Tuesday 31 August 2010

PLEASE DON'T HURT US???

      
         The European Trade Union Confederation is staging a European Day of Action on 29 September next. It will be made up of a Euro-demonstration in Brussels and trade union actions in the various European countries. The European trade unions will be demonstrating against the austerity measures adopted recently by many European countries, and to demand recovery plans in favour of quality jobs and growth.
        This is not enough, little pockets of demonstrators dotted around Europe will not have any effect on the powers that be. What is needed is an indefinite pan-European general strike. To call on the workers to politely form marches here and there asking the financial world not to hurt them too much is a retrograde step. We want to change the system, we don't want more of the same. If we want that better world for all, we can't simply ask for more of what we have just had. All the workers of this world have to do to change it for ever is just simply fold their arms. Stay at home, read a book, take the kids for a walk, go for a cycle, then organise your community and work place the way you want it to be, but don't turn up to be employed by the parasites, occupy your work place.
         This action by the European TUC should be expanded, it should be seen as the opportunity to grasp the moment and take control of our lives and free ourselves from the yoke of exploitation by the parasitical financial greed merchants and their state mouthpieces the politicians. We could take that step to start the creation of that better world based on mutual aid that sees to the needs of all our people and consign this system of greed and profit to the dustbin of history. We don't want to beg for work, we don't want to to say “Please don't cut my social services, my health service or my kids education but do keep exploiting me.” We want to change the world and only we the workers will do that for the benefit of the workers.


ann arky's home.

Monday 30 August 2010

DEVELOPING WORLD FIRST,OUR TURN NOW!!!

    
        This was posted some time ago but I think it is worth repeating as it is more relevant now than ever before. As I keep spouting, the cuts are nothing to do with the "deficit" that is just the excuse. It is all to do with transferring public assets to the private corporate world. A look at history can often show you trends and directions and this trend of hiving off all public assets into the private sector has been going on for some time. It has created devastation in the Third World and now it is set to do likewise in the developed world. The so called "financial crisis" has allowed the big financial vultures to accelerate the process in the developed world. Be warned, it was the Third World first, now it is our turn!!

Extract from:    anarkismo
      Throughout the world, public services have been under attack for the past twenty years. Forming a central plank of the capitalist globalisation agenda, ‘privatisation’ and ‘competition’ are the seemingly unchallenged dogma of modern capitalism. The levels of privatisation which have taken place worldwide are absolutely mind-blowing. During the 1990s alone over $900 billion worth of public assets were transferred into private hands. Globally this agenda is pushed by the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The basic theory by which these bodies operate is that all decisions should be made on the basis of profitability alone. Economies in the so-called ‘developing’ world have been carved up under re-structuring deals called Structural Adjustment Programmes which have been like manna from heaven for international business. The World Bank website(1) , for example, “provides information on more than 9,000 privatisation transactions in developing countries from 1988 to 2003”. This information is presented as ‘revenue generating opportunities’ for international capital. The current phase of the WTO’s strategy for the imposition of its privatisation agenda is the General Agreement on Trade in Services – which looks to sell off such basic services as healthcare, education, housing, water supply, waste management etc. This strategy is driven not in the interest of the ordinary people of these countries but by the needs of international capital. As David Hartridge, Director, WTO Services Division put it quite succinctly: “Without the enormous pressure generated by the American financial services sector, particularly companies like American Express and Citicorp, there would have been no services agreement and therefore perhaps no Uruguay Round and no WTO.” (2)
          This privatisation agenda has had disastrous consequences for many peoples and communities in the developing world. According to journalist John Pilger (3)  
        “The introduction of school fees where there was previously free education has driven many poor families to withdraw their children from school, while hospital fees have put basic health care beyond the reach of millions. Although they acknowledge the harm which privatisation has brought to poor communities in the Third World, the World Bank and IMF still insist on prescribing it as an economic model. Water privatisation is just one example. The World Bank notes that water in Haiti's capital Port-au-Prince costs up to 10 times as much from the private sector as it does from the public supply, and that poor families in Mauritania now have to spend a fifth of their household income on water. Yet both the World Bank and the IMF continue to force water privatisation on developing countries. During 2000 alone, the IMF made water privatisation or full cost recovery a condition of loan agreements to 12 African countries. The World Bank has promised Ghana an extra $100 million in loans if it privatises its water supply.”


Saturday 28 August 2010

THE CORPORATE SOCIETY.

