Not News!

    This is just a wee blast from the recent past. I penned this about three years ago, but felt I wanted to spout it all again, as it is a train of thought that never leaves my mind. "When will we ever learn"

Too Old For The News.

    Something about living a long time, news never seems like news. Recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation announced that almost one third of the UK population are living on an inadequate income. In its statement it said that during 2014-15, approximately 19 million people were surviving on less than the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). Mired in that 19 million group of desperate people are six million children, roughly 45% of all UK children, and 1.8 million pensioners. These depressing figures are up from six years ago when they were quoted as, 15 million, or 25% of the population.  

       Why do I not see this as news? Well has it ever been other? It is just bubble gum and candy floss to plaster across that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media. Through the years, as I have seen governments come and governments go, I have been reading figures like this. Under one government the figures improve slightly under the next they deteriorate, so we switch governments again, and the process goes boringly but brutally on its destructive way. Yes we the ordinary people wrestle small gains here and there, but slice by slice they are taken away from us, and we have to start all over again in the constant struggle to try and get a decent standard of living. Poverty has soared and then slightly abated, homeless has grown and then slightly abated, child poverty has increased and then slightly abated. However, none of these problems have ever been addressed  and solved. Nor can they, the system is incapable of solving these problems, or surely it would have done so by now. Have no illusions, the system has the wealth and the resources to sort it all out, but doesn't. Based on the profit motive, these problems are actual results of the system, a few must gain while the majority must lose, that's capitalism. So if you wish to see that 45% of UK children ceasing to be a statistic on a poverty scale, if you wish to see those 1.8 million pensioners live the remainder of their lives in reasonable comfort, don't ask for better allowances, organise to destroy the system that is responsible for these statistics of misery and anxiety. We must accept that it is a class war, and at the moment we are losing, but we have the numbers, the ability, the resources and the imagination, to turn that tide and be the winners of that better world for all.

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

Time For Righteous Anger.

        It has always amazed me just how much suffering, poverty and deprivation our society will take before it explodes into righteous anger, and tears down the system responsible for all this unnecessary suffering. Our babbling brook of bullshit the mainstream media throws up everything for discussion, as long as it doesn't mean changing the system. Our political ballerinas, depending which colour of tie is in power, will utter platitudes, from "what needs to be done" to "what we are doing to remedy the situation". However, nothing changes, the suffering goes on, poverty's teeth still bites into our communities, and deprivation still push people to an early grave. In the UK we are fast reaching the level of poverty and deprivation of the 20's and 30's. After a few years of gains, from what were sometimes very bitter struggles, we are now sliding back to Dickensian style poverty. 

           Perhaps when our babbling brook of bullshit swings into full "consume for Christmas" mode we can reflect on the following. Recent figures show that in Glasgow  from May 2016 to March 2017, 39 homeless people died on its streets, in Edinburgh it was 18 homeless deaths for 2015/16.  

       Charities claim that estimates that 5000 people in Scotland sleep on the streets in the course of a year are likely to be "the tip of the iceberg" with a recent study by Heriott Watt University for Crisis predicting rough sleeping will double from 800 across Scotland on any one night – already a 10 percent rise for the first time in ten years – to 1500 by 2041.

      The Edinburgh winter shelter, run by Bethany Christian Trust, has already reached capacity on several nights since opening in October and will increase capacity from 49 sleeping mats to 75 on Monday. In Glasgow the winter shelter run by Glasgow City Mission at the Lodging House Mission day centre in the Gallowgate opened on Friday night.

Read the full article HERE:

      While our pampered political parasites squabble "Brexit" and spew about the illusion of how to make Britain great again, poverty takes a bite out of an ever larger section of our communities, with the resultant suffering and early deaths.

     Recent figures show that one fifth of the UK population is now living in poverty, and we are witnessing the worst decline in living standards for children and pensioners in several decades. 

        Nearly 400,000 more children and 300,000 more pensioners are now living in poverty than five years ago, during which time there have been continued increases in poverty across both age groups – prompting experts to warn that hard-fought progress towards tackling destitution is “in peril”. 

       The report, by the independent Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), shows that a total of 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty – more than one in five of the population. While poverty levels fell in the years to 2011-12, changes to welfare policy – especially since the 2015 Budget – have seen the numbers creep up again.

     UK to experience longest fall in living standards for over 60 years---

Read the full article HERE:

      This is capitalism, after centuries of of producing unmeasurable wealth, the majority of citizens still struggle to survive, while others suffer poverty and deprivation, with its attendant miseries, diseases and early deaths, and the few wallow in unimaginable opulence. How many more centuries are we going to tolerate this greed driven insanity, expecting it to somehow change and see to the needs of all our people. It isn't going to happen, capitalism cannot be reformed into a caring system, a history of centuries of exploitation should be proof enough. When will we see that explosion of the people enjoying the ecstasy of their righteous anger, and building that better world. We are producing ever more wealth and it is going somewhere, but not to the masses who produce all that wealth, where is it going, who is living off your sweat and tears? think about it, get angry.

Time For Righteous Anger.

We talk of justice, we ooze compassion

you and I. Our comfort sure

with a gracious smile a token give

those, SO deserving poor". 

Where is compassion when children lose

carefree innocent play,

where is justice when children meet

hunger along the way?

Children who, in this world of excess

create a newsreel scene

cradled in a starving mother's arms

expiring on your screen.

Forget the famine rationale

in a sickly syrup word,

mouthed by those crazy apes

until the truth is blurred.

Feel the anguish of the other

hear their pitiful cry

see hunger steal their future;

loudly cry out,   why?

Too Old For The News.

 

        Something about living a long time, news never seems like news. Recently the Joseph Rowntree Foundation announced that almost one third of the UK population are living on an inadequate income. In its statement it said that during 2014-15, approximately 19 million people were surviving on less than the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). Mired in that 19 million group of desperate people are six million children, roughly 45% of all UK children, and 1.8 million pensioners. These depressing figures are up from six years ago when they were quoted as, 15 million, or 25% of the population.  

       Why do I not see this as news? Well has it ever been other? It is just bubble gum and candy floss to plaster across that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media. Through the years, as I have seen governments come and governments go, I have been reading figures like this. Under one government the figures improve slightly under the next they deteriorate, so we switch governments again, and the process goes boringly but brutally on its destructive way. Yes we the ordinary people wrestle small gains here and there, but slice by slice they are taken away from us, and we have to start all over again in the constant struggle to try and get a decent standard of living. Poverty has soared and then slightly abated, homeless has grown and then slightly abated, child poverty has increased and then slightly abated. However, none of these problems have ever been addressed  and solved. Nor can they, the system is incapable of solving these problems, or surely it would have done so by now. Have no illusions, the system has the wealth and the resources to sort it all out, but doesn't. Based on the profit motive, these problems are actual results of the system, a few must gain while the majority must lose, that's capitalism. So if you wish to see that 45% of UK children ceasing to be a statistic on a poverty scale, if you wish to see those 1.8 million pensioners live the remainder of their lives in reasonable comfort, don't ask for better allowances, organise to destroy the system that is responsible for these statistics of misery and anxiety. We must accept that it is a class war, and at the moment we are losing, but we have the numbers, the ability, the resources and the imagination, to turn that tide and be the winners of that better world for all.

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

I Daniel Blake.

       Last night Stasia and I went to see the Ken Loach film, "I Daniel Blake", we both found it the most powerful and moving film we had seen. We left the cinema traumatised, not because we didn't know the facts and all the statistics of the system before hand. In my case I felt that I wasn't watching a film, I was looking through a window at the real life of real people. Real, honest decent people, being slowly destroyed through an inhuman bureaucratic system designed to attempt to fit people, through a confusing and humiliating process, into non-existent jobs, fit for work or not. A system of slowly breaking down the self respect of the individual. A system callously set up by faceless bureaucrats, devoid of human empathy, knowing that it would fail in its stated aims. If anybody sees this film, and leaves the cinema without a gut wrenching desire to pull down and destroy this vicious inhumane system, they have lost their empathy with humanity.

       Some of the figures to back up the film. In this extremely rich country of approximately 65 million, 13.5 million live in poverty. This breaks down as 7.9 million working age adults, 3.9 million children, and 1.6 million pensioners. There are over 1 million individuals in work in the low paid industries who live in poverty. This breaks down as, residential care workers, 130,00, accommodation and catering workers, 360,000, and in that back bone of the consumer society, the retail trade, 460,000 of these workers live in poverty.

     There were 2,380 individuals who died shortly after their Employment Support Allowance was stopped. Between December 2011 and February 2014, a staggering 50,850 individuals claiming ESA died, of those 7,200 had been judged, by this bureaucratic killing machine, as fit and able to return to work.

      This is the traumatic reality that crushes so many honest decent people, who through no fault of their own, find themselves, entangled in the vicious claws of this inhuman, callous and  destructive bureaucracy, operated by robotic rule obeying, automatons. A system designed to silence them through frustration, humiliation and the destruction of their self worth, and at the same time save money by getting rid of social spending.

     As one commentator said, "I Daniel Blake" is a rallying call for the dispossessed, I wouldn't be surprised if you wake up one morning and find your local job Centre with large graffiti saying, "I Daniel Blake".  "I'm Spartacus", solidarity is the weapon to defeat this festering nightmare of injustice and inequality called capitalism.

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

The New European Pension Credits!!!

       The horror of deprivation that exists in Greece since they were "saved" by the financial Mafia, (the Troika) doesn't get much coverage in that babbling Brook of bullshit, the media, but it is still there and likely to get worse. With the events over the last few weeks in Cyprus, where the Troika again stepped in to "save" them, we can expect the same pattern to emerge. You can take it that the "economy" in Cyprus has totally gone down the tubes. Who cares about the people, we saved the bank, or did we? Now the CEO of the third largest bank in Italy, thought to be the oldest bank in the world, has just announced that recently billions of Euro, have flown out of the banks vaults and he has no idea how much is left there. It is beginning to be come very obvious that the big money feels it can no longer trust the banksters, why should we? By the way, this bank has been bailed-out twice already, but that doesn't seem to have solved the problem.

      It is only a matter of time before the Greek standard of living becomes the norm across most of Europe, there can be no doubt that at the moment the ordinary people of Greece and Cyprus are in a race to the gutter, thanks to the help from the financial Mafia. Unless the people of Europe call a halt to this insanity of sacrificing people at the altar of finance, the cancer of poverty and deprivation will eat its way through Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland and with these countries mired in poverty, what chance for the rest of Europe to maintain its present miserable and precarious standard of living?

   Another very poignant photo from Teacher Dude's Grill & BBQ. Though taken in Greece, it could be coming to a city near you, soon, very soon.

Greek pensioner scavenging among rubbish on a Saturday afternoon, just before the city's central market closes for the weekend.

Some other Teacher Dude's photos of Greek pensioners survival methods.

ann arky's home.

GET OLDER, SUFFER POVERTY.

            One way to measure a civilised country is to look at how it cares for its most vulnerable citizens. First we should remember that in spite of all the crap poured out by our millionaire lords and masters, this country is a very rich country. As we get older we take our place among the vulnerable, so how does Britain, a modern rich country, care for its elderly? Well British pensioners are among the poorest in Europe, in this country more than two million older people are at risk of poverty. In 2010 21.4% of elderly British were classed as being at risk of poverty, dwarfing the European average of 15.9%. The only nations in Europe who treated their elderly worse were Cyprus with 45.2%, followed by Bulgaria at 32.3%, then Spain at 21.7%. We are shamed by such figures as Hungary 4.1%, the Netherlands, 5.9% and Luxembourg, 5.9%. Of course it is not just the elderly that are at risk of poverty in this country. In 2010, 10.7 million people, 17.1% of the population, were at the risk of poverty, where as the European average is 16.4%. So all the nonsense pumped out by the media and the establishment, that we in this country are better off than everybody else is bullshit. What these figures show is that almost a sixth of the entire population of Europe is living with the risk of poverty and that risk rises as we get older. This is the best that capitalism can do, from this dismal position, thanks to the “austerity”, “deficit reduction” plans, we are heading in a downward direction. The system can only deliver poverty for millions while the financial Mafia grow fatter on salaries that have shown a 51% increase in the last couple of years. I find it strange that we tolerate a system that hands astronomical bonuses to parasitical fat-cats and sinks the rest of the population into Victorian deprivation. It doesn't take much imagination to come up with a system that would see to the needs of all our people, but first we have to get the fat-cats and the parasitical financial Mafia off our backs. Shed that burden and we are almost there.

ann arky's home.