Socialists and elections

Over the few years I’ve been involved in politics on the left I have come to notice those who choose to stand in elections on the left more often than not the Marxists that are Trotskyists and so on tend to disguise their true ideas in elections. For example many align themselves with reformist programmes and cozy up to left wing bureaucrats in order to curry favor and support. Many will not reveal their true intentions beyond a few catchy slogans in fact. It is almost like the word socialism cannot be used it would scare off those sympathetic to our cause if we mention the S word the line goes. Personally I find this very disingenuous and downright insulting in many ways to think that workers are too stupid to vote for socialism is a bit patronizing if we're honest. Its not ultra left to talk about socialism or what you really stand for. If you explain how you intend to get there people will trust you far more I’d suggest. People are not stupid and will see through you in the end. It is this vanguardist idea again though that socialism needs to be brought into the workers minds without a revolutionary party they will never gain any higher level of thinking than "trade union" consciousness. For me this is one of the reasons I felt awkward at times during elections in a trotskyist party I felt I was having to speak down to workers all the time when really they wanted to know what we were really for and what is our end goal. When I stood in a election for TUSC this year I stood on a "no cuts platform" as they call it and looked to oppose the cuts but there was no room for socialism in the programme I stood under apparently I was told TUSC have a basic programme which is basic for a reason this reason I could not work out why are we hiding the fact we are socialists and want to change society from people? Yes Socialist is in the name TUSC, Trade Union and Socialist Coalition but it was not prominent much in our literature I felt. For workers they are straight forward people they simply to know what you stand for and how you will help them if they back you. If you feel that electoral politics is your thing and I am no longer sure it is for me but if it is for you then good luck but hiding your true ideas is dishonest in my opinion. Calling yourself a socialist is one thing but it’s not a dirty word to use like it maybe once was. I am not sure real change can come through the ballot box anymore many of the gains we as a class have made have come through mass struggle from below but not through a vote. Even the 1945 Labour government who are as popular on the left still sadly as really they didn’t go that far at all and had other downsides of course were forced to do much of what they did through struggle and pressure from below. The old phrase if we don’t give them reform they will give us revolution has been very key over the years with those at the top in positions of political power having to bend to the demands from below to r remain in power if they did not they would have been removed. One interesting election campaign I’d like to draw people’s attention to is Kshama Sawant Of the CWI in the USA in Seatle which has been seen over the years as a more progressive city but her fantastic campaign has gained a fair bit of momentum and congratulations from this blog must go to her. If she does go on and get elected we will be watching with close scrutiny as we have seen how workers in positions of power change and get sucked in by the system in time if they are not careful. Kshama Sawant's $15 a hour as a minimum wage really caught a mood out there it would seem but yet this in itself is a reformist demand and while these sorts of demands are fine in the short term and will gain popular support in times of austerity and cuts to pay and jobs this should only be seen as a start of a programme which looks to one day abolish wages all together in place of a system which meets people’s needs and produces for everyone’s needs. In Seattle, Sawant’s campaign helped put the “Fight for 15” - strikes and protests of low-wage workers for a $15/hour minimum wage - at the centre of political debate. Socialist Alternative energetically built this movement, aiding victimized striking workers and countering arguments against raising the minimum wage. When labour organisations placed an initiative on the ballot to raise the minimum wage to $15 in the suburb of SeaTac, the Kshama Sawant campaign energetically supported this movement, contributing to the ballot initiative’s historic success. While a new workers party is not even close in the US this campaign highlighted above does show how an idea can catch on. Even though this timid and reformist idea got a echo it cannot be ignored but we must also warn of the dangers of putting faith solely in elections and our elected leaders as a historic president. We must continue to build resistance and direct action on the ground. Organising ourselves independent of a leadership is important. As it is also important to keep all our struggles rooted in the rank-and-file democratic committees while trying to prevent them to be co opted for someone’s gain.