     
       As I keep saying, the millionaire Osborne's planned cuts are all about transferring public assets to private hands, the deficit is just the excuse they needed. Let's look at one department, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. This department looks after a considerable amount of public assets and has a budget of £2.9 billion. It has to find savings of 25%, this of course will come with the usual lay-offs and pay freezes. It has also been mentioned that they will be selling off some of Britain's nature reserves, privatising parts of the Forestry Commission and stopping grants to British Waterways which looks after miles of canals and rivers. Think of all that wealth of rich land being sold to the friends of the millionaire trio, Cameron, Osborne and Clegg. No doubt, after the grants stop, the British Waterways will find it rather difficult to continue looking after all those acres of land that line those canals and rivers and will have to hold a wee fire sale to let the millionaire's club get their sweaty hands on that public asset of prime real estate.
        While we sit and listen to their phony ceremonies about all having to tighten our belts, they are busy stuffing their coffers with everything in sight. Every public asset will be transferred to private hands, the millionaires are having a field day at our expense, they have never had it so good. A team of their millionaire friends are in the driving seat and they know where they are going, straight to the bank with all our belongings.
        Unless there is an organised and forceful defence launched soon we will have nothing left to defend. You are looking at a corporate society where the public own nothing, no public libraries, no public parks, no public walkways along the canals and rivers, no public baths, no public parks and sports facilities. Everything will be corporate owned and you will have to pay through the nose for the simplest of activities, after all, profit is the name of the game they play. This is happening now, it is happening under our noses and will continue until it is all gone. It is easier to fight to hold what you have rather than fight to try to get it back.
       As long as we tolerate this millionaire run system of winner takes all and to hell with the hindmost we will have to continually fight to try to have a decent standard of living. We don't need them, they do need us to maintain their pampered parasitical lifestyle.
 
 

Thursday 26 August 2010

EXPECTING FAVOURS FROM MILLIONAIRES!!!

       
        The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has stated that the coalition government's first Budget has hit the poorest families hardest. It also stated that the measures announced in the Budget were regressive. According to their analysis this Budget will see the low income families with children lose most as a percentage of net income. Their report also suggests that cuts to housing benefit and disability allowance would see the poorest families lose approximately £422 between the Budget and April 2014. Two other statements are “Low-income households of working age lose most as a percentage of income from tax and benefit reforms announced in the Budget.” and “Those who lose least are households of working age without children in the upper half of income distribution.” The report went on to conclude, “once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the the emergency Budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of income distribution in cash, let alone percentage terms.” This from an institution that can hardly be called left wing.
        Now is there anybody out there who believed this bunch of over privileged parasite millionaires would do it different? The Chancellor is a millionaire from a privileged background, 23 of his colleagues in the cabinet are also millionaires. They have no idea of what it is like to be poor, the don't even accept the idea that this system creates poverty. With their value structure, if your poor it is because you are not trying enough, it's your fault. So why spend money on those who just won't get up and get rich. They are under the illusion that they are rich because the worked very hard. So, if you work very hard, you could be a millionaire. From their privileged pampered background social services and benefits just make you lazy. They have no idea of the reality of the working class in this system of exploitation.
          We can never expect them to create a system to benefit all the working class, everything they do will be to the benefit of the corporate world, their world. If we want a better world for all the people in society we will have to do it ourselves. Only the working class can create a society that is fair and just to all and we can only do that if we take control of our lives and control of society and all that it entails. We must organise to take control of our communities and our work places, shaping them to see to the needs of all our people. Who needs a bunch of useless, pampered, privileged parasites to organise our world?
 
 
ann arky's home.

Monday 23 August 2010

NEW BUMS ON SEATS, NEW FACES AT THE PODIUM!!

       
        We all know that those who sit on the seat of government are in the pay of the corporate world, they call the shots, who gets invaded and when, where the tax payers money goes etc. So what’s next, new bums on seats, nicer smiles at the podium, while leaving the same corporate power in control? The system stinks from top to bottom, it is the system that should be criticised not the individuals that manage it, an Obama here a Blair there, so what, what changes. When the mass euphoria broke out at the election of Obama I reminded people of the same euphoria when Blair was elected which quickly turned to an effort to get him indicted. Over the years I have seen a multitude of smiling faces form governments and seen a library of election manifestos held aloft, but little changes, our standard of living goes up a little and goes down again, but we always struggle. We go to war on an alphabet of causes, we are always the just and the defenders of freedom, the other the evil enemy, the workers do the killing and get killed, the corporate world takes the bounty. It’s the system that needs to be destroyed, until that happens, we will struggle and we will go to war, we will kill ordinary people in the defence of those ordinary people and it will be the ordinary people that do the killing.
       Let's stop the babble and the pandering to the parasites that control and destroy our lives, Let's realise that we can make a better job of the world if we take control ourselves. Direct action, direct involvement, not delegation of our power to the millionaire parasite class that is going to screw you to the deck at every turn. 
ENDLESS BABBLE.


