Two-Faced.

Image courtesy of Church Times.

           As a rule, I don't like writing about the Sunak and Starmer gangs and their election antics, I usually refer to the elections as the "crooks and liars" competitions, as they each tell whoppers to try and impress and win the gullible. However, having lived almost 90 years and seen the pantomime of our political ballerinas perform their many grand illusions in many guises, I have to admit that these two take the biscuit and live somewhere under the belly of a snail, according to their stand on humanity. The £700+ millionaire Sunak waffles from one thing to another in an attempt to be the superman for all. While at the same time his stance on the genocide taking place in Gaza denies any grasp of humanity. However he is behaving as one would expect the Tories to act. Starmer on the other hand is supposed to be the leader of a party that stands up for the ordinary people, but advices his members not to take part in pickets, and now, not to take part in any Palestinian related protests. a wee bit dictatorial perhaps! As a lawyer on international law he doesn't seem to understand the meaning of genocide nor of collective punishment, both banned in international law.

Image courtesy of Channel 4.

 

           The pubic have lived under dreadful conditions after 13 years of Tory rule, if Starmer wins the next election, then dear citizens, expect more of the same. He and his cronies will play the same game of economics to the rules of the big boys, the financial Mafia. They will call the shots on how our tax money should be spent, they will control the purse strings, as they have done since the birth of cancerous capitalism. State and capital always work hand in hand to the benefit of the wealthy, and to hell with the rest of us.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info    

BoJo.

                                               Image courtesy of Umbrella online.

           The mainstream media has made a big splash about Boris the Buffoon resigning from Parliament, let the speculation begin. Boris has jumped before he was pushed, Boris will do anything  to save his earning capacity. This liar, charlatan, narcissistic, bumbling, incoherent product of the Oxbridge sausage factory came to gain power because of his wealth and background, not because of his intelligence. He is typical of what the mass producers at the Oxbridge sausage factory turnout, power because of the wealth and privileges, yet these are the people we constantly hand over our power to, for them to "take care of our affairs". By now we should have learned that all they do is look after their corporate conies and their own off-shore accounts. Time and time again they are found to be dodging taxes, claiming expenses to which they are not entitled. They take petty jobs with large companies and receive fabulous fees, not for their knowledge of the business, but for the strings they can pull in parliament. So while they continually stuff their off shore accounts, they give us austerity, underfunded NHS, closed libraries, swimming pools, community centres a crumbling education system and a collapsed social care service. While they allow the corporate world to rip us off with hyper-inflation, so that the financial Mafia can recapitalise their rotten corrupt system. So rejoicing at the departure of one of these political ballerinas is an empty celebration, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, is still stuffed full of narcissistic greed driven charlatans, still riding the gravy train, which we, in our blind folly, fund and allow them to do without hindrance. Bring the whole rotten system down, it's the only answer to our problems.

                                              Image courtesy of Wealden District.

 

Visit ann arky at https://spiritofrevolt.info  

Child Poverty.

       All my adult life, come an election, or as I prefer to call them, the crooks and liars competition, I have heard our political ballerinas sing the usual chorus, "We will end homelessness and we will end child poverty". They don't all sing in tune, they all have their own variation. Here I am 87 years old and the latest figures show that in every Scottish local authority, child poverty has increased over the last 6 years.
        Recent figures compiled by Loughborough University create a shocking picture, a scandal of a failed system. The report shows that before we were hit with the pandemic in Scotland, 2019-20, 26% of children were living in poverty, an increase from 23% 2018-19, and up from 24% 2017-18. Glasgow saw the largest increase, up 5.i%. Glasgow child poverty was approximately one in three children struggled under the yoke of child poverty, while in our so called better areas, East Renfrewshire, almost one in six children saw their lives blunted by poverty.
       These are damning figures for a so called advanced developed country, by any standard. However I don't think those party political animals should jump up and say, "Ah, a failure of the SNP", England fares no better. In Middlesborough, child poverty grew by an astonishing 12.5% between 2014-15 and 2018, the largest increase in the UK. Tower Hamlets boasts the worst child poverty in the UK with 55,4%, followed by Newham with 50.3% then Barking and Dagenham with 49.9%. Outside London Birmingham takes the prize for child poverty with 41.6%. Another disgusting aspect of this child poverty epidemic is that 68% of those children bighted by poverty, are in families where at least one adult is working. Bang goes their crap phony mantra, that "the best way out of poverty is through work". 