Labours hypocrisy on benefits

Labour today intend to vote against the benefit cap of RPI + 1% which in effect is a real terms cut. This on the face of it sounds great go on Labour the labour left cheer we have our party back, labour stands up for the poor. Slow down there this is nothing of the sort. Labour still support a benefit cap just disagrees on the way it fits that’s all. Do you really think if they were in gov they’d be acting any differently? Take these quotes from Ed Ball’s article in the Guardian this morning and you can hear their similarities with the Tories ideas. Labour has fallen or rather backed up the Tories in the scrounger vs. strivers rhetoric so common among capitalist politicians nowadays. Take some of these quotes I found in this Guardian article by Ed Balls. “Of course we need spending cuts and tax rise’s to get the deficit down” He goes on.... We also need a welfare system that works. And for Labour, that means any reform of the system must pass three tests. First, it must pay more to be in work than live on benefits, both for the individual and the Exchequer. Labour introduced a minimum wage alongside tax credits to help ensure work pays. But this government's deep cuts to tax credits already mean that thousands of working parents are now better off if they quit their jobs, while cuts to childcare support mean thousands of mums and dads are struggling to afford to take up full-time work. The implementation of the government’s flagship universal credit is already proving to be a shambles with Iain Duncan Smith’s own Cabinet colleagues warning this week that it is a “disaster waiting to happen”. Meanwhile the government's benefits cap could also end up costing more than it saves. Labour supports the principle of a benefits cap but this government's crude 'one size fits all' cap - with the same level in London as the rest of the country - will simply lead to taxpayers funding the cost of rising homelessness as families living in high cost areas are turfed out of their homes. Second we must get tough on the scourge of long-term unemployment by matching rights with responsibilities. A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a responsibility to help people into work and support those who cannot, but those who can work must be required to take up jobs or lose benefits as a result – no ifs or buts. Tackling long-term unemployment will be a top priority for the next Labour government because we know from the 1980s that it has a scarring effect on individuals and communities, damages our economy and society, and builds up long-term costs for the taxpayer. All this could have come straight out of IDS’s mouth but a labour front bench politician I just think it says it all. Forcing you into an unpaid position or you will lose your benefits is slave labour there is no two ways about it. You have no choice in the matter. So whether you are labour or Tory workfare or workfare plus the results will be the same. Labour does not recognise that low pay is at issue here a huge issue that most people receiving benefits are actually in work. They talk of long term unemployment but have no answer to those themselves only more workfare and Tory light ideas. How anyone can support labour still I do not know. Their policies are bankrupt and their ideas are straight from the Tories. We as socialists cannot give any support to labour and must build TUSC as an alternative. Those who say only Labour can beat the Tories is wrong I’m sure the liberals were telling the newly formed Labour party in the 20th century only we can beat the Tories yet look what happened. We must be brave must be bold and confident let’s not settle for lesser evilism or labour are not as cruel line. Let’s kick the cuts coalition out and build a working class, socialist alternative with TUSC. With quotes from this Guardian Piece http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/69052/ed_balls_britain_needs_real_welfare_reform_that_is_tough_fair_and_that_works.html For more information on TUSC and how you can get involved check out www.tusc.org.uk

Workers today earning far less than 30 years ago

A recent findings by Union news Uk and the TUC. have shown some stark figures of how pay for workers is going backwards for many workers. While pay for the top 10% zooms ahead.
Workers today are taking home less than workers did 30 years ago, according to a new report published today by the TUC.

The finding is published in the latest TUC Touchstone Extra pamphlet All In this Together? which looks at how the recession and ongoing economic weakness has had an impact on different parts of the workforce.

All in this Together?, written by author and academic Stewart Lansley, documents the scale of the real terms pay cuts and downgraded terms and conditions that employees are facing, and warns that UK workers are at risk of a near-permanent lowering in the pattern and nature of their working conditions, with disastrous potential consequences for our future economic health.

The report shows that earnings took a sharp hit during the recession – dropping from an average increase of 4.2 per cent in 2007 to just 1.7 per cent in 2009 – and there has been no post-crash rebound. In September 2011, nearly two years on from the end of the recession, 99 per cent of pay deals were below RPI inflation – the measure most commonly used in setting pay.

At the same time the pay gap between executives and their staff has continued to widen, the report shows. While in 2000 the ratio of FTSE 100 top executive to typical employee pay stood at 47:1, by 2011 it had risen to 102:1.

But while poor earnings growth and increasing earnings inequality has been well-publicised in recent years, All in this Together? also shows that the UK’s total wage pool has been shrinking for more than three decades.

In 1978, the total UK wage bill represented 58 per cent of GDP. By 2011 this ‘wage-output’ ratio had dropped to 53.8 per cent. The 4.2 per cent fall in wages as a share of national output means that UK workers took home £60bn less in 2011 than if the wage-output ratio had stayed at 1978 levels. Cumulative wage losses over the last three decades are approximately £1.3 trillion.

