Accelerating To Deprivation.

     This government's eager complicity in the financial Mafia's drive for sweatshop Europe is seen in the number of ways in which they offer their business friends helpings of free labour. They give interviews proclaiming unemployment is falling and the recovery is gaining ground. However, unemployment is falling because thousands of people are on workfare, a government gift of free labour to the corporate greed machine, and as for recovery, well among the ordinary people the recovery is a fairytale. The millionaire's Old Boys network, our government, has now started another way of forcing young people to work for nothing, their “traineeships” scheme. Of course their millionaire buddies in businesses like Boots, Poundland and Kwik-fit, to mention just a few, are more than eager to take on board as much free labour as they can get their hands on. Why employ people for a wage when your friends in government hand you free labour.

       Another smiling comment from the millionaire cabal in charge of our drive to deprivation, is that inflation has fallen from 2.7% to 2.2% and this should ease the pressure on the general public. What a load of bullshit, in that “fall” there is hidden the fact that food has risen by 4.6% and energy bills are set to rise in the region of 10%, how this will ease the pressure on the ordinary household budget has yet to be explained.

     With workfare, traineeships, zero hours contracts, part-time employment, bedroom tax, rocketing food and energy prices, and ATOS killing off the disabled, this government has pressed the accelerator as we spiral down the deprivation road. Sweatshop Europe here we come. 

 

An excerpt from an interesting and informative article by The Void:

Unpaid workers on these schemes are counted as employed, a handy distortion of the figures for a Government that claims they are bringing down unemployment.  With the numbers in part-time work, precarious self-employment or workfare all at record levels, and wages falling far behind inflation, the true picture of the labour market is far from good news. Recent Housing Benefit statistics* show that the number claiming help with housing costs remains at record levels.  Over 5 million people are on this benefit and for the first time, in July 2013, the number of working Housing Benefit claimants topped one million.

 Read the full article HERE:

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Feeding Off The Blood Of The Vulnerable.

     True to form, as the temperature drops, and more and more people are facing fuel poverty, along come the corporate highway thugs. We in Scotland have seen the first real drop in temperature since last winter and this is met by SSE energy company announcing that it will raise it prices as from November. We can expect to see an 8.2% increase in energy costs this winter. This is a company that last year (2012) announced profits in the region of £1,500 A MINUTE!!! While they are shaking their heads and saying we have to increase prices, the top three parasites in the company are now looking at almost doubling of their salaries. The top blood sucking leech, in this rip-off company will this year stash almost £2 million salary into his already fat bank account. As you see this is just a slight increase from his miserly £1.1million salary for 2012. This, of course, is in keeping with our wage freeze/cuts, proving that we are all in this together. Fat salaries and bonuses, as you and I know, are not a new thing, the corporate world throws them around their little circle of friends, as you and I would pass round the crisps. Recently Ian Marchant stepped down as chief executive of SSE and left with a smile on his face, as his little parting gift was salary and bonuses worth £1 million and a pension pot of £9 million and just in case he found things difficult after leaving, he also got share options worth £4.8 million.

      In this greed driven exploitative system of injustice, winter is seen as an opportunity to rip people off. In any decent compassionate society we would see winter as a time to help each other, to see that nobody suffers because of the cold winters. Energy price increases mean increases in avoidable deaths from cold related diseases. This is criminal in a country where fuel poverty is rife and rising. Price increase are not a matter of survival for the big energy companies, there are a desire and policy. The big 6 energy companies have seen their profits rise by 74% since 2009. In the same period prices have risen by 13%. For the first six months of 2013, Centrica, owner of British Gas, saw their operating profits rise by 9% giving them a staggering £1.58 billion.

      While our elderly and vulnerable suffer and die in our cold damp winters, we tolerate the leeches feeding of their blood. There is no grounds on which this type of behaviour can be acceptable. Energy is not a commodity, to be sold to those who can afford it, in any decent society, it is a necessity available to all. Don't expect them to change things. If we think this is intolerable and inexcusable behaviour, then we will have to change the system. Remember, the energy companies used to belong to us! It is up to us and us alone.