        These figures of child poverty, should not be seen as some sort of statistics, they are young lives being blunted, potential being thwarted, young health being damaged and lives disfigured, all unnecessarily.  The UK is one of the richest countries in the world, a country that can spend an estimated £104 billion on a high speed rail from London to Birmingham and throw billions at nuclear weapons and trident submarines, but fails miserably to attend to child poverty. 

 

 

        This system of capitalism has had centuries to create a decent life for all involved and has proved to be an abysmal failure. It is a system built on exploitation, power and privileges for the wealthy few, hard work and struggle for the rest of us. The answer lies not in listening to the chorus from our political ballerinas, but in the dismantling of the insanity of capitalism and the state and replacing it with a system of community based co-operation, equality, sustainability and fairness, freed from the cancer of the profit motive and the authoritarian shackles of the state, a system that sees to the needs of all our people. Only then will we see an end to child poverty, and I can stop hearing year in year out, that pathetic chorus sung by vote beggars at each crooks and liars competition, "We will end child poverty". 

 

 

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

No Vote.

 

        At the moment all the bubble and squeak on the media is "the election" who will be voted in to wear the crown for American imperialism. What seldom hits the headlines is who, with power over our lives, we never get the opportunity to vote in or out. The financial institutions, investment banks, fund managers, the corporate CEOs, a coterie of parasites that make up the financial Mafia that control the levers of this economic system called capitalism. That gang of expensive suits that make their decisions behind closed doors, far from the prying eyes of the public, but who control how the society that public inhabits, will be shaped. They dictate directions to elected parties by means of extravagantly funded "lobbyists", all legal, but with gifts, opportunities and donations as persuaders, to oil the greasy hands of our political ballerinas. There is no such thing as a poor member of Parliament, all those who enter that edifice to imperialism, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, leave much richer than when they entered.

        Instead of concentrating on those participants in our national farce of "Lairs and Corruption" competitions, sometimes known as elections, we should be paying much more attention to those we don't get an opportunity to vote on, the parasite class, the financial mafia and their bedfellows. That's where the real power in this greed driven insanity lies, that's the ones who hold and the reigns of power, who hold the wealth and bask in a swath of privileges, all gleaned from the toil and sweat of you and I. 

 

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

My Moan.

 

         So the covid19 pandemic again grows, did we really expect it would be other? A pandemic that has political ballerinas at the helm is bound to be a disaster. Especially if those same political ballerinas have a vested interest in the growth of the economy. All the decisions made in this fight against the pandemic will be made by people who have shares in companies, friends and family who own, run and/or are shareholders in businesses. Their decisions will be shaped by these facts, the strategy tainted by these influences, the economy will play an important part in all their decision making. This will move the health and welfare of the people down a notch, where as it should be at the top of the agenda.
        We have seen enough suffering and deaths with this method of trying to control this pandemic, it’s time we took the decision making out of the hands of economic vested interest and put full control in the hands of the medical and scientific minds, those who are experts in the field of disease and human health and welfare.
       Our political ballerinas will always feed you this crap about saving jobs, opening up the economy, which translates as, ”Get out there and get those tills ringing, our friends are losing money” and with scant regard to the results on the people. Only when the results, which were predictable, start to alarm the people, do they start to apply a temporary brake to their profit orientated strategy. 

