Our Streets.

Image courtesy of Daily Mail

         A comment I received form an unknown source so can't certify its validity, but thought it was of interest.

THEN
        A reminder to those whose memory fails them.....
On Saturday 13th June 2020 large numbers of people defied lockdown restrictions to resist the eviction of Glenfrome Road. GRC Baliffs attempted to clear a big traveller site on the old gas works site in Bristol.
        Despite the large police presence, and the increased use of state power through the 'Coronavirus Act', the eviction went on for over 12 hours and solidarity was strong. GRC failed to evict the site.
NOW
        The company that paid for the eviction was Wales and West Utilities. They have just built a new £4 million Gas Haulage Depot on the Glenfrome Road site, and its up and running so we thought we'd pay them a visit.
        In the early hours of Friday 26th May, shots were fired with a slingshot over the perimeter fence of Wales and West Utilities, taking out two large first floor windows... A small reminder that we hold grudges, and that there are many ways to resist.
       Wales and West Utilities talk of 'sustainability' (the site is part of their "commitment to biodiversity") and new gas tech... Bristol City Council have helped fund the site. Wales and West own 35,000km of gas pipeline.
        Near the depot (unconnected to us) we noticed some graffiti: "Power to the Peaceful!" but we don't buy that concept.... and have no time for "pacifism"....... in the face of ecological collapse.... we call for rage and rowdy responses. Not peacefulness...
        The police were not peaceful when they used grenades at Saint-Soline against those who resisted the mega-basin. Solidarity with Serge Duteuil-Graziani who is in a coma and sustained major head injuries due to the grenades.
        The police were not peaceful when they killed Kyrees Sullivan and Harvey Evans in Cardiff this week. Solidarity with the Cardiff rioters!
         Many companies with a shiny public image like Wales and West Utilities pay baliffs to do their dirty work.... Evicting people is big business, and there will be many more in Bristol this summer.
         There were beautiful riots when the 'Police Crime Sentencing and courts Bill' (PCSC) was passed (strength to those inside or awaiting trial!).
         This action is a reminder that the bill doesn't just effect those resisting, it also criminalises people's way of life if they choose not to live in homes made of bricks.

For a summer of disobedience and anarchy!
See you on the streets!

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

Homes.

 

         More relevant today than ever, the struggle for affordable homes, with the economic plundering of the public by the Sunak/Hunt duo of financial market appeasers, we are facing higher rents, higher mortgages, more evictions and homelessness. Though this book was first published in 1992, it is the same struggle that the ordinary people have faced all their lives. I hope you can get along and join this struggle for decent, affordable and secure homes for all.

THURSDAY, 24 NOVEMBER 2022 FROM 18:00-20:00

'Sell and Be Damned' - Book Launch
John Smith House

Event by Jim MacKay and Anni Donaldson

John Smith House

Duration: 2 hr

Public · Anyone on or off Facebook

          Join us to celebrate the publication of the new 2022 edition of ‘Sell and be damned – The Glasgow Merrylee Housing Scandal of 1951’ As Told By Ned Donaldson and Les Forster.
         Originally published in 1992, the book then marked the 40th anniversary of the successful protest campaign aimed at ending Glasgow Corporation’s plan to sell newly built council houses in Merrylee. This new, expanded edition marks the 30th anniversary of its original publication and the 70th anniversary of the protest itself – an important chapter in Glasgow’s history of housing activism. Copies of the book will be on sale on the night (£5.00 cash only) - proceeds from sales will be donated to Living Rent. 

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

Crooks & Liars.

        I don't often say much about party politics and their crooks and liars competition called elections. However there seems to be a frenzied babble about the coming American November illusion of change. Trump or Biden, Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, Laurel or Hardy, what a choice for what is reputed to be the most powerful position in the world, however, it is far from funny. No matter which puppet of the financial/corporate industrial war machine gets to wear the USA crown, wealth and power will stay firmly where it is, locked in the vaults of the pampered privileged parasite class. Covid19 will continue to kill, evictions will still escalate, unemployment will still rise, poverty will still be rampant, and profits will still be made and syphoned into the pockets of the rich. That's capitalist change for you.

The following is an extract from FSP Revolutionary Feminism in Action:

Are The Powers-That-Be Ready to Dump Trump?

        Trump’s hopes for a second term are slip-sliding away, so he’s lashing out with vicious racism and fear-mongering. When he calls anti-racist protests unpatriotic “far-left fascism,” it emboldens white supremacists and right-wing militias to attack.
       Not only is Trump trying to rally his base with racism, but he is ranting about mail-in ballot “voter fraud” as his followers close thousands of polling places in poor and Black communities. The only thing he’s not inviting people to fear is Covid-19! Instead, he denounces Obamacare, refuses to mask up, and pushes businesses and schools to reopen during the height of the pandemic.
      Workers and the oppressed doing it for ourselves. Where is the power and will to make real change?
      It doesn’t lie with the Democratic Party — it lies with working people and the perpetually abused. In two short months, people in the streets forced cuts to police budgets, prompted bans on chokeholds and tear gas, and got cops who murder fired and arrested. Where has the Democratic Party been?
     Democratic politicians aren’t out fighting tooth and nail to stop voter suppression or police violence. They spend their energy trying to keep minor parties off the ballot and co-opting Bernie Sanders to support “centrist” Joe Biden — who actually drafted the 1994 Crime Bill that filled the prisons to bursting.
       Whoever wins the presidential contest will face the same gigantic problems, armed with the same limited capitalist tools to address them. He (undoubtedly) will have to deal with a probable depression, mass joblessness, a continuing pandemic, and public uprisings for justice, all while protecting ruling-class interests. Right now it may seem that the upper crust has more faith in Biden than Trump, but a lot can happen before November!
      What’s more important than who wins is continuing to build the strength, radicalism and organization of the grass-roots movement. The fight goes on!

Read the full article HERE:

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

Homeless.

        The Covid19 pandemic has many dark strands that will shade many lives for years to come. The shadow that it casts over America stretches across the oceans with the UK in its perimeter.  When money is the basis of your society you can expect the managers of the system to be completely ruthless in the safeguarding of that particular commodity. Wealth and power are paramount health and well-being are secondary. That's the essence of capitalism.

The following from The Conversation:

        The United States is on the verge of a potentially devastating eviction crisis right in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Federal, state and local eviction moratoriums had put most of the pending cases on hold. But as the moratoriums expire and eviction hearings resume, millions of people are at risk of losing their homes.
      That’s because the court process is heavily skewed towards the needs of landlords and offers few protections for tenants – a problem that has been going on for decades, as my ongoing research on the process of evictions shows.
       Early in the pandemic, as states shut down their economies, tens of millions of people lost all or part of their incomes, with poorer Americans suffering the greatest losses.
        Worried about a wave of evictions, the federal government and many cities and states imposed moratoriums in an effort to prevent a crisis. Some states went further and provided financial assistance directly to renters, while Congress provided aid in the form of economic impact checks and enhanced unemployment benefits.
      Financial assistance to tenants is important because landlords have also been hurt by the economic effects of the pandemic. Part of preventing an eviction crisis and maintaining affordable housing means helping tenants pay their rent in order to ensure that landlords can pay their mortgages and other costs.

       All this aid has helped ensure greater financial and housing stability for people affected by COVID-19. But the federal benefits have now expired, and many eviction moratoriums have lapsed or will do so soon. As a result, as many as 26 million people are believed to be at risk of losing their homes in the coming months.
      This comes on top of the many other economic and health effects of the pandemic that have hit low-income Americans – especially women of color who have children – the hardest.
      Unfortunately, not even an extension of the moratoriums or financial assistance alone can solve this problem. Eventually, tenants will have to pay back their landlords and, if they can’t, will have to go to court to avoid losing their homes. In most cases, they’ll lose.

Read the full article HERE:

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

Arbitary "Justice"!

       The state will always show retribution when an act it sees as an attack on its power and control. Though that retribution will not necessarily be heaped on the "guilty" person, that matters little to the state, what matters is that it is seen to be in control, in a attempt to intimidate others from doing similar acts. The judicial system and its attendant hell-hole prisons, are not there to dispense justice, but to protect the power of the state, and the wealth and privileges of its parasite class, to hold the system together and keep the status-quo. To those who desire freedom and justice, prisons are an obvious target, but to be free of prisons we have to demolish the institution that deems them necessary, the state.

      It is not unusual for an individual to find themselves being sentenced to a term in prison with no direct evidence  linking them to the event in question. It happens day and daily in country after country, it is just the state apparatus defending its power over the population.

The following from AMW:

On July 15, 2020, anarchist Marco Bolognino was sentenced to four years for the fire that broke out at the Vallette prison in Turin on February 11, 2019, following a greeting to the many comrades detained following the eviction of the Asilo Occupato.

Aggravated fire and dangerous ignitions and explosions: these are the crimes alleged against Marco Bolognino, anarcho-insurrectionist arrested in Turin by Digos [General Investigations and Special Operations Division, anti-terrorism law enforcement in Italy]. The disputed facts date back to February 10, when anarchists organized a procession against the eviction of the Asilo Occupato in via Alessandria and the arrest of six anarchists who ended up in the Vallette prison. On that occasion, paper bombs and fireworks exploded. A nautical signal rocket ended up on the roof of a prison shed, where there was a kitchen workshop, causing a fire and the explosion of some gas cylinders. The laboratory was completely destroyed.

Once again the tribunal rite was an end in itself, deaf to the evidence of the facts, which not only questioned the disputed facts, but also the identification of a responsible person: the sentence is typical, 4 years for arson .

A warning to all those in solidarity that often find themselves outside those damned walls, an attack on solidarity!

Fire to all the prisons

Freedom for all

Western Alps antirepression

From: https://ilrovescio.info/2020/07/15/condanna-per-lincendio-alle-vallette-nel-febbraio-2019/

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

The Violence Of Democracy!!

   In Athens the Greek state's war on freedom of expression and dissent continues with renewed savagery all dressed up as making the city safe, and clearing it of criminals and terrorists. The latest squats to be evicted have been long standing community centres, hubs of alternative culture and co-operation among local residents. Once again we see how representative democracy works with its usual iron fist against any attempt to live outside its dictate and control.  

     In one recent eviction an incident not reported here, the anti-terrorist police entered a neighbour's yard and when she asked to see a warrant for entering her property, she was wrestled to the ground, handcuffed and arrested. The face of representative democracy.

This from SquatNet:

      Today in the early morning hours, Villa Kouvelos in Marousi (northern part of Athens) was evicted by a strong state anti-terrorist police force.
The empty and dilapidated building was squatted by anarchists in April 2010 and quickly developed into a nationally known social center, providing the district with concerts, lectures, discussions, political events, etc.
      The villa has also been the target of attacks by right-wing groups such as the Golden Dawn. In the north of Athens, Villa Kouvelos was an institution and its eviction is a catastrophe for the neighborhood in cultural terms alone, leaving behind – similar to the eviction of the Villa Zografou – a socio-cultural desert. As far as is known, there is also no special reason for the eviction, there are no plans to use the building or sell the land. The eviction is therefore a purely populist act.
       A few minutes after the arrival of the cops at 7:30 am, residents gathered in front of the building to express their solidarity. Flyers were distributed and the city council meeting of the Nea Dimokratia (ND, New Democracy) responsible for the eviction was disturbed. A spontaneous demonstration was called at 6 pm, attended by about 300 people. The demonstration went loudly through the neighborhood, slogans were sprayed and some banks were smashed.
        Yesterday ND announced the eviction of another 28 squats by the end of the year, which after the events in Exarcheia and the eviction actions so far is tantamount to a further declaration of war on the scene, on alternative life and on all progressive people in Greece. A foretaste of the reaction was already given in the last few days, with smaller attacks throughout the city – and a clear warning on 6 December with 12,000 anarchists in front of the parliament.

And:

Three more evictions in Koukaki. Cops terrorized neighbours

Athens – Greek police evicted 3 more squats in the Koukaki district this morning (December 18th). Neighbours were terrorized by the cops, some of them were also arrested. On Exarcheia square the Nea Demokratia regime put up a Christmas tree. Tonight there will be an emergency meeting in the Gini building in Athens.

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Some squats in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR/squated/squat
Groups in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/groups/country/GR
Events in Greece: https://radar.squat.net/en/events/country/GR

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https://de.indymedia.org/node/54093 https://enoughisenough14.org/2019/12/18/athens-3-more-evictions-in-koukaki-district-cops-terrorized-neighbours/

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

"I Wont Pay".

 

       No doubt Greece will once again gain a little space in the babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media. The reason, well Greece has enough money to last until July, then it runs out. So another shuffling of billions through the various banks is necessary to keep the illusion of progress going, but for the people of Greece there is no progress. That band of robber barons that make up the "Troika", (IMF, International Mankind Fuckers, EC, European Conmen, ECB, European Criminal Bastards) are having their own problems. They can't agree on how to handle the mountain of gambling debt they have allowed to amass in Greece.  Each one of the three gambling organisations that make up that band of robbers is aware that their money, to a degree is lost, their squabble is about who has to take the biggest hit. The IMF is trying to look compassionate in saying that Greece can't make the conditions placed on it, and the debt has to be re-structured or written down. While the European wing of this criminal gambling organisation is adamant the Greece stick to the punitive policy already in place, as any change would mean that they, The European mob, would have to take the biggest hit.   

Protesters preventing a lawyer from presenting a case for repossession.

        Meanwhile, the people of Greece are experiencing ever falling living standards. The education system is in tatters, the health service has all but collapsed, unemployment is still running at around 24%, with youth unemployment at around 50%. Poverty is endemic, suicide is on a rapid increase, homelessness is at a level that no civilised country can accept, evictions are a daily occurrence. Of course the people of Greece are not sitting down and wringing their hands, they are fighting back in lots of ways. Squats, community feeding schemes, voluntary health centres and more. On the matter of Greek evictions, the group "I Wont Pay" is growing in strength and confidence. Much like the Glasgow 1915 rent strike, where the people in great masses, prevented Sheriff Officers from serving eviction notices, the "I Wont Pay" movement are cramming into the courts where landlords are attempting to get eviction orders, and making the court unworkable. They have had several successes, this we hope will give them greater numbers and greater confidence.

      While the billionaire robber barons of the financial Mafia, gamble and shuffle their ill gotten gains, we the people suffer, so that their gambling losses are recouped. How long will we put up with this blatant system of robbing the people to enrich the few. The choice is ours, do we sit and wring our hands, or do we organise to bring this festering cesspool of greed to and end?  

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

Solidarity Is Our Winning Weapon.

       Landlords who keep shitty property and threaten tenants with eviction if the complain about the state of the place they rent, should not be tolerated. However it is difficult to stand alone against a bullying landlord, but with solidarity, it is a different matter, we can make a difference if we stands together. It is encouraging to see a community come together to protect a threatened family. 

This from the Evening Times:

