Welcome to the markets

Pre-tax profits of £883 million for the year that ended on March 31 meant that the problematic carrier pocketed 45 per cent more than the previous year.

And this is even after the oil companies, which themselves have been rolling in the profits at record rates, jacked up the price of aviation fuel to such an extent that the BA fuel bill rose to £2.1 billion and is expected to rise by a further £1 billion in the next year.

BA reduces the costs of fuel by a policy of buying fuel futures which, while showing an apparent saving for the company over current rising prices, forces them to rise even further and faster.

And, with the credit crunch roaring on, speculators are buying oil futures as, believe it or not, a hedge against the inflation which they themselves are causing.

Petrol for your car, if you can afford to run one, has topped £5 a gallon and all goods which are transported by road are reflecting the rising fuel cost in their prices.

Communities across the country are campaigning against the proliferation of new extensions to airports and the increasing volume of traffic through them and noise from them, while the motorway network grinds to a periodic halt through overuse by a totally inappropriate and energy inefficient road transport lorry fleet.

And environment charity WWF warns that business flights alone are generating over 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each year

Meanwhile, WWF reports on a different front that populations of animal, bird and fish species have dropped by almost a third since 1970, land-based creatures cut by a quarter between 1970 and 2005 and freshwater species falling by 29 per cent in the same period, due mainly to loss of habitat.

The human race, the charity points out, is now using 25 per cent more natural resources than the planet can replace.

And yet, a majority of the people of this world still live in poverty, with hunger a constant companion.

In this country, the number of people living in poverty doubled between 1979 and 1999.

Almost 13 million people in Britain still live below the poverty line and government anti-poverty programmes are struggling to reduce the numbers.

So, welcome to a world in which capitalist globalisation is the dominant force and the sacred markets make the decisions.

Welcome to the neoliberal world of Gordon Brown and George Bush, where entrepreneurs are worshipped and the poor, although always with us, receive bounty from the lords of the free market, which, we are told, is the only mechanism capable of rational decision-making.

Welcome to greedy, thoughtless capitalism and unbridled profiteering.

It is said that a better world is possible and that is certainly true.

But it has to be fought for and wrested from the hands of those who are raping this planet.

Those who think that capitalism can be rejigged into a socially responsible creed are welcome to their optimism, but are likely to be disappointed.

And the next Tory who tells us that the only thing wrong with socialism is that it doesn’t work is going to get a very dusty answer indeed...