 

          We have to demand that we take the economy out of the equation, and put the full strength of the medical and scientific establishment to takeover the tackling of this pandemic. Otherwise it will be a continual rivalry between those with power and wealth protecting that wealth and power and the risks to the general population. To date billions of tax payers money has been handed to big business, with the bullshit tag “to save jobs” We are always being told of the wonderful capitalist system, well let’s remind them this is capitalism, if your business isn’t making money then it should go bust. If it has an essential function for society, then take it into public ownership. All those billions should have gone into the health and welfare of the people, in the battle against this pandemic, which will never be won if the political ballerinas continue to hold control. So let's screw the economy and save the people.

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

The Perennial Question.

The Warmth Of A Dream.

He lay in a dark doorway, dreamed of home,

night frost locked his joints

morning rain chilled the marrow of his bone.

In the dream there was a sister,

a pram in a garden, a crowd of youngsters

who called him "mister", a time of little pain.

Are these youngsters the same young men, who

now laugh at him, throw beer cans,

piss on him as he lies dunk in some dark lane?

When was that first step down this slippery slope,

when was that first step to no forgiveness.

No will to rise to beg for food,

numbness kills the pain.

The dream brings a warmth that feels good,

dark fog shades out consciousness,

an ambulance carries off a body washed in rain.

       Homelessness is back in the news again, with our new bunch of pampered, privileged parasitical government ministers in control spouting how they are going to resolve this problem and the money they will throw at it. At the tender young age of 85, 86 next month, I wish I could remember how many governments I have heard spew out this mantra, but the problem still remains. It is the same with child poverty, each new bunch of political ballerinas pledges how they will end the scourge of child poverty, alas-alack, it is still with us. 

      It is now being stated that the official figures for homeless are inaccurate and a gross under estimate, as if we didn't know. The truth being that the true number of homeless in this country as away far beyond "shocking", it is a criminal indictment against the system. Homelessness is a rather tame word, it belies the underlying world contained in that simple word. The true meaning of homelessness is, a miserable existence, a life of anxiety, a blighted life, a damaged health, a stunted potential, and in many cases an early death.

      As long as wealth governs quality of life, there will be those with no quality of life, such a system breeds and fosters homelessness. Glasgow is no stranger to this avoidable punishment inflicted on some unfortunate individuals and families.  

      This from Glasgow Live:

 

       New figures have revealed an increase in the number of homeless deaths in Glasgow.
     Statistics published today by the National Records of Scotland show there were 100.5 estimated deaths per million population in Glasgow in 2018, considerably more than any other city in Scotland. This compares to 63.5 estimated deaths per million in Glasgow in 2017.
     Aberdeen was second behind our city in terms of the 2018 stats, with 67.8 estimated deaths per million. The Scottish average was found to be 35.9. East Renfrewshire was the only council area with no homeless deaths in either year.
    Meanwhile, there were an estimated 195 deaths of people experiencing homelessness across the country in 2018, an increase from the 2017 figure of 164. Scotland had the highest rate of homeless deaths of all GB countries in 2018, with a rate of 35.9 per million population compared to 16.8 in England and 14.5 in Wales.

   Should I see another 85 years and we are still persisting with the same economic system, then I will still be hearing how our lords and master are going to get rid of child poverty and end homelessness. Surely by now anyone with a shred of intelligence and a slight grasp of our history would come to the conclusion that this present economic capitalist system can't solve our problems and has to be demolished once and for all.

The Homeless. 

Tenebrous spectres, they exist,   out there,

on the crumbling edge of chaos.

A father, a son, a brother,

a daughter, a sister, a mother.

Fragments of some shattered family structure;

waste products

from a society being driven to destruction

by a hurricane of greed

living a life that wears out life,

dying,

the devious death of exhaustion from existence.  

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

Hunt The ****.

       I don't as a rule, often slate individual political ballerinas, they are all dangerous charlatans in my book, and all deserve the same level of contempt. However sometimes something appears in the "news" that seems to set me off on a rant, and Jeremy Hunt's call for a massive increase in war spending, just tipped me over the edge, though it shouldn't have, as it is just true to form. 

