Billionaire tax exile to slash services

Action now to defeat cuts!

Coventry Against the Cuts protests outside Council House, photo Coventry Socialist Party

Coventry Against the Cuts demands that the Labour Party refuses to implement the cuts, photo Coventry Socialist Party

A cabinet of millionaires appoints a billionaire to advise them on making cuts to our jobs and services, or as they refer to them - 'efficiencies'. No surprise there!

Alistair Tice

Sir Philip Green, boss of the Arcadia retail group, has just been appointed to join the Con-Dem crusade against the public sector and the poor.

And Sir Philip has been very efficient - at making money! Along with his wife he is listed in the top ten of the Sunday Times Rich List, enjoys a Ł4.1 billion fortune and lives in the tax haven of Monaco.

But from his private yacht on the Med, Green said he had "no idea" what savings he could deliver. So here's a couple of ideas to save public money that Green probably won't be considering:

Close the tax loop-holes for the rich, which Sir Philip has valuable experience of exploiting. Even Revenue and Customs reckons that Ł40 billion is avoided, evaded and unpaid each year, yet tax offices have been closed and their staff reduced.

This figure is more than 25 times the Ł1.5 billion that Cameron says is being stolen from the taxpayer by alleged benefit fraud. Against the poor, Cameron will use credit ratings agencies to act as bounty hunters, whilst the rich tax avoiders get appointed to government.

Another idea. Scrap the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The vast majority oppose privatisation, seeing it for what it is - a further gift from us to the rich.

After 100 days of coalition cuts and privatisation Clegg says: "judge us on five years". No way. Nobody 'agrees with Nick' now. We can't afford to let the Con-Dems stay in power for five years. There'll be nothing left!

Rising anger and opposition needs to be channelled into action that can defeat this millionaires' government. We should follow the example of workers in Greece, Spain and Portugal and get onto the streets.

That's why the Socialist Party supports the National Shop Stewards Network's call for a mass lobby of the Trade Union Congress when it meets in September.

We demand that our trade union leaders call a national demonstration this autumn to mobilise for the public sector-wide strike action that will be necessary to defeat these savage cuts.