Memories!!

          I've lived a long time, 90 in about 3 weeks time, and all my adult life I have listed to election and party political speeches and broadcasts. Why politicians hate old folks, they have memories, and lots of my memories are of those political out bursts by the pompous political ballerinas. Along come an election and out they spout, "We will end child poverty 5 years" "We will eliminate poverty if 5 years." "We will end homelessness by building 300,000 new homes a year over the next 5 years". I've heard this so often, the number of years quoted may vary, but the vacuous promise is usually there.

Image courtesy of Salvation Army.

 

        Here we are 2024 approaching that 90 mark and what I see is child poverty is increasing, poverty across the population is growing, homelessness is growing, more and more household are anxious and stressed as they try to make ends meet, food banks have sprung up and are overwhelmed. With all these phoney promises doing nothing to change this situation, why do we keep repeating the same mistake of voting for them. They say that the first sign of insanity is to keep doing the same thing but expecting a different result, are we really that insane? 

Image courtesy of Metro.

 

       Why in the name of any logic or rational should we even listen to this bunch of so called representatives, who in actual fact only represent themselves and their rich cronies.

Image courtesy of The Guardian.

 

       Let's prove how sane we are by pulling the plug on this burden and restriction on our lives, stop voting, become ungovernable, organise within you communities and workplaces to take control of own lives and shape society they way we want it to be. Fair, just, co-operative based on mutual aid, and seeing to the needs of all our people. Tell me "why not"?

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Unfair.

 

 

            GREAT Britain, well I suppose it all depends on which side of the fence you sit. To the ordinary citizen of Great Britain the the word GREAT is a joke. Every day we have more reports of buildings with crap RAAC concrete all nearing the end of their lives, from schools, hospitals, public buildings and who know what else. We have an education system in meltdown, a transport system that is not fit for purpose, a health service that is falling apart at the seams, poverty is on the rise, homelessness is on the rise, child poverty is on the rise. More and more families depend on food banks and can't afford to heat their homes, while struggle endlessly to pay their way. We have social services that fail miserably to look after the elderly, infirm and those in need.

                                            Image courtesy of Trussell Trust.

            However, on the other side of the fence in GREAT Britain, the millionaire/billionaire class has added unimaginable amounts to their personal wealth. Large corporations are roping in mountains in profit and handing out millions to their CEO and their shareholders. Great Britain, a divided society with opulence, privileges and power for the few, and a harsh struggle with poverty and deprivation always a close neighbour for the many, who know all to well that there is nothing GREAT in these conditions.

 Image courtesy of Compensation Cafe.

          All this happens with our consent, we pay the managers of the system to handle our affairs and this is the hand they deal us. They won't change the system as it benefits them and their cronies immensely. If we want to change the system, then it is up to us the ordinary people. We must in solidarity, take control of our communities, our workplaces, our towns and cities and bring this insanity that spawns poverty, inequality and gross injustice, crashing down, we can build a better world if that is what we really want.

                                      Image courtesy of Economic Policy Institute.

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info      

Lies.

          We all know that politicians lie, they lie with ambiguous statements, phoney predictions and promises they have no way or intentions of delivering. At the moment the BIG lie is inflation, they have just announced that inflation is running at the highest for 41 years at 11.1%. Of course if you are one of the very many millions who struggle to make ends meet, then the picture is a little bit different. You will obviously spend more of your income on food than the likes of Rishi Sunak and Jeremey Hunt, who will have no problem with inflation. However you are facing a food inflation rate of 16.2%. Even that is not the true figure for the vast majority of the population, who spend the biggest part of their income on the basics, they are facing something in the region of 30% inflation. The poorest always pay to keep the financial Mafia happy.

 

Image courtesy of The Independent.

 

  The following figures explain this.
        The inflation rate over the previous year for the following is eye watering;

         Low-fat milk up 47.9%
         Margarine up 42.1%
         Pasta up 34%
         Sauces and spices up 33.2%
         Oils and fats up 33.2%
         Butter up 29.7%
         Flour and cereals up 28.1%
         Cheese up 27.1%
         Eggs up 22.3%
         Jams and honey up 22.2%

        How do these figures relate to you and the so called inflation rate of 11.1%
      Don't you think we have had enough of the lies, austerity and exploitation of this economic system of greed with milk and honey for the few and a little bread and perhaps a scrap of margarine for the rest of us.