Neighbours form human chain to prevent bailiffs evicting mum-of-five

        This is the moment kindhearted neighbours formed a human chain around a mum's house - to stop her being kicked out in a 'revenge eviction'. Nimo Abdullahi, 39, was told she and her family would be thrown out of their home of 12 years after she complained to her landlord about damp. But in a bid to protect the mum-of-five from a 'revenge eviction', residents and campaigners turned out to stop it happening. Around 30 people stood side by side, arms linked, to build a wall of bodies in front of the privately-rented property in Easton, Bristol.
      All morning, more neighbours joined the blockade - with a newlywed couple living opposite the family cutting up their wedding cake to keep the protesters sustained. When bailiffs turned up at 11am on Tuesday, they weren't able to get inside. Nimo said she was threatened with evictions numerous times - whenever she complained - but this time, the landlord actually went through with it.
       She said: "It has a big problem with damp. This is bad for us, because my children have asthma and it is not a good place. "Until recently, the carpets everywhere were very old and dirty and we would ask the landlord to improve things, but he was difficult. "Many times I asked him, and a lot of times he would threaten us. "He would say that we were going to be evicted, and once he came round with his wife and she said that if we didn't move out they would call the police to get us out.
       "But this is our home." Nimo who is being helped by Acorn, a local grass roots movement which fights for renters' rights, said she was stunned by the support from her neighbours. The mum, whose three sons and two daughters go to the local school, said: "I was shocked. I went out and came running back in because I was so stunned. "I've had great support from Acorn and now to see my neighbours outside supporting me is amazing."
        Jenny Ross came out to protest the treatment of the Abdullahi family, who have lived in the property since they moved to England from Holland. She said: "We don't want people in our community treated like this. It's a revenge eviction and people deserve decent rented accommodations. "This landlord, and all landlords, need to know there are people in this community who won't ignore it. "We live in this street and it's a close community. It's amazing how many people have turned out."

Read the full article HERE:

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

 

  

Who Pays For The UK Recovery?

       Yea, the nights are fair drawn' in, it's getting' cauldur, for some that is a fearful dread. In this country of millionaire economic recovery, this winter, approximately 3.5 million people will not be able to to heat their homes adequately. Age UK states that an older person dies every 7 minutes from the cold weather, then there is the increase in cold related illness, if it doesn't kill them, can leave their health impaired for the remainder of their lives. The winter figure for England and Wales is 206 cold related deaths a day. Every winter, across the country, elderly people die from living in homes they can't afford to heat, yet the big energy companies see their profits go through the roof. The UK energy watchdog states that this year suppliers of our energy will see a record profit £106 from every customer, up from £53 the previous year. In 2009 the big energy companies averaged £9 profit from each customer, since then they have enjoyed a staggering 1,100% increase in their profit per customer. That is a crime against the elderly of this country and people should be held to account for those deaths. 

       Another symptom of this millionaire economic recovery is the increase in evictions, and the threat of eviction, even although you have no rent arrears. Citizens Advice Bureaux states that it has seen a 38% increase in the number of people consulting them over the fears of eviction, even although they have no rent arrears. Eviction by private landlords is the most common cause of homelessness encountered by their offices. The housing shortage, and increase price of houses see landlords increasing rents to unaffordable levels. Some tenants have been faced with eviction after asking for repairs, the landlord making the excuse he wants to sell the house. Others have been faced with eviction after informing the landlord that because of changed circumstances they have moved on to housing benefit, even although they have no rent arrears. Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “Tenants are being treated as cash cows as a chronic housing shortage pushes up prices and forces renters out of their homes. Competition for properties means that tenants are easy to replace, increasing insecurity for people trying to create a home in the private rented sector. “We see people who will be forced to move away from work, school or family and friends, which can ramp up commuting and childcare costs or disrupt children’s education.”

     These are the conditions of the ordinary people in this rich millionaire controlled country, these are the building blocks of the millionaire economic recovery. As the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, it's called capitalism.

 

 

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

 

Evictions To Help The Economy!!

      According to Sweet & Maxwell,(legal information providers), tenant evictions by landlords have risen to 36,177 for the year June 2012 to June 2013. This is the highest in 5 years, an increase of 9% on the previous year. We all accept that the governments “bedroom tax” has pushed already struggling tenants over the edge and must be blamed for most of this increase. Of course we should not forget the last few years of enforced austerity measures had already taken thousands to the brink of financial collapse and ever closer to that eviction. As Daniel Dover, co-author of Residential Possession Proceedings, has been quoted as saying, “Rising rents on residential property and falling real wages are trends that have been in place for a number of years, and have stretched the finances of an increasing number of tenants to breaking point.”

      Campaign group False Economy, through a Freedom of Information request, received figures from 114 local authorities, indicating that because of the “bedroom tax”, a minimum of 50,000 are adversely affect and facing rent arrears problems. You can add to that number by approximately 30,000 tenants in housing association property.

      Recently a much smaller survey, found that one household in four, 25%, affected by the “bedroom tax” have found themselves facing rent arrears for the first time. According to the National Housing Federation, just over 50% of 63,578 tenants from 51 housing associations were unable to meet their rent payments in the first few months of the introduction of this tax. The worst affected area being Barrow in Cumbria, where more that 75% of all council tenants have fallen into rent arrears since the introduction of this brutal tax. Other areas are showing figures of around 50%. That is a lot of anxiety, stress and misery.

     We are not alone in seeing this tax on the poor as unfair, brutal and unacceptable, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on housing Raquel Rolnik has called for a rethink on the policy after finding the reform was causing “great stress and anxiety” to “very vulnerable” people.

      Will rent arrears, the ensuing poverty, and the actual and threatening evictions, be the spark that will light the fire? The fire is inevitable, as sparks are flying everywhere, ATOS, workfare, zero hours contracts, decimated social services, continuing austerity in the midst of arrogant wealth, and a government that is no more than a thin mask for blatant corporate greed.

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

The Determination And Ingenuity Of The People.

      It never fails to amaze me, no matter how hard the state bears down on the people, they always fight back. However hard the state repression is, there are those who will fight back, resist, circumvent, short-circuit, the state's brutality, and do whatever is possible to reach out for that freedom, which the state will always try to deny.

 

  Keli Squat.

   While the Greek state is now rampant fascism, and does is best to shut-down all free spaces by attacking and evicting squats across the country, the ingenuity and determination of the people comes to the fore. In that land of Troika repression and deprivation, the state, in July 2013, evicted the Keli squat in Igoumenitsa. However it appears that the people had other ideas, and it has been re-occupied on the 3 September.

 

 Ioaninna Municipality.

       On Thursday 5 September, in Ioannina in North West Greece, and Heraclion in Crete, the people showed solidarity with those evicted from the squats all over Greece and occupied the Municipality Buildings in both towns. So the fight goes on, brutal repression met with organised, determined resistance. The fight will only stop when the state has vanished and is forgotten in the fog of history.

 

Heraclion Municipality.

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

Land Of The Free.

How democratic America deals with autonomous spaces.

 

 August 22nd, 2013— The StayAway squat in Oakland was evicted by a paramilitary camo-clad SWAT team with assault rifles. A long-time rent paying resident was also evicted and left homeless, all for the profit of REO Homes.

       At around 10am, four heavily armored black SWAT trucks turned heads as they rolled down Vallecito Place in Highland. Deterred by the barricades that had been built in front of the StayAway over the previous month of eviction defense, the camo-clad SWAT team packing AR-15s went up 28th street and entered an adjoining property. This maneuver appears to have been pre-planned, as the neighbor said that while the Sheriff did not gain her consent to pass through her yard, she was addressed by name upon stepping outside. Entering through the backyard with no warning, StayAway residents confronted by this paramilitary squad were forced at gunpoint to abandon their possessions and leave their home with nothing but the clothes on their bodies. Two comrades were arrested and at the time of this writing their charges are unknown, although we know they were taken to Santa Rita County Jail. Those who witnessed the arrests say that one of the arrested comrades was beaten by officers. Those unfortunate enough to be barefoot at the time were not even permitted to get their shoes, and no one was able to get food for the three dogs who had not yet eaten. The entire block was closed to all traffic for over two hours. The StayAway collective and supporters rallied to challenge the fascist sheriff department, confront the owner, and demand a return of stolen possessions.

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

Gentrification Evictions?

This from Glasgow Solidarity Network:

Losing your home thanks to ‘house improvements’

Posted on August 18, 2013 by plattenbauglasgow

    Multi-national corporates buying swathes of late 19th century flats and ‘modernising’ them by installing air conditioning, triple glazing and lifts. The consequence is that current tenants can no longer afford rents which often double as a consequence of ‘luxury refurbishments’. The anti-gentrification German campaign “We Are All Staying” recently reported about yet another case in Berlin’s ‘trendy’ Prenzlauer Berg district and is building a direct action coalition to stop ‘modernisation’ and evictions. The Council, always great on promising rent caps, is doing nothing.
     Who has similar experiences in Glasgow? Are there particular companies involved in the destruction of affordable homes? Who benefits from the profits? Can we name and shame them? We’d like to hear your stories and your thoughts about gentrification and displacement and what can be done to halt it.

