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.
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.