 

Image courtesy of Evening Standard.

 

 

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Class War.

            Well people of UK, now you know, with Kwarteng's massive-mini budget we face raw capitalism, capitalism with the gloves off. No sham, no illusions, feed the rich and keep the poor poor, to give the poor money would only feed inflation. While we struggle with astronomical energy bills and struggle to feed our families adequately, millions of pounds are thrown at the very rich. In the UK there are 19,000 who earn more than £1million a year, the chancellor has just handed them a further £55,000 a year to play around with. If you earn £20,000 a year, the chancellor's tax cuts will give you the princely sum of £1.43 a week more to spend. Well Kwarteng tells us the rich with all that extra money will invest in giving you high paid jobs. My bet is that they will now consider a larger yacht or a bigger super car. What will you do with your fabulous windfall of £1.43 a week? Well not a lot, as it and much more will be gobbled up with your new energy bill come October. While you struggle spare a thought for those poor bankers who have had to survive on annual bonuses of just twice their annual salary. Kwarteng has seen their plight and abolished the cap on bankers bonuses. The man's sympathy knows no bounds, well except for the poor.
          With this comes suggestions that the 48 hour week could be scrapped, and new legislation to curtail strike action. Well if you want to survive this cull on the poor we had better get organised now. Increase strike action before they put the hems on it. Once the legislation is in place it will be a much harder struggle. Don't wait for the extra chains to be put round your ankles, act now, end this jamboree of power, privilege and wealth, end this onslaught on the ordinary people, end this drive to accumulate more wealth for the pampered, privileged few.

 

Image courtesy of Mail Online.

 

Image courtesy of Trussell Trust.

Quote from Institute of Fiscal Studies:

Paul Johnson, IFS Director, said: 

          “Today, the Chancellor announced the biggest package of tax cuts in 50 years without even a semblance of an effort to make the public finance numbers add up. Instead, the plan seems to be to borrow large sums at increasingly expensive rates, put government debt on an unsustainable rising path, and hope that we get better growth. This marks such a dramatic change in the direction of economic policy-making that some of the longer-serving cabinet ministers might be worried about getting whiplash.
          Mr Kwarteng has shown himself willing to gamble with fiscal sustainability in order to push through these huge tax cuts. He is willing to shrug off the risks of inflation, and to invite significantly higher interest rates. And he has avoided scrutiny by presenting a Budget in all but name without accompanying forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

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Anger!!

       Tomorrow Saturday, 25th June, 10am. George Square, Glasgow, there is a march in support of the striking railway workers.

          So you're pissed off being driven into the grubber, angry at being promised pie in the sky, those illusions of high skilled, high wage jobs, sometime in the next ten to twelve years, perhaps, and in the meantime, go to the food bank, watch your kids shiver at home during the winter, see your elderly rapidly going to their grave earlier than they should. All this while the rich parasite class grow fat on your austerity. Are you angry at those with salaries in the £100,000's telling you not to ask for a big pay rise as it will only feed inflation. At the same time, the boss of Birmingham airport has just been given a 10% rise in his salary. They are having a good laugh at us.
         Well you have a right to be angry, this is an extremely wealth country, meanwhile the government is driving the population into dire poverty, while we have an army of millionaires and billionaires, all their wealth gleaned from your labour. So let's get angry, really angry and take our anger onto the streets, join the picket lines of those strikers fighting for a decent wage increase, and protecting their conditions.
        Tomorrow Saturday, 25th June, 10am. George Square, Glasgow, there is a march in support of the striking railway workers.
        Join them bring your family and friends, bring your street, bring placards, come and make plenty of noise. Their fight is our fight, we the ordinary people of this country, are all being hit by this tsunami of avoidable hardship and with it will come evictions, dire poverty, health problems, children's potential stunted, and a crumbling health service that will end up being privatised.

       Tomorrow Saturday, 25th June, 10am. George Square, Glasgow, there is a march in support of the striking railway workers.

Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.co.uk    

A Virus.

         Today as the ordinary people of the UK, like those else where in the world, are heading for the biggest fall in living standards for many, many years. People are facing winter unable to heat their homes, struggling to put food on the table and often failing. There is a massive rise in homelessness, in food-banks, our health service is teetering on the edge of collapse due to lack of funding and slices being handed to the corporate word. Our kids' health will be assaulted and their education system is broken.

