Wanted - a budget for the millions not the millionaires

The people of Britain want decent wages and benefits, secure jobs and properly-funded public services. Gordon Brown thinks he can buy us off with peanuts.

The 'New Labour' government hopes we will ignore the following facts:

• They froze public spending for two years to meet the EU conditions for joining the Single European Currency.
• they handed the power to raise interest rates - and the vallue of the pound - to the Bank of England, destroying more than 100,000 manufacturing jobs.
• They squeezed more than £10 billion extra out of us in taxes and National Insurance contributions last year, to be used for more military adventures and pre-election bribes.

THE BUDGET IN BRIEF

• No taxation of Oil company and Banking "super profits".
• Some 2p to 3p off a litre of "enviromentally Friendly" fuel without any guarantee the oil companies will not take advantage and simply raise prices.
• Acceptance of the principle of a Pensioners tax linked to earnings for tax relief. No acceptance of this principle in pensions payments which are still £25 short.
• Reported surplus of £23 billion mainly as a result of cuts in public services, particularily local government.
• Restoration of cuts to Education and Health sectors which have seen massive public outcry. This will do nothing to alleviate the pressures on local councils.
• Increase maternity leave - up to 26 weeks. Paternity leave increased to 2 weeks not paid at average earnings rate.
• Betting tax abolished - more food for the betting monopolies.

The Communist Party is clear that the surplus didn't occur through taxing the rich but because of cuts and by not increasing pensions in line with earnings.

While Gordon fiddles the figures....

New Labour's multiple counting of government spending, like his use of bogus Tory style unemployment totals cannot hide the real problems:

• 2000 manufacturing jobs lost every week,
• more cuts in local council jobs and services,
• longer NHS waiting lists - mow above 1 million again,
• more children and pensioners in poverty than any other EU country,
• banks and privatised industry ripping off the public, sacking workers, running down our services - piling up record profits.

THE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT HAS THE BIGGEST PARLIAMENTARY MAJORITY IN HISTORY.... but claims it is powerless to act.

The Communist Party says this is rubbish! this government subsidises Railtrack, British Aerospace, the European Union - the world's richest pensioners in Buckingham Palace, wealthy arms dealers and the bombing of Yugoslavia and Iraq.

Chancellor Brown has a budget surplus of at least £16 billions to spend.. but rather than challenge big business and the European Union, 'New Labour' attacks the unemployed, single parents, students annd refugees.

What could a real Labour government do with a socialist budget?

• Raise the top rate of income tax and put a Wealth Tax on the rich
• Slap a Windfall Tax on bank profits (£20 billion this year) and oil profits.
• Cut military spending to average European levels.

What could we do with the £20 billion raised by these measures and the £16 billion already in the Treasury coffers?

• Invest in health, housing, public transport and the enviroment - no more 'private finance' and privatisation in the public sector
• Expand nursery provision, restore student grants and abolish fees
• Restore the link between basic state pension and earnings
• Take the railways, coal, aerospace and other capitalist industries into public ownership, defying the EU where necessary

The socialist alternative is the Communist Party