How Long Are They Going To Get Away With It?

        The so called “crisis” was in 2008 and here we are in 2014 and the ordinary people are still being kicked in the teeth, under the guise of “balancing the books”. The “crisis” was a wonderful opportunity for the corporate/financial greed machine to put pressure on the political class to create a sweatshop Europe. Of course the political class willingly agreed, they are the managers of this ideology of “austerity” and its resultant misery and deprivation.

      The sad truth is that they seem to be getting away with their callous disregard for human dignity. In their eager endeavour to placate their corporate/financial masters they have introduced a series of measures to syphon all wealth upwards, to plunder public assets and privatise all social services. In doing this they slash the living standards of all the ordinary people.

We've had to make some tough decisions.

      They have introduced slave labour under the nice sounding name of “workfare”. This scheme gives the corporate world an army of free labour to swell their coffers. The big corporate names are queuing up to grab a share of this free bonus to the balance sheet. At present there are more than 180,000 people in “government supported training and employment programmes”. This is growing as the threat of sanctions force people, who in most cases are already in poverty, to accept this slave labour scheme, or face total deprivation.

       Another inhumane scheme they dreamed up to cut social spending, is the bedroom tax. If you, for what ever circumstances, find you have a “spare room” you are forced to move to a smaller house, and there aren't any, or lose a portion of your council tax benefit. Recent statistics show that there are well over 500,000 people facing the threat of homelessness due to this inhumane, ideology driven, attack on the poorer section of our communities.

       Probably the most brutal and callous of their schemes so far, is their attack on the disabled. They always give these savage attacks nice sounding names, in this case it is called the disability assessment process. This translates as, cut disability allowance. The government has paid millions of pounds to the firm ATOS, to carry out this attack on the wellbeing and dignity of the disabled, and so far they have done this with an amazing ineptitude and indifference to those being “assessed”. 

       The ATOS assessment has seen more than 10,000 deaths that can be related to this assessment process. That is 10,000 disabled people who have been caught up in this ATOS assessment process, and dying. I think part of Michael Meacher's statement in the House of Commons last year is worth quoting, 

      "The fundamental issue is this: how can pursuing with such insensitive rigour 1.6 million claimants on incapacity benefit, at a rate of 11,000 assessments every week, be justified when it has led, according to the Government’s own figures, to 1,300 persons dying after being put into the work-related activity group, 2,200 people dying before their assessment is complete, and 7,100 people dying after being put into the support group? Is it reasonable to pressurise seriously disabled persons into work so ruthlessly when there are 2.5 million unemployed, and when on average eight persons chase every vacancy, unless they are provided with the active and extensive support they obviously need to get and hold down work, which is certainly not the case currently?"

       Six years on from the “crisis” and these policies are set to continue indefinitely, they are policies that suit the corporate world, privatising everything, cheap labour, zero hours contracts, and eight people chasing every job, which helps to keep down wages. So why should they change them? If we don't like them, then we will have to be the ones to change things. The political class are part and parcel of the corporate/financial world, they have nothing to do with our world. We are mere dispensable units to be used or discarded according to profit levels. We mine, make, grow, and distribute everything on this planet, We don't need the parasites on our back, we can create a much fairer world on our own, but they do need us. 

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk