November issue of the free Glasgow Keelie is out, again it is pact with info, opinions, criticisms and events, Its prying eyes have looked at everything from Cop-26 to Covid 19, our councillors' shenanigans to corporate bosses duplicity. You can read it online line HERE, and now it is also available in various pubs and cafes across the city. Pick up your copy and join that ever growing band of Keelies that want to be involved in the shaping of our city and our society for the benefit of all our people.
You will all probably remember the cross-party MP's report stating that the government's handling at the beginning of the pandemic was the greatest public health failure in UK history, and was responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths. It was obvious then that as business people they would do anything to keep those businesses profitable and would rather see the bodies pile high, than slow down the economy and hurt their profits. Well it seems that the cabal of privileged business/political ballerinas that inhabit that edifice to power and wealth, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are at it again. While infections and hospitalisations are rising daily and all the medical experts, hospital specialists, doctors and nursing staff are crying out for some restrictions to stem this rising disaster, our "Right Honourable Gentlemen" are determined not to slow down their profits. to them the economy is sacred and the public's health and welfare, somewhere down the list.
How much longer will we tolerate the lives of our friends and family being put at risk to protect the shareholders bonuses? We should ignore the ramblings of those corporate lovers and follow the advice of the medical experts, don't go to work if it is unsafe, masks may be uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as Covid19, avoid shops, cafes, restaurants, and crowded places, for our own good and the welfare of our friends and families. put ourselves before the profit margins of the rich and powerful. They need us more than we need them, so screw them, they have been screwing us for generations.
It is a strange group of people that select a proven king of bullshitters as there chosen one to lead them to the promised land. There is no doubt what so ever that bumbling Boris is a bullshitter and a person that sees the truth as an inconvenience in trying to satisfy his unquenchable desire for fame and power. The bumbling buffoon however is not a laughable character to be amused by, he is a dangerous, power seeking individual completely divorced from the feelings of others, a play actor with a dangerous and menacing personality. He was the man at the head of the government that the cross party of MP's said were responsible for the worst public health failure in UK history. He was at the head of the government that the same group of MP's stated were responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths during the early part of the Covid19 pandemic. Yet there he is, still sitting on the throne of that farce that goes by the name of UK politics. When will we ever learn.
To his critics, Johnson is a liar and a fraud, and stories such as this one are taken as further evidence for their case. According to his one time rival for the Conservative leadership, Rory Stewart, Johnson is “the most accomplished liar in public life—perhaps the best liar ever to serve as prime minister.” Johnson, Stewart wrote last year, has “mastered the use of error, omission, exaggeration, diminution, equivocation and flat denial. He has perfected casuistry, circumlocution, false equivalence and false analogy. He is equally adept at the ironic jest, the fib and the grand lie; the weasel word and the half-truth; the hyperbolic lie, the obvious lie, and the bullshit lie—which may inadvertently be true.”
I, like many others have always stated that this pandemic, obviously a painful and devastating disaster to millions, is also the greatest opportunity we have had in generations to change the way we structure our society. As in all disasters, the human reaches out to help each other, and this one was no different. Mutual aid groups sprang up across the planet, people rallied to help each other without the thought of personal gain or profit, it worked and it felt good. As the pandemic seems to be receding across the planet, we mustn't let that feeling of community fade, we should foster it and struggle to make mutual aid the fabric of our communities. Grow the structure of coming together, see and feel the benefits of mutual aid, and use that structure to change the shape and fabric of our unequal, exploitative, profit driven and destructive society, to one that is sustainable and sees to the needs of all our people, mutual aid is the foundation of that better world we all seek. Mutual aid is humanity, humanity is mutual aid.
Report from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief about the massive and deadly impact on the coronavirus epidemic and the importance of continued mutual aid organizing.
