Friday 26 June 2020

Benefit Claimants Left With NO DWP Money - Wirecard Financial Crisis

Benefit Claimants Left With NO money after Wirecard Financial Crisis.

DWP benefits, State Pension and Tax Credits blocked and held by Financial Conduct Authority FCA - This does not affect Post Office Card Accounts, only those who have benefits paid into PrePaid Debit Card accounts.

For years the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) pressurised millions of benefit claimants and pensioners to dump the Post Office Card Account. Harassing them to nominate a bank, building society or credit union account for payments to be deposited. The DWP must bear some of the responsibility after forcing claimants into the hands of these Financial Sharks who prey on the financially vulnerable.

The UK license of Wirecard Card Solutions has been frozen by the regulator after its German parent company filed for insolvency. It means people are unable to access cash held with financial apps in the UK using Wirecard technology.

Shares in German payments company Wirecard have fallen more than 60% after the firm said its auditor had raised questions over cash balances worth £1.7bn. Auditors Ernst & Young had refused to sign off on Wirecard's accounts, saying it was unable to confirm the money existed. Ernst & Young, accused their client of "an elaborate and sophisticated fraud".

Wirecard has filed for court protection from creditors, Ernst & Young the accountants who signed off the firm's books for a decade are rejecting responsibility for their role in the debacle and preparing for the inevitable avalanche of lawsuits.

Wirecard's former CEO Markus Braun was detained on suspicion of falsifying accounts before being released on bail. A saga that's evoked memories of the Enron accounting scandal in the United States.

Many benefit claimants and pensioners don't have bank accounts, many are unable to open an account. Many do have PrePaid debit cards which allow benefits to be paid direct into them and don't require a bank account. You can top these cards up at any store and spend online or use benefit payments like any other bank cards.

The Post Office Card account is ending in a bid to save government money. The contract with the Post Office will end in November 2021.

We the people are given a credit rating to ascertain our credit risk predicting our ability to pay back debt. The credit rating held by a credit rating agency is extremely harsh in keeping people in the gutter of poverty. Many reading this article will be asking who ascertains the credit risk, the credit worthiness, of companies like Wirecard to manipulate accounts and deceive investors and steal customers monies?

Work and Pensions secretary Thérèse Coffey said the cost of the contract provided “poor value for taxpayers”. Around 900,000 people use Post Office Card Account POCA to collect payments. However, DWP has been trying to encourage them to have benefits paid directly into their bank accounts instead.

Chairman of Respect For The Unemployed And Benefit Claimants said:

"Yet again we are witnessing a financial crisis unfold - an unparalleled scandal. Wire-Card's collapse and many claimants left unable to open bank accounts expose the need for Post Office contract to be renegotiated. We need to protect vulnerable claimants, kids will be going hungry as a result of decisions being taken out of their control. An investigation must be held into the financial repercussions on UK cardholders - FCA decision has put card accounts into Financial Lockdown"

For the last five years HMRC undertook a joint exercise with DWP harassing claimants to open bank accounts forcing claimants into the hands of Financial Sharks. Letters sent to tax credit and benefit recipients who had their benefits or pension paid into a Post Office Card Account (POCA) telling them to open a bank account. The letters have a black HM Government branded letterhead instead of either of the more usual HMRC or DWP letterheads that claimants may be more familiar with. The letter provides a DWP freephone telephone number that claimants can call for further information or advice.

With Bank closures, those wanting a bank account proved impossible for many. Campaigners are angry that letters sent to 900,000 pensioners and claimants failed to mention they can refuse to move – and keep their old account. The letters told the elderly to switch to a bank account for the continued receipt of their state pension. The Tory led Government since 2010 has been leading the Post Office into a ‘managed decline’. Government have stripped £65 million of fees from the Post Office, closing local branches in towns and villages across the country.

There is no legislative requirement to change from a Post Office Card Account POCA to a standard bank account. The reason for the exercise is to 'encourage' the use of a bank account, which provides the account holder with additional services such as debit card and direct debit facilities. That led the way for many to apply for PrePaid debit cards. The 'Financial LockDown' imposed by FCA will create severe hardship for benefit claimants and pensioners plus those stuck in low paid jobs who are unable to take a heavy financial hit!

