NSW power sell-off exposed as daylight robbery

Testimony to the NSW Upper House inquiry into the sale of the retail arm of NSW electricity has revealed that only a tiny fraction of the $5.3 billion price tag will reach the public purse, with billions of dollars eaten up by a number of “associated costs”.

These include nearly $1.5 billion in government funding for the new Cobbora coal mine north-east of Lithgow to ensure a cheap coal supply for energy producers, and a guaranteed further $1 billion in coal price subsidies to the private energy companies over the life of the mine.

In addition, the legal and administrative expenses for negotiating the deal amount an estimated $300 million alone.

While NSW Treasurer Eric Roozendaal has crowed that the sale would free taxpayers from future risk in the sector, the Inquiry has heard that this is far from the truth.

Treasury Secretary Michael Schur, who appeared before the inquiry on January 18, criticised the “Gentrader” model under which the sale took place, calling it a “second rate” model that retained future risk for NSW taxpayers.

Manic Street Preachers: "One last shot at mass communication"

Manic Street Preachers - Postcards from a Young Man (Sony, 2010) 
 

From its opening strains, the Manic Street Preachers’ latest – and tenth – album, Postcards From A Young Man, is clearly the successor not only to 2007’s Send Away The Tigers, but also to their critically acclaimed 1996 success Everything Must Go.

It seems sometimes obligatory (although perhaps not useful) to divide the Manics’ work into the chart-friendly “pop” of Everything Must Go and of their successful 1998 follow-up This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, and the darker, more political and introspective music of 1994’s The Holy Bible and 2009’s Journal for Plague Lovers.

Certainly there is a difference – not least the darker lyrics of former guitarist Richey Edwards, who disappeared, now presumed dead, in 1995. While Journal saw the Manics use up the last of Richey’s frequently disturbing lyrics and imagery, the band’s major commercial success has come largely off the back of the more anthemic music which characterised Everything.

Postcards is cut largely from that lighter cloth – it is the Dr Jekyll to Journal’s Mr Hyde.

The album opens with the roaring string crescendos of "(It’s not War) Just the End of Love" and the title-track, "Postcards from a Young Man", followed by a glorious choir-backed duet with Echo & the Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch, "Some Kind of Nothingness".

As a tenth album, coming after more than two decades of tribulation and glamour, of rage and disillusionment, some might have expected Postcards to sound at times tired and dispirited. On the contrary, even the saddest songs on the album are packed full of the same righteous anger and intelligence that have sustained the Manics – and their fans – for all this time.

This is in fact the Manics at their best – anthemic pop songs with dark moments and more political and cultural critique than a university bookshop, performing a subtle unwinding of the chains of alienation that keep us alone and cold.

Germany's ‘hot autumn’ of protests

Germany’s centre-right government is facing what many have dubbed a “hot autumn” of protests, as conflict over a range of social, political and environmental issues come to a head across the country.

As the governments of Europe attempt to offload the costs of the financial crisis onto working people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has initiated a series of “austerity” measures aimed to undermine Germany’s social welfare system.

About 100,000 trade unionists took to the streets on November 13 to protest cuts to social welfare, including government plans to raise the pension age from 65 to 67.

On November 15, Merkel was successfully re-elected leader of her party - the right-wing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - with the support of over 90 percent of the party conference.

Facing criticism from the party's influential right-wing, Merkel has shifted her rhetoric rightwards, claiming that multiculturalism had "utterly failed", and calling on Germans to return to their "Judeo-Christian values".

The day before the CDU conference began, tens of thousands of protesters in Stuttgart, Dortmund, Nürnberg and Erfurt came out to oppose her government’s cuts.

Minister for labour Ursula von der Leyen has tried to defend the attack on pensions. Claiming it was necessary because of Germany’s low birth rate and high life expectancy, Von der Leyen described the move as “a question of fairness”.

Protesters, led by Germany’s largest union IG Metall, rejected the claim. They condemned the changes as an attack on working people designed to maximise corporate profits during the German economy’s current upswing.

Berthold Huber, head of IG Metall, told demonstrators in Stuttgart: “We don’t want a republic in which powerful interest groups decide the guidelines of politics with their money, their power and their influence.”

German activists blockade nuclear train

More than 50,000 German anti-nuclear protesters defied 17,000 police over the weekend of November 6 and 7 to blockade a train carrying spent nuclear fuel rods from France to Germany.

On November 8, the fuel rods finally reached the small north German village of Dannenberg. From there, they were trucked a further 20 kilometres to an interim nuclear storage facility in the town of Gorleben.

Anti-nuclear activists drove more than 600 tractors, blockading roads and the railway in the largest ever demonstration over the transportation of spent nuclear fuel rods in Germany.

The nuclear train was stopped for several hours as local residents, unions, politicians, environmental groups, football clubs, farmers and protesters from across Germany occupied the railway tracks.

FFA Cup? A modest proposal indeed...

The recent announcement that the FFA would be introducing a Cup competition from the 2011-12 season hit me with no small sense of bemusement, as it's something that I (as well as countless voices in the footballing community) have been advocating for years. These are some of my first reactions to the announcement.
 

Based on past form, of course, there is every chance that the FFA will stuff it up spectacularly, unless the new “FFA Cup” is genuinely pitched at building football in Australia – at all levels. For it to work, it must link the different levels of the game, not just act as a tokenistic add-on to the A-League season.

The obvious advantage of such a competition is that it allows for the inclusion of what in my mind is the “real” heart of football in Australia – the State Leagues. I would, however, advocate that once established the competition should be further expanded, getting not only the state leagues involved, but also the best of the regional leagues.

