Recent figures from the Bank of England show that in the UK there are over 10 million families that are struggling to pay their bills. There are approximately 26.5 million household in the country, so we are approaching the 50% of UK families in some sort of financial trouble. These figures are before the “we're all in this together” austerity cuts come into play. This an increase from 8.9 million in the last report. These figures do not include the hundreds of thousands of people who have already fallen behind with their various payments. The report also states that 1 in 10 people are having difficulty paying their rent or mortgage. It also states that it expects these figures to get worse next year.
This is the type of life that capitalism brings to the ordinary people, struggle to hold on to your standard of living and facing cuts. This situation is nothing new, no matter how far we go back the story is the same. Go back to 1787, the Calton Weavers strike, three weavers shot dead, and why were they on strike, because they were facing a wage cut. It's the same old story, and it is a brutal story.
We are now being told the full extent of the next round of vicious cuts to be unleashed on the ordinary people of this country. Believe me, these will be the worst that any of us have experienced in our life time. The misery that will be heaped the the ordinary people of this country will be brutal and it will be long lasting, this is not a quick fix policy.
You have to ask yourself, does the government really want to devastate the living standards of the people? We know that there are alternative ways of reducing the deficit, why this way? The truth is it has nothing to do with rapid deficit reduction and all to do with ideology. The deficit is the wonderful excuse to allow them to go hell for leather at transferring all public assets into private hands and that is the real game plan. The cuts will make it impossible for government departments to carry out their appointed duties, and where they fall short, galloping in to the rescue will come the knight in shining armour, the private sector. Then you starve the local councils of funds and they can no longer provide the required services, lo and behold, here he comes again, galloping to the rescue the wonderful capitalist knight in shining armour, ever ready to supply what you want or need, at a profit of course. No such thing as a public service, good lord no, that would be silly, you must always provide a profit for the parasites sitting at the top sucking the life out of society.
Prepare yourself for a society with no public assets, no public spaces, no public services, all corporate owned and controlled, a society of ghettos and poverty with an unbridgeable divide between the deprivation of the many and the opulence of the few. We know there is an alternative, we can build a society that is based on the needs of all our people, we know what we want, a society created on the principles of mutual aid free from the fear of deprivation and exploitation. We have it in our power to destroy this abomination of a system and build a future that we would be proud to hand to the next generation.
Ah Love, Could Thou and I
with Fate Conspire
To Grasp this Sorry Scheme
of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it
to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to
the Hearts Desire!
Extract from Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam.
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