JOHN Maynard Keynes, one of the world's most famous economists once said: "Capitalism is the astonishing belief that the nastiest motives of the nastiest men somehow or other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds."

Today the Cowdenbeath area is living testimony that we are not living in ‘the best of all possible worlds’: A housing crisis that is blighting the lives of so many families, schools without teachers, family’s dependant on food banks, over 6000 households in fuel poverty, teachers paying from their own pocket to provide pupils with a breakfast, one in three people attending GP surgeries suffering from mental health problems, public services for the elderly cut year on year, and the list goes on……

Despite the failure of our current economic system to deliver ‘the best of all possible worlds’ our Governments in Holyrood and Westminster continue with their austerity death march, cutting funding and increasing charges.

This austerity is forcing working men and women to pay the price for this failing economic system that works for the few wealthy enough to profit from the system and forces the rest to manage on what is left.

If this sounds loony-left nonsense, here are some facts from an Oxfam report published this year, ‘Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, the richest 1% own more wealth than the rest of the people on the planet, over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%’.

It’s time for radical change that puts people and families before profit and big corporations.

The message to all the politicians representing the Cowdenbeath communities is now is not the time to be timid, you can no longer pretend to be against austerity then vote to cut funding to public services.

THE AGGRESSIVE PROGRESSIVE,

Lochgelly.