Alistair Darling's pre-Budget was meant to be part of Labour's electoral arsenal in the run-up to an early general election. But Brown retreated hastily for fear of losing his huge majority in the Commons - if not his flat in Downing Street. As a result, this pre-Budget appears as a crude attempt to entice the rich onto Labour's bandwagon.

In fact, Darling was so determined to ensure that the capitalist class would be pleased with him that he even tried to present the 2% reduction in corporation tax (what the bosses pay on their profits) already announced in Brown's last Budget, in March, as a new giveaway for companies.

Then there is the increase of the threshold above which Inheritance Tax is due. The Tories made a big fuss over it. As it was, however, at £300,000, very few people paid it, even with soaring housing prices, because this tax is not applicable to one's own home. So, the only people concerned by this tax are really the richest.

Likewise for the taxation of financial profits. Darling claims that by introducing a single 18% rate for this tax, he will close loopholes that allow rich speculators to make huge profits out of raiding the assets of ailing companies. Strangely enough, however, he admits that this change will only bring in £300m or so to the government. The reason for that is simple: while some profiteers will see the tax rate on some of their income rise from 10 to 18%, others will see it drop from 40% to 18%, particularly among real estate speculators.

Yet why do these speculators pay less tax on the income they get from playing bingo, than they would if this income came from the labour of their muscles (which would be 40%, since they are all in the top bracket of income tax). Why should the rich pay proportionally less tax that the rest of us?

But while Darling woos property speculators, not one penny will be devoted to providing new state funding to build affordable rented housing for the low-paid! Obviously, the Darlings and the Browns still take the votes of the working class for granted. But one day or another, they will pay for their contempt for working people.

Official strikes staged by postal workers before and after the weekend before last, have been followed by a wave of unofficial strikes, mainly in Mersey side, Scotland, London and the Manchester area.

Why? Partly because the threat of Royal Mail imposing flexible working conditions on postal workers and closing their final salary pension scheme, was still there. And partly because Royal Mail managers were provoking the workforce by trying to implement some of the flexibility measures even before they had been agreed.

Meanwhile the CWU was still negotiating with Royal Mail. By Friday, a deal was announced which was to be referred first to the union's Postal Executive and then, if agreed, to the membership.

At the time of writing the union executive was still discussing the deal and its content had still to be published. But leaks showed that there was no change in the main issues, on job flexibility and pension. The only new elements were a little bit more money and the fact that the job flexibility measures were to be trial-run before being negotiated at local level.

This way of trying to bribe workers with a few quid and getting the union to help in enforcing the management's plans at local level, is well-known at Royal Mail. This was how they made massive job cuts over the past 3 years with the cooperation of many CWU officials.

The odds are that this is, once again, what the leadership of the CWU will try to do: instead of refusing this rotten deal point blank and organising serious action, they will ballot the membership, in the name of democracy. As if they were concerned with democracy, when they kept hiding the content of their negotiations behind a thick veil of secrecy over the past months! No, the only purpose of such a ballot, which is bound to last a month at least, would be to dampen the postal workers' anger and to demoralise the most militant among them.

But such a manoeuvre may fail. The fact that so many Royal Mail offices have been taking unofficial action over the past week shows that there is a deep suspicion among workers against what is being cooked up behind their backs. This healthy suspicion and militancy may help them to do what their union leaders are incapable of doing: to use their numbers and organise a solid fightback against Royal Mail's attacks. If so, they should get all the help we can give them.