A competition that not only allows South Melbourne to play Melbourne Victory, but that also gives a team from rural NSW, South Australia or Queensland the chance to pit itself against the best of Adelaide FC or the Brisbane Roar, would finally give football the level of permeation and community support to make it a challenger to the title of Australia’s main code.

Of course, how such a cup should work is still open to discussion and debate. The most convincing proposal I have seen so far is one that pitches the top one, two or three teams from the state leagues into a form of elimination round (or rounds) with A-League teams.

The cup-winner should also be given an automatic place in Asia, alongside the winner of the A-League.

But an FFA Cup alone is not enough to fix the fatal flaws in the FFA world-view, and which will continue to kill the game unless they are addressed.

Some more modest proposals...

Germany: Two party system unraveling

Coasting on the back of environmental protests and a hemorrhaging two-party system, the German Greens have sent shock waves through German politics, surging into the position of main opposition party for the first time.

The Greens, who were part of a coalition government with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) from 1998-2005 at the expense of many of the party’s principles, are benefiting from the unraveling of Germany’s tradition two-party system.

Nevertheless, the two major parties - the centre-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union coalition (CDU/ CSU) and the centre-left SPD - retain a monopoly over government in Europe’s biggest economy.

But the facade appears to be truly falling apart at last. Opinion polls in early October put the Greens on 24%, one point ahead of the SPD.

At the 2009 federal elections, the Greens scored 10% of the vote. The far-left Die Linke won 11.9%.

In recent polls, the governing CDU were at 32%, while their neoliberal fundamentalist Free Democratic Party (FDP) allies only reached 6%. Die Linke remained steady on 11%.

The Greens’ poll surge comes amid a rise in environmental and community protests.

Ecuador: Correa vows to ‘radicalise revolution’

In the aftermath of a failed coup attempt on September 30, left-wing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has vowed to deepen his “citizen’s revolution” in the small Andean country.
 

After the coup attempt by sections of the police and armed forces failed amid pro-government protests, Correa’s approval rate has surged as high as 75% in some polls.

In response, Correa, stating his government had not done enough to implement its pro-people program and would radicalise its project to build a “socialism of the 21st century”.

This call was echoed by Ecuador’s National Secretary of Planning and Development Rene Ramirez, who said after the coup: “We want to have a much more progressive government, more turned to the left.”

Correa, addressing the Fifth Congress of the Latin American Coalition of Rural Organisations in Quito on October 13, said Ecuador needed an “agrarian revolution” rather than small reforms in land ownership.

Addressing hundreds of peasant leaders from across Latin America, Correa said his government would either directly expropriate unused and unproductive agricultural land, or raise taxes on those properties to force its owners to sell.

Other measures proposed to deepen agricultural reform include allotting state-owned fallow land to poor farmers and a program of selective import substitution and incentives to increase local production.

Behind the coup attempt in Ecuador

The attempted coup d’etat in Ecuador on September 30 against the left-wing government of Rafael Correa, which was defeated by loyal troops and mass mobilisation of Correa’s supporters, underscores the turbulent history of that small Andean nation.

It also exposes the weaknesses of Ecuador’s revolutionary movement, which is part of a broader Latin American movement against US domination and for regional unity and social justice.

The coup attempt was led by small core of police and soldiers, whose rebellion was triggered by a public service law that cut some of their immediate benefits. This has led some commentators to assert that recent events were simply a wage dispute, rather than a coup attempt.

Correa’s 2006 election victory - supported by the country’s powerful social and indigenous movements - came after almost two decades of political turmoil. Government after government dragged the country deeper into debt and greater poverty.

Between 1998 and 2005, three elected presidents were overthrown by mass uprisings, led in large part by the main representative of the country’s 40% indigenous population, the indigenous federation CONAIE.

Correa - a former finance minister - won the 2006 poll on a platform of radical social change.

He promised to lead a “citizens’ revolution”, using Ecuador’s oil wealth to eradicate poverty, deepen grassroots democracy and build a “socialism of the 21st Century”. These promises echoed similar process under way in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Ecuador: Right-wing coup attempt defeated

On September 30, Ecuador descended into chaos as a protest by sections of the police force and army turned into a potentially bloody coup against left-wing President Rafael Correa.

At about 8am, sections of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces and the national police went on strike, occupying police stations and barracks in the capital Quito, in Guayaquil and in at least four other cities. They set up road blocks with burning tyres, cutting off access to the capital.

They also stormed and occupied the National Assembly building and took over the runway at Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport.

Schools and many businesses in Quito shut down early, as opposition protesters attempted to take over and sabotage broadcasts from television station Gama TV.

The protests were in response to the new Public Service Law designed to harmonise income and benefits across the Ecuadorian civil service. Many police and troops, however, believed the law would remove their benefits and bonuses, as well as delay promotions.

In an attempt to end the strike, Correa went in person to the main police garrison in Quito to convince the police there was a misunderstanding - and that their benefits were safe and their wages would in fact increase.

The situation spiralled out of control when a number of rebel police pointed their guns at Correa and threatened to shoot him. A tear gas canister was thrown, exploding only centimetres from the president’s head.

Serie A - Italian footballers to go on strike

On September 10, the players of the Serie A - Italy's top-flight football league - declared they would go on strike on September 25-6.

AC Milan defender Massimo Oddo - speaking on behalf of the Italian Players' Association (AIC) - made the declaration as part of an ongoing dispute over the renewal of the collective contract for the game's top players.

The statement - signed by the captains and union representatives of all 20 Serie A clubs - read:

"The association, in perfect symphony with the players of Serie A, has decided not to go on the field for the fifth round of matches of the Serie A championship in protest against requests to impose new contractual rules,"

The football league, Lega Serie A, is attempting to introduce a new collective contract that would strip players of their existing transfer rights and bring larger profits to football clubs and their owners, at the players' expense.