How Long Are They Going To Get Away With It?

        The so called “crisis” was in 2008 and here we are in 2014 and the ordinary people are still being kicked in the teeth, under the guise of “balancing the books”. The “crisis” was a wonderful opportunity for the corporate/financial greed machine to put pressure on the political class to create a sweatshop Europe. Of course the political class willingly agreed, they are the managers of this ideology of “austerity” and its resultant misery and deprivation.

      The sad truth is that they seem to be getting away with their callous disregard for human dignity. In their eager endeavour to placate their corporate/financial masters they have introduced a series of measures to syphon all wealth upwards, to plunder public assets and privatise all social services. In doing this they slash the living standards of all the ordinary people.

We've had to make some tough decisions.

      They have introduced slave labour under the nice sounding name of “workfare”. This scheme gives the corporate world an army of free labour to swell their coffers. The big corporate names are queuing up to grab a share of this free bonus to the balance sheet. At present there are more than 180,000 people in “government supported training and employment programmes”. This is growing as the threat of sanctions force people, who in most cases are already in poverty, to accept this slave labour scheme, or face total deprivation.

       Another inhumane scheme they dreamed up to cut social spending, is the bedroom tax. If you, for what ever circumstances, find you have a “spare room” you are forced to move to a smaller house, and there aren't any, or lose a portion of your council tax benefit. Recent statistics show that there are well over 500,000 people facing the threat of homelessness due to this inhumane, ideology driven, attack on the poorer section of our communities.

       Probably the most brutal and callous of their schemes so far, is their attack on the disabled. They always give these savage attacks nice sounding names, in this case it is called the disability assessment process. This translates as, cut disability allowance. The government has paid millions of pounds to the firm ATOS, to carry out this attack on the wellbeing and dignity of the disabled, and so far they have done this with an amazing ineptitude and indifference to those being “assessed”. 

       The ATOS assessment has seen more than 10,000 deaths that can be related to this assessment process. That is 10,000 disabled people who have been caught up in this ATOS assessment process, and dying. I think part of Michael Meacher's statement in the House of Commons last year is worth quoting, 

      "The fundamental issue is this: how can pursuing with such insensitive rigour 1.6 million claimants on incapacity benefit, at a rate of 11,000 assessments every week, be justified when it has led, according to the Government’s own figures, to 1,300 persons dying after being put into the work-related activity group, 2,200 people dying before their assessment is complete, and 7,100 people dying after being put into the support group? Is it reasonable to pressurise seriously disabled persons into work so ruthlessly when there are 2.5 million unemployed, and when on average eight persons chase every vacancy, unless they are provided with the active and extensive support they obviously need to get and hold down work, which is certainly not the case currently?"

       Six years on from the “crisis” and these policies are set to continue indefinitely, they are policies that suit the corporate world, privatising everything, cheap labour, zero hours contracts, and eight people chasing every job, which helps to keep down wages. So why should they change them? If we don't like them, then we will have to be the ones to change things. The political class are part and parcel of the corporate/financial world, they have nothing to do with our world. We are mere dispensable units to be used or discarded according to profit levels. We mine, make, grow, and distribute everything on this planet, We don't need the parasites on our back, we can create a much fairer world on our own, but they do need us. 

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

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

When Anger Reaches Critical Mass??

      As I keep spouting, there isn't a country on the planet that hasn't got people on the streets, venting their anger and disgust at the present system, voicing their outrage at the injustice and inequality that blights so many people's lives, all in the midst of unbelievable wealth. We struggle to survive surrounded by opulence. More and more people are realising this is not necessary, we are capable of seeing to the needs of all our people, but are hindered by a bunch of greedy pampered parasites who attempt to lock us into a system that feeds their bloated bank accounts at the expense of the well being of the people.

    I believe that awareness is the first step to change, and awareness is spreading rapidly across the continents of this world. People no longer accept the political system, and in most cases hold the political class in contempt, seeing them as the paid managers of a corporate system of greed and exploitation. Is that feeling of anger, disgust, reaching the critical point where change is unstoppable, where the old system will be demolished and that better world built in its place? If so, we need to have in our minds what that better world will look like, we need to clarify our desires and the principles on which to build that better world for our kids and grandkids. We need to think mutual aid, co-operation, equality, dignity and justice for all, we must put the needs of all our people as the basic building blocks, and build on sustainability.