The falling share of wages as a proportion of national output has contributed to the rising household debt, plastered over in good times by a housing boom and easy access to credit, that helped to cause the recent financial crash, says the TUC.

The falling wage share has been particularly acute for those on low and middle incomes. The wages of the poorest fifth of workers in 2011 are 43 per cent lower than they would have been if the wage share had not fallen since 1978 and the distribution of earnings had not been skewed towards higher earners. Workers on middle incomes have experienced a 36 per cent wage loss, while the richest fifth of earners have had a wage loss of just six per cent.

The only group of workers immune from the UK’s shrinking wage pool have been top execs who have weathered the recession and stock market falls to receive median pay increases of 10 per cent in 2010 and 17 per cent in 2011.


This has been something we marxists have known all along that despite teh so called boom years in the 2000's average wages for the lowest paid workers stayed the same and in some cases went backwards. The gap between rich and poor widened even in the boom times. So while many got on and improved their situation many didnt and this is down to the fact capitalism and its blind drive for profit crushed workers wages to increase their profits at the top. More millionaires than ever before as a result.

The gap between rich and poor is a social issue too the wider the gap the more social issues we face of deprevation, riots and crime all increases. They are not the only reasons but have a hell of a lot to do with it.

Workers wouldnt be so angry if they had had a bit more of the share of the wealth but the slogans of the 99% and the 1% could not be clearer today in showing the social and economic gap in wealth in society.

Capitalism exists on the basis of wage labour without wage labour it could not exist so could tackling the wage gap be a bridging demand to a more equal society ending the use of boss's in place of workers committees being paid no more than a average skilled worker. Being subject to immediate recall if a vote of no confidence is held up

It is shown a more equal society is one where the wage gap is smaller a society where there is no gap is what i'd want to see one day, fairness for all not just some.

Wage Labour and Capital/Value Price and Profit

Introduction by Ken Smith – How Capitalism Rips Off the Working Class

How many times has a boss told a shop steward or union rep that if they ask for too big a wage increase then prices will go up? Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson claimed in the 1960s that: "One man's wage increase is another man's price rise". This is still a common cry from bosses world-wide.


When the national minimum wage was brought in, Britain's bosses again argued that wage rises cause inflation. If the minimum wage was at too high a level, they said, workers would be priced out of jobs, prices would rise and economic meltdown could follow.

Some trade union leaders stressed that a minimum wage had been introduced in other countries - sometimes at a higher level - without this economic Armageddon happening. This was a correct argument but it did not really explain why wage increases do not cause inflation.

If workers want the best arguments to expose the bosses and show that they can demand larger pay rises than are offered without causing economic chaos, then look no further than two pamphlets from Karl Marx written in the 19th century.


Workers Produce Wealth

In Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price and Profit, Karl Marx anticipated the arguments of today's capitalists and exposed the myth that workers get a "fair day's pay for doing a fair day's work".

Wage Labour and Capital first advances the arguments that Marx would fully develop in his exhaustive economic study, Das Kapital (Capital in English). Here for the first time, Marx unravelled a problem that had bedevilled even the greatest of the 'classical' economists: Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

They could not fully explain how a commodity or good attained a certain value and how in attaining that value the capitalist was able to make a profit.

Both had been on the right lines in different ways, but neither could square their argument that the quantity of labour that goes into any product determines its final value with their mistaken belief that the capitalists also add value in the production process which justifies them collecting their profits.

The capitalist class have always tried to excuse their parasitic existence and mega-profits by arguing that they take the risks in bringing together the factors of production. This has in turn been adopted by orthodox economics as the way capitalists add value in the production process.

If they stopped peddling this lie, the game would be up. They would have to admit that workers' labour, especially the unpaid labour of workers, produced all value (ie, new wealth) in society and their days as parasitic capitalist bosses would soon be over.

Marx argued that it was absurd to say the capitalists used profits to make further profits, as profits were a reflection of the value already created. By transferring money (capital) or charging rent on land the capitalists were not adding value but appropriating it and using if for their own ends.


Labour Power

To do this Marx showed that labour had a double meaning or effect. Labour was used to describe the cost to the capitalist of hiring a worker but it also referred to the actual amount of labour performed by a worker.

Marx pointed out that labour was a commodity and like all commodities it was bought and sold. The crucial difference is that when a capitalist pays a worker he does not pay the worker for the value he puts into the production of another commodity, instead the capitalist pays for labour power.

