The UK, Land Of Monarchy And Child Poverty.

          The UK, fifth largest economy in the world, it is awash with wealth, it carries on the back of its people the imperial edifice of a pomp swamp of monarchy and all the aristocratic parasites associated with such a menagerie. Wealth flows freely, but only in certain quarters.

      Since the 2008 "crash" the UK, like lots of capitalist countries, embarked on a policy of "austerity". This was the acceptable euphemism for the scheme to allow the rich financial Mafia to regain their massive gambling loses, by plundering the public purse. Eleven years on and we are told, "austerity is over" but where do we stand?

Well has "austerity" worked? You bet it has, with UK's billionaires having seen their net worth rise by 112% from £258billion to £547 billion since 2009. The previous 12 months saw the biggest jump in the UK super rich in six years, the City of London now boasts 80 billionaires up from 72 last year, more than any other city in the world.

       Well while this "austerity" plan has worked for the super rich, how do we at the other end of this master plan fare?

     Well it is not quite the same story, we the people got clobbered. We have suffered an ever decreasing standard of living, child poverty is increasing, workers in poverty has been increasing. What has been plunder from our social services has fed the super rich as they prance around the world in their private jets and super yachts.

         Joseph Rowntree Foundation research reveals that in the UK child poverty has been rising since 2011/12. with 4.1 million children in the UK living in poverty, a rise of 500,000 in the last five years. 4 million of those in work are living in poverty, a rise of more than half a million over five years. In work poverty has been rising faster than employment, driven almost entirely by increasing poverty among working parents. Two sides of the capitalist coin.

      These appalling figures among the ordinary people of this country are not just statistics, they are lives. Lives stunted in health and well-being, the potential of our children destroyed, an increase in stress among families, the breaking up of families, people pushed to homelessness, hard working people put under strain to the detriment of their emotional and physical health. All this, not as an unavoidable set of circumstances, but by the deliberate policies of the chosen few who play the corrupt game to the advantage of their rich cronies. It is called capitalism, and any attempt at trying to turn this exploitative, profit driven system into something with a shred of humanity is doomed to failure, it is not in the nature of the beast. It has to be totally dismantled and replaced with a system of justice, fairness, co-operation and sustainability that sees to the needs of all our people, in a word, anarchism. 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

In Despair, I Repeat Myself.

 

      Maybe I'm a depressing sort of guy, and I see the world different from lots of others, but I can't help looking at the world we have created, and getting a sickening feeling in my stomach. We have taken a planet that had the potential for a paradise for all, and turned it into a savage nightmare of grotesque brutality.

    No matter how convenient your mobile phone, no matter the amount of movies you can stream, no  matter how comfortable your home, we are living an illusion. That real world, that place where the vast majority live, is a cruel vicious and very often deadly place.

      I wrote the following article about nine years ago and have posted it once since then, and I post it again, for the simple reason that I think it is still a picture of the unjust savage reality in which billions of people have to survive. If anything, in the passing nine years or so since first posting this, I believe things have got worse. How and when do we change things?

    It is difficult to grasp the state of the world that we have created. A world where there is an abundance of almost everything conceivable and yet to the vast majority of the world’s population it is all out of reach. A world where a small elite live a life of obscene and wasteful wealth while millions die of starvation and millions of children die from the lack of clean drinking water. In this capitalist made world there are small enclaves where the rich, in safety, play games with their expensive toys, private jets, luxury cars, yachts and several holiday homes in “exotic” locations. While just over that financial apartheid wall there is the stench of squalor and death for countless millions living in total deprivation and endless wars,
        In this capitalist created world, 8 million people die every year from poverty, One billion children live in abject poverty, 640 million do not have access to appropriate shelter, 140 million have never attended school, 400 million do not have access to clean uncontaminated water, 500 million do not have basic sanitation, 270 million have no access to health care, and 90 million are severely food deprived. Approximately 12.3 million people worldwide live in conditions of “modern slavery,” while over one billion people live on less than one dollar of income per day and over three billion live on less than two dollars per day. Then there is the strata in between, that manage to scrape a reasonable existence that seems to keep them from revolt.
        All this misery in spite of the fact that the world economy actually produces one and a half times the amount of food necessary to provide the entire human population with adequate and nutritious meals. The fact that the capitalist system will not allow this to be shared out to those in need tells us that it is not a natural problem but a political problem. Perhaps the words of Derrick Jensen come close to capturing something of that world.
       “We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means—all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity ... What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have...I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that they can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host ... For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”

Eighteen Hungry Children

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day

eighteen of tomorrow’s people

cruelly thrown away.

When pandering to a fashion

gratifying our greed,

think, theirs is no desire

but a basic need.

Envisage a familiar face

a child that calls your name,

try to be the parent

try to place the blame.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen little faces

that never learnt to play.

Walk past your local school

listen to the shrill,

stand and count to sixty

imagine hunger start to kill.

Fingers must be pointed

at decisions made on high,

questions must be asked

loudly asked by you and I.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen precious lives

the claws of hunger slay.

WHY?

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

Time For Righteous Anger.

        It has always amazed me just how much suffering, poverty and deprivation our society will take before it explodes into righteous anger, and tears down the system responsible for all this unnecessary suffering. Our babbling brook of bullshit the mainstream media throws up everything for discussion, as long as it doesn't mean changing the system. Our political ballerinas, depending which colour of tie is in power, will utter platitudes, from "what needs to be done" to "what we are doing to remedy the situation". However, nothing changes, the suffering goes on, poverty's teeth still bites into our communities, and deprivation still push people to an early grave. In the UK we are fast reaching the level of poverty and deprivation of the 20's and 30's. After a few years of gains, from what were sometimes very bitter struggles, we are now sliding back to Dickensian style poverty. 

           Perhaps when our babbling brook of bullshit swings into full "consume for Christmas" mode we can reflect on the following. Recent figures show that in Glasgow  from May 2016 to March 2017, 39 homeless people died on its streets, in Edinburgh it was 18 homeless deaths for 2015/16.  

       Charities claim that estimates that 5000 people in Scotland sleep on the streets in the course of a year are likely to be "the tip of the iceberg" with a recent study by Heriott Watt University for Crisis predicting rough sleeping will double from 800 across Scotland on any one night – already a 10 percent rise for the first time in ten years – to 1500 by 2041.

      The Edinburgh winter shelter, run by Bethany Christian Trust, has already reached capacity on several nights since opening in October and will increase capacity from 49 sleeping mats to 75 on Monday. In Glasgow the winter shelter run by Glasgow City Mission at the Lodging House Mission day centre in the Gallowgate opened on Friday night.

Read the full article HERE:

      While our pampered political parasites squabble "Brexit" and spew about the illusion of how to make Britain great again, poverty takes a bite out of an ever larger section of our communities, with the resultant suffering and early deaths.

     Recent figures show that one fifth of the UK population is now living in poverty, and we are witnessing the worst decline in living standards for children and pensioners in several decades. 

        Nearly 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are now living in poverty than five years ago, during which time there have been continued increases in poverty across both age groups – prompting experts to warn that hard-fought progress towards tackling destitution is “in peril”. 

       The report, by the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), shows that a total of 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty – more than one in five of the population. While poverty levels fell in the years to 2011-12, changes to welfare policy – especially since the 2015 Budget – have seen the numbers creep up again.

     UK to experience longest fall in living standards for over 60 years---

Read the full article HERE:

      This is capitalism, after centuries of of producing unmeasurable wealth, the majority of citizens still struggle to survive, while others suffer poverty and deprivation, with its attendant miseries, diseases and early deaths, and the few wallow in unimaginable opulence. How many more centuries are we going to tolerate this greed driven insanity, expecting it to somehow change and see to the needs of all our people. It isn't going to happen, capitalism cannot be reformed into a caring system, a history of centuries of exploitation should be proof enough. When will we see that explosion of the people enjoying the ecstasy of their righteous anger, and building that better world. We are producing ever more wealth and it is going somewhere, but not to the masses who produce all that wealth, where is it going, who is living off your sweat and tears? think about it, get angry.

Time For Righteous Anger.

We talk of justice, we ooze compassion

you and I. Our comfort sure

with a gracious smile a token give

those, SO deserving poor". 

Where is compassion when children lose

carefree innocent play,

where is justice when children meet

hunger along the way?

Children who, in this world of excess

create a newsreel scene

cradled in a starving mother's arms

expiring on your screen.

Forget the famine rationale

in a sickly syrup word,

mouthed by those crazy apes

until the truth is blurred.

Feel the anguish of the other

hear their pitiful cry

see hunger steal their future;

loudly cry out,   why?

There Is Something Rotten At The Heart Of The Sytem.

        Well here we are, the clocks have gone back an hour, the kids come home from school in semi-darkness, and Scotland's cold, raw, damp winter starts to inextricably envelop us. All very well if you can don decent winter clothing, and turn the heating up in your home. However, this is 2017 Britain, where thousands can't afford that nice warm winter jacket, where thousands of households are wrestling with eating or heating, an inhumane cruel choice. It is an indictment on this country that to be in a home without adequate heating or food can be considered fortunate, for let's not forget, there is an army of homeless and rough sleepers who will face this winter seeking out shelter of some sort, perhaps a doorway, a quiet lane, or under a bridge. This in 2017 in the sixth richest country in the world.

     In our cities we have an abundance of empty properties, from shops, warehouses, workshops, offices and houses, but still we tolerate people sleeping rough and dying on our streets and lanes. Our political ballerinas have evolved a system whereby property is worth more than human life, and they have put in place a legal code that guarantees that relationship will be enforced. It is midnight, mid December, the temperature is plummeting, you are walking the streets seeking somewhere to lay your head for the night, you probably know that a night on the pavement might kill you. You come across an small empty, disused locked workshop, you enter find a corner and try to get some rest and survive. You are now a criminal, you could be forcibly removed, charged with criminal damage, and/or breaking and entering, the sanctity of that property is worth more than your life.

 Image by Robert Perry.

      Having lived a long life can be seen as a curse or a benefit, as it comes with memories. I think of all those children in poverty, the hungry families struggling as best they can in a cruel unforgiving system, the wandering homeless, that have plagued our country throughout my life, and I still hear, echoing from the that distant past, that looped tape, from the mouths of our parasitic political ballerinas, "we will end child poverty", "we will fix the housing problem", "we will eradicate poverty". They never seem to tire of mouthing their vacuous mantras, yet the must know within their hearts, that they are spouting, unmitigated, unadulterated, vicious bullshit.    

       The system will not allow for those unnecessary cruelties to be resolved, profit is the guiding factor, and history tells us that the gap between the rich and the poor is an ever widening chasm. A system that creates those who can purchase multi-million pound yachts, and fly in private jets to their private islands, needs the many to be exploited. We the many, produce an abundance of wealth in this world, the more the parasite class cream off for themselves, the less there is for us, the many. Until we crush and obliterate this system of profit first and foremost, we will continue to hear the false cruel mantras of our political ballerinas, "we will end child poverty", "we will fix the housing problem", "we will eradicate poverty" and we will continue to have some of our people die on the streets of our cities.

Image by Robert Perry.

      It is estimated that approximately 5,000 individuals rough sleep in Scotland each year. This year Winter Night Shelter, which is run by Glasgow City Mission stated that last year was their busiest year ever, with 605 people using their service on 4060 occasions. This is a staggering increase of 94% on the previous year. This is our country, the sixth richest country in the world, in 2017, there is something rotten at the heart of the system. 

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

For Their Sakes, We Must Do Something.

Figures for 2014.

      The never ending downward spiral of poverty continues at an ever increasing rate, and still our political ballerinas spout their crap about a strong economy. Figures from the Office of National Statistics, (ONS) show the extent to which we in this country are sliding down the toilet, though I have no doubt, under the insane capitalist system, the picture is repeated in countries across the globe. According to the ONS figures, in 2015, 7.3% of the UK population, approximately 4.6 million people were living in persistent poverty, (Persistent poverty described as living in relative poverty in the current year and at least two of the three preceding years) this is an increase of 18% on the previous year 2014. In human terms, this means an extra 700,000 individuals joining the ranks of the misery and anxiety of persistent poverty, in the 6th. richest country in the world.

       With this insane capitalist system, of those in poverty some groups are hit harder than others, women are showing a more rapid increase in persistent poverty than men. Women in persistent poverty, 2015, registered 8.2%, as compared to men which was 6.3%, the biggest gender gap since this data was first gather in 2008. Everywhere we look, we see inequality, and policies that divide. 

       We the ordinary people continue to generate wealth on a massive scale, keeping the UK ahead in the league of wealthy nations, but we never see any of that wealth. By sleight of hand, and a loaded system, the largest slice, by far, of that wealth ends up in the hands of a small powerful cabal of parasites. While we the real wealth creators, continue our grinding path down the dark corridors of poverty and deprivation.