      In America, that country at the pinnacle of the capitalist system, where, if it did what it says on the packet, everybody should be doing great. However, in that land of super capitalism, poverty, deprivation, and growing anger are the odours that fill the air. 

This from Workers World:

What will it take to defeat dead-end capitalism?

Dear sisters and brothers,

     There is a big change taking place in the United States this year. It has not yet been seen in mass outbreaks of struggle. But it is there. You can almost feel it, breathe it in the air. It is a growing change in the consciousness of the working class. It is especially strong among its most impoverished and oppressed sectors, including immigrants, but it is everywhere.

There is:

•  A growing resentment of the very rich, the only ones to benefit from the so-called recovery.

• A feeling that the capitalist, profit-driven system has run up against a brick wall and will not, cannot provide a real, lasting solution to the growing poverty felt by more and more people.

• A disgust with the politicians of both wings of the capitalist parties — Republican and Democratic alike. They are seen as part of the problem, not part of the solution.

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

MODERN IMPERIALISM - CORPORATE FASCISM!!

            We can go through the wars that the UK, as a Western imperialist power, has been involved in since the beginning of the 20^th century, World War 1, 1914-18, World war 2, 1939-45, Korea, 1950-53, Suez, 1956-56, and the short but bloody Falklands 1982-82. All these wars have one thing in common, the all have an end date. However in 2001 Western imperialism entered a new phase, we entered the era of the war without end, the war on terrorism. Not long after the 9/11 attacks in America, president George W. Bush announced a new doctrine, a new national security strategy of pre-emptive war, to strike at terrorist groups and states that allegedly pose a threat, or are developing a credible threat, to the United States, Britain and most of the Western nations actively supported this stand. Obama continued this doctrine, and what it is, is basically a licence for the West to wage aggressive war whereever they think fit. Ironically, Obama endorsed the doctrine of pre-emptive war, when giving a speech accepting the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. What he endorsed was the type of action that the Nuremberg trials at the end of World War 2, had outlawed and condemned.

        There is absolutely no doubt that our cynical political class have been using the war on terror to keep the population in a permanent state of fear and to push through military and surveillance contracts, handing the corporate world trillions in tax payers money. In America since the 9/11 event, the US ruling political elite has spent US$8 trillion on homeland security. The war on terror is also intended to give their imperialist wars across the globe, a stamp of legitimacy. Of course we can ask, is the world any safer because of the illegal war on terror and its accompanying financial cost and human death and suffering? Has the obliteration of Iraq as a functioning country and the 10 year slaughter in Afghanistan made the world a safer place to live?

         I think it is safe to say that the war on terror has failed miserably to stop attacks on Western countries. We are told that it has foiled numerous attacks on Western cities, but we never get the information to verify these stories. What we can be sure of is that the actual manifestation of the war on terror, extraordinary renditions, unmanned drones with their death and destruction, barbaric torture and inhumane treatment at Guantanamo and Bagram prison, Western forces killing thousands of Muslim civilians across large swaths of the planet, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, to mention a few, is and will continue to build up an unstoppable anger and hatred of the West. You can't make friends with people while you destroy their homes and kill their family and friends. The war on terror is one method of securing natural resources for the West and feeding trillions of tax payers money to the massive corporate military industrial complex that controls our subservient and complicit political class. In the West, imperialism is alive and well.

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WILL IT BE A MERRY CHRISTMAS??

       Our dupicious millionaire politicians are still feeding us crap about improving the economy by austerity cuts, while those in the know are more or less saying it is all over and we are heading for the biggest collapse of the financial system - ever. The Greek people are in the front line of the harshest attack on anybody's living standards seen in Europe. They are expected to accept wage cuts, pension cuts, social service cuts, increase taxes, plus VAT up to 23%, a new porporty tax on all property, increased unemployment and price increases on energy and food. The attacks on the general public will become more vicious and more wide spread as the greed created crisis rapidly deepens.

      At the moment we have mass demonstrations in Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, with plans for co-ordinated union demostrations in the UK. The various goverments are not listening to the people, they can't, they are impotent in the face of the dictates from the leader of the banking cartel, the IMF (International Mankind Fuckers) and the policy from them will continue to be, screw the people and hand the tax payers money to the banks. In this corporate fascist system we live under they hold total power over the political class and the International Mankind Fuckers will not allow their cartel to go down. When will the demonstrations turn to open revolt?

ann arky's home.