      Jeremy Hunt, our foreign secretary, admirer of Trump, has come out with an appeal for the government to vastly increase its spending on its war machine, in line with Trump's demands and sabre rattling. I'm surprised he can talk at all, due to the very large silver spoon he was born with in his mouth. Deemed to be the richest member of the cabinet, is quite a claim among a bunch of very rich and privileged parasites.

      This privileged prancing political ballerina, making such demands, is obviously unaware of the increasing poverty among our children and working families, he will not have noticed the homelessness, areas crying out for more resources. How could he be aware of these facts, he is from a different world. He has an excellent pedigree for his class, a product of the Oxbridge sausage factory, a distant relative of Queen Elizabeth II and Oswald Mosley, and from a Royal Navy background, what more could his class ask for.

     These are the types of other world privileged parasites that we allow to shape our lives and our communities, they shape society to the benefit of their class and to hell with the population at large. No doubt his bold militaristic demands is to win the hearts and minds of his party's backwoods, shooting and fishing landed gentry, in an endeavour to land the big job, party leader. 

     Why do we let them take our wealth and turn it into a war machine for their benefit only? Why do we allow those from another alien privileged world to keep us under the yoke of poverty, while they play war games for the benefit of their class and their class alone? Surely we can see through their subterfuge, illusions and lies. We don't belong in their world, and they certainly don't belong in ours.

From Wikipedia:

Early life and education

        Jeremy Hunt was born in Lambeth Hospital, Kennington,[5] the eldest son of Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt,[6] who was then a Commander in the Royal Navy assigned to work for the Director of Naval Plans inside the recently created Ministry of Defence,[7] and his wife Meriel Eve née Givan (now Lady Hunt), daughter of Major Henry Cooke Givan.[8] Hunt is a descendant of Streynsham Master, a pioneer of the East India Company.[9]
       Hunt was raised in Shere, Surrey, near the constituency that he represents in Parliament.[10] He is a distant relation of Elizabeth II and Oswald Mosley.[11]
      Hunt was educated at Charterhouse where he was Head of School.[6] He then read Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and took a first class honoursBachelor of Arts (BA) degree. He became involved in Conservative politics while at university, where David Cameron and Boris Johnson were contemporaries.[12] He was active in the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA), and was elected to serve as President in 1987.[12]

 Early career
       After university Hunt worked for two years as a management consultant at OC&C Strategy Consultants, and then became an English language teacher in Japan.[13]

      On his return to Britain he tried his hand at a number of different entrepreneurial business ventures, including a failed attempt to export marmalade to Japan.[14] In 1991, Hunt co-founded a public relations agency named Profile PR specialising in IT with Mike Elms, a childhood friend.[13] Hunt and Elms later sold their interest in Profile PR to concentrate on directory publishing.
       Hunt had been interested in creating a 'guide to help people who want to study rather than just travel abroad'[15] and together with Elms founded a company known as Hotcourses in the 1990s, a major client of which is the British Council.[16] Hunt stood down as director of the company in 2009, however still retained 48% of the shares in the company which were held in a blind trust, before Hotcourses was sold in January 2017 for over £30 million to Australian education organisation IDP Education. He personally gained over £14 million from the sale and in doing so became the richest Cabinet member.[16][17][18]

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

Brexit, We Need A Bit More Anarchy.

         I have mostly stayed away from the Brexit pantomime being performed by our political ballerinas, as it is nothing more than a squabble between the various capitalist groupings in the UK on how best to exploit the people of this island. My only comment was to say that in or out, half way in or half way out, we will still be governed and exploited by the capitalist class. My only surprise is how they have managed to get the vast majority of the exploited to join in and take sides in this battle on the methodology of how to exploit the people of the UK.

       I post the following article because it more or less repeats my sentiments and lets me vent a little bile.