The questions arise. Why war and hunger?
Why does poverty continue to linger?
Why such need in a world of wealth?
Why put a price on a child’s health?
Confused and angry the public stand
gazing in disbelief at this pathetic band.
Those shiny politicians designed by spin
their street credibility paper thin,
the great persuaders looking the mood
struggling so hard just for our good!
Masters of the art of wheeling and dealing
exceptional experts at legal stealing.
Enter the Media, drowning us all in trivial text,
everything you need know
of scandal and sport, crime and sex.
Together they create a world of confusion
all fashion and style, a vicious illusion.
So no matter how often we point at need,
we always drown in a sea of greed,
no debate entered into, no answers found,
the waffle the babble goes round and round.

ann arky's home.

Wednesday 18 August 2010

DON'T SWALLOW THE CRAP.

      
      Are we all daft?? Why do we accept this sort of crap?? We keep being told that there are hard times ahead and we are all in this together. The millionaire cabinet tell us that austerity cuts are necessary and we will all have to tighten our belts. On the surface it looks like that with food price increases running in double figures, pulses up 59% tea up 30% baby milk up 29% baby foods up 21% on 2007 prices, pay freeze and pay cuts, social service cuts, pension cuts, health and education being decimated and unemployment set to hit the stratosphere. Then you take a wee look at the millionaire Mafia that are shouting for these “austerity” cuts and you see a totally different picture.
          Lets take a wee look at how the millionaire parasites are doing. This is how some of them are suffering in these difficult times.

                                                 2009 payment  2010 payment  % increase
S. Hester, C.E. of RBS group      £164,000       £1.227m           648.2
M. Geoghegan, C.E. of HSBC    £1.67m           £5.68m             240.4
S. Wolfson, C.E. Of Next PLC.  £831,000        £1.737m           109.0
S. Rose, C.E. Marks & Spencer £1.77m           £2.606m             47.6

       How about Willie Walsh, the C.E. of British Airways, the guy who has been trying to screw the workers in that industry to the deck with wage cuts and savaging their working conditions. You can see how he has tightened his belt over the last year. In 2009 he had to struggle by on an austerity pay deal of £743,000 and this year so far he has managed to scrape through on a mere £1.024m a slight increase of 37.8% Yea, we're with you Willie, we are all in this together, we want more of your type of austerity.
          When will we ever learn, as the song goes. Do we need these hypocritical parasites feeding off us? It can't be beyond our imagination to device a social structure for society that sees to the needs of all our people based on sustainability. A society freed from the greedy profit driven motive and based on mutual aid. These so called Chief Executives are greedy, useless expendable parasites, I'm sure if the workers occupied their work palces they could run them better without these egocentric worthless appendages. They are no more than the gun slingers hired by the equally parasitical shareholders.
        Anarchists point the way to that better society for all our people, anarchism is the tool that can create a world fit for all our children and our grand children. A world of peace and justice, freed from the fear of deprivation and exploitation, a colourful world fit for a colourful humanity.
 
 

Monday 16 August 2010

WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY, 16th.AUGUST.

     
        Workers should know their history, it tells you which side the the state is on no matter the government of the day. Every occasion when the ordinary people come together to try to improve their lives, whether it be to fight a closure, oppose a war or push for reform, the state always answers with force. It can be the heavy hand of the police or the bullets or sabres of the military and afterwards the state will peddle the usual lie about it being justified force. In this so called democracy the will of the people must be stifled at all costs.
        The 16th August is the anniversary of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, the outcome of a demonstration of 60,000/80,000 people in Manchester calling for parliamentary reform. A cavalry charge, 15 killed and estimates of 400 to 700 injured. Not an isolated incident by any manner of means. Prior to this in Glasgow 1787 the Calton weavers on strike for an increase in wages marched to the Cathedral in support of their claim only to be met by the military, 6 weavers were killed by gun shot. We can move forward to the violence that the poll tax demonstrators met, the striking miners, the G20, and so it goes on. All this should tell us the the state is never on the side of the people.
      We owe it to those who have suffered and died in the people's struggle for liberty and justice to keep alive that history, our history, the workers history.
Weaver's memorial at Abercromby St cemetary Calton Glasgow. 