 

      Despite these unnecessary conditions being heaped on the population, the UK government see fit to spend an obscene amount of tax payers money on this jamboree celebrating a parasite families imperial power. £28 million of our tax money has been set aside for this obscenity, the lottery fund is donating £22 million to plaster the country with symbols of pomp and imperial power.
      We are supposed to celebrate 70 years of a woman sitting on a throne, a woman whose entire family and many hangers-on, who have never earned a penny from honest work in their lives, and are subsidised to the hilt with tax payers money. This old lady, who we are supposed be enthralled with is labelled a "constitutional" monarch. However, she is the one that opens parliament, and in speeches honestly refers to "her government", she is the one approached by the elected Prime Minister should he wish to close down parliament. She also sits in her palatial surroundings signing death warrants on those poor individuals who are condemned by British Overseas Territories that still have the death penalty. This whole edifice of pomp and power is an attempt to get us all to cheer an obscene display to the world of Britain's brutal imperialism, its past and its determination to hold on to that power, wealth and its privileges. It baffles me seeing all those thousands of people who struggle to make ends meet, willing pay homage to this family of parasites, this edifice to pomp, wealth, power and privileges. All I can say of those throngs who wave flags, cheer this obscenity, is that their minds have been damaged by the fatal and vicious virus of patriotism.

 

Visit ann arky's home at http://strugglepedia.com  

Anger!

 

Image courtesy of Telegraph.

 

     Day by day, drip feed by drip feed, we the ordinary people of this country learn the force of the kick in the teeth we are about to receive from this capitalist system. The latest detail is the rise in interest rates. It might not seem much, but could be enough to push those on the edge over into the poverty bin. Mortgages could increase, interest on you credit card, any future HP you might feel you need to take on, any loans you may find yourself forced into, will in all probability cost you more.
       Of course the big one is the increase in energy bills, that thing that no home can live without. The increase is going stratospheric. No matter the sticking plaster or paracetamol the government offers, it will not be any where near enough to eliminate a massive increase to your bills.
      Then there is inflation in general, sending food prices, among other day to day necessities, through the roof. Trying to put food on the table never mind trying to cook it, will an impossible task for thousands. Just to add a little bit more pain to that kick in the teeth, those working families who are at the moment just about managing, will now be hit with an increase in National Insurance, over and above those just mentioned.
This July 2021, before this latest attack on living standards of ordinary people.  

Glasgow.

Image courtesy of The Big Issue.

 

            Now, if that sort of unjustified pain doesn't make you angry, what will? This pain is being planned and administered by millionaires, who will probably be unaware of what their energy bills are and care even less. Some will take off to their luxury extra home somewhere in the warm sun, or take their yacht to the Mediterranean for a wee break. They will have no need what so ever to change their way of living, they live in a land of plenty. They don't feel that pain, they administer it, without a care in the world.
       So you are angry, who will you direct you anger at, the local council, mere pawns in the game, who are legally bound to do the dictate of the government. So the government, well they are just the managers of the system, they follow the instruction of the financial Mafia, that is where the power lies. That gang of mobster who go under different flags, but belong to that one clan, the corporate financial Mafia. The main gangs being the IMF sometimes called the International Monetary Fund, but in reality, the Internation Mankind Fuckers, the ECB, know as European Central Bank, real name Eternal Money Bastards, and the Davos Club, the place where the rich and powerful meet up to decide the best way to exploit the world's people and resources to create greater profit to be split among themselves. They all come together under the banner of corporate capitalism. Until we smash that organisation, we are at the mercy of the financial Mafia. 

      Take what you get or fight back. Organise your communities in conjunction with other communities, not to ask nor demand, please can we have some more, but to take control of you communities resources, in solidarity with all other communities. Every brick, every house, every boat ever built was built by your hands, every piece of equipment every item transported was made and transport by you, it all belongs to you. Take it and use it to service our own people and see to the needs of all our people, with no place for profit, CEO and shareholders bonuses. It's yours by the sweat and blood of you and you forbearers. Nothing is gained by self contained anger, show it, direct it, along with solidarity, it is your righteous weapon.

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

Insanity.

