Their Growth Is Our Deprivation.

      Where do we stand as a country, our lords and masters, the millionaire class, spout growth and being a world leader. What is more, they come up with mythical figures to prove their illusion. Of course you and I, the people on the ground, outside that bubble of rarefied atmosphere of upper crust parasites, see it somewhat different. While they discus figures plucked from their favourite guess-machine, and Her Majesty's Opposition produce imperceptible variations on those figures, we, the ordinary Joe, live in the real world of food banks and workfare, of choosing between heating or eating. In our world we are acutely aware of our collapsing infrastructure and our rapidly descending standard of living. We might have smart-phones, tablets and super broadband, but large swathes of our elderly and vulnerable are facing problems from hypothermia, and malnutrition has double in the last year. We the ordinary people are also well aware of the fact that we live with an eduction system that miserably fails our kids. According to a recent report, South Korean, Vietnamese and Macanese teenagers are streets ahead of our teenagers, in mathematics and science.
      Our infrastructure is late nineteenth century early twentieth century, and as we would expect our industrial over lords never invest, but are merely interested in taking the profits and running things into the ground, out-sourcing is cheaper, so more profitable. According to a recent survey of 148 countries by the World Economic Forum, our road transport system was rated as inferior to that of Barbados and our roads were ranked worse than those of Chile.
       Of course we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that, as far as our standard of living is concerned, it is all going to plan. Our millionaire political class, (who we should not forget, are all big investors in, and friends of, the corporate greed machine) are working hard with their corporate masters, to get this country down to a low wage, sweatshop economy, and you have to say, aren't they doing well.
     A cheap subservient workforce is the key to their growth, their businesses will grow in size and profitability. They will be able to compete with their Easter competitors. So when you hear the corrupt millionaire political cabal, and the greed driven parasitic corporate greed machine, talk of growth, you know what they mean, it's growth in their bank accounts that they are after, and you and I, are the tools.

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

UK, A Hungry Nation.

      While our Oxbridge millionaires, sitting in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, mouth off about “growth” and “making the right decisions” and the blue corner waffles with the red corner with meaningless phrases and lots of “here, here's”, you and I see hunger and desperation. This is one of the richest nations on the planet, yet its people go hungry. The Trussell Trust, which has 400 food banks across the UK, states that it handed out food parcels to more than 350,000 people, between April and September this year. What makes this even more criminal is the fact that a third of these were children. The number of people relying on food banks for survival has tripled over the last year.

        Here in the UK it is not just a handful of families that are somehow in need of help. This is a national crisis caused by the deliberate actions of the bankster friendly government. This is a nation slowly being driven to deprivation by forced “austerity”. Some leading experts state that in the UK hunger has now reached the level of a “public health emergency” A recent letter to the British Medical Journal signed by a group of senior academics from two leading universities, the Medical Research Council and a group of doctors, said that the effect of Government policies on vulnerable people’s ability to afford food needed to be “urgently” monitored.

        There letter states that there has been a rapid rise in the number of people requiring emergency food aid, plus the doubling of the number of cases of malnutrition seen in hospitals, and a rapid fall in the number of calories being consumed by the public at large. They state that these are, “all the signs of a public health emergency that could go unrecognised until it is too late to take preventative action,” Research into this problem, commissioned by the Government itself, has had its publication delayed, we can only speculate that the reason is that the government may find its result embarrassing.

        This is the meaning of “austerity”, this is the ConDem's “steady growth”, this is Osborne's “right decisions”, this is the financial mafia's plans falling into place. Sweatshop Britain leading the way to sweatshop Europe. We have been told that these policies will continue until 2020, how many food banks will we need by then, how many cases of malnutrition will the hospitals handle by then? This is the promise of another 7 years of falling wages, slashing benefits and social services, and rising prices. Where will your standard of living be by then? Do you honestly believe that at that magical 2020, everything will suddenly be great, and hunger and poverty will disappear? Accept it, if you accept this present system, you accept an endless downward spiral to poverty and deprivation. Surely you want more than this.

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

Government Paid Mercenaries!

      When a state carries out policies that kill people in another state, they usually call it war. However, what do you call it when a state carries out policies that kill its own people? Well here in the UK the policies pushed through by the state are killing people. One of them is called “Work Capability Assessment” and the weapon is in the hands of ATOS. I suppose that ATOS being a French company, we should call them mercenaries.

      The number of people who have died after being assessed by ATOS, as fit to work, is well over 100,000. In any war situation these figures would be a national disaster, why does our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, not splash them across banner headlines? Simply because they are on the other side, the side of the murdering state. The latest tragedy in this brutal assault on the disabled and vulnerable, was 53 year old, partially sighted Jacqueline Harris, as well as her problem with her sight she had restricted mobility and was on constant pain relief. However the compassionless bureaucrats, sitting comfortable in their cocooned world of “ticky-boxes” considered her fit to look for work and stripped her of her benefits. It was a pain to far, and sadly Jaqueline Harris took her own life.