Starting in 2019/2020 and now continuing into the summer of 2021, global civil society is witnessing the biggest neoliberal disaster capitalist shock yet: COVID-19. Millions of people have been and continue to be killed by this unprecedented disaster. Like most catastrophes, those historically oppressed and least responsible for this pandemic are nevertheless those most impacted. The death toll is comparable in magnitude of lives lost to another World War. Every age has it’s kairos, those moments of possibility where the fate of humanity and all life on the planet hangs on the smallest of threads. What we choose to do or not do in these moments of twilight has the greatest of consequences. The ancient Greeks had two words for time: chronos and kairos. Chronos was/is chronological or sequential time, while kairos signifies a moment of truth – the time for action – pregnant time. Similarly, crisis, in its etymology, is a turning point, a moment where there are multiple paths in front of us, and we must make choices on which path to walk. The Zapatistas, likewise, taught us about the crack in the wall:
Most of the time the wall is a big marquee where “P-R-O-G-R-E-S-S” repeats over and over. But the Zapatista knows it’s a lie, that the wall was not always there. They know how it was erected, what its function is. They know its deception. And they also know how to destroy it. They are not fazed by the wall’s supposed omnipotence and eternity. They know that both are false. But right now, the important thing is the crack, that it not close, that it expand.
So dangerous bumbling Boris and his privileged band of brigands have decide to remove all Covid restrictions in England, his timing for doing this is when cases of Covid are rising rapidly in ever part of the country. Most experts state that this is risky and could be dangerous, so much for following the science. One expert in the field of infections has stated that no other country in the world has attempted this while cases are rising, oh dear. Estimates of the outcome of this action vary from expert to expert, as to be expected as it has never been done before. Estimates bounce around reaching 100,000 infections a day, 1,000 daily admissions to hospitals and a possible 100 to 200 deaths a day, with the resultant disruption to the NHS normal services. One expert compared dangerous bumbling Boris's action like taking the control rods out of a nuclear reactor. Pro. Chris Whitty has stated, "The slower we take it, the fewer people will have Covid, the smaller the peak will be and the smaller the number of people who will go into hospital and die." and dangerous bumbling Boris response to all of this is let it rip.
There is only one reason for lifting the restrictions, the economy. His rich corporate backers have obviously been having a wee word in his ear, whispering, "We need to start making more money again, get the peasants back out there working and spending." Another thought that will guide him in this decision is the fact that his financial Mafia friends will be wanting him to get the tax revenues up so that the peasants can start to pay off the massive debt, also think austerity. One thing you can be sure of, his actions never have the welfare of the ordinary people in mind.
Call me cynical, but it sounds very much like a policy of herd immunity, let the bodies pile high, eventually the weak and vulnerable will be eliminated and society will be immune. Then we can get on with the usual exploitation and money making for the pampered privileged parasite class.
It is obvious to most that the pandemic has allowed to state to create a submissive population, a population that sits and waits for the next set of instructions. Scanning news broadcasts to see where we can go, who we can meet, what parts of society are open to us and what parts are closed. With remarkable ease the state has created what it always strives for, total control over the citizens. Yes we are living through a pandemic, could it have been handle better with a more community inclusiveness? Of course it could, but this is capitalism and decisions are made on the best way to handle the economy, how to save the economy, how to get the economy "back on track", which we all agree is a track to environmental destruction. The needs of the people will follow after these priorities have been seen to be handled in the best method to suit the system. Now there are remarks about the damage to the mental health of many of our people because of isolation and lose of human contact, those with other illnesses are now suffering long delays and possible death. Was this all unknown, of course not, medical and scientific experts were well aware of the effects of isolation and the denying of social contact, but our decision makers, who claim to be following the scientific advice, cherry pick that advice according to their mindset that the economy is paramount. The result being a society of submissive citizens, with anger simmering under the surface, an increase in poverty and its attendant illnesses, an incredible strain on the health and care services, which have been denied proper funding for years. Despite this our lords and master will puff out their chest and try to convince you of how well they have done. Of course in their eyes they have done exceedingly well, they have transferred billions to large rich corporations, the parasite billionaire class has seen it obscene wealth grow at an incredible rate. Where does that leave you and me?
