UK, Land Of Privilege And Poverty.

 

         Once again that clump of land, know as the UK, the forth richest country in the world, has been exposed as a class ridden, land of inequality. A land mired in poverty, strewn with destitution, where a small cabal live a life of unimaginable opulence, at the expense of the many.
        Inequality of wealth between the poorest and the richest is wider in UK than any other developed country, and is widening. 

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       First, earnings of the top 10 per cent of full-time workers doubled between 1978 and 2008, whereas those of the median grew by 60 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent by just a quarter. After the financial crisis, overall earnings fell substantially over the next five years before recovering slightly, but they are falling once again. This combination of absolute decline following generations of widening inequality explains much of the current sense of unfairness.
      Second, the standard measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, shows Britain’s post-tax inequality rising strongly in the 1980s (from 28 per cent in 1978 to 41 per cent in 1990) though it has stabilised a little since (to around 37 per cent). Having once been one of the more egalitarian developed countries, the UK is now one of the least. Third, there has been an extraordinary concentration of rewards in the hands of the top 1 per cent, and within that group, the top 0.10 per cent.
     Finally, wealth inequality is greater than for incomes and is growing. In the absence of compensating wealth taxation, high earners can turn their income into assets, and the value of assets can be compounded through investment. This is then passed on as inheritance, entrenching inequality across time between generations and classes.

         Recently our political ballerinas, mostly wealthy products of the Oxbridge sausage factory, were all aghast at the audacity of the UN Rapporteur Philip Alston when he released his report on poverty in the UK. Foaming at the mouth they declared, how dare he put on display, the extent of poverty and destitution in this country. They went into convulsions when he claimed that the extreme poverty and destitution in this country was a deliberate result of government choices rather than inevitable circumstances.

Austerity
      Alston was critical of the “mentality” behind cuts and reforms introduced in the past few years that have brought misery and torn at the social fabric. “British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and callous approach …”
Universal credit
      The government’s ambitious programme to simplify the benefits system was a good idea in principle but was “fast falling into universal discredit” and should be overhauled. It was gratuitously punitive in its effects. Draconian sanctions and long payment delays drove claimants into hardship, depression and despair.

       Of course ordinary Joes, like you and I, knew all this, we didn't need a UN Rapporteur to tell us of the extreme poverty and destitution in this clump of land, nor did we need to be told that deliberate policies were the cause. We have lived with it for years, we have seen the result among our friends, family and neighbours. We are also aware of who is responsible for these policy choices that created this quagmire of despair, and we also know that to expect those wealth privileged political ballerinas to start to spread the wealth of this country more equally is fantasy from cloud cuckoo land.
       The answer is to rid ourselves of these prancing, privileged parasites, and take control of wealth and resources of this rich and wealth plot of land, and start to create a system that will spread those riches in a fair manner, seeing to the needs of all our people. We can do it without UN Rapporteurs, political ballerinas, and privileged worthless parasites. The sooner we start, the quicker we will see all that poverty, despair and destitution disappear.

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