Pre-Paid Debit Cards - seen as providing 'vital support' for those in poverty. However cardholder funds are not protected, as they are in banks, by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. Many benefit claimants and pensioners plus millions of Low Paid Workers of Wirecard's UK customers base are thrown into financial crisis. ANNA Money, a freelance business account provider, told users on Twitter to "urgently" withdraw their money. Another Northern Rock fiasco is brewing. Northern Rock at the time approached the government for support with its liquidity led within 24 hours to a public lack of confidence and concerns that savings were at risk, and the bank failed following a bank run as people rushed to withdraw their savings. It was the first British bank in 150 years to fail due to a bank run.

We are urgently recommending you withdraw your money from your ANNA account as soon as possible. This is due to the FCA placing requirements on our UK payment provider.
— ANNA Money (@ANNAMoneyUK) June 26, 2020

Pocket and ALL other pre paid card providers have FROZEN account holders monies. The Financial Lockdown was imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority FCA after Wirecard Card Solutions Limited £1.7bn Financial Crisis. The financial fallout has left millions penniless with NO money whatsoever for Food, Electric, Gas or to pay housing costs.

The Financial Services Authority advises:

The account where I receive my benefit payments has been frozen, what do I do?
Please refer to the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) for support.

Are my funds protected by FSCS?

No. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) only applies to certain types of activity which does not include issuing electronic money or payment service. So Benefits will NOT be protected.

The daylight robbery of the poor, pensioners and benefit claimants. continues @wirecard - The Financial Services Authority must release all funds held by UK card holders!

Many are asking .... Are we heading for another Global Financial Crash - capitalism in crisis?

The missing sum amounts to about a quarter of its total balance sheet. Wirecard joined Germany's blue-chip Dax 30 share index two years ago. At the time, it was valued at €24bn. Yesterday (Thursday) the group filed for insolvency after admitting the £1.7 billion missing from its accounts did not exist.

Investors around the world are warning that a “worldwide credit crunch” triggered by the coronavirus has the potential to “set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis...like nothing!

It’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty whether another crash is around the corner. However there’s certainly plenty of potential problems that could cause a fresh financial market meltdown. A second stock market crash could well be approaching - an indicator could well be Wirecard.....

'We are facing the biggest financial crash for 100 years'

That would represent the most severe hit to livelihoods since a 13 per cent slump in 1921, when Britain's exports collapsed and the post-First World War boom was ended by a fierce deflationary spiral.

The coronavirus pandemic has turn global economic growth "sharply negative" this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned. Kristalina Georgieva said the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. She forecast that 2021 would only see a partial recovery. Lockdowns imposed by governments have forced many companies to close and lay off staff. Earlier this week, a UN study said 81% of the world's workforce of 3.3 billion people had had their place of work fully or partly closed because of the outbreak.

Kristalina Georgieva added: "In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression. Her comments came as the US reported that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits had surged for the third week by 6.6 million, bringing the total over that period to more than 16 million Americans. The US Federal Reserve said it would unleash an additional $2.3tn in lending as restrictions on activity to help contain the coronavirus had forced many businesses to close and put about 95% of Americans on some form of lockdown.

Unemployment in Britain and the US look set to surpass the levels reached during the 1930s Great Depression within months as the coronavirus crisis crushes the global economy, a former Bank of England official has warned.

In a stark forecast as job losses mount around the world, David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in the US and a member of the Bank’s interest rate-setting monetary policy committee during the 2008 financial crisis, said unemployment was rising at the fastest rate in living memory. Writing in Guardian the economist said recently that UK unemployment could rapidly rise to more than 6 million people, around 21% of the entire workforce, based on analysis of US job market figures that suggest unemployment across the Atlantic could reach 52.8 million, around 32% of the workforce.

“There has never been such a concentrated business collapse. The government has tried to respond but it has no idea of the scale of the problem it is going to have to deal with. We make some back-of-the-envelope calculations and they are scary,” he said.

Making the assessment alongside David Bell, an economist at the University of Stirling, the former Threadneedle Street policymaker said the collapse in activity amid Covid-19 and the accompanying rise in unemployment looked to be at least 10 times faster than in the recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis. There will be NO 'Business As Usual' when this pandemic is over!

As we navigate many unchartered territories we must embrace alternatives - A Socialist Plannned Economy would get Britain out of this economic, political and pandemic crisis.

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants

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Sunday 21 June 2020

Schools Factories Food - are they SAFE from Covid 19

Schools Factories Food - are they SAFE from Covid 19

Reckless Governance of a 'Make It Up' as you go along Prime Minister will continue to see Love Ones Die. Aided and Abetted by Governmental Incompetence.

Boris Johnson 'sends millions back to work' as coronavirus lockdown is lifted. The reopening of shops, school, pubs and the wider hospitality industry puts peoples lives at RISK.

This reckless Tory regime plans to scrap the two-metre social distancing rule. The rate of transmission, or R number, is between 0.9 and above. Meaning the virus is spreading.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Boris Johnson’s statement will cause working people a lot of confusion and anxiety. “The Government still hasn’t published guidance on how workers will be kept safe. So how can the Prime Minister – tell people they should be going back to sites and factories? It’s a recipe for chaos.”

Hard work of isolation ‘could be lost if we rush out of lock-down’ – Sir David King, the former government chief scientific adviser, who set up the Independent SAGE group of scientific experts WARNS.

"It's a very strange decision to make at this point in time".

Former Chief Scientific Adviser to the government Sir David King responds to the decision to lower the UK's Covid-19 alert level from 4 to 3 - saying "the number of cases per day is still very high". pic.twitter.com/7Skz0FvMpp
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 19, 2020

Our factories are NOT safe for a return to work. Our fast food restaurants are NOT safe to reopen. Our schools are NOT safe for our children. Scientific Test need to be done regarding the safety of our MEAT and the food we eat. Covid 19 can be transmitted via meat and packaging. Could the slaughterhouses of the WORLD be spreading the coronavirus?

Just Days ago a Welsh chicken factory closed over Covid-19 safety contamination issues.

Fifty-eight coronavirus cases confirmed among workers at 2 Sisters Chicken Factory facility on Anglesey. The firm supplied all of the main supermarkets, fast-food chains such as KFC and provided meat for Supermarket Ready Meals, Hospitals, Care Homes and School Dinners. Public Health Wales said 58 Covid-19 cases had been confirmed at 2 Sisters Food Group’s facility in Llangefni, Anglesey, which employs about 560 people. In 2017, after a undercover investigation raised questions about food standards, the company suspended production at its West Bromwich chicken plant for five weeks in order to deal with the problems.

In the same week - three other 'Food Meat Factories' in England have closed after 250 workers tested positive for coronavirus. The Unite Union said it was aware of suspected outbreaks at five other sites across the UK. A meat processing site owned by Asda in West Yorkshire became the third food plant in 48 hours to confirm an outbreak after about 150 workers fell ill with the virus. The Kober plant, which supplies bacon to Asda supermarkets and employs more than 500 people, has closed. The company also provides meats for Greggs and Subway.

In Wrexham, 38 staff have tested positive at Rowan Foods. The company makes food for supermarkets across the UK. The cluster of new cases in food processing plants will raise serious concerns about a potential outbreak similar to those seen in France and the US. In the latter, as many as 25,000 meat and poultry workers are reported to have contracted Covid-19 and spreading it within the community with at least 91 deaths so far.

Three workers died from coronavirus after a small outbreak at a meat processing plant in South Yorkshire last month. The family member of one of those who died accused Cranswick, the company that owns the plant, of failing to adequately protect workers, citing a lack of face masks, a lack of physical distancing, and the provision of only the statutory sick pay of £95.85 a week for those too ill to work.