          If ever there was an incident that showed up the gross inequality and crass stupidity of this economic system, "Blue Origin" must be up there for first prize. For sheer self indulgence at a preposterous cost, and utter waste of the world's resources, Jeff Bezos must claim the crown. His self indulgent trip which he opened to bidders for the few seats available drew bids from 159 countries with well over 7,000 pampered parasites bidding in the millions to get their fantasy fulfilled. Bidding started at $4.8 million, the winning bid was $28 million for a 10 minute journey, with approximately three minutes at zero gravity. Of course in this crazy world such an endeavour sets of a rush of copy cat acts, and that other pampered parasite Richard Branson wants to be in the scene with his billion $ enterprise Virgin Galatica, to set up a little competition to satisfy those idiotic pampered plundering parasites who have millions plundered from the ordinary people, which they wish to throw at living in the fantasy world of the idiots.

 

Photographer: Matthew Staver/Bloomberg

           While this little bunch of plundering parasites indulge themselves in their little fantasies, paid for by wealth stolen from those trapped and woven into their schemes of exploitation, millions die of hunger, millions are homeless, and millions don't have clean water to drink. Even in the so called developed countries, food banks grow, homelessness grows, child poverty grows, health services creak under strain, education systems flounder through lack of funding, social services get shaved. While this little group of pampered plundering parasites squander $28 million on their twisted minds ten minute flight of fancy. No doubt there will other ancillary costs of a few million, but what does that matter when you can milk the people for more when you need a little spare million or two.
          Truly a world of insanity managed by idiot fantasists, and we accept it, are we the insane?

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         http://strugglepedia.co.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page

The Hungry Keep Feeding Capitalism.

       Surely if in the richest capitalist country on the planet there are millions of the population going hungry, it should be blatantly obvious that the capitalist system doesn't work for the people. Country after country sees continuing and rising poverty and homelessness, and still we are sold the myth that capitalism is the best economic system for this planet. Do we honestly believe that this system of inequality and injustice and growing poverty and hunger is the best that the human mind can come up with? Ask anybody if they can think of a better way of distributing the wealth that we create and I'm sure they will come up with an answer, but we put that aside and accept the lies and illusions spun by the rich and powerful parasite class. Why?

This from Global Research: 

      In July of 2013, Rose Aguilar wrote a wonderful article for al-Jazeera (1), in which she discussed the dire hunger crisis that envelops the US today. In her article, she brought back a memory of something I had long forgotten, an event that so outraged the American public that the government was temporarily forced to respond with more humane policies. That event was a 1968 CBS special hour-long documentary called Hunger in America, in which viewers literally watched a hospitalized child die of starvation. Nixon responded because the public outrage left him no choice, but Reagan quickly dismantled those improvements.
      When Reagan came to power in 1980, there were 200 food banks in the US; today there are more than 40,000, all overwhelmed with demand and forced to ration their dispersals. Before 1980, one out of every 50 Americans was dependent on food stamps. Today, it is one out of four. Before Reagan, there were 10 million hungry Americans; today there are more than 50 million and increasing. A substantial part of the Great Transformation included not only tax cuts and other benefits for the wealthy, but a simultaneous massive reduction in budgets for social programs – in spite of the fact that Reagan and the secret government were creating the conditions that would desperately require those same social programs.
     That 50 million hungry Americans today includes the 25% of all children in the US who go to sleep hungry every night. About 25% of the American population today cannot buy sufficient food to remain healthy, with most of these being hungry for at least three months during each year. It is so bad that many college students have resorted to what we call “dumpster-diving” – looking in garbage bins for edible food.
      In 2013, America’s largest food bank in New York City delivered more than 35 million Kgs of food, and still 1.5 million of the city’s 8 million inhabitants are hungry. After that CBS documentary and prior to Reagan’s appearance, New York had almost no need for emergency food services, and had only 28 food agencies. Today that number is more than 1,000. The problem is so serious that many agencies fear that desperation for food will lead to increasing violence.
     By contrast, only about 5% of Chinese said there had been times during the previous 12 months when they had been hungry, while in the US that number is now 25% and still rising. Maura Daly, a social agency spokesperson said,
      “People have a lot of misimpressions about hunger in America. People think it’s associated with homelessness when, in fact, it is working families, it’s kids, it’s the disabled.”
        Perhaps even more alarming was the release of study data in the middle of 2014 documenting that 25% of the US military members are also dependent on food stamps, food banks and other civilian welfare projects for their survival. After compiling four years of data, the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, released its largest and most comprehensive study which showed, among other things that 15% of all Americans rely on food banks for all their basic nutrition. In other words, no other source of food. But perhaps the most shocking revelation was that 25% of military personnel were in the same financial position. Of course, the Pentagon was quick to take issue with the study’s methodology, using statistical babble to cloak their embarrassment.