Quarantine isn’t coming to the US, it’s already here. Like everywhere else It does not arrive as a social peace treaty but comes crawling from the decaying corpse of the welfare state as a monstrous racial policing apparatus. Prison has never been a singular place but a particular collection of techniques of social control and that is most apparent under the logic of quarantine where every good citizen is both, and happily we may add, captive and warden. What this says for physical prisons is even more grim as they are transformed into the most pure expression of capital: workhouses where prison slaves manufacture our hand sanitizer[1] and PPE[2] so that we may live, and on the flip side mass graves, human warehouses packed to the brim under hostile conditions, a fertile field for both the virus and their captors to run wild[3]. Crisis is here, as it always is, and it doesn’t put a hold on all the other crises unfolding, it just both obscures and amplifies the intensity of them. Still the police are executing black people in the streets, still riots are breaking out[4], still black people are enduring and dying from medical neglect[5]. Still, still still! We are struggling and suffering and dying – and now the old ways of holding together the social peace reveal themselves for what they are – absolutely nothing. Reforms, inclusion in institutions, ‘community policing’, and paltry hand outs mean fuck all, just as they ever did but even more so now. Even what they offer us now is more insulting than anything: a paltry, one-time, 1200$ that will maybe cover one or two months of rent, and only for some of us at that[6][7][8]! All the promises of our masters turn to dust in our hands. The state recognizes what’s going on and whats falling apart and in order to ensure it’s continued existence is using the logic of quarantine to wage all out war against the entirety of the social body to ensure social cohesion. The life giving and death giving institutions of the state – the police, the medical industry, the carceral institutions, the military – are working overtime now. But where other technique of capital and governance have failed and are now failing to absorb the social body into it’s logics, health and pandemic have mutated into one sinister, paternalistic technique of governance that has managed to absorb the social body into the nation and the economy. What’s healthy for the nation, whats healthy for the economy, is healthy for us because we are them. With this one trick the social body has become a weapon wielded against itself. From discourses willing to sacrifice more vulnerable people for “our” collective health [9][10] (that of the nation and the economy), to neighborhood snitches calling the police on those violating the imposed rules of ‘social distancing’.[11] How long before those neighborhood snitches become neighborhood shooters enforcing a hardened border of social distance? Everyone knows behind the walls of our healthy neighborhood are the hoards of sick others…
The world is watching a mass slaughter of the poor, some watch with horror, some with disdain, after all it is away over there in India. This shows up the glaring inequality and inefficiency of the capitalist system, it is the poor in India that are suffering the most, as is usual in this economic system. India is a very rich country, but millions of its citizens live in dire abject poverty. They are the ones who stand confused when told to self isolate, use sanitiser, wash your hands frequently, when their home can be a box in the midst of a refuse dump.
The pain and anguish of the poor of India shrieks across the globe, but few hear it. Those extremely rich countries that can spend billions on arms, send a few plane loads of supplies, and puff out the chests expecting loud praise and acclaim. If ever there was an example that showed up the abject failure of capitalism to see to the needs of the people, India today is that example. What we are seeing is a crime against humanity, the cause in this case may be a virus, but how it manifests itself is the result of the capitalist economic system. The virus doesn't pick the poor by choice, it is the economic system that makes them vulnerable to its ravishes. The world is awash with wealth, so why are people dying because of poverty, it may be labelled covid19, but it is the poverty created by this insane economic system that feeds this death machine.
Now that the covid19 beast has been somewhat restrained, our millionaire/billionaire parasite class want you run into the street, credit card held high, cash in the other hand and shouting yipee. The only group that came out of this pandemic better off than they went in, are our sleazy millionaire/billionaire parasites. They cleaned up with government grants and lucrative government contracts, while the rest of us felt the harsh end of this situation. They are now eager that the loot keeps coming their way, so their hope is that you get out there and get those tills ringing like mad.