A Guardian analysis last month found that almost half of the Covid-19 hotspots in the US were linked to plants where poultry, pigs and cattle were slaughtered and packaged. The outbreaks led to calls for urgent reforms to an industry beset by health and safety issues. The United Food and Commercial Workers union said recently that at least 44 slaughterhouse workers in the US had died from the virus and another 3,000 had tested positive.

KFC worker ‘collapsed’ during her shift before testing positive for Covid-19. Later revealed, served unlimited - 'untraceable customers'.

Anonymous reports from colleagues at the restaurant allege the woman tested positive for Covid-19. She collapsed while on shift on June 13 and paramedics were called to the scene of the Fast Food Restaurant in full view of panicking customers who then refused to buy food.

The restaurant where the infected staff member worked is still open. Employees who wish to remain anonymous say they are still concerned about their own health and safety. They allege NO self isolation measures have been implemented since the diagnosis.

Public health officials in Germany are grappling with an outbreak among hundreds of workers at a meatpacking plant in Rheda-Wiedenbrück. At least 730 workers have tested positive at the Tönnies Group plant.

Bev Clarkson, Unite’s national officer for food, drink and agriculture, said: “The relaxation of social distancing has been brought in too soon; we predicted a spike in the meat industry. You only have to look at what has happened in America and Germany to know that it would happen here. Measures need to be taken now by the government to stop further spikes within the sector.”

In Texas, the fastest growing Covid-19 outbreak isn’t in Dallas or Houston or San Antonio, the state’s most densely packed metro areas. It’s hundreds of miles to the north, in the dusty, windswept flatlands of Moore County, population 20,000. According to data reported Monday by the state health department, 19 out of 1,000 residents in Moore County have so far tested positive for the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19—10 times higher than the infection rates in the state’s largest cities.

So what’s in Moore County that’s making people so sick? One of the nation’s largest beef processing facilities, where huge armies of employees slice, shave, and clean up to 5,000 cattle carcasses a day. Last month, Texas health officials launched an investigation into a cluster of Covid-19 cases linked to the massive meatpacking plant, which is operated by JBS USA, a subsidiary of the largest meat processing company in the world, based in São Paulo, Brazil.

In recent weeks, beef, pork, and poultry processing plants across the US have emerged as dangerous new hot spots for the deadly respiratory disease, which can also cause damage to the heart, kidneys, and brain. Dozens of plants have been forced to temporarily halt operations amid skyrocketing numbers of cases and fatalities. According to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 5,000 plant workers in 19 states had tested positive for the virus as of April 27. In Iowa and South Dakota, close to a fifth of the workforce in the states’ largest slaughterhouses have fallen ill.

Witnessing a modern day version of the British Mad Cow Disease phenomenon - could the virus have started in our slaughterhouses?

It’s not just the US. Large Covid-19 clusters have also appeared in meatpacking plants around the world, including Canada, Spain, Ireland, Brazil, and Australia. “One, two, or three meatpacking plants—fine, you might expect that. But these outbreaks are clearly a worldwide phenomenon,” says Nicholas Christakis, head of the Human Nature Lab at Yale where he studies how contagions travel through social networks. “To me, that’s evidence that there’s something distinctive about meatpacking that’s adding to people’s risks of catching Covid-19.”

There’s been much talk over whether or not SARS-CoV-2 is actually “airborne”—meaning that it can remain aloft on respiratory particles smaller than 5 microns, as the measles virus does. A growing number of researchers who suspect the coronavirus can in fact be in these very fine particles, termed “aerosols,” as they wrote in a recent editorial in Aerosol Science and Technology. This would mean the coronavirus could be spread not just by an uncovered cough or sneeze but also just by regular breathing and talking. It would also complicate the current standard 6-foot rule for social distancing in the USA that the CDC and OSHA have recommended for their workers.

Meanwhile England's two-metre social distancing rule set to be scrapped following a hint from Chancellor Rishi Sunak. The measure is thought to be planned to come into place from July 4.