Visit ann arky's home.

Bedroom-tax - Poll-tax!!

      We in the UK are heading for some real battles and should be preparing now. Come April there will be the implementation of the "bedroom tax"  on top of increasing food poverty and fuel poverty. This "bedroom tax" will put three options before all those in social housing, if they are deemed to have an extra bedroom. As an "under-occupier" you can pay extra, take in a lodger or get out, non-compliance will trigger eviction notices. This is probably the most vicious attack in decades on the ordinary people of this country. The legislation comes into force and they are well aware that there isn't enough right sized accommodation to fulfil that legislation, but that won't stop them going for evictions. Even if there were enough right-sized apartments for everybody, but there isn't, the monumental upheaval to people's lives, sick, disabled, elderly, young families, as they are shunted around to the satisfaction of some millionaire cabal's bullshit economics, is inhumane, unjust and downright vindictive. This is "poll-tax model two.
       While our millionaire parasites that lord it in those Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption are spewing out crap about it all being necessary and "for our own good" a UN official, Mr De Schutter, the UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has stated that the explosion of people in the UK, depending on food handouts could represent a human rights abuse. He points to the dramatic rise in the number of food banks as evidence that governments had "failed in their responsibility not to leave the poorest behind". Here in the UK the number of food banks as exploded tenfold  since the start of the recession.
       This is the UK today, massive fuel poverty with energy prices still rising. Food poverty with food banks the only growth industry in town. A third of children living in poverty. Unacceptable unemployment among our young people. Being forced through "workfare", to work for free in some tax dodging corporate greed machine. Now the threat of evictions being heaped on the shoulders of the already struggling public.
        These are drastic times and drastic action by the organised public is the only answer. We may not yet be where the people of Greece are as far as deprivation is concerned, but we are moving inexorably in that direction, it is only a matter of time. It is inevitable, unless we the public, by mass organised resistance, come together and drive our society in a different direction. Another world is possible. 

POWER CUTS, a daily reality in Greece by docupraxi

ann arky's home.

TERRORISTS IN THE COMMUNITY.

     It is pleasing to see the finger pointed at the real terrorists, we all know them but they tend to be invisible as they are dressed in the livery of the establishment's flags of respectability.
From Contra Info:

      Terrorism is the lack of basic means of survival, having your wage or pension taken away, your house confiscated by the bank, living among the pollution that kills. Terrorism is living daily with fear of survival. To most of society, the terrorists and criminals are those who govern: the regime’s politicians, the rich, and the privileged castes, which exploit the workers and prosper by simply participating in the economic and political establishment. The enemies of society are those who—after years of stealing, getting rich, and taking advantage of a barbaric and grossly unjust system—are asking us to donate our blood in order to save the life of the regime’s putrid corpse now that the system is going through the biggest crisis in its history.
—Political letter to society
Pola Roupa, Nikos Maziotis, Kostas Gournas
Greece, April 2010

ann arky's home.

GLASGOW'S MASS EVICTIONS.

         Glasgow has more than its fair share of homeless, so you would think that the powers that be would do their utmost to prevent any more. However, no, due to a change of policy at Ypeople, who house refugees at Red Road flats, they are evicting at least 140 refugees, making them homeless in one fell swoop. We are talking about families,young people and individuals. As a city we can't throw another 140 people onto our streets, we must put pressure on the authorities to stop this insane and brutal treatment in what is a modern civilised city.

       A meeting will be held at the STUC building in 333 Woodlands Road, subject, How Do We Stop The Evictions. This is an open campaign meeting with speakers from, Campaign to Welcome Refugees, Ypeople residents,, Unity Centre and others.

TUESDAY17 APRIL, 7PM.
STUC BUILDING
333 WOODLANDS ROAD
GLASGOW.
PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD.

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