Let's look at what you and I have been facing, during covid19 while the millionaire/billionaire parasites raked it in, in bucketfuls. Approximately one million people have lost their jobs as a result of Covid19, with that figure likely to double. Fire-and-rehire has meant that almost 1 in 10 workers have been forced to accept the same job with worse conditions and pay or lose their job. Between April 2019 and April 2020, the real value of average earnings fell by almost 1%. Those who were obliged to continue working saw 10s of thousands contract Covid19 and many died. All of this and more from a pre-covid19 lousy base line. Pre-Covid19 a staggering 5+ million workers earned less than the Real Living Wage of £9.30 an hour. More than 8 million people in working households were living in poverty. Of course having a job could mean you lived in poverty but also of those in work, approximately 1 million were on zero hours contracts, more than 3 and a half million were in insecure employment.
Obviously the figures have grown since 2016.
So let's not be so eager to run out there and feed the parasite class, who have shafted us for years. Let's continue with mutual aid, self-help and DIY clubs, etc. and make them grow, Let's take control of our communities and work places and shape society for the benefit of all our people, let's scrap their "economy", after all it is just the rich parasites gambling club, and is not there for the benefit of the population at large.
Over the last year or so covid19 has allowed the state to impose on us a new “normal”, one of subservience, standing by waiting for our next set of instructions as to how we can live our lives. Though most people will say it was necessary under the circumstances, rationalism and evidence tells us that it could have been done differently, with more control at community level and with science, health and welfare as the guiding factor, taking the political/economical aspect out of the decision making equation entirely. It has been obvious from the beginning of this crisis, that the political and economic factors played a major role, in how it was handled, putting the science and the well-being of the people second. Now the crisis is easing and the establishment is keen that we get back to their designated “normal”, spend, spend, spend, increase consumption, get their tills ringing madly, the economy once again takes centre stage. We would do well to remember that the state will do all it can to hold onto that subservient attitude of the population. Expect lots of new legislation defining how we can live our lives, the state never relinquishes control it has engineered.
During this crisis the only group that comes out better off then they went into it are the billionaire class. Now that we are seeing the possible end to the covid19 disaster, that same class is keen to keep that ill-gotten booty growing. So we can look forward to new aspects to their deemed “normal”, slashing of working conditions. Thousands of workers are being forced to sign new contracts or leave their job, the new contracts of course benefit the corporate bodies at the expense of the workers. Unemployment will soar, giving the boss class another weapon to threaten your conditions, pointing to the queue at the door waiting to take your job.
It doesn’t have to be like that, we can ignore their god, “the economy”, and structure our lives around mutual aid, community organising and swap-shops among many other means of self help and organising. During the covid19 crisis we have seen mutual aid grow, common sense tells us that it shouldn’t die because the billionaire class want you to increase their wealth power and privileges, at our expense Over the last year the state has had more or less a free hand at shaping our “normal” let’s now take that power into our own hands and come together to shape our desired normal, one that sees to the needs of all our people, not one that pays homage to the corrupt bloated and privileged pampered billionaire parasite class.
When it comes to this Covid19 pandemic, each country points to other countries as doing much worse than they themselves are, it all helps to keep the people on the side of the government's ineptitude in the handling of the pandemic. At the moment Brazil is coming in for some heavy criticism as the pandemic runs wild, mainly over the poorest regions of that country. Yes, the pandemic is decimating large swaths of the population, yes, its health service is being crippled, and yes, it is run by a macho idiot who tells the people to stop whining, says about his family that his daughter was a mistake, and also says that if your son show signs of wanting to be gay, slap him and you'll see his attitude change. So Brazil has not got a lot going for it at the moment. However if we look at the most recent figures regarding covid19, they make interesting reading. They should be making us ask some very serious questions of our lords and masters, the political ballerinas that hold sway over our lives.
