High-earning individuals who choose to take advantage of New Labour's generous tax concessions for Self Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs) will from next April be offered the chance to include unregulated investments in residential property, antiques, wine, boats and vintage cars in their portfolios of assets.
Gordon Brown's new mechanism to widen the growing gap between rich and poor offers those investing in SIPPs lavish tax relief of up to 40 percent on what they spend.
The idea of including housing as part of the portfolio of assets has raised angry protests from rural areas that it is effectively subsidising wealth city dwellers to buy up additional houses in the countryside for their retirement fund, leaving low-paid workers struggling to afford a place to live as property prices spiral upwards.
Policies worth a staggering £1.1 billion have already been purchased from market leaders
end in 2007. the schemes. exemptions and allowances. Standard Life in the ten months from December 2004, while other companies have reportedly racked up another 22 billion in investments.
Much more business is expected when the full scheme kicks in from April 2006.
But there are limits to the windfall profits.
Business analysts have voiced tears that tax breaks on this scale are too generous to last, and the period of deregulation is set to There are even fears that some especially greedy rich people could fall victim to a new "mis-selling" scandal, with companies scooping up inflated fees for administering
However we should not weep too much for the possible victims: SIPPs are simply the latest in a long line of schemes to dump the main burden of taxation onto ordinary working people, while the rich escape through a labyrinthine system of
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Sheila Malone On November 1-2, Tony Blair hosted a promised post-Gleneagles 'dialogue' on climate change between the rich and the developing countries. The Prime Minister was trying hard to regain lost credibility as greenhouse gas emissions In Kritain continue to rise (up 2.5% in the last six months alone.) But more importantly, the gathering was to push Blair and Bush's agenda that corporate capitalism will sole the issue of global warming and to make sure developing countries also tow this line. Their approach was spun as the triumph of technology. So all sorts of carbon capturing, burying, offsetting, conversion and trading schemes were discussed. These actually allow the harmful burning of fossil fuels to continue as usual, in fact to increase. They take research and subsidies away from alternative renewable energy sources such as wind, wave and solar. All such schemes, however, will afford a bonanza for private capital investment in anything termed "clean' or 'sustainable' development. Bizarrely, this includes nuclear power, now being falsely spun as carbon free.
What these London talks did not set, however, were any international, legally binding limits to the emisLondon Socialist Resistance Forum
How do we stop climate change?
Indian YMCA, Fitzroy Sa (Warren St tube) with PHIL THORNHILL Campaign to Stop Climate Change Socialist Resistance speaker, December 7 7.30pm sion of greenhouse gases, the main cause of global warming.
Blair's stated reason for this was that such targets 'make people very nervous ... they fear some external force is going to impose some internal target ...to restrict your economic growth. Business as usual
So, it will be business as usual for Blair's 'people' -those corporate capitalists pursuing unfettered growth, unhindered by any considerations of and planet.
The Kyoto Treaty, agreed by European and other governments (but not the USA, the world's biggest polluter) did pledge to reduce emissions. However, their target is a meagre 5.2% by 2012, whereas most climatologists agree that cuts of 90% are needed within the next decades in order to avert catastrophe.
Kyoto's mechanisms achieve cuts are also themselves market-based, involving the buying and selling of carbon 'rights' to pollute. Some schemes also prolong an imperialist dependency of poorer countries on the richer North.
Under its misnamed Clean Development Mechanism, for instance, developing countries are being pressured to accept vast monoculture tree plantations or 'carbon sinks' to soak up the pollution of the industrialised nations.
The nuclear power industry is also hoping to sell itself as a 'clean' solution to countries such as China and India.
As long as such schemes are lucrative, the necessary large investment in renewable energy is unlikely. For instance, the biggest sources of CO2 emissions in the world are power stations. The International Energy Agency put the tigure, even
* ANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE PLANET in 1999 at almost 39%.
However, , in Britain, for instance, although the Dept of Trade and Industry's own 1COULLS show that wind power alone could meet one half of our electricity needs, only a derisory 3% of our energy comes from renewables. If the investment and subsidy now being put into fossil fuels went instead into development of renewable energy sources, Britain could easily switch over to them within a decade. Over a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions in Britain come from domestic usage. Proper insulation and efficiency measures could reduce this by at least 30%.
However, New Labour's much-heralded new buildings regulations are being easily circumvented by business. Grants to householders involve jumping through so many hoops that hardly anyone is eligible. The other huge source of CO2 emissions is, of course transport, accounting tor 26% in the UK.
Bizarrely, the worst pollutant, aviation fuel exempted from Kyoto. So in Britain airport expansion is speeding ahead, and air traffic is set to treble within the next few decades.
Capitalism is equally determined to keep its lucrative markets in the area of road transport, especially the private car, a huge moncy-spune..
Take, for instance the rise and rise of the SUV, now the family car for over half of Americans and accounting tor one in seven cars now sold in London.
This grimy, grizzly monster spews out twice the average car pollution, choking up our neighbourhoods. So, under heavy criticism manufacturers have come up with a SUV-lite, whose reduced body weight, they claim cuts emissions by over half. So, everyone can keep using these cars; just buy the latest new super-clean model.
But according to Department of Transport figures, road traffic in the UK is set to rise by up to 70% by 2025, fuelled by huge road building expansion. This will now only cancel out all savings in emissions from such techno-fixes. It will also ensure that cars continue to clog up our streets with bumper-to bumper traffic jams. Planning
So combating global warming also means a different way of planning our communities and organising our lives. A good quality, eco-friendly and inexpensive public transport system would eliminate the need for much private car usage. Better still would be to have our work, school, shopping and leisure facilities within walking or cycling distance.
At present profit-hungry supermarkets increasingly Under heavy criticism manufacturers have come up with a 'SUV-lite' whose reduced body weight, they claim cuts emissions by over halt. So, everyone can keep using these cars; just buy the latest new super-clean model. import produce from labour-exploitative and environmentally destructive monoculture in developing countries. This gobbles up airmiles and emits CO2 at an enormous rate. Challenging these practices would involve opposing a system that traps developing countries into dependency and perpetuates unsustainable patterns of consumption in the imperialist North. Opposition to targets for cuts in emissions is often justified by saying that this would not allow a country such as China to 'catch up' with the West. But this assumes the only mode of development is a capitalist one. This, of course, is what the Chinese leadership is currently pursuing, at breakneck speed.
Those at the top are reaping huge profits. But for millions of Chinese the seizing and ravaging of their lands and livelihoods to make way for huge, often export-oriented enterprises has brought destitution and misery As happened earlier in other parts of Asia, Africa and South America, this has resulted in the coming together of trades union, social and environmental movements in a fierce opposition. The government has responded by brutally repressing activists. When environmentalist Tan Kai tried recently to set up a Green Watch branch he was promptly thrown into prison. The World and European Social Forums have been a
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