       Across the other side of the planet, India, another super rich capitalist country, there is an army of hungry mouths while the wealth piles up in the bank accounts of the few.

India: Violations of the Right to Food and Work Rampant Across the Country, Made Worse by Aadhaar

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By Our Tolerance, We Are Complicit.

      I recently read an article decrying the plight of the people of Greece and stating that due to the dire economic situation in Greece, 25.7% of Greeks are unable to heat their homes adequately. It pointed out that this was among the highest in Europe. Bulgaria at 37% being the worst, followed by Lithuania 29%, Cyprus 23% and Portugal 20%. Shocking figures which are indicators of misery and deprivation across rich Europe.
       Of course you and I know that under the capitalist system, being in a rich union of countries or in a very rich country does not eliminate poverty and deprivation. Take the VERY rich UK, recent government figures reveal that we in the UK are among the top raft of fuel poverty citizens in Europe. In the first four years since the Conservative Oxbridge brigade took control of our political machine in 2010, fuel poverty has risen by 9%. During the coldest spell of the 2017/18 winter it is estimated that more than 50,000 died from cold related problems, the worst figure for 40 years.
      The study also found that as well as turning down the heating to save money. 25% were scrimping on food. It is obvious that with rising prices and benefits and real wages shrinking, fuel poverty is going to increase. The fuel poverty rate for the UK, 2015, was 17% (Wikipedia) energy prices have continued to rise well above the rate of wages, this can only add more pressure to the struggling homes.
     All this is a further indictment of this economic madness, the UK, 5th. richest country in the world is among the worst for fuel poverty in Europe, when compared to the lowest rates of fuel poverty in Europe of around 2% in Austria, Finland, Sweden, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
      In a sea of wealth, we tolerate a system of inequality, exploitation, poverty and deprivation, where people queue at food banks, and die from the cold. Our tolerance makes us complicit in their deprivation and deaths. The wonder of capitalism and the "market forces".

 

 

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

The End Of Austerity!!

 

        As usual our political ballerinas are prancing around with their opposing views. On the one side, the opposition spouts gloom and doom, while the group with their hands on the controls, waffle on about "austerity is over", and everything is wonderful and will only get better if you leave them in control. Then through the portal into the real world and we find the truth. The use of food banks in UK has risen by 13% this year, people are still being callously sanctioned for trivial and unjust reasons, and losing their benefits for varying periods from one week to one year, pushing them into deprivation and desperation. This winter it is forecast that their will be an increase in deaths from fuel poverty. Which translates into people sitting in their home during the UK winter with no or too little heating and in some cases dying a slow death.

      What kind of society takes the only means of survival away from poor and vulnerable individuals and families, by deliberate means of "sanctions". What is the outcome for a young family when their income is stopped, in a society where money is your means of survival? This is callous vicious vindictiveness based on an ideology that the poor must be intimidate to obey and be submissive, or at worst, a cull of the poor. 

      How can we claim to be a developed rich modern country when there is an ever increasing number of our people, to survive, are having to seek food from charities?

      While the UK spent. 2016/17, £35.3 billion on defence, the world's 5th largest defence budget, the same government is quite prepared to see an increasing number of its elderly people suffer strokes, heart attacks, pneumonia and death, simply because they don't have enough money to heat their homes.

     This is the real picture of the "end of austerity" a country that has seen, during the ten years of "austerity", the richest section of our community double its wealth, while the rest of us have seen our standard of living rapidly decrease, and we continue to slide down that slippery slope to ever greater deprivation. All of these factors can be reasonably named engineered poverty.

       This is the best that capitalism can deliver, is this the way we want to live, is this the world we wish for our children? The answer is not to look to the very wealth political ballerinas to come to our rescue, they wont. Their corporate buddies need us as a large pool of submissive cheap labour, it helps their profits. The answer as always, is in our own hands, to take control of our own lives, our communities and workplaces, and shape them to the needs of all our people. Don't expect the rich and powerful to come riding on a white charger to sort out your problems, that's up to us, and only the people can and will solve the problems of the ordinary people.  

Visit ann arky's home at 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

A Ploy To Get You Off The Street.