Brazil: population 211 million, approximately, covid19 cases, 11,483,370 covid19 deaths 278,229 deaths per million of the population, 1,318 approximately.
United Kingdom: population 66.8 million, approximately, covid19 cases, 4, 245,166 Covid deaths, 125,279 deaths per million of population, 1,874, approximately.
So we are doing much worse than Brazil in deaths per million of our population, and our political ballerinas are strutting about spouting our success. Are they unaware of these figures, or as usual they just ignore the facts they don't like. We have to ask questions and we have to demand answers.
You don't need a crystal ball to see what lies in the near future for humanity. It is increasingly obvious. Here is what I see just from a little looking around - there are, and will continue to be, great changes occurring with increasing rapidity. Why? Cascading crises. Pick any one. Economic crisis. COVID crisis. Variant crisis. Climate crisis. Environmental crisis. Extinction crisis. Biodiversity crisis. The list goes on and on, but it does not matter. We already have enough going on to let us know that business as usual is over, and it is not coming back. There will be no "going back to normal" because it was that normal that got us into each and every one of our current crises. To go back to normal would mean to go back to a continued path to extinction of not only humans, but all life on Earth. There will also be no Great Reset. There is nothing left for capitalism to reset. Decades of unchecked greed have sucked the life out of everyone, and everything. There is nothing left. There will, however, be a Great Remembering, and it might just save us. This will be where the tired and worn out workers of overdeveloped nations begin to yearn more for slower, quieter lifestyles than they do for more money, more work, and more stuff. People are deciding, appropriately, to quit consumerism all together. They can see it is a dead end. The more principled ones will also quit jobs that support the creaking machine of consumerism, and shift toward endeavours that support the health of our communities and ecosystem. Regardless of what happens moving forward, one will be better served by having a simple, more self-reliant and local lifestyle. If there is any "reset" it will be this - community and cooperation are becoming more important than cash and competition. The only things that will make the massive and rapid changes of the near future easier to deal with as our multiple crises continue to cascade and coalesce into collapse are: Simplicity. Community. Cooperation.
How long will it be before the public at large get really pissed off with being shafted generation after generation? In this capitalist system the bigger you are the less you play by the rules. In capitalism, when a small business runs into financial difficulties, it goes bust. However if you are a very large capitalist business, and you run into difficulties, then there is every chance that the government will bail you out with tax payers money. This is not new due to the pandemic, it is standard practice and has been for generations. The pandemic has just opened the sluice valves that bit wider. Of course it is not just happening here in the UK, it's part and parcel of the capitalist system the world over. America is probably where the largest hand over of tax payers money to big businesses is happening.
Here in the UK we try to mimic the U$A in this bailout scam.
While SMEs struggle to gain access to government-backed loans, large corporations have already been bailed out to the tune of approximately £7.5bn via the Bank of England’s newly created Covid Corporate Financing Facility – and it’s all being hidden from public view. ------ ----- The most concerning aspect about the CCFF however, is that neither the Bank of England nor the Treasury are being transparent about which corporations have access to the facility. The Bank explicitly states that “the names of issuers and securities purchased or eligible will not be made public” and recipient companies are even required to sign a confidentiality agreement regarding their participation in the scheme. A few companies however have seemingly broken this agreement by publicly announcing the support they’ve received through the CCFF. This includes EasyJet, Redrow, and Greggs who have secured £600m, £300m, and £150m respectively. With these sums amounting to £1.5bn, that leaves another £6bn already doled out to some of Britain’s biggest businesses completely in secret.
This is just the tip of the bailout iceberg, and all this while the NHS is struggling for more staff, equipment and funding, councils are slashing services to local communities and vulnerable groups are flounder in a morass of poverty stricken services and facilities, and food banks grow by the day. It is glaringly and blatantly obvious that we the real wealth creators in society, are being plunder and pillaged by the rich and powerful, through the auspices of Her Majesty's Government, yet we tolerate this generation after generation, while watching the ever growing poverty among our children, why?