The capitalist tries to pay as little for this labour power as he reasonably thinks he can get way with – basically enough to provide for the week-by-week upkeep of the workers and their families.

The bosses continually try to increase the pressures on workers to work for as little as possible using their hired media, the arguments of academic economists and using the brutality of unemployment and ever-intensifying contracts.

From this the capitalist then tries to get as much labour power out of the worker as he possibly can. In other words the capitalist exploits the worker by not paying for the full value of his or her work and trying to push the workers to work longer and harder to increase the extraction of surplus value (profits) from the worker.

Marx explained this simply. He showed that, for instance, if a worker worked an eight-hour day then four hours of this was worked to reproduce the value of what the workers was paid in wages. In the other four hours the worker effectively worked for the capitalist for nothing - allowing the boss to extract surplus value.

In general, the total wealth and total profits of the capitalist class grow at a greater rate than workers' living standards. A look at the difference in the proportions of national and international wealth going to the capitalists compared to the workers at any period in history will confirm this.


Trade Union Struggle

Although workers' relative living standards may rise, it is also true that the wealth gap between the workers and the capitalists is ever-widening at most times. There are periods, though, where the working class through their organisations like the trade unions have mounted a militant struggle for an improved share of the wealth and this trend has marginally abated.

That is why Marx supported the struggle of trade unions - even although it was not directly linked at the time to the struggle for a socialist society - to push for better wages and conditions. This little pamphlet shows that workers are the source of all wealth in society and the unpaid labour of the working class is the source of all the capitalists' profit.

The second of the pamphlets Value, Price and Profit is really an expansion of these arguments by Marx against socialists like John Weston, a follower of Robert Owen.

Weston argued that although he believed capitalism was wrong and should be removed, that it was pointless for workers to use trade union action to fight capitalism. He argued this because he accepted the orthodox economic line that it was supply and demand that conditioned the values of things and that any wage increases would be wiped out soon after by price increases.

Trade unionists and socialists facing these arguments today would do well to read both of these little pamphlets.

Although some of the argumentation and language can prove difficult, it is worth persisting and perhaps enlisting the help of someone who has read them

Contradictions in capitalism part 4 : workers wages

In this 4th piece of my mini series on the contradictions in the current economic system we live under capitalism i have looked at various things that leads capitalism to crisis's and the reasonings behind them.

In this piece we look at workers wages and how they are paid and how the boss's decide how much a worker earns.
“Every upward movement in wages can have no other effect than a rise in the price of corn, wine, etc., that is, the effect of a dearth. For what are wages? They are the cost price of corn, etc.; they are the integrant price of everything. We may go even further: wages are the proportion of the elements composing wealth and consumed reproductively every day by the mass of the workers. Now, to double wages ... is to attribute to each one of the producers a greater share than his product, which is contradictory, and if the rise extends only to a small number of industries, it brings a general disturbance in exchange; in a word, a dearth....
( Karl Marx - povety of phillosophy chapter 2)

The rise and fall of profits and wages expresses merely the proportion in which capitalists and workers share in the product of a day's work, without influencing in most instances the price of the product. But that “strikes followed by an increase in wages culminate in a general rise in prices, in a dearth even” – those are notions which can blossom only in the brain of a poet who has not been understood.

In England, strikes have regularly given rise to the invention and application of new machines. Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalist to quell the revolt of specialized labour. The self-acting mule, the greatest invention of modern industry, put out of action the spinners who were in revolt. If combinations and strikes had no other effect than that of making the efforts of mechanical genius react against them, they would still exercise an immense influence on the development of industry.


The price of Labour Power.

Let us take any worker; for example, a weaver. The capitalist supplies him with the loom and yarn. The weaver applies himself to work, and the yarn is turned into cloth. The capitalist takes possession of the cloth and sells it for 20 shillings, for example. Now are the wages of the weaver a share of the cloth, of the 20 shillings, of the product of the work? By no means. Long before the cloth is sold, perhaps long before it is fully woven, the weaver has received his wages. The capitalist, then, does not pay his wages out of the money which he will obtain from the cloth, but out of money already on hand.....Wages, therefore, are not a share of the worker in the commodities produced by himself. Wages are that part of already existing commodities with which the capitalist buys a certain amount of productive labor-power.....