        The latest show from the UK's Theatre of Lies, The General Election, has come to an end, the curtain has come down, the media frenzy abates, now back to the usual world of poverty, exploitation, homelessness, food banks, lousy wages and wars. All that time and energy, all those long TV shows and heated squabbling, in a few weeks will be dead history, and capitalist juggernaut will go merrily on its way, of ruthless exploitation, and its brutal rape and plunder of our planet, but it did give our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, a lot of bubble gum and popcorn to spew out over us.

       The capitalist system with the backing of the state has the incredible ability to morph and change, but retaining its basic structure. All those radical groups, people’s assemblies, etc. who start to form a political party, and/or enter into dialogue with the existing system to extract improvements, at best, do no more than readjust bits of the system here and there, but leave the raw structure of the capitalist system intact, much to the pleasure of the ruling elite. At the moment the system is in a critical state of turmoil and unrest, more and more of the people across the world are showing their anger at the inequality and injustice of the system, and the power mongers are looking around for any method that will hopefully return them to some sort of control. If this means new political parties, calling for more democracy, being given legitimacy, and in doing so restoring the public’s faith in “representative democracy”, then so be it.
       Probably the best known of these “people’s” movements in Europe, are Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. Both came together as a manifestation of the people’s anger at the establishment and its brutal policies of exploitation, corruption and austerity. Both consisted of a mixed bunch of radical left, anarchists and ordinary people, who wanted real change. Both looked like they might challenge the system. However, both formed political parties, walked through the portal of parliament, and took their seats in the marble halls of power, both became part of the system, bolstering up the capitalist elite’s desire to get the people off the streets and bring them back to the acceptance of “representative democracy”, Accepting the parliamentary road they had taken the anger, and will of the people for real change, and channelled it into lobbyists within the system to ask for a few more more crumbs and crusts from the capitalist booty. 

        To take your protests and people’s assemblies down the parliamentary road you are cementing the status quo, you may gain a few more links in your chains, allowing you to walk a little further, but you will remain shackled to the capitalist beast of exploitation, poverty, homelessness and wars.
       Your freedom lies outside parliament, on the streets, in your communities and in your work places, organising horizontally to take control of these areas, short circuiting, by-passing, circumventing and stifling, the so called “will of parliament”. Building real horizontal democracy based on the needs of all our people, sustainability, co-operation as opposed to competition, and mutual aid, only then will you see the cancer that is capitalism wither and die, only then will the people control their own lives. 

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

The Downward Spiral To Deprivation.

 

      In the UK the cull of the working class continues unabated. A recent statement from a food bank charity says it has handed out 913,000 food parcels in the last year, up from 347,000 the year before. Still the Bullingdon Club Boys, sitting in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, trumpet this as a "strong" economy. Another sign of their "strong" economy, is the steep rise in homelessness. The England and Wales figures of homeless for June to July 2014 was 55,090 compared with 39,480 for the same period 2010. 

     The massive rise in food bank distribution and the stark increase in homelessness, is nothing short of a human tragedy, a crime waged against the poor and vulnerable, in this extremely wealthy country. One homeless charity says it can no longer offer a bed to all the homeless and instead is giving then bus tickets so they can sleep on the bus at night. It says ‘We tell them which routes to choose, so that they will be travelling around all night".

        Of course the UK state is not the only state that is slashing the living conditions of the people. It is a European wide strategy, we all know how far they have gone in Greece, we are aware of the viciousness of the Spanish state. The people in Finland have taken to the streets as their government moves in with the hatchet to slash at the people's living conditions. New legislation in Finland will abolish two paid holidays, introduce wage cuts, and cut overtime payments, among a raft of other "austerity" measures. Big business wants a sweatshop economy here in Europe and the governments are hell bent on delivering. The UK has already given them a pool of free labour in the shape of workfare.

        Living standards across Europe are all under attack, big business is hungry, wages have to come down, working conditions have to "liberalised", social spending has to be cut to a minimum. Slashing social services means that the government can cut taxes to big business, and those services can be provided, at a profit, by big business. 

       This is not going to change because the government and their pay masters, big business, decide that it is time to raise the living standards of the people and give them a bigger slice of the cake. We are not going to see this wealthy bunch of parasitical shareholders, become a caring compassionate group eager to share their ill-gotten plunder with the people. We are on a downward spiral to deprivation, unless we decide that we want all the fruits of our labour to come to us, and take the necessary steps to ensure that happens. We don't need CEO, banksters, parasitical shareholders, nor do me need their protector that state.

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