'It is not just TTIP, across the board the EU is bowing to business pressure to do away with ‘burdensome’ regulation – regulation that tends to save lives, protect consumers and ensure standards' writes Linda Kaucher on the Institute of Employment Rights blog. Yet another example of capital treating the costs of social reproduction as an 'externality - a cost for which it bears no market responsibility' as described by David Harvey in Rebel Cities:
http://www.ier.org.uk/blog/eus-giant-and-secretive-deregulation-blitz
The TUC's Stronger Unions blog reports on the final report of the European Commission's so called 'High Level Group on Administrative Burdens' which recommends a range of deregulatory measures including 'calling for targets for reducing regulatory costs, ensuring that any new costs are balanced with reductions elsewhere and a “think small first” principle exempting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from EU obligations as far as possible.' Alongside the Commissions REFIT programme which is blocking any new health and safety directives and the UK Tory EU reform agenda, the neo liberal direction of the 'European project' is becoming clearer by the day:
http://strongerunions.org/2014/10/14/the-dead-hand-of-the-european-de-regulators/
Public Services International (PSI) and Our World is not For Sale have launched a new report, written by Ellen Gould, on the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). The report outlines the way the TISA, the radical extension of GATS, will restrict democratic government’s ability to make laws that protect us. It will tie the hands of governments to deal with important issues such as health care, water, energy, education and climate change. The agreement will stop public services returning to state ownership if privatisations fail and will undermine data privacy laws. Shockingly it will restrict the rights of government to regulate the financial markets, as if nothing has been learned from the financial crisis:
http://www.world-psi.org/en/psi-special-report-really-good-friends-transnational-corporations-agreement
One of the first schools to open as a free school (state funded but run as independent schools) is facing closure if it does not come up with an improvement plan in the next two weeks. Opponents of the Con Dems' free schools programme in England have long warned that the deregulation of education will harm standards. Labour shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt accused Ministers of ‘refusing to take action to address the fundamental flaws in their schools policy that allows unqualified teachers in classrooms on a permanent basis; a lack of transparency; and a complete failure of oversight’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25059495
UNISON’s Narmada Thiranagama, provides an overdue examination of UKIP’s policies beyond the EU and immigration and finds that ‘UKIP are not a friend of workers or trade unions. Nor is there an evidence base for their economic and employment policies, which would remove virtually all regulation particularly for small companies. They sincerely believe that this would have no negative impact on living standards or economic confidence. It is time the media started asking them some tough questions on jobs and work’
http://www.ier.org.uk/blog/ukip-workplace
The modern European Union has given ‘a failed neoliberal model of capitalism the force of treaty, entrenching deregulation and privatisation and enforcing corporate power over employment rights’ writes Seumas Milne in the Guardian. It may be the case that EU withdrawal on the terms of the Tory right would lead to a (worsening of the) ‘carnival of reaction’ yet the default position of the labour movement should not be support for the status quo. As Milne points out, the EU's ‘profoundly undemocratic and dysfunctional structures have been brutally exposed by the eurozone crisis and the devastation wreaked by Troika-imposed austerity.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/14/tory-led-exit-europe-carnival-of-reaction
A considered view of Thatcher's legacy from Michael Hudson writing for the US webzine Counterpunch. From her first Government's groundbreaking privatisation of telecommunications and public utilities through to New Labour's deregulation of the City of London and the financial sector, Hudson traces the continuities since 1979 which have led to Britain's 'Great Polarization between the creditor 1% and the increasingly indebted 99%'
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/04/08/the-queen-mother-of-global-austerity-financialization/
In 1906 the left wing American writer Upton Sinclair published his classic novel ‘The Jungle’ which exposed the rotten and unhygienic working conditions in the US meat packing industry. It caused a sensation and literally within a few months the Federal Meat Inspection Act was passed.
In this Observer article UNISON National Officer Ian Adderley highlights the dangers of deregulation of inspection regimes in the meat industry. For years UNISON was told that it didn’t matter if the meat inspection service was killed off and that the industry could self-regulate. The consequences as warned by Adderley could be far worse than Trojan Horsemeat burgers:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/19/abattoir-meat-checks-food-scandal
Veggie
Even the dogs on the street know that deregulation of the banking and financial sector caused the 2008 economic crash. In the UK alone £1,270bn private banking debt was bailed out by government, swelling so called public debt by 57% in one fell swoop. Now the TUC’s Touchstone blog reports evidence from an unlikely source – the IMF – that countries with the most deregulation have the worst performing economies and are hardest hit by the economic crisis:
http://touchstoneblog.org.uk/2011/11/debunking-the-deregulation-myth/
As usual the British media deployed diversionary tactics when reporting on the Tory ‘rebels’. Classically portraying divisions in the Tories as being simply the pro and anti Europeans within the ranks but there is a more sinister level to this debate. Deregulation is an ideological standpoint for the Tories.