Now, the same general laws which regulate the price of commodities in general, naturally regulate wages , or the price of labor-power. Wages will now rise, now fall, according to the relation of supply and demand, according as competition shapes itself between the buyers of labor-power, the capitalists, and the sellers of labor-power, the workers. The fluctuations of wages correspond to the fluctuation in the price of commodities in general. But within the limits of these fluctuations the price of labor-power will be determined by the cost of production, by the labor-time necessary for production of this commodity: labor-power.

What, then, is the cost of production of labor-power?

It is the cost required for the maintenance of the laborer as a laborer, and for his education and training as a laborer.

Karl Marx, Wage Labour and Capital



Wage labour is the mode of production in which the labourer sells their capacity to work as a commodity.

The pre-condition for wage labour is a class of people who have no other way of living, and a class of people who own the means of production as their Private Property. The capitalist who buys the labour power, and pays for it at its value, own the labour process and the product of labour, and can sell the product in order to realise a profit. The worker, on the other hand is alienated from her own labour.

Their commodity, labor-power, the workers exchange for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and, moreover, this exchange takes place at a certain ratio. So much money for so long a use of labor-power. For 12 hours' weaving, two shillings. And these two shillings, do they not represent all the other commodities which I can buy for two shillings? Therefore, actually, the worker has exchanged his commodity, labor-power, for commodities of all kinds, and, moreover, at a certain ratio. By giving him two shillings, the capitalist has given him so much meat, so much clothing, so much wood, light, etc., in exchange for his day's work. The two shillings therefore express the relation in which labor-power is exchanged for other commodities, the exchange-value of labor-power....

But the putting of labor-power into action -- i.e., the work -- is the active expression of the laborer's own life. And this life activity he sells to another person in order to secure the necessary means of life. His life-activity, therefore, is but a means of securing his own existence. He works that he may keep alive. He does not count the labor itself as a part of his life; it is rather a sacrifice of his life. It is a commodity that he has auctioned off to another. The product of his activity, therefore, is not the aim of his activity. What he produces for himself is not the silk that he weaves, not the gold that he draws up the mining shaft, not the palace that he builds. What he produces for himself is wages ; and the silk, the gold, and the palace are resolved for him into a certain quantity of necessaries of life, perhaps into a cotton jacket, into copper coins, and into a basement dwelling. And the laborer who for 12 hours long, weaves, spins, bores, turns, builds, shovels, breaks stone, carries hods, and so on -- is this 12 hours' weaving, spinning, boring, turning, building, shovelling, stone-breaking, regarded by him as a manifestation of life, as life? Quite the contrary. Life for him begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed. The 12 hours' work, on the other hand, has no meaning for him as weaving, spinning, boring, and so on, but only as earnings, which enable him to sit down at a table, to take his seat in the tavern, and to lie down in a bed. If the silk-worm's object in spinning were to prolong its existence as caterpillar, it would be a perfect example of a wage-worker.

The free laborer , on the other hand, sells his very self, and that by fractions. He auctions off eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his life, one day like the next, to the highest bidder, to the owner of raw materials, tools, and the means of life -- i.e., to the capitalist. The laborer belongs neither to an owner nor to the soil, but eight, 10, 12, 15 hours of his daily life belong to whomsoever buys them. The worker leaves the capitalist, to whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only source of income is the sale of his labor-power, cannot leave the whole class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class , unless he gives up his own existence. He does not belong to this or that capitalist, but to the capitalist class ; and it is for him to find his man -- i.e., to find a buyer in this capitalist class.

Karl Marx
Wage Labour and Capital



We conclude this part of this mini series bhy looking at the fact that a capitalist will never pay the worker the true value of his or her labour as then they would be owning the means of production owning their own labour of which they currently do not unfortunatly.
Wages reflect a certain level of work that the capitalist pays for and gets back in the final product which he then sells to make a profit. The worker only recives part of this as Marx tells us. So the contradiction is clear for all to see the capitalist is exploiting the workers to increase his or her profits. That is essentially a capitalist in a nutshell only interested in profits . In times of economic downturn in a capitalist system wages are one of the first things to get cutback this wage is waht the worker lives on and is made to suffer due to the capitalists lack of need for production as he has produced too much that he cannot sell. As i have explained in previous parts in this series there is another contradiction in capitalism that encourages capitalits to over produce in their blind search for profits and more profits. The one who always suffers as a result of this is the poor worker who is left out of pocket and soften out of a job.

In the last part of this mini series i will conclude all the contradictions and look to offer an alternative which of course is socialism. The social centralisation of the means of production in the hands of the working class and a end to wage slavery.

