Pensions

The Communist Party endorses the Pensioner Manifesto from the National Pensioner Convention, which demands:

  • A basic State Pension set above the official poverty level (estimated at £165 per week in 2009), linked to rises in earnings or prices, whichever is higher.
  • Free long-term and social care for pensioners, funded from general taxation and provided to the highest standards
  • Free Britain-wide travel for pensioners on public transport
  • A Winter Fuel Allowance of £500 per pensioner per household

Transport

  • Take the privatised utilities, telecoms and public transport back into public ownership to ensure that their pricing and investment policies are planned to met the needs of users, workers, the economy and the environment - not those big corporate shareholders
  • That is why public transport and energy - which must include the big oil monopolies - should be brought back into public ownership. Britain must plan for greater comfort at lower consumption by integrating and improving public transport, shifting freight from air and road to rail and sea, funding conservation of domestic heating, producing locally rather than half way across the world, and investing in energy-saving technology

Health

  • Scrapping the 'foundation trust' status for hospitals and restoring co-operation rather than competition as the ethos of the NHS

Environment

The second major threat of environmental catastrophe comes from global warming, which is leading to melting of the polar ice-caps, rising sea levels and changed weather patterns. Despite recent media specualtion, global warning is real and is clearly connected to the profligate burning of fossil fuels, which is pumping iver 30 billion tonnes of heat trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Unless this is checked, the consequences will be dire for millions of people: loss of homelabd, desctruction of agriculture,deaths from hunger, and migration on a massive scale. Yet the big energy monopolies and their major industrial consumers are unwilling to accept any regulatory measures whcih would limit their profits

Capitalism is threatening the life-support system of humanity on the planet

  • Take the privatised utilities, telecoms and public transport back into public ownership to ensure that their pricing and investment policies are planned to meet the needs of users, workers, the economy and the environment - not those of big corporate shareholders