Legal Killing.

           What seems to go without any retribution is the state's killing of ordinary people by means of legislation. Austerity measures are discussed and passed in to legislation by people who have no worries about heating or eating. It is then enacted by the minions of the state, backed up by the law. The result of course is that ordinary people, who have no say in the matter, suffer hardship, poverty and deprivation and of course death. All deemed necessary to balance the books to suit the financial Mafia. These policies to suit the big financial boys, have over the years reduce the life expectancy of the population. What is insane about this crazy setup is we pay them to do this.

            The following extract from The Guardian. 

 

 

         More than 330,000 excess deaths in Great Britain in recent years can be attributed to spending cuts to public services and benefits introduced by a UK government pursuing austerity policies, according to an academic study.
        The authors of the study suggest additional deaths between 2012 and 2019 – prior to the Covid pandemic – reflect an increase in people dying prematurely after experiencing reduced income, ill-health, poor nutrition and housing, and social isolation.
        Previously improving mortality trends started to change for the worse after austerity policies introduced in 2010 when tens of billions of pounds began to be cut from public spending by the Tory-led coalition government, the study said.
       The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found there were 334,327 excess deaths beyond the expected number in England, Wales and Scotland over the eight-year period.

 

Read the full article HERE. 

 

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

East Is East And West Is West!

      As a football pundit once said, "Football is a game of two halves", to me a non-football guy, I thought that was obvious, I always  miss the subtleties of the "beautiful game". However it could also be said that Glasgow is a city of two halves, the West End and the East End, and according to the Mafia in George Square, East is East and West is West, and ne'r the twain shall meet. This divide is obvious to all our senses, visit each End and the difference startles and baffles all those senses. On visiting these "ends" the first impact is visual, the West End, busy shops, cafes, bistros, pubs, restaurants and the smell of affluence, visit the East End, closed shops, derelict buildings, empty spaces, poor housing and the smell of poverty. The difference is not just apparent to our senses, it is embedded in the lives of those who live in each of these two "Ends". The life expectancy in parts of the East End are as low as 53.9 years, while a short (but expensive) bus journey across the city, and in parts of the West End, life expectancy can be as high as 82 years. 

      Now we know that it is not a genetic difference between the species that live in these two ends of our city, the root cause is that first visual appearance, affluence and poverty. Quality of life governs length of life, and in this society that is decided on affluence and poverty. We also know that poverty is not an accident, it is caused and prolonged by policies, and policies are made and carried out by people. It therefore follows that those people are directly responsible for the poverty, deprivation, short life expectancy, and the criminal plunder of the future of all those children who are born into those policy created conditions.

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

Quality Of Life = Length Of Life.

       If life expectancy is an indicator of quality of life, and it is, then we in Scotland can be worried. Scotland has the lowest life expectancy levels in the EU. Men in Scotland have a life expectancy of 76 and women 80, but in the most deprived 15% of areas in Scotland, (2007/08) it is 57.5 for males and 61.9 for females. Whereas the European average is 79.7 for men and 84.8 for women.

In that very low average for Scotland, Glasgow languishes at the bottom as the lowest in Scotland, with 71 for men and 78 for women.

 Cartoon by Frank Boyle:

         Of course across Glasgow that average rises and falls as you move from the more affluent areas to the more deprived. The area with the lowest life expectancy is the Calton district of Glasgow, with a life expectancy of 54 for males. While not many miles away just on the outskirts of Glasgow we have Lenzie with a male life expectancy of 82. If we move south of the Scottish border to the London district of Kensington and Chelsea, we have the highest life expectancy in the UK with a figure of 89 for males.

        These vast fluctuations are an indictment of a system that not only tolerates such wide variations in quality of life, but fosters and perpetuates a grossly unequal society. Why should one person expect to die younger than another born just a handful of miles away? These variations in life expectancy also show the callousness and injustice of the raising of the pension age to 70. What does that mean for those living in the 15% most deprived areas in Scotland whose life expectancy is in the 50's?

        There is no democracy, there is no justice in the midst of such disparity in quality of life, and we can't expect a band of millionaire parasites to put matters right. It would be against their own personal interests. We will have to do that ourselves.

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

POVERTY IN THE UK!!

      It is odd that so many people believe that capitalism is a system that brings prosperity to all. Even as the evidence stacks up against it with poverty increasing across the world, it is still accepted by too many as the only game in town.

       Poverty in the UK tends to be invisible when it comes to the mainstream media. They are more likely to focus on poverty elsewhere. Yet poverty in the UK is considerable by any standard. Some figures compiled by Oxfam give an indication of just how poverty blights the lives of so many across the UK.

      In the UK 13 million people, more than 1 in 5, live in poverty, with the majority of both children and working age adults in poverty living in working households, 55.3% of children and 52.9% of adults. Bang goes that excuse that they are poor because they wont work!!. How does poverty translate in to real life? One example would be that a child born in the poor district of Calton in Glasgow has a life expectancy of 54, where as a child born in the more affluent area of Lenzie on the outskirts of Glasgow has a life expectancy of 82. They are separated by about 10 miles.

       In the supposed affluent UK, 1 in 8 men and 1 in 4 women earn less than £7 hour and almost 50% of home owners earn less than the minimum wage. In this land of advanced capitalism a staggering 3.9 million children live in poverty with more than half of these in working households. The reality of this is that children born into poverty are more likely to have lower birth weight, higher infant mortality, and poorer health than their counter parts born into better off homes.

       Another feature of this advanced capitalist society is the fact that the number of households in which no-one has ever worked has almost doubled since 1997. According to the Office of National Statistics, 1.7% of all households were permanently jobless by the second quarter of 2010, up from 1% in the second quarter of 1997. Of course as we know, capitalism is an unfair system so these figures are not spread evenly across the country. For example in the more affluent East England it is just 0.5% jobless households, compared with inner London which stands at 6.5%.

Everything seems to working fine!!

 

      As the gap between rich and poor gets wider by the year and the number of poor increases, surely we will reach that point where we say enough is enough. After all capitalism is just a man made system, one that benefits the few at the expense of the many, it is not created from tablets of stone or ordained by a supreme being. Men created it, men can destroy it, and create a more fair and just system that benefits all our people, not just a handful of parasites.

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