The absolute relentless drive for profit

I have a good friend who is a comrade of mine who has recently seen himself made redundant from a well known pharmaceutical company around the world. The drive for profit within this certain company which i best not mention just in case is so great that a compulsory redundancy program has had to be enforced. The fact that my freind who is a very good union man who is a union rep at his place of work standing up for good honest workers who do not wish to go and have no choice has been victimised.

My freind now has found himself out of thi company and looking for a new job. But i do not like the way these big global business's goa bout their work. Attacking any who stand up for the workers and do not like the way the workers are pushed from pillar to post and the way they are treated. I cannot blame them i always side on the sides of the workers even if my view is described as "black and whiteW" sadly this is how the capitalists want us to appear. Sadly black and white is the only way the capitalists will only have it. That the workers are the things we can get rid of to protect their profits not taking a less of a profit for one year to keep our good hard workers on.

To me as a socialist i just do not understand the need for more and more profit beyond that that will do you over nicely. I am of the view that as long as you can get by and live ok and a little bit more that is enough why do you need anymore. It is a terrible thing that humans have become greedy and profit hungry in times of capitalist greed but i do think it is the system we live under which fuels this emotion rather than people themselves.

I truely believe under a different system of society say socialism that a message sent out from the top that profit is not all what it is about rather than providing for peoples need would filter down throughout society much like the message that more profit more greed is good in society like we live under today sadly.

The example of my friend working for a well known pharmaceutical company which makes 8 billion pounds a year and 8 thousand pounds per employee is quite enough i'd say and craving more just exposes the system we live under in my view.

I feel the victimisation of union reps during these times will only increase sadly with the crisis of capitalism increasingly too. The fact that any workers are willing to stand up now and be counted must be to the bravery of them workers. The capitalists are looking for scape goats and will crack down heavily on any worker willing to stand up.

Sadly this was my friend at his last job willing to put his head on the line to stand up for other workers. Does he get any tahnks or credit ? no sadly not but from me and this blog he will always do so. If any union rep or member is prepared to stand up for waht is right and take on the management i comend them.

Not enough unions or union members are taking up the battle against management and the system as yet. On the 30Th June we had 750,000 + public sector workers out on strike but this is just the start. Getting a class based contiousness back in to workers is the start. Instructing them who the real enemy is is key too. The fact that profit can so often go before workers needs and rights is not on in my view and the socialist society i invisige would be based on peoples need far before the need for anyones profit.

What good is peoples profit at the end of the day when people are starving and cannot feed themselves due to the insuficient wages the workers recieve. It is time to be countedand time to stand up for waht is right.

It is no time for half hearted reforms or half baked compromises we know exactly what we are aiming for as revolutionary socialists lets spread the word and influence others who wish to join with us against the battle of profita nd need of all.

Is football not living in the real world ?

Taking this blog on a different direction now. As some of you may or may not know i'm a big football fan but i think this recent story of Darren Bent a average premiership striker at best is set to move to Aston villa from Sunderland for 18 million pounds.

Outrageous sums of money this is. When will football join the real world while people aer struggling to get by with paying their bills these super rich sports stars are getting paid silly amounts of money.

Take Manchester City for e xample Carlos tevez gets paid roughly 200,000 pounds a week and if any new player joins the club on a higher salary his wages will match that. I just think it sets a really bad example to the rest of the country in times of hardship.

I know alot of this money coming into the game has been though various sources like Sky Television money and selling the rights to show live games around the planet. But also foreign ownership with rich benifactors buying up english clubs pumping huge sums of money into the top teams. That money rarely trickles down to the lower league teams forcing many to go out of business.

Football is a cruel game which must look at its actions if it wants to continue to be a well respected sport on the national and world stage. As was shown with FIFA over their decision for the world cup in 2018 and 2022 there is a hell of a lot of corruptin involved in the game still.

Speaking of corruption it hasnt erally been touched on but is sure to attract attention from groups like UKuncut in next few months and years is the fact alot of rich footballers avoid paying large sums of their tax. Wayne Rooney, one of Englands best players and best paid players earns an estimated 250 thousand pounds but dodges paying tax on a large amount of that. What UKuncut ask is that money better spent on the NHS rather than being in your back pocket.

more and more questions will be asked like this if fotball continues to live in this rich fantasy world turning into a game no longer for the working class who already find it hard to afford to attend games turning into a game and a play thing for the very rich.