I wonder when we will grab the bull by the horns and create a civilised society, a society where the locking people up in cages is finally recognised as barbaric and inhumane. When will we see a society where the only reference to this savage activity is in our history books. The fact that these degrading institutions are more and more being run by large corporations for profit, makes them even more unacceptable to civilised people. Inflicting misery and violence on fellow humans for corporate gain condemns them beyond the pale. Profit will always strip away at conditions, making prisons even more damaging to the mental and physical health of those caught up in this human crushing machine. In these inhuman institutions there is never enough money for medical care, security and profit come first. So it comes as no surprise that there have been approximately 260 people infected with covid19 in Kilmarnock prison. This particular human degradation institution is run by SERCO, a company that is no stranger to useing human misery to enhance its profit margins. Apart from prisons, Serco have been grabbing a slice of public money to harvest a profit from the misery of migrants. As long as we follow the economic madness of the capitalist system, making money from human misery will be an acceptable method of enhancing shareholders' bank accounts. If we dare to call ourselves civilised, then we have to erase any possibility of this type of enterprise entering the human chain of thought. A civilised society will only grow from the dust of demolished prisons and an end to the profit motive.
Time and time again this pandemic is seen to have been handled by our political ballerinas, lead by bubbling Boris as an economic crisis. Their shut, open shut again, half open and half shut, was obviously driven my thoughts of their corporate friends and a desire to see that they didn't lose too much money. Health and safety of workers was away down the scale. Only when it was seen to be getting out of control did they come up with another prolonged lockdown. However even in these circumstances they still wanted to keep some business earning, so construction was allowed to continuing working as the number of case spiked.
The result being that it has meant that those working in the construction industry had to pay a heavy price for this economic decision. According to the Office of National Statistics, the number of construction workers who have died from Covid19 between March 9th, 2020, and December 28th, 2020, is over 2,000. This figure doesn't take into account all the ancillary staff, security guards, delivery personnel, cleaners etc. Nor does it take into account how many of the construction workers' family and friends fell fowl of this disease because of this government's cavalier attitude to the health and welfare of workers. Surely this and all the other bungling decisions made with one and half eyes on the economic and half an eye on the medical during this pandemic is a case that must be brought into the open, and justice brought to all those who died unnecessarily through government bungle ineptitude and economic greed. There must be a reckoning or we insult those and their families who died unnecessarily.
Governments have always been corrupt, they have always favoured the wealthy and powerful, at the expense of the general public. However as the wealth of the super rich grows at an alarming rate, so the corruption in the governments that serve them also grows at an equally alarming rate. This phenomena is world wide, but here in the UK we have seen it reach new depths of greed and favouritism.
The present UK government lead by that bumbling but extremely dangerous buffoon, Boris, has plumbed ever greater depth of corruption, cronyism and gross disregard for the lives of the people. They have presided over more than 102,000 deaths from Covid19, among the highest deaths in the world, not all this was down to ineptitude, though that was their in bucketfuls, a large part was due to, their desire to grease the palms of their friends by throwing billions of pounds of tax payers money at them in the form of non-tendered contracts, and calling it an emergency, and working hard to get you all out their spending, irrespective of the danger to your health and welfare, so that their friends wouldn't lose too much money. This emergency situation also allowed them to carry out another of their heartfelt dreams, slicing off large section of the NHS to large corporate companies, no doubt lots of them and/or their friends, have shares in these same companies.
This is how governments work, those how still believe that you can solve society's emergencies and society's inequality, injustice and all the malaise that comes with these conditions, by voting for this colour or that colour of party, should take a long hard look at our history, and a thorough examination of the goings on of the present regime. Over the centuries it has always been a new smiling face, to lead us to paradise, but we end up as usual with the same shit and still being shafted by the rich and powerful, as we allow them to hold the reins.
