The year 2012 ended with Osborne's poison "Xmas gifts", carefully packaged in his Autumn Statement, for the low-paid, jobless and those on any form of social benefit. Yes, they were given a real value cut in what they receive over the next three years. And all to pay for the sweet £2bn handout given so generously to shareholders in the form of another reduction in corporation tax!
Now 2013 begins with more poisoned gifts - this time prepared by the ConDem's City sponsors. On January 1st, came yet another transport fare hike. And over the first months of the year, a number of bills, making up a significant chunk of working class households' budgets are also due to increase - from gas and electricity, to telephones and insurance.
Their profiteering is just too costly!
Transport is an important budget item for many working class households, especially in the big cities. And since affordable accommodation can only found in areas where there aren't any jobs, those who are forced to live far out, are also forced to commute into work, sometimes over very long distances.
Yet, while the fare increase which came into force this month is 3.9% for daily tickets (half as much as inflation), it is 4.3% for the season tickets used by working class commuters. But these are only averages. On some commuter routes, fares have risen by up to 12%! And some of the most expensive season tickets per mile travelled are on the most congested routes, like London-Sevenoaks or London-Bracknell.
This has been the standard pattern over the past decade, in which the government's "regulator" has allowed such fare hikes year after year - so much so, that today, Britain's trains are the most expensive in Europe, by very far, while being among the worst in terms of comfort and reliability!
There is, however, logic in this madness - the logic of the market. The private train operating companies simply bank on the fact that many people can't afford to have a car and that many more can't afford to drive to work. Just as they bank on the fact that if a route is congested, there will always be enough passengers to keep profits rolling, even if they are forced to pay through the nose! And, since privatisation, the companies have been able to get away with this crude profiteering thanks to the complicity of every government, whether Tory, Labour or ConDem.
Never mind if, as a result, some workers may lose 10, 15, or even 25% of their wages just by commuting into work!
We won't pay for their profits!
What is true for transport is just as valid for all the main bills which eat up workers' budgets.
At the time of privatisation, we were told that "competition" would reduce the cost of public services. Well we just have to look at our fuel bills to know what a lie that was! Behind it, politicians were selling off decades-worth of public investment at rock-bottom prices.
In fact, behind the privatised services, a handful of giant companies built up a dominant position in no time, allowing them to do as they please. This included hiking prices, behind the hypocritical cover of bogus "regulators", while starving the infrastructure of investment or even maintenance. And all this, with the benevolent help of political parties which would never have dreamt of doing anything that might upset rich shareholders.
Such is the state of play today. Obviously, the way forward would be to bring back under public ownership all the services that are socially useful. Except that, in this society, "public ownership" does not mean "run in the interest of the public". Publicly-owned organisations, such as Network Rail (rail infrastructure) or Transport for London, not to mention the NHS, are milch-cows for a galaxy of private contractors which drain their budgets to the last penny without delivering very much in return.
No, it is another kind of "public ownership" that will be needed, one which will have to be exercised under the direct control of the working class - in these organisations as well as at every level of society - to counter the rule of the capitalist sharks who cause the chaos and injustice in this society.
But, in the meantime, the working class has to defend itself against the attacks it is facing - including against these constant price increases. After these years of crisis in which wages have been cut, outright, or through the casualisation of labour, we must hope - and mobilise our ranks to ensure - that 2013 will be the year when the struggle for decent, inflation-proof wages will resume with a vengeance, across all sections of the working class. That is the way forward today!