Today I asked the Prime Minister why - when his Government's many failures have already led to tens of thousands of needless deaths - he is gambling with people's lives by lifting restrictions before it is safe to do so. pic.twitter.com/t9TEajkBzF
— Richard Burgon MP (@RichardBurgon) June 23, 2020

A third of the workers at a factory in Tipperary tested positive, while the McDonald’s supplier was forced to temporarily halt production. 120 workers at the Rosderra Meats plant in Roscrea had tested positive for the virus. Also 350 workers at the plant, up to 140 were off sick. Rosderra is the largest pork-processing company in Ireland. One of Ireland’s biggest beef companies announced a Covid-related shutdown. Dawn Meats had temporarily closed its plant in Westmeath after workers tested positive for coronavirus. Dawn Meats produces more than 400 million burgers a year for McDonald’s outlets in the UK and Europe. In a statement, the company said that the plant had been closed.

We're not out of danger - We must send a warning not to end lockdown until safe to do so....

Frustration and desperation to return to normal life are not good enough reasons to lift the coronavirus lockdown and the UK is not out of danger yet, the public has been warned. The sun is out around the country, the days are getting longer, and I'm sure it's tempting for people to feel that they should go out. We can't emphasis enough that we are far from there yet...it won't take much for this virus to start increasing its transmission again and spread more widely.

“I would be surprised and delighted if we weren’t in this current situation through the winter, into next spring”

Prof Chris Whitty says he expects a “significant amount of coronavirus circulating at least until that time” and we should plan as suchhttps://t.co/bXSXTy76Tb pic.twitter.com/WK8SIe96D4
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) June 23, 2020

The American President Donald Trump and Boris Johnson's criminal negligence allowed over 200,000 people to die. This is societal negligence of governance. Both leaders are enemies of the people and need to be removed from office. If a leader struggles to carry out tasks in government effectively.

This is their level of incompetence - Peter Principle

Our policy editor Lewis Goodall has sobering news on deaths in this pandemic, particularly in the UK’s care home sector, where excess deaths have increased by 93% during this time and 13.6% of residents died.@lewis_goodall | #Newsnight pic.twitter.com/SajUq5N1ou
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) June 23, 2020

Pause For Thought....

Chairman

Respect For the Unemployed & Benefit Claimants

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Wednesday 10 June 2020

Coronavirus: We're Going Back To The 1930's Great Depression Era

- Warning from History
Coronavirus: We are going back to the 1930's - Worst economic crisis since the depression

In the UK we have NEARLY 9 million workers furloughed unable to work on the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Recent figures from the government's independent economic forecaster, the Office for Budget Responsibility, show that the cost of the government's efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic is expected to hit £123.2bn. The OBR expects annual borrowing to equal 15.2% of the UK economy, which would be the highest since the 22.1% seen at the end of World War Two.

Poverty stricken areas are at a greater risk of those dying from Covid-19. Areas with the highest levels of deprivation pay the heaviest price in terms of death count. The impact of poor diet low wages, unemployment and benefit sanctions had left those in disadvantaged areas more vulnerable to the virus. A review into black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) deaths from coronavirus has exposed that black men and women are more than four times more likely to suffer a coronavirus-related death than white people in richer areas.

The coronavirus pandemic will turn global economic growth "sharply negative" this year, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned. Kristalina Georgieva said the world faced the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. She forecast that 2021 would only see a partial recovery. Lockdowns imposed by governments have forced many companies to close and lay off staff. Earlier this week, a UN study said 81% of the world's workforce of 3.3 billion people had had their place of work fully or partly closed because of the outbreak.

Kristalina Georgieva added: "In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression. Her comments came as the US reported that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits had surged for the third week by 6.6 million, bringing the total over that period to more than 16 million Americans. The US Federal Reserve said it would unleash an additional $2.3tn in lending as restrictions on activity to help contain the coronavirus had forced many businesses to close and put about 95% of Americans on some form of lockdown.