This from Anarchist News:
via Anarchist Communist Group

      The spectacle of the Brexit debacle would be comic if it weren’t for the fact that the consequences of the antics of the politicians will be felt largely by the working class. We are seeing the complete inadequacy of politicians of all shades. The phrase, ‘they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery’ comes to mind! So why do we still let them decide our future?
       It is clear that they are only thinking of their own political futures rather than sorting anything out. The right-wing Tories want to see Britain becoming some kind of Singapore – an offshore unregulated tax haven off the coast of Europe in which workers are exploited even more then they are already. The SNP has eyes only for what might make people more likely to vote for an independent Scotland. Labour is divided between those who think leaving the EU and curtailing immigration will somehow make it possible to have a workers’ paradise under the leadership of Corbyn and those who are forging links with business interests who want cheap labour and free trade. The centre – some Tories and Liberal Democrats – are mainly concerned with business stability and keeping markets open to business. Then there are the racists and the little Englanders who think that by leaving the EU the British Empire will live again.

       For anarchist communists, whether in or out of the institutions that are the EU, we know that the only way we will be able to resist the attacks from the bosses and the State is to build up a strong international working class movement. We argue for no borders, not the open borders of capitalism, but the free movement of people whether they are from Europe or elsewhere. Low wages and poor conditions can only be fought by a strong united movement which includes all workers wherever they come from originally.

 

 

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

 

UK, Land Of Privilege And Poverty.

 

         Once again that clump of land, know as the UK, the forth richest country in the world, has been exposed as a class ridden, land of inequality. A land mired in poverty, strewn with destitution, where a small cabal live a life of unimaginable opulence, at the expense of the many.
        Inequality of wealth between the poorest and the richest is wider in UK than any other developed country, and is widening. 

Photo

       First, earnings of the top 10 per cent of full-time workers doubled between 1978 and 2008, whereas those of the median grew by 60 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent by just a quarter. After the financial crisis, overall earnings fell substantially over the next five years before recovering slightly, but they are falling once again. This combination of absolute decline following generations of widening inequality explains much of the current sense of unfairness.
      Second, the standard measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, shows Britain’s post-tax inequality rising strongly in the 1980s (from 28 per cent in 1978 to 41 per cent in 1990) though it has stabilised a little since (to around 37 per cent). Having once been one of the more egalitarian developed countries, the UK is now one of the least. Third, there has been an extraordinary concentration of rewards in the hands of the top 1 per cent, and within that group, the top 0.10 per cent.
     Finally, wealth inequality is greater than for incomes and is growing. In the absence of compensating wealth taxation, high earners can turn their income into assets, and the value of assets can be compounded through investment. This is then passed on as inheritance, entrenching inequality across time between generations and classes.

         Recently our political ballerinas, mostly wealthy products of the Oxbridge sausage factory, were all aghast at the audacity of the UN Rapporteur Philip Alston when he released his report on poverty in the UK. Foaming at the mouth they declared, how dare he put on display, the extent of poverty and destitution in this country. They went into convulsions when he claimed that the extreme poverty and destitution in this country was a deliberate result of government choices rather than inevitable circumstances.

Austerity
      Alston was critical of the “mentality” behind cuts and reforms introduced in the past few years that have brought misery and torn at the social fabric. “British compassion for those who are suffering has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and callous approach …”
Universal credit
      The government’s ambitious programme to simplify the benefits system was a good idea in principle but was “fast falling into universal discredit” and should be overhauled. It was gratuitously punitive in its effects. Draconian sanctions and long payment delays drove claimants into hardship, depression and despair.

