Plundering The Till!!!

     A brief description of our political system, greed, corruption, cronyism, secret deals to line pockets of friends and associates, operated by a bunch of rich two-faced duplicitous callous Oxbridge parasites. I think that is a reasonable and fairly accurate summary of this festering cancer we call capitalist "representative democracy". 

       We could all get on with our daily lives if this bunch of suited mobsters were wheeling and dealing and divvying up their own loot, but unfortunately it is our tax money, they are shuffling into their mates pockets. It's our NHS that is