A reminder of the 1930's from those Marching to London on the Jarrow Crusade

Last Jarrow marcher dies aged 96

In OUR video above Con Shiels talks about his experience - Con died Boxing Day 2012, he was the last survivor of the Jarrow March, a famous protest against unemployment and poverty during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Carrying an 11,000-name petition, they marched to demand help from the government after the closure of their shipyard.
Con Shiels, who was 20 at the time, joined his father and other protesters for the final part of the marathon 300-mile journey.

In 2020 -

UK-based charity organisation Oxfam warned that the economic fallout from the spread of Covid-19 could force more than half a billion more people into poverty. By the time the pandemic is over, the charity said, half of the world's population of 7.8 billion people could be living in poverty.

Child poverty is rising ‘inexorably’ and we predict that we will have over 7 million children living in poverty in the UK by 2022 due to current economic chaos caused by the tories in response to covid 19. Before the coronavirus pandemic the Child Poverty Action Group was projecting 5.2 million by 2022.

Before the Coronavirus Pandemic

47% of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty. Lone parents face a higher risk of poverty due to the lack of an additional earner, low rates of maintenance payments, gender inequality in employment and pay, and childcare costs

Children from Black and minority ethnic groups are more likely to be in poverty: 45 per cent are now in poverty, compared with 26 per cent of children in White British families.

On Thursday, following marathon talks, EU leaders agreed a €500bn (£440bn; $546bn) economic support package for members of the bloc hit hardest by the lockdown measures.

The International Labour Organization (ILO), a UN agency, warns that the pandemic posed "the most severe crisis" since World War Two. It said the outbreak was expected to wipe out 6.7% of working hours across the world during the second quarter of 2020 - the equivalent of 195 million full-time workers losing their jobs.

Last month, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) warned that the global economy would take years to recover. Secretary general Angel Gurría said that economies were suffering a bigger shock than after the 9/11 terror attacks of 2001 or the 2008 financial crisis.

The current regime within the Department for Work and Pensions on harassing claimants back to work using the Work Capability Assessments needs to be scrapped. The Work Capability Assessments fails to take into account the long-term impact of covid 19's secondary impact diseases upon the unemployed and those workers who may become unemployed in the future. The Work Capability Assessments has contributed to the deaths of more than 100,000 benefit claimants in recent years - directly or indirectly many have been persecuted and suffered under this regime.. it has to stop!

We can't wait and accept the old guard within the IMF to correct things - Only a Socialist Plannned Economy can get Britain out of this mess!

We need to lift people out of hunger, poverty, sickness and ignorance. Our planet's eco-system must be rescued. Even under wasteful and destructive capitalism, the productive forces exist that could, if planned and utilised to meet human need instead of maximising capitalist profit, ensure sufficient food, nutrition, health care and education for all.

Never before in history have the rapid advances in science and technology provided such opportunities for the all-round development of every human being.

But while it has proved possible, from time to time, to curb capitalism's tendencies to crisis, pandemic deprivation unemployment and war, those tendencies have always reasserted themselves because they arise from the nature of the capitalist system itself. The capitalist economic cycle produces gluts, crises, cut-backs, redundancies and then shortages before beginning all over again.

We can not allow economic crisis to allow a busness as normal mentality. The anarchy of the capitalist economy in general militates against society's need for planned, balanced, equitable and sustainable development across countries, regions and the whole world. Nonetheless, the experience of social-democratic policies and the attempts so far to build socialism – albeit in very different conditions to those in Britain – provide some valuable lessons.

They demonstrate, for instance, that public ownership, economic planning, collective provision and the redistribution of wealth can provide substantial economic, social and cultural benefits to the mass of the population, even when these are restricted, distorted, exploited and subverted by monopoly capitalist interests. Experience also indicates that unless such policies are mobilised as the basis from which to make deeper inroads into capitalist economic and state power, they will prove to be partial and temporary. Their weaknesses and inadequacies will then be used to discredit any alternative to private capitalist ownership, the 'free' market and social inequality.

After centuries of capitalism, the first attempts to build a socialist society arose fewer than 100 years ago in conditions of world war, in less developed societies facing the advanced, hostile and powerful forces of imperialism. Both the achievements and the failures of these pioneering socialist systems have to be considered in this context, and lessons learnt accordingly.