         Does anybody honestly believe that this system of capitalism will ever remedy this mass poverty in the midst of opulence? History tells us, the system has failed miserably to come even close to eradicating poverty and deprivation, but has produced an over abundance of wealth for the small band of parasites who control the system. How much longer will we condemn our children and grandchildren to a life of wrestling with poverty in the midst of abundance? For their sakes and for justice and equality, we must destroy capitalism, the system that creates mass poverty, deprivation and wars. 

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

£125 Lunch Or A Food Bank!

       My fair city of Glasgow was once a city of skilled industrial workers, who built ships, locomotives, and other products of heavy industry, it had miners and steel workers. Now it is a city of low wage workers in the service industries, who exist on on part-time or zero hours contracts, or "self-employed" cyclist scratching out a living delivering bits and pieces. Our city has been turned into a playpen for tourist, a city of shopping malls, cafés, restaurants, hotels and expensive "events", a place for those with too much money and not enough common sense. The city's latest plaything for the rich is the idiotic eating experience of "The Event in the Sky".  George Square, which was once a green and pleasant square in the city centre with trees and grass, in good weather it would be covered by people sitting around, mums with their kids, or people having lunch on the grass, now it is a tarmac rentable space for the corporate juggernaut. The latest one of these events is the afore mentioned "Event in the Sky", they have dumped an large industrial crane on the square and attached to it is what looks like one of those large contraptions you see at some fairgrounds, where you get swung and twirled around in, for a couple of pounds. Only this one has seats around its outer edge an island in the middle where chefs will serve you food. So for £50 you can sit there and be lifted to approximately 60 feet or so and enjoy your breakfast. Lunch comes in at £125, I have no idea what the idiots pay for an al a carte dinner floating above the exhaust fumes of the city centre. This event attracted some many idiots that its stay was prolonged for a few days more than planned. 

        This is a glaring example of the inequality endemic in our city, and others across the planet. Glasgow is a city with areas of high deprivation, low life expectancy, child poverty and food banks, but we have brainless idiots happy to pay £125 for lunch swinging above the city centre, on the end of a crane. This is the shape of the world that this economic system of capitalism has built, frivolous and fancy expensive experiences on which the rich can spend their ill gotten gains, while the ordinary citizens struggle from day to day to scratch out a meagre living at best. Of course they can only live this phoney life of excess with our complicity, despite the fact that we create all that wealth, we serve the rich exploiters for a few crumbs off their table. We built that crane and that swinging basket, we grew their food and delivered it to them, and then went home to poverty and deprivation, what are we thinking of??

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

I Will Not Choose My Master.

       They are still at it, that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, they are trying to turn this "competition of liars", known as an election, into some sort of really exciting drama. "Will the nation forsake Labour because of Corbyn", "has UKIP died", "Who will win, strong stable waffling May, or uncouth, scruffy Corbyn", "Will Labour find a sprint finish, or is the Tories lead to big". Election after election we are spewed upon by the babbling brook of bullshit's army of "experts", all suffering verbal diarrhoea as the fill the air with their candy-floss and bubble gum garbage of personal speculation. They are trying hard to convince you that you are in charge, by running an putting your little cross on that piece of paper, you are running the country. In my 83 years I have been witness to a lot of elections, and here we are still trying to solve the problems of inequality, homelessness, child poverty, injustice, we are still sending our young to foreign lands to kill and to die, in the name of power and resources for the big corporate beasts. What ever small gains we wrestle from the system, it eventually takes them all back. Here we are in the 21st. century and we are seeing the slashing of social services, wage freezes/cuts, working conditions being eroded, while the rich get richer on a daily basis. We have moved from Victorian poverty to Elizabethan food banks, from starvation wages and long hours to zero hours contracts and wageless workfare, that's the progress we have made by continuing with this farce of party political elections, the system stays the same. As has been said before, "If voting changed anything, they would make voting illegal". In my 83 years, I have never voted in an general election or a local council election, and this article from blasphegme coincides with my own position.

 

I don’t vote!