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

Who Owns The Basics of Life?

    Some things are necessary for survival, like water, shelter and food, without any one of these basics your survival is in jeopardy, yet we tolerate a system where by if you don't have enough of that stuff called money, you can be denied these basic necessities. Probably one reason this cruel unjust system survives is because you don't die suddenly. With poverty you can be denied one or all of these basics, not enough money means cheap crap food, not enough food, and you die, rather slowly. We won't see people fall over and die in the street, they will just simply deteriorate and die young, the shock factor isn't there. Likewise the homeless, a hidden slow death by poverty, murder by shareholders. Across the world day in day out, millions of lives are shortened by not having access to clean drinking water. Why should the flow and distribution of the very basics of life be under the control of the Davos Club, that group of greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders?

      Under our millionaire's scheme of "debt reduction" and "austerity cuts" we are seeing more and more of our public assets being handed over to those shiny suits of the Davos Club. Soon there will be nothing that belongs to the people. In the UK they already own, among other things, our energy resources and we have seen the prices rocket, as they pursue ever greater profits. Social housing has long been under attack and is disappearing, financial institutions own our homes, and they are working hard at getting our water.

      These corporate conditions will produce a world where we will be completely at the mercy of those greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders of the Davos Club, for everything we need, and if you are poor, your only means of survival will be dependent on charity organisations. Of course we can take everything back, creating co-operatives and community controlled enterprises, it is happening in all sorts of places across the globe. People have seen enough of "free market", "neo-liberalism", which translates into ripping-off the people and widespread deprivation. The tide is turning, it has to, it must be our world, or it is a destroyed world of abject poverty.

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

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PIRATES OF THE PUBLIC PURSE.

       I have always said that the "austerity" (I love that word, it makes it sound so efficient and harmless), cuts to date are nothing, compared to what is still to come. 2013 will be crunch time, that's when the boot goes in with a vengeance. Homeless set to soar, workfare propping up the corporate profits as people are "obliged" to work for nothing more than their job seekers benefits, disability allowances disappearing, condemning thousand of vulnerable people to isolation and worse, and the only jobs on offer will be low paid part-time. Meanwhile the grand plan of transferring all the public purse to the millionaires' old boys club goes on unabated and all public assets become corporate assets. On top of all the already legislated cuts that have been in the pipeline, we are faced with massive increases in energy prices and increase rail fares. Plus Osborne has stated that all government departments will have to find extra efficiency savings, (cuts), on top of what has already been passed. However, we have to be careful when we talk about "austerity", it is not quite universal. While you and I struggle to pay our way, there are those in this twisted Alice-in-Wonderland system that are doing just fine, mostly, those who do nothing, Company directors, traders in the financial Mafia, and of course, those millionaires who pass all this "austerity" legislation. 

       An interesting article from A World to Win:

Unions should resist rail and fuel price rises with civil disobedience

      Millions of people who commute to work are a just a few weeks away from a massive cut in incomes that will intensify the dramatic fall in living standards that the recession and austerity measures have already created.
       As people struggle back to work after the Christmas holidays, they will be hit by a double whammy of steep rail fare increases and the bills for electricity and gas that in some cases will show rises of nearly 11%. his amounts to a huge transfer of wealth to the train operators and energy companies like E.On which yesterday announced increases averaging 8.7%. These will naturally impact harder on poorer households, adding to five million already in fuel poverty.
     So too will the rail fare rises. Passengers on many routes face fare increases of up to 10% next month. Season tickets and peak fares are regulated and will rise by an average 4.2%. Many commuters pay huge amounts already. For example, an annual season ticket from St Albans to London is around £3,000. That will go up by over £120 in January.
Off-peak and anytime tickets in England and Wales are set to soar, according to the watchdog Passenger Focus because they are not regulated. An anytime return from London to Norwich will now be 9.2% dearer at £107.70. A day return from Holyhead-Llandudno will be 6.5% more expensive.
      The ConDem coalition is pushing ahead with plans to reduce the £3 billion plus subsidy to the rail industry, a process that began under New Labour. That will result in ticket office closures and other “efficiency” savings.
      The rail unions have launched a campaign to bring the railways back into public ownership. Today they were holding protests in Swansea and Cardiff. More actions are planned before Christmas.
They handed out Christmas cards with a "seasonal message" from the train companies, which promised commuters will have a 2013 "packed full of cancelled trains, staff cuts and ticket office closures" while the train companies are "making huge profits".
Rob Jenks, of transport and travel union TSSA, said:

     We want to point out the dramatic rise in rail fares, a 30% increase in rail fares, compared to the average increase in people's wages of 11.9%.  So you can see there's a huge gap between what people can afford to pay and what people are having to pay.
      It's about fares, it's also about all the cuts the industry is facing as the government tries to allegedly balance the books but without taking the opportunity to actually look at what public ownership would bring and all the savings that would make by cutting out profit and various other things.

     The Action for Rail campaign says that since privatisation, more than £11 billion of public funds has been “misspent” on debt write-offs, dividend payments to private investors,  and higher interest payments in order to keep Network Rail’s debts off the government balance sheet.

     At the same time, privatisation has failed to deliver on its promises. Genuine private investment makes an insignificant contribution to the railways, representing about one per cent of the total money that goes into the railway each year.  Our fares are among the highest in Europe, many of our services are overcrowded and rely on obsolete rolling stock.

       Obviously, there is no way the Coalition is going to contemplate public ownership as an option. And nor is Labour. Shadow transport secretary Maria Eagle has only pledged to make sure that the limit on fare rises is applied more strictly. That’s really worth waiting for!
       The savage reduction in living standards that will greet millions on January 1 is unprecedented. Rail unions ought to step up their action. RMT general secretary Bob Crow has in the past talked of a campaign of civil disobedience to fight the government. There couldn’t be a better time to put his words into action than right now.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
11 December 2012

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STRONGER TOGETHER.

     We all know that winter in Scotland means choices, choices between eating or heating. Winter in this country, because of the climate and "fuel poverty" brings with it misery and death, while the energy companies fatten their shareholders with bigger profits. There are ways and means of fighting the leeches that own the energy companies.

This from SNIFFER:

"Jam the gas meters or Stronger Together?

    Direct action on fuel poverty in Europe campaign ‘Samen Sterker’ or "Stronger Together" reports that thousands of people in Belgium and Netherlands have organised collectively against the power companies and won great deals.

   But here in the UK EDF Fuel prices for residential customers are to hike up by 10.8% from December 7, 2012 sending the average dual fuel bill to £1,251. Scottish Gas and Scottish Power will be more than this by up to £23. And we already know that means misery and death.

   Excess winter mortality statistics from the UK Office for National Statistics estimated there were 25,700 Excess Winter Deaths (WHO) in England and Wales in 2011, 3.4% higher in the North East. Scotland’s winter statistics at 2,450 are like the UK’s low temperature related deaths, not exclusively hypothermia but cerebrovascular disease and heart disease, pneumonia, stroke and respiratory diseases.

    Belgium and Netherlands have taken direct action on fuel bills by collective switching. Their groups of 10,000 people prepared to switch en-mass to a new supplier this means that these suppliers offer a decent price in order to get them as new clients. They have a trusted third party who's actually doing all the leg work, setting up the switch system so that it is minimal effort for us. Hundreds of thousands of consumers have benefited and on average saved some 200-250 euros a year.

   Earlier this year the UK consumer organisation Which? organised the firstcollective switch in the UK. Almost 40,000 people took part, with average savings of £223 a year.

     A pilot scheme is running in Cornwall, and South Lakeland District Council in Cumbria is finalising the first local authority project in the UK. Other local councils may follow suit soon.

Let’s do it in Scotland."

      Start to organise your own "energy switch" group in your own area, join the group nearest you and hit the energy companies with a mass switch deal and get the best price. Start today before the Scottish weather really bites.

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