       Of course ordinary Joes, like you and I, knew all this, we didn't need a UN Rapporteur to tell us of the extreme poverty and destitution in this clump of land, nor did we need to be told that deliberate policies were the cause. We have lived with it for years, we have seen the result among our friends, family and neighbours. We are also aware of who is responsible for these policy choices that created this quagmire of despair, and we also know that to expect those wealth privileged political ballerinas to start to spread the wealth of this country more equally is fantasy from cloud cuckoo land.
       The answer is to rid ourselves of these prancing, privileged parasites, and take control of wealth and resources of this rich and wealth plot of land, and start to create a system that will spread those riches in a fair manner, seeing to the needs of all our people. We can do it without UN Rapporteurs, political ballerinas, and privileged worthless parasites. The sooner we start, the quicker we will see all that poverty, despair and destitution disappear.

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

There Is Only So Much Bullshit We Will Take.

      I didn't get any of this from any of the tributaries of that babbling brook of bullshit, our mainstream media, you have to look elsewhere for any real news. How long before the rest of the country decides it has had enough of the bullshit fed to them from our political ballerinas via the bullshit propaganda machine called the "media"?

This from Act For Freedom Now:

Report from events outside the New Cross Assembly

     What we saw last night 6.11.18 was real people power in action, as people continue to fight against the destruction of Tidemill community wildlife garden in Deptford and the eviction of the adjacent flats at Reginald House. This follows last week’s eviction of the Tidemill occuption by hordes of cops and bailiffs, which was strongly resisted throughout the day. The area now remains a fortified zone, permanently surrounded by dozens of bailiffs.
      At 7pm on Tuesday evening, around 40 people, furious about the planned destruction of yet another green space & eviction of yet more council flats, gathered to protest at the Lewisham Mayor and councillors who were due to speak at the New Cross Assembly. Despite there being plenty of empty seats in the room, us common riff-raff were shut out and prevented from participating in their ‘democratic processes’.
       So instead we made our feelings heard from the outside, banging on the gates and makeshift drums and eventually making it right up close to the half-open windows, through which cries of “stop demolition”, “careerist parasites!” and “no one believes your lies!”, and plenty of cheers of support for the angry locals inside the event were expressed.
      Councillor Joe Dromey, a particularly smug-faced, upper-class advocate of the destruction (and son of Harriet Harman no less) was the first politico to leave the event. As he did so, he was mobbed by the fiery crowd. He couldn’t face his constituents and eventually opted to be bungled into a police van to drive him home.
      Meanwhile, Lewisham Mayor Damien Egan’s attempts to make a quiet getaway were foiled, as the crowd spotted him and encircled his car. Some people lay passively in the road while others stood around the car. The message was made very clear to the young mayor: drop the development, hands off tidemill. The cops waded in and, without giving any formal warnings to leave, set about dragging people out the road and violently chucking people about left right and centre. Several of them appeared completely unhinged, charging and punching people in the face.
      For about 5-10 minutes, the mayor’s car was unable to leave its parking space as the scuffles with the cops continued. Eventually, enough violence was used by the police to clear the path, enabling the mayor and his colleague to begin driving slowly through the backstreets of Deptford. But at every turn, brave and passionate people with little concern for their own safety, got back into the road, or tried to make barricades with bins. This was it: Tidemill had become a symbol of every dodgy development project in the area, of lie after lie by self-serving and patronising local politicians, of destruction of our neighbourhood and the environment. People really have had enough.
       To get the car through, the police had to bring in heavy reinforcements and dogs. Met police Commissioner Cressida Dick even made her way down by the end of it and was sighted talking to the chief cop on the scene. At one point, crazed skinhead cop #1393 inexplicably made a beeline for a harmless and entirely peaceful young brown man who was walking alone about 10 metres ahead. This psychopath threw himself on this poor lad, chucked him to the floor and proceeded to asphixiate the totally passive guy, digging his thumbs into pressure-points on his neck so that his face was rammed up against the concrete, and knelt on his knee for extra measure. It looked like he was going to kill the guy, and the many people who witnessed it said so. Given that there were lots of people who had been much closer to Egan’s car, this was yet another overt case of pure racism, premeditated assault, and outright police brutality. This took people’s attention away from Egan’s car which was then able to get away onto New Cross Road at around 10pm. The poor guy was arrested and taken to Lewisham police station, where a group went to support him.
      The racist assault & arrest by the cops aside, the night was a really promising one. It was fantastic to see impassioned people taking to the streets again, uncompromisingly defending our neighbourhood from corporate parasites, fighting ecocidal destruction, and refusing to play to their silly game of ineffectual quiet protest.
      Later that night, Councillors Joe Dromey and Paul Bell pulled out the inevitable tired old tropes of ‘legitimate’ vs. ‘illegitimate’ protestors, masked vs. unmasked, young vs. old, ‘native residents’ vs. interlopers, poor vs. middle class & respectable -i.e. those naive enough to continue to play along with their sham consultations and faux democratic processes.
      No-one but your suited cronies buy it. We’ve gone right through the petitions, the utterly futile ‘debate’ in your forums, the legal processes and the passive protests. And Lewisham Council has run roughshod over all of them.

There’s only so much bullshit that people will take.

SUSTAIN THE RESISTANCE!

DO NOT LET THE POLITICIANS DIVIDE US!

NO HOMES ON A DEAD PLANET!!!

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

Usual UK Political Ballerinas Ignorance And Arrogance.

         I found this article to be a little breath of fresh air, in the midst of all the brexit fog, illusion and delusion our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media pours out. It is by Paul Walsh and is taken from Ceasefire:

       For Siegfried Sassoon, the frontline was the one place he could get away from the war. For the UK government, the Brexit negotiations are the one place they can get away from Brexit, as this is where their strategy of ignorance is deployed, a strategy which has turned these negotiations into something resembling an out-of-control drinking game — with round after round of insults, half-truths, and accusations — rather than the most important political and economic event in a generation. The process has descended into rhetorical trench warfare.
       So when UK leaders compare the process to a divorce they have a point, of sorts. There are important decisions to make, there are bills to settle, and worse still, lawyers to pay. Yet when a couple divorces, splitting the dog and car in half, divvying up the CDs and tallying up the tablecloths, they tend not to argue about what divorce means as a concept, as a phenomenon, and as a thing. Although there may be an emotional war, there’s no epistemological gulf to bridge. A divorce — messy, soft, hard or amicable — means a separation and a reckoning for both parties.
       Divorce means divorce. And we know this because we have dictionaries and Google. Just imagine the confusion otherwise. Divorce loses its meaning in a sudden freak accident, and one person is taking out cardboard boxes to the car (‘I’m leaving you!’), while the other flicks through travel brochures (‘How about a European River Cruise this year?’) You’d have two people living in two different semantic spheres, each with a completely different understanding of reality and events. Sounds familiar?
         This semantic dementia explains how the UK government, like a modern Miss Havisham, has morphed into a person avoiding the pressures of a real breakup; someone who prefers to wallow in the warm nectar of the past, the nostalgia of yesteryear — a nostalgia that can, in English minds ever susceptible to flickering daydreams of Empire, inflate to unmanageable proportions and like a balloon, just float away.
       This is the misty, nostalgic dream-world of the jilted lover; stranger still, the jilted lover who campaigned for the separation, voted for the breakup, yet who is dumb-founded by the reckoning. This is magical thinking, denial thinking, and the stuff of dreams.
And in that other dream-world of Alice in Wonderland, at the end of a race in which everyone runs in circles, whichever way they like, for however long they like, the Dodo announces: ‘Everybody has won and all must have prizes.’
        And so maybe the Dodo and the ardent Brexiteers are right. Maybe there will be prizes for all after Brexit. Control over immigration. Sovereignty. New trading relationships and new ties. New opportunities. New neighbours! (Who will become, inevitably, good friends.) Why can’t we have a ‘global Britain’ and a leaner, fitter EU?
         Yet as this divorce of separate semantic spheres spins out; as the pound keeps sinking, prices keep rising, and the economy splutters, it’s unclear whether the prize is worth the risk.
And the questions to ask are these: Are you ready to be taken ‘over the top’ by the Brexit officer class of Boris Johnson and co? Are the blithe reassurances and Cheshire cat grin of David Davies, Michael Gove’s invitation to “take back the billions we give to the EU […] squandered on grand parliamentary buildings and bureaucratic follies”, and Liam Fox’s promise of the “glorious joy of free trade” really enough? Or is this officer class simply deluded?
        Perhaps when thinking of the coming Brexit journey, we might heed the words of soldiers serving in the real trenches of Ypres, a hundred years ago: “This farce promises to be a great success and a long run is expected.”
        So be warned. As we fight across a no man’s land of our own making, the distant goal of national strength regained may turn out, on closer inspection, to be mere post-imperial frailty in disguise. And somewhere between now and March 2019, the UK government will realise that the rhetorical trenches from which they fire, and in which they hide, offer no escape from a Brexit reality growing more dangerous and absurd by the day.

Paul Walsh is a teacher, writer, and precarious worker. He writes mainly on grassroots politics, social movements, and neoliberalism. Find him on twitter:@josipa74

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

Let's End The Bullshit, Now.

          I’m 82 years old, and I wonder how many of you can tell me how often I’ve heard our political ballerinas spout, “ We are going to end child poverty”, “We are going to solve the housing crisis”, “We are going to tackle inequality”? Every election, every new leadership battle, this kind of bullshit gets spread over our heads, and sadly on the basis of who says it with the best acting performance, usually gets onto the gravy train.
       Here we are in the 21st. Century, so with all those reassurances from the political careerists, where are we on those three points, child poverty, house shortage and inequality?
       Child poverty, 2014-15 there were approximately 4 million children living in poverty in the UK. That is equivalent to more than 25% of all our kids, in some areas it is much higher, where I live, in Springburn for example, it is 52%. While this is a crime, what is worse is that we have 1.7 million kids living in severe poverty. Of course we will hear the mantra get a job and lift yourself out of poverty, well, 63% of those children living in poverty are in a home where someone is working.
       Housing crisis, not enough homes being built keeps the price of houses high, and rising. More and more people can’t afford a mortgage and with the slashing of social housing, they are forced into expensive private rentals or crap private rented accommodation. The number of homeless households has risen to more than 50,000 a year. Many of these people will wait years for decent accommodation, and many will have dependent children, they will spend years shuffling around temporary accommodation. Approximately 2,000 will have no roof over their heads and will end up sleeping rough. (figures for England)
     Inequality, over the last decade the poorest tenth of our population have seen a fall in their real incomes, while the richest tenth has seen their incomes take a much larger proportional rise than any other group. The vast majority of extra income money has gone to those with above average earnings, with approximately half of this extra money going to the richest tenth of earners.

  The overall message from these various analyses is simple: income inequalities have been increasing, both recently and over longer time periods.  These inequalities have been increasing at both ends of the spectrum.  In other words, the poorest have fallen further behind the average, and the richest have moved further ahead.

       So I have lived for 82 years of being fed pure unadulterated bullshit, though I don't remember the fist five or so, but I imagine they were filled with just the same crap.

        One encouraging feature of today is that the vast majority of the public have absolutely no belief in, or respect for, our established system. They see the political parasites for what they are, a bunch of self-centred, greedy careerists, and the establishment is worried. The growing discontent, and anger is a threat to their control over our lives, and they will go to any lengths to try to reassert that control. One feature of this fear is the latest onslaught against the Corbyn wave of popularity, they can't tolerate anyone with even a faint hint of socialism any where near the levers of control. Their hysteria has gone from reds under the beds, to Trots in the toilets.

       So now would seem the right time to really get aggressive with our anger, with our disgust, now would seem the right moment to take our anger to the streets, to the work places, to the communities. The hysterical parasites are on  the back foot, they are losing control. Perhaps that one large push of organised anger, of well supported direct action, can bring this whole stinking cancerous system tumbling down. 

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