Chancellor Osborne has had to admit the humiliating truth - his policies to revive the British economy aren't working.
But his solution is to carry on with more of the same - make the working class pay more and do nothing about his tax-dodging, multimillionaire friends.
Councils across the country are cutting jobs and services. Now Osborne's autumn statement is rubbing salt into those wounds.
It carries measures which will hit the poor and the most vulnerable the hardest. In fact everybody except the super-rich is facing rising bills and falling wages, as well as job insecurity and a bleak future.
We're definitely not 'all in this together'.
Big tax-avoiding companies like Starbucks, Amazon and Google are embarrassed that their antics have been exposed.
It's not good PR. But they know that the chancellor will generally leave them alone, along with his rich chums.
After all it was Osborne who cut £3 billion from the tax office HMRC's budget in October 2010. This included axing 10,000 jobs.
When you look at this alongside the scandal of MPs still with their snouts buried in the expenses trough, it's no wonder that workers are fighting back.
The call for co-ordinated action against the cuts, low pay and the Con-Dem's austerity agenda in general is gaining support.
For example Unison's Scottish council has voted unanimously to instruct the union to "immediately take the necessary steps to promote with all STUC affiliated unions the need for a coordinated industrial action strategy, beginning with a one-day strike across Scotland."
Brian Smith, Glasgow city branch secretary and a member of Socialist Party Scotland explained that the trade unions "must step-up our campaign to defend wages, jobs, pensions and services by organising coordinated strike action across all sectors of the economy.
"At a time when Unison members are facing yet more pay cuts, further attacks on pensions and tens of thousands of jobs losses its clear the Con-Dem government will not stop unless they are forced back. A 24-hour general strike must be organised urgently to stop these attacks."
Failing coalition can be beaten:
Lobby the TUC on 11 December
The National Shop Stewards Network has organised a lobby of the TUC on 11 December to call on the TUC to name the date for a 24-hour general strike.
To support this demand, see
www.shopstewards.net and get a copy of the model resolution.
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