Monday 9 August 2010

CALL FOR SOLIDARITY.

         
 
      A little behind but only received this in the form of a leaflet the other day and thought it deserves support, after all who will be next in their attempt to silence the opposition to their slash and burn policies? Trying to push one group out here and another out there is their way of trying to silence the public and frustrate any attempt at the ordinary people organising themselves against the millionaires' club.

Govanhill Police Attack the Right to Organise.
        On Tuesday (13/07.2010) Fight Racism-Fight Imperialism set out to hold one of its weekly stalls outside Lidl Victoria Road. Within 15 minutes of setting up we were approached by two police officers; Pc. Ishaque (badge number- G282) and Pc. Willie Neil (badge number-G480) who have tried to shut down our own and other activists stalls before but failed. Two FR/FI activists were charged with selling a newspaper without a permit ( which the human rights act 1998 allows us to do) and were also charged with obstruction. Our table and 13 FR/FI newspapers were seized!

Defend Democratic Rights! No to Political Policing!
        FR/FI will not be intimidated off the streets and will defend the rights of ourselves and others to oppose the wars, spending cuts and blatant corruption (e.g. Steven Purcell) of Britain's rulling-classes. I the period before the full crunch of the spending cuts is felt; lower the already miserable living standards of Glasgow's poor; police should be shown that they cannot attack our democratic rights without promting a fightback. Let the people of Govanhill decide who should be allowed to sell their newspapers, not a few coppers hiding behind their badges!

What You can Do?
Send e-mails of complaint to -SouthsideCentralCommunityPolicingTeam@strathclyde.pnn.police.uk
or phone 0141 532 5312 demanding our table and newspapers be returned and that all charges be dropped.

Support our right to sell newspapers! No to censorship!

L:eave your details for upcoming meetings and events or contact us at glasgowfrfi@yahoo.co.uk



http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/



ann arky's home.

Friday 6 August 2010

NOT ON SALE AT YOUR LOCAL SUPERMARKET.

          Ian Tomlinson is just one of a long line of victims of police brutality. To date no serving police officer has ever been successfully charged with killing someone. In spite of there having been more than 400 deaths following police contact in the last ten years, no police officer has ever been convicted of murder or manslaughter. Draw your own conclusions. 


“After 16 months of waiting, to hear nothing is being done is a complete joke. Today they gave us no hope. This experience has broken our family apart. The DPP has told us there was an unlawful act, yet no charges are to be brought. This is no justice - everyone has failed us.”
 Ian Tomlinson’s son Paul King
Photo and Paul King's comment courtesy of   Schnews 
  I'm aware that it might be last months news but it is of such importance that I think it is well worth repeating Plus don't you think the schnews photo makes the point dramatically?

Wednesday 4 August 2010

GOT SPARE CASH? GET OUT OF YOUR COUNCIL HOUSE!!!

        
      You wait for years for a council house and then finally you get one and it is in an area that your happy with, so you're all sorted. You start to do the place up and settle in and feel at home, your sorted for life. Well, not any more. Our millionaire well coiffured twins have just decided to change the rules. Now you will only get a short term rental agreement, probably about 5 years. After that period a committee made up of a bunch of wealthy bureaucrats will assess you to see if your are now well-off enough to buy your own house and therefore no longer in need of a council house. What if you don't want to buy a house and you're quite happy in the area you're in? Well tough, you have been assessed as not being in need of a council house, so out you go. It could be that you have been there for years and one of your family has left home. Well those same well-heeled bureaucrats will now assess you has having a house too big for you needs and move you to another council house somewhere else. That is assuming that you haven't increased you income in that period or it could be both, too well-off and your family is too small.
         This is another little gift to their millionaire mafia friends in the lending business, another way of forcing everybody into debt with a mortgage company whether they like it or not. Council housing will only for the poorest of the poor who will be assessed every 5 years or so just in case their circumstances have improved and then out they go. The corporate world must be able to make money out of you if you have any at all. Why else are you there??
        Another glaring example of who the millionaire twins at the Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption really work for, they know who their friends are. Do we know who are the friends of the working class? Well it is us of course, the working class, the only group that will look after the interests of the working class.
 
 
 

Tuesday 3 August 2010

ANOTHER GREED DRIVEN THEFT.