    This war against its own people continues on many fronts, the freezing/cutting of wages in the midst of rising energy and food prices, the bedroom tax, putting extra strain on already stretched finances, are just two attacks which are pushing more people into fuel poverty, food banks, deprivation and in turn malnutrition, with the resultant health problems. In truth, these actions are a slow death sentence and are directly responsible for health problems and an early death in thousands of cases. The state by its deliberate policies is killing its own people, all in the name of the economics of the banksters, it is sacrificing the lives of its citizens to bolster and increases the wealth of the already obscenely wealthy. We live in a sacrificial society, where the people are offered up to the god Mammon. 

This from The Void:

     A woman stripped of benefits after being found ‘fit for work’ by Atos has taken her own life the Bristol Post have reported today.

According to the newspaper: 

     “PARTIALLY-sighted and only able to walk with the aid of a stick, Jacqueline Harris suffered crippling pain due to slipped discs in her back and neck. Her mobility was reduced further when a dog savaged one of her wrists. “Despite being in agony which strong pain relief could not ease, the 53-year-old was deemed to be fit for work following a government health assessment and told to find a job.

      “Her sister claims the verdict that she was ineligible for disability benefits drove her to take her own life earlier this month.”

Read the full article HERE:

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

Austerity And Deprivation, Two Sides Of The Same Coin.

        What does “austerity” mean, or what should it mean? You would imagine “austerity” would mean a doing without the luxuries, a little tightening of the belt, but does this financial Mafia's variety of “austerity” fit that description? This brand of “austerity” means abject poverty for families the length and breadth of the land. In England, since the 2008 “crisis”, malnutrition treated in NHS hospitals has almost doubled. Diagnoses of malnutrition in England rose from 3,161 in 2008/09 to an criminal 5,499 in 2012. This has been driven by wages being frozen/cut, while the cost of food and heating have rocketed. Add to this the various benefit cuts, bedroom tax, ATOS attack on the disabled, and it becomes very clear that this “austerity” is a vicious attack the living standards of the general population.

      Oxfam, that organisation that we see as a charity for those poor countries, stated that, in the UK, "increasing desperation to avoid starvation in one of the world’s richest and unequal countries has seen the number of visits to food banks rise to around half a million a year." The Trussell Trust, the UK's largest food bank operator, has seen the number of those receiving food parcels rise from approximately 26,000 in 2008, to more than 350,000 in the past five years. UK director of Trussell Trust has stated that, “It’s not surprising that rates of malnutrition have also increased. We see people coming to food banks who’ve gone without food for days.”

     Poverty and debt go hand in hand, as people get desperate in their struggle for survival, they are more likely to run up more debt. The average UK household debt is £54,000, that is close to twice the level of a decade ago. Personal debt in the UK's is almost 94% of the total UK economic output for 2012, a mind boggling £1.43 trillion. Lots of people are failing to manage that debt and are suffering in many ways, cutting down on food and heating. Interest rates are set to rise, when that happens, thousands more who are at the moment barely coping will start to sink into the mire of poverty and deprivation. With poverty comes health problems, both mental and physical, families and relationships start to strain and break.

        This is the true meaning of “austerity”, it is not a slight drop in your luxuries, a little bit of inconvenience, as you miss a night at the movies. It is mind crushing stress, it is malnutrition, it is health problems, it is watching your family disintegrate, it is seeing your kids future being stunted and their potential obliterated. It is living with the reality or the fear of homelessness, for what? To sort out a bunch of financial parasites' gambling mess, while they continue to live in the lap of unearned and undeserved luxury. That's capitalism. Do you want it? If not, what are we going to do about it?

Cum'awn, dae sumthin'

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

Time to Start Pushing.

     In these so called “difficult times” it is hard to grasp the difference between the rich and the poor. As you and I continue to struggle to maintain a decent standard of life, and millions fail in that attempt, the wealth of the richest parasites looks more and more like monopoly money. According to the Forbes “rich list”, the combined wealth of the world's 1,426 billionaires is a staggering $5.4 trillion. If they decided to fall out with us and form their own country, they would be the fourth richest country in the world, just behind Japan but ahead of Germany. Think of it, a country richer than Germany, with a population of just 1,426??

      At the other end of the scale, approximately one person every 3.5 seconds of each and every day, dies of hunger-related causes, a staggering 25,000 each day, most of these are children. At least 80% of the world's population lives on less than $10 a day. The world is a wealthy place but the split is criminal, with the poorest 40% of the world's population having 5% of the total income and the richest 20% accounting for 75%.

