State Crime.

Image courtesy of The Telegraph.

          So here we are in Great Britain, a country that can afford to throw £millions into prolonging a blood bath in Ukraine but spouts no money to afford to eradicate child poverty at home. During 2021-22 in the UK there were 4.2 million children living in poverty, that's a staggering 29% of all UK children. Of course statistics vary as you move among the population. In lone parent families,44% of children are living in poverty. Again, if we move to Black and minority groups, then the % of children living in poverty jumps to 48%
        Of course the ever preached mantra from our lords and masters that work will lift you out of poverty, proves to be the usual bullshit we expect from our political ballerinas. Here in the very rich UK 71% of those children living in poverty are in a family where at least one person works. Again the dice is loaded against you if you come from a larger family. 42% of children living in families of 3 or more children are living in poverty. Of course we shouldn't forget, the adult poverty that lives along side this tsunami of child poverty.

Image courtesy of West Wales Chronicle.

 

        These figures certainly don't paint a picture of a very rich country, but we are living in a very rich country. The problem is the distribution of that wealth, the capitalist system is a system that favours the few who can horde that wealth and with it live a life of opulence steeped in privileges and power. Until we sort that problem we will bequeath a future of continuing poverty and stunted lives for the coming generation of our kids. The choice is ours, the solution will not come from those hoarding parasites who live a privileged life and hold the reins of power.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

Child Poverty.

       All my adult life, come an election, or as I prefer to call them, the crooks and liars competition, I have heard our political ballerinas sing the usual chorus, "We will end homelessness and we will end child poverty". They don't all sing in tune, they all have their own variation. Here I am 87 years old and the latest figures show that in every Scottish local authority, child poverty has increased over the last 6 years.
        Recent figures compiled by Loughborough University create a shocking picture, a scandal of a failed system. The report shows that before we were hit with the pandemic in Scotland, 2019-20, 26% of children were living in poverty, an increase from 23% 2018-19, and up from 24% 2017-18. Glasgow saw the largest increase, up 5.i%. Glasgow child poverty was approximately one in three children struggled under the yoke of child poverty, while in our so called better areas, East Renfrewshire, almost one in six children saw their lives blunted by poverty.
       These are damning figures for a so called advanced developed country, by any standard. However I don't think those party political animals should jump up and say, "Ah, a failure of the SNP", England fares no better. In Middlesborough, child poverty grew by an astonishing 12.5% between 2014-15 and 2018, the largest increase in the UK. Tower Hamlets boasts the worst child poverty in the UK with 55,4%, followed by Newham with 50.3% then Barking and Dagenham with 49.9%. Outside London Birmingham takes the prize for child poverty with 41.6%. Another disgusting aspect of this child poverty epidemic is that 68% of those children bighted by poverty, are in families where at least one adult is working. Bang goes their crap phony mantra, that "the best way out of poverty is through work". 

        These figures of child poverty, should not be seen as some sort of statistics, they are young lives being blunted, potential being thwarted, young health being damaged and lives disfigured, all unnecessarily.  The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, a country that can spend an estimated £104 billion on a high speed rail from London to Birmingham and throw billions at nuclear weapons and trident submarines, but fails miserably to attend to child poverty. 

 

 

        This system of capitalism has had centuries to create a decent life for all involved and has proved to be an abysmal failure. It is a system built on exploitation, power and privileges for the wealthy few, hard work and struggle for the rest of us. The answer lies not in listening to the chorus from our political ballerinas, but in the dismantling of the insanity of capitalism and the state and replacing it with a system of community based co-operation, equality, sustainability and fairness, freed from the cancer of the profit motive and the authoritarian shackles of the state, a system that sees to the needs of all our people. Only then will we see an end to child poverty, and I can stop hearing year in year out, that pathetic chorus sung by vote beggars at each crooks and liars competition, "We will end child poverty". 

 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://spiritofrevolt.info   

I Get Sick, Disgusted, And Angry-

 

       At the age of 84, I wonder how many people can tell me how often I have heard our prancing political ballerinas with their fat salaries, generous pensions and lush perks, openly state that they will end child poverty and end homelessness?  From the age of 17 I have ranted against these preventable injustices, this callous exploitation of the ordinary people. I get sick, disgusted and angry in varying degrees, as year after year this shit is poured over my head, and what is the result. The poverty, the injustice, the misery and deprivation stays with us.

       The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has just released another damning report on the state of poverty in this country. Though I don't need the Foundation to tell me about the poverty that surrounds us, I have been there, seen it, and at times shed a tear because of it. For many years as a young man I earned my living knocking on doors in the poorest districts in Glasgow. I have entered homes where there was no bed, just a pile of coats on the floor under which a couple of kids were sleeping. I have entered houses where the only furniture was a couple of kitchen chairs, I have seen a young woman sitting on a kitchen chair in front of a fire, tearing up slices of "waxcloth" from the floor to keep the fire going. This and worse blighted the lives of many families as I made my way through life. 

       Well after a life time of promises, here we are in 2018 and what is the picture? 22% of the UK population live in poverty, that's one in five, over 14 million people. Of those 56% are in poverty despite being in a family where one or more are working. Our political ballerinas and corporate bosses always yap on about work is the road out of poverty, work hard and you will do well. of course the figures belie that false mantra as in-work poverty is now at its highest in 20 years, we, the ordinary people, are sliding back to the Victorian era. There is a continuous crime being committed as the system blights the lives of our children, more than half a million children in this country and mired in poverty, their lives chances diminished, thwarted, because of this system of exploitation, injustice, greed and profit.

      After a couple of hundred years of representative democracy under the mantle of capitalism, you would think that we the public would have arrived at the decision that the system doesn't work.

    It must by now, be clear that to expect a wealthy bunch of parasites who control the system that continues to feed them wealth and power, at the expense of the many, will somehow change the system to our benefit, is fantasy of the insane. The rise in poverty, the blighting of our kids opportunities, the stress of trying, in poverty, to hold a family together will continue to wash over us wave after wave. The only alternative, if we seek justice and a better life for all, is to bring this cancerous abomination of capitalism crashing down, by any means available, and replace it with a system controlled by the people, one that is free from the profit motive, and has the interests of all our people as its basis. 

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