Gordon Brown, New Labour and big business are carrying out daylight robbery.  Gas and Electricity bills are due for huge rises, food prices are increasing by 16% a year, fuel costs are out of control and all Brown and New Labour can offer millions of low and average paid workers is pay cuts and tax increases.

The abolition of the 10p tax rate means an effective wage cut for millions. At the other end of the scale a tiny minority are continuing to rake it in at our expense.

Ordinary people are fighting back however.

Thousands of civil service workers have stepped up their strike action in defence of pay and conditions.

Local communities are campaigning to save post offices and other vital services under threat.

In Glasgow East, the voters gave Gordon Brown's New Labour the kicking they deserved.

Some facts 

 £41 billion is lost every year in unpaid taxes as one in three of the big companies avoid paying corporation tax.

 Shell and BP have just announced £7 billion in profit for the first three months of 2008. That’s more than £3.2 million an hour.

 £50 billion, and probably more, is to be made available to the banks to protect them from their self-inflicted credit crunch.  Public money is being used to rescue the banks after they messed up.

So let’s get this straight: when the economy is going well they want to keep the money for themselves but when things go bad we have to bail them out.

As economist Martin Wolf, who writes for the Financial Times, put it:

"in the good times the profits are privatised and in the bad times the losses are socialised".

Well where is the help for the 123 families per day who are seeing their houses repossessed? What about the average household debt of £56,234? Why are banks not using the bail-out to significantly cut mortgage interest rates? Where are the billions to end low pay and poverty ?

Why is it right that a blank cheque can be written for the billionaires while all we are offered is below inflation pay deals and growing insecurity?

Solidarity believes we cannot put up with this scandal. Workers are taking action on pay in the public sector and in defence of pensions as the highly effective strike at Grangemouth demonstrated.

Millions of public sector workers in Scotland and across Britain are rejecting three years of wage cuts offered to them by their employers.  We desperately need change!

The parties both at Holyrood and in Westminster represent the interests of big business and the rich. With the coming recession they can only promise us that things will get harder.  If we want better wages, public services or working conditions we'll need to fight for them ourselves.

This includes organising in our workplaces, colleges and communities.  But it also means helping Solidarity build a movement to fight the anarchy of the capitalist market and the poverty it creates - for a socialist society where the resources are used democratically to provide a decent standard of living for everyone.