Tax the banks not ordinary people

Five points.
1. Accountability and regulation.
Why is it that the audit firms who signed off the big banks accounts year after year as being sound are not being charged with criminal negligence? They should be closed down and all corporate / business accounts should be audited and then assessed for taxation by the Inland Revenue.

2. Alternative Macro Economic Strategies.
Perhaps we should read or re-read J. M. Keynes "How to pay for the war" and remember the state of British finances in 1945 in order to find the solution to this crisis.

3. The Political Reality that needs to change in New Labour.
We don't need more Blair - clones like Cameron and Clegg leading the Labour Party what we need is another Attlee. We have been subverted by 'Tory' Blair and his followers (in all three parties) who have moved the Labour Party so far to the right that even Harold Macmillan would be on the New Labour Left Wing! Three centre-right parties equals a one party state where democracy means choosing which Blairite we want to manipulate us and finish off the trade unions and the political influence of organized Labour for ever.

4. The wider context for the issue of taxation.
In the midst of the rubbish from the new government about what we can afford and their anti-Europe rhetoric we are gradually turning into a model of the American system. European social-democrats whether Secular, Protestant, or Catholic (West and East) must right across national boundaries organize together and rouse the people. Ownership must be by the people for the people whether in municipal, co-operative, mutual or other social-economy models. Otherwise this merry go round of bonuses and speculation will just continue. We do not need national state monopolies or private oligopolies.We need real policy and economic organizational alternatives within the framework of regulated markets. We do need urgently a European-wide political organization to promote them. These social economy and communitarian frameworks can provide a just approach to establishing where we can and must cut our consumption of both energy and things not to pay for the banks but to assist the worlds poor and protect the planet and all our children's futures.

5. Is their a secular valued based set of doctrines that we can rally around?
I believe that Catholic Social Doctrine provides such a secular basis and a policy framework as well as a set of standards for individual behavior that can unit all Europeans whether Latin Catholics or Albanian Muslims, Greek Orthodox, German Critical Theorists, Nordic liberals and even the empiricist, sceptic and conservative English. Whatever ones views of Christianity and its Catholic tradition the humanism, the social values and the emphasis on the dignity of the individual pronounced within the Social Doctrine of the Church stands at the core of all the values central to the rich texture which makes up the modern European heritage in all its diversity. These values also stand totally opposed to the anti-human and anti-nature program and values of a technology driven corporate capital bent on sustaining economic growth and their profitability no matter what the cost in human and environmental terms.