For as long as capitalist ownership of the economy exists, whether or not the so-called ‘free market’ is dominated by monopolies, its operations will produce crisis, destruction, inequality and waste on an enormous scale.

Capitalism's drive to maximise profit leads it to turn every area of human need – food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education, sex, leisure – into a market for the production and sale of commodities for profit at the expenses of more damage to the enviroment.

Capitalist competition invariably means unnecessary duplication, takeovers, 'rationalisation', closures, asset-stripping, commercial secrecy, excessive packaging and large-scale contrivances of style and fashion – all of which represent a waste, limitation or destruction of society's productive resources. Whole economic sectors have developed – advertising, property management, business consultancy – that perform little or no useful function in society, except to promote the interests of monopoly capital and, ultimately, to transfer income to it from the working class and intermediate strata.

Only public ownership of the economy's major sectors and enterprises – the economic essence of socialism – can restart the UK economy out of this pandemic and put an end to monopoly power and fundamentally change the basis on which economic decisions are taken. Pointless and wasteful competition and duplication would be eliminated. The development and deployment of society's productive forces would be planned in order to meet people's real needs and aspirations. Jobs, houses and vital or useful goods and services would be created as the primary purpose of planning and production, not as the incidental consequence of maximizing profits for shareholders.

In particular, public ownership is the only viable basis on which energy and public transport can be planned and developed in an integrated way, to combat global warming and climate change while ensuring renewable power supplies.

Unemployment in the United States and Britain 'may be worse than in the Great Depression'

Boris Johnson’s Conservative government continued discussions with big business in a bid to restart capitalism mapping out a “mass return to work.” He plays Russian Roulette with peoples lives in catching and spreading the virus. From the start of this pandemic he has proved himself to be an habitual liar. His Herd Immunity agenda, enabled the highest death toll per head of population. Many of those who have been mentally, emotionally and financially tortured for decades will have paid the ultimate price..... dying at home alone from covid 19. There will be NO 'Business As Usual' when this pandemic is over!

We can not continue pretending every-things OK.... there is an alternative...

Social ownership of economic property puts an end to the exploitation of the working class including the unemployed working class, whereby surplus labour is performed for the benefit of the capitalist class.

When there is social ownership, surplus labour takes place to meet the needs and aspirations of the working class and society as a whole. This will have to mean that workers and their representatives are fully represented in the economic and political spheres of decision-making, ensuring that surplus labour is not exploited for the benefit of a privileged class or group.

Since society first became divided into classes, the ruling class of the time has used the oppression of sections of the exploited classes to maximise exploitation and reinforce its rule. Under capitalism, the oppression of women, black workers and other groups has reaped super-profits and helped ensure the reproduction of existing class relations economically, ideologically and politically – not least by fomenting or perpetuating divisions within the working class itself.

Such oppression is sustained by sets of prejudicial ideas and assumptions, for example those of sexism and racism. These ideologies apply across class boundaries, affecting members of the oppressed group in every class, although their impact is felt most severely by those in the exploited classes.

Back in 2006 Tony Benn gave an interview on Socialism in Britain

Putting an end to capitalist property relations and the exploitation of labour would remove the material basis for social oppression. No class in society would gain from the super-exploitation of any section of the working class, or have the means by which to secure it. The reorientation of priorities in production to meet the needs of the people would further reduce the scope for conflict over scarce provision, whether of jobs, housing, public services or essential goods.

The experience of socialism confirms that prejudice and discrimination on grounds of gender, nationality, sexual orientation, age etc., can survive the abolition of capitalism, at least for a period, weakened but not altogether eliminated. But socialism furnishes the material basis, and therefore the potential, to bring all forms of social oppression to an end.

With the abolition of capitalism, the most powerful forces for the perpetuation of racist, sexist, homophobic and other reactionary attitudes are disarmed, leaving the forces of socialism with the responsibility to consign them to the rubbish heap of history, promoting a culture of equal rights and liberation instead.