops home. Don’t waste billions on a new generation of nuclear weapons and scrap Trident’s replacement as called for by CND.“The People’s Assembly has a plain and simple goal: to make government abandon its austerity programme and if it will not, to replace it with one that will”- Tony Benn