      My aren't the political Mafia fickle? One moment they say one thing, the next they say another. For a while the Scottish SNP government was saying that Scottish Water would remain in public ownership, then some economist waved some magic numbers in front of their eyes, like £3 billion and suddenly they are considering handing over one of the Scottish people's most valued assets to the millionaire club of the corporate world.
      If this goes ahead, and I think it will, it will fit perfectly into the plans of the machete millionaire twins. Their strategy of slashing cuts has as its aim the final dismantling of all public assets of any worth and handing them to their millionaire friends, thus creating a society where nothing is there for the public good but merely to make money for their already obscenely rich parasite friends.
       Water is a natural resource and is so important that is should in no way be in the hands of the corporate greed machine. In their hands it will just another product to be sold or exported to the highest bidder. Having water run in your home when you turn on the tap will be at the vagaries of the market, need will not come it to it, cash will be the deciding factor. The poor will be priced out, and that essential product will become a luxury. Can you imagine flushing the toilet just once or twice a day to save money? Skipping the kids bath time as it costs too much? Just try to think how your life would change if you had a meter on your water and the price kept going up like gas and electricity.
       The Scottish people must organise to prevent this latest plunder of their assets, we have already seen the common goods neatly stashed away out their control. This plunder will go on and on until there are no such things as public assets. Then the corporate world will really have you by the balls and they will squeeze until your eyes pop and then leave you when you are an empty husk
 

Monday 2 August 2010

YEP, IT IS THE SAME OLD NEW PLANS.

   
   No matter how far we go back in our history it is the same old story, the working class being screwed by the rich and powerful and a state that is hell bent on war. Since the "peace" after world war 2, the British state has been fighting in almost every corner of the globe. There were the colonial wars as the "empire" struggled to be free of the British yoke. Then of course there was Egypt, Korea,the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan to mention a few. During all this time the ordinary people of this country have struggle for a decent standard of living and now stand on the brink of a return to the Victorian era poverty. It seems that we can't afford a decent standard of living for the people but we can afford to send our young people all over the world to kill other working class people. Surely we can come up with a better system than this, you know that this system is fashioned to suit the millionaire parasite class and you know that there are alternatives. Isn't about time that we asserted our selves and showed our real strength and ingenuity and fashion that new society to suit the needs of all our people and to hell with the millionaire parasite greedy power hungry war mongers.
   The wee poem is from a previous attack on the working class and was written by one of Glasgow's own.

THE "FIND YOUR VOICE" RAP
"Do not despise the snake for having no horns for who is to say it will not become a dragon" (Ancient Chinese saying)

What do you say when you have no voice
what do you choose when you have little choice
When money talks and you've next to none
What do you say when the day is done.

Do millions have to demonstrate
against poor laws made by the state
for will they listen, will they hell
war propaganda is their main sell

What do you do when you are feeling low
thinking Bush and BLiar just have to go
Every four years there is a vote
The Party needs funds, will sell your coat?

What can you do when it is a crime
that it costs too much for TV time
Only the rich can air their views
to tell us lies and distort the news

So tell the aged, tell the youth
have the courage to tell the truth
Point out their every bluff
Shout it out "enough's enough"

By Paul Anderson 24 April 2004

ann arky's home.

Sunday 1 August 2010

GLASGOW SOLIDARITY NETWORK.

Friends and comrades,
         If you are interested in the Glasgow Solidarity Network but haven't been able to come to a meeting yet, you would be welcome at Tuesday night's all-Glasgow meeting, 7-9pm at Wyndford in Maryhill, former site of  St Gregory's Primary School: 186 Wyndford Road, Glasgow G20 8HF
        We're hoping for a good turnout to talk about publicising the network and ratifying a Constitution. For those who haven't heard about us yet, the Glasgow Solidarity Network, based most directly on the Seattle Solidarity Network, is a network of tenants, workers, claimants and residents of greater Glasgow that aims to build solidarity within the working class by taking direct action and winning fights against oppressors like landlords, employers and the DSS. Glasgow SolNet isn't affiliated with any political organisation but it is organised on non-hierarchical principles and aims to raise class consciousness and promote solidarity so that we can eventually take control of our own lives.

*Glasgow Solidarity Network all-Glasgow meeting:
7pm Tuesday the 3rd of August,
186 Wyndford Road, Maryhill*
(formerly St. Gregory's)

http://www.glasgowsolnet.tk/      glasgowsolnet@gmail.com

ann arky's home.