Source: https://blasphegme.noblogs.org/2017/04/je-ne-vote-pas/

        I don’t vote. Because I don’t want to choose a master, to choose who will decide in my place what’s right for me, who will force me to respect their choices, who will present those choices as my own. I don’t want the majority to determine the conditions of my servitude, I don’t want the cattle to build the fences that enclose them and select those who will rule over me as well, regardless of what I think.
       I don’t vote because I don’t want the world they force on us. I don’t recognize the idea of the nation, of peoples, or of citizenship, because states always manage to construct identities that give the illusion of a unified population. My nationality, the language I speak, and the colour of my skin in no way determine who I am, and I don’t recognize the borders of the state in which chance saw me born. In the same way, I don’t want to hear about any “common good”, because I don’t want to be part of any community – I don’t want to be bound to anyone and I want to choose those with whom I build my life.
        I don’t vote because I don’t want to give power to the hypocrites who present themselves as something they’re not, trying to nourish our illusions to the point where waking from them is painful. I don’t want a world where I’m just a pawn in a chess game played between cunning strategists who use my credulity to trample my individuality in service of their sly interests, in their frenzied quest for power and domination.
         I don’t vote because I want to live in a world without masters or slaves. And such a desire will never fit into a ballot box. Instead, I want to take charge of my life and push myself to create it while revolting against the existing order and the misery it imposes on lives everywhere.

I will never abdicate my freedom!

Rather revolt than the passivity of the vote!

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

Australia, The Good Life!!!

 

       Australia is a country that we don't hear much about in our neck of the woods, unless of course you're into cricket and/or rugby. For most people here in the UK, there is this perception of Australia as a sunny land with the good life. However, Australia is a capitalist country and so comes with all the usual capitalist baggage, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, inequality and discrimination.

        Australia has a population of approximately 24.5 million, and they don't all live the good life. The people of that country are going through the same "austerity" treatment that we are going through, with much the same results, increase in poverty and homelessness. Australia's "middle class" is shrinking and over the last decade, the bottom 5% of income earners have become poorer. Sound familiar? The Australian headline poverty rate in 2014 was 13.3 percent, or 2.99 million people up from 11.8 percent in 2003-04, while children in poverty in one-parent families, rose from 36.8 percent in 2012 to 40.6 percent in 2014. Same old capitalist story.

        According to the The Australian Council of Social Service report 2016,  In international perspective, Australia’s poverty rate remains above the OECD average, despite the country's relative prosperity. Ah well, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

         It is not just in poverty and homelessness that Australia follows the capitalist mode of society, it is also in discrimination. Australian Indigenous people are at the receiving end of a brutal discrimination. In 2000, life expectancy of Indigenous Australians was some 20 years below that of other Australians. All the socio-economic indicators such as income, employment, housing, education and health show considerable disparities between Australia's Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. In fact, Australian Indigenous poverty ranks alongside countries as poor as Bangladesh where absolute poverty is real.

 From FTP No. 8.

        However, Australians, like people across the globe, don't all sit and take this savage exploitation with complete subservience, they fight back. If you are interested in finding out about some of that fighting back then the zine FTP is worth a read and No. 8 is now available. FTP is a “bi-annual report on indigenous, ecological & anti-capitalist resistance in the occupied territory known as Australia.” As such, this zine features a wide-range of actions compiled from communiques and news reports. There are a lot of photos interspersed with the text, making this a great way to learn about what is happening in Australia. I'm all in favour of our ideas and actions finding their way onto print and being circulated, the printed word finds its way into places the internet can't.

Download free readable PDF HERE:

 

Download free printable version HERE:

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

A Rich Country With Rising Child Poverty!!

         As the UK millionaire cabal sitting the the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption drives it patriotic bus out of the EU, waving the flag of nationalism, while spouting illusions about being the fastest growing economy in Europe, what the don't shout about is the fact that child poverty in this country has rocketed in the last year.  The government's own figures show that child poverty has risen by 100,000 in the past year. A glaring indictment of the system we live under, is the fact that today, in 21st. century UK 30% of our kids now live in relative poverty. Unicef’s deputy executive director for the UK said the country ‘can and must do better‘ and should be ‘more ambitious’ for its children. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, cuts to working and non-working benefits since 2013 are projected to increase child poverty by 50 per cent by 2020. So the trend is ever downwards. UK, that country with the fastest growing economy in Europe, now has a total of four million children in families struggling to make ends meet, the worst figures since the financial crisis. And the overall number of people in poverty in Britain has risen to 10.4 million, the highest level this decade.

        Surely the measure of a society is how it treats its children, its elderly, its sick and needy? In all these measures the system under which we live fails miserably. What makes this an even more hideous crime is the fact that this rapidly rising poverty is not by accident but by design. This tsunami of poverty that is washing over the ordinary people of our country, is the direct result of an ideological driven policy. They can dress it up in many guises, austerity, balancing the books, managing the crisis, and so on, all part of the smoke and mirrors needed to conceal the reality of this brutal system. However, the aim is the same, creating a cheap labour economy by plundering the public purse to enhance the profit of the corporate world. Do you honestly believe that this is the best economic and social system that we can create? We don't have the ability and imagination to create a system that sees to that needs of all our people? We are so dumb we are stuck with this exploitative, greed driven system that robs the poor to gorge the rich? If so, we deserve our poverty.

 

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

Too Old For The News.

 

        Something about living a long time, news never seems like news. Recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation announced that almost one third of the UK population are living on an inadequate income. In its statement it said that during 2014-15, approximately 19 million people were surviving on less than the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). Mired in that 19 million group of desperate people are six million children, roughly 45% of all UK children, and 1.8 million pensioners. These depressing figures are up from six years ago when they were quoted as, 15 million, or 25% of the population.  

       Why do I not see this as news? Well has it ever been other? It is just bubble gum and candy floss to plaster across that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media. Through the years, as I have seen governments come and governments go, I have been reading figures like this. Under one government the figures improve slightly under the next they deteriorate, so we switch governments again, and the process goes boringly but brutally on its destructive way. Yes we the ordinary people wrestle small gains here and there, but slice by slice they are taken away from us, and we have to start all over again in the constant struggle to try and get a decent standard of living. Poverty has soared and then slightly abated, homeless has grown and then slightly abated, child poverty has increased and then slightly abated. However, none of these problems have ever been addressed  and solved. Nor can they, the system is incapable of solving these problems, or surely it would have done so by now. Have no illusions, the system has the wealth and the resources to sort it all out, but doesn't. Based on the profit motive, these problems are actual results of the system, a few must gain while the majority must lose, that's capitalism. So if you wish to see that 45% of UK children ceasing to be a statistic on a poverty scale, if you wish to see those 1.8 million pensioners live the remainder of their lives in reasonable comfort, don't ask for better allowances, organise to destroy the system that is responsible for these statistics of misery and anxiety. We must accept that it is a class war, and at the moment we are losing, but we have the numbers, the ability, the resources and the imagination, to turn that tide and be the winners of that better world for all.

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

"Fastest Growing Economy In Europe".

        A little bit more of my thoughts on the “fastest growing economy in Europe”. a phoney growth built on a mountain of personal debt. While this is held up as a success story by our corporate minded lords and masters, its fruits to you and I are nothing like a success story. As I mentioned in my previous post on this illusion, child poverty is on the increase, homelessness is on the increase, those in temporary accommodation are on the increase, those sleeping rough is on the increase. We can add to that, this year saw an increase in insolvency and bankruptcies. Then we have the number being locked up in our vastly over-crowed prisons is on the increase, with obvious resultant riots. So the dystopian vision materialises with other details such as a massive increase in prisoners suicides and self-harm. All this is the world of the ordinary people in this the fifth richest country in the world. Where is all that extra wealth generated from this “fastest growing economy in Europe” going? Certainly not to our National Health Service, as it crumbles under the stress of under funding and under manning, in preparation for its slicing and dicing for sale to the corporate greed merchants. Our education system is falling apart for much the same reasons as our NHS, with the result that the future potential of millions of kids will be stunted. Yet we are supposed to feel satisfaction, and take comfort in the fact that we are the “fastest growing economy in Europe”. 

        The crap coming from the mouths of our lords and masters sitting in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, is that ever increasing trade will solve all our problems. Hence their scurrying around post Brexit, screaming about trade deals with all and sundry, dictators, fascist regimes and despots, as long as the corporate world can make money from the deal. As long as we frame the problem in these terms of ever increasing trade, we will lose the argument. Ever increasing trade is the life blood of the corporate world and will only widen the gap between rich and poor, will only fatten the bank accounts of the corporate greed merchants. Instead of pushing for ever increasing trade, we should be framing the argument in terms of building self sufficiency, with a decent life for all, seeing to the needs of all our people, and what ever surplus we have distributing in the form of mutual aid to those communities still struggling for self sufficiency. Removing profit from the equation and allowing the corporate world to die is the only road to equality, the only way to end poverty and deprivation. We should be aiming for a world where all the wealth that is created should be delivery to all those who created that wealth and those who are in need. We should see the phrase, “the fastest growing economy in Europe” as the slogan of the greed driven corporate world and as the death knell of equality.

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