     In a world where 25,000 a day die every day because of hunger, there is an abundance of food. The problem is not the shortage of food, the problem is the system. In this capitalist system everything has to make a profit, the system traps people in poverty and the spiral is downward. Malnutrition means ill health and you are less able to earn your living, and in country after country that is a slow spiralling down to death.

      At one end, a small army with money to burn, obscene wealth for a handful of pampered parasites, private jets, yachts, mansions dotted across the world, the purchase of islands for family homes. All this off the sweat, tears and death of the many. At the other end, a multitude of hungry people, mother after mother watching her child slowly die of hunger.

     By any analysis, the system is unjust, immoral, plain wrong, stinkingly corrupt, unsustainable and not fit for purpose. That is not in doubt, the question is how long will we allow this murder for wealth to continue? How many more mothers will see their children slowly die of hunger while surrounded by food, before we say enough is enough? In a world of abundance, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to take food and distribute it to all who need it, those who stand in the way have to be pushed aside.

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ONE BILLION PEOPLE GO HUNGRY.

     Some facts that might interest you and perhaps encourage you to take direct action.

This from Raw info:

Food inequality

Factory farming breaks our food systems, taking grain and other precious resources from those that need it most.

There is a huge gap between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' when it comes to the distribution of food around the world; around 1 billion people do not have enough to eat and this crisis currently kills more people than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined¹. In stark contrast, around 1.5 billion people in the Western world are classified as overweight, around a third of whom are obese². The situation is challenging efforts to achieve the United Nations (UN) Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger³. Although small-scale livestock farming plays a vital role in developing countries, contributing to the wellbeing of more than 800 million poor smallholders⁴, large-scale factory farming is actually compounding the food crisis.

Raising the demand for feed

Around two thirds of farm animals worldwide are currently factory farmed, reared in systems that are dependent on cereal and soya feeds for fast growth and high yields. Although dairy cows are naturally adapted to grazing and eating grasses, they are now being bred to be more dependent on cereal and soya feeds too. This demand for feed essentially means that we are putting humans in competition with farm animals; we're literally taking high-quality, nutrient-rich foods that people could eat and feeding them to our farm animals.

Over 90% of soya meal and 60% of maize (corn) and barley are grown for animal feed.

Read the full article HERE:

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EIGHTEEN HUNGRY CHILDREN - WHY!

       Every hour of every day 300 children die due to malnutrition, at the very start of their lives they are left so weakened by relentless hunger that they can't fight off illnesses like diarrhoea or pneumonia. Surviving malnutrition doesn't bring a full and healthy life, those children who survive, malnutrition suffer devastating and irreversible damage, stunted growth and bodies and brains that are permanently damaged.

     The problem isn't that the world is short of food, the food is there, but somewhere along the line some people have to make a profit. So the food won't move to the needy until the money changes hands. While a child is dying of malnutrition, we in the rich developed world run around shaking charity cans under the noses of all and sundry hoping that they will drop a few coins in the box and perhaps then we can start the food moving.

      What a barbaric inhuman system, shrink the picture, you know of a child down the road that is dying from malnutrition, what do you do? Run around trying to raise some money to buy some food from the supermarket? Any system that has an abundance of food and yet stands by waiting for the money to change hands before supplying children dying from malnutrition, is not fit for purpose.

         Capitalism is only there to serve the shareholders, the corporate world, everything is a commodity, even the life or death of a child. If companies can make a profit then the child will live, if not, sorry, you don't have enough money. Why do we allow ourselves to be dominated by these corporate fascist? We the ordinary people make everything, we transport and distribute everything, all we have to do is take control of what we make, where we transport it, and to whom we distribute the produce of our labours. We don't need them, they on the other hand do need us. Let's dump this brutal, unjust, inhumane, greed driven system in the dustbin of history. After all it is only a man made system it is not something written in tablets of stone or some immutable force of nature, it is a man made economic system of greed.

          The following is a poem that I penned some 20 years ago, in spite of all the pontification by our expensively suited, hypocritical politicians, the situation is no better today than it was then, probably worse. As long as we keep this system of capitalism dominating our lives the situation will never improve.

EIGHTEEN HUNGRY CHILDREN.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day

eighteen of tomorrow’s people

cruelly thrown away.

When pandering to a fashion

gratifying our greed,

think, theirs is no desire

but a basic need.

Envisage a familiar face

a child that calls your name,

try to be the parent

try to place the blame.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen little faces

that never learnt to play.

Walk past your local school

listen to the shrill,

stand and count to sixty

imagine hunger start to kill.

Fingers must be pointed

at decisions made on high,

questions must be asked

loudly asked by you and I.

Eighteen hungry children die

every minute of every day,

eighteen precious lives

the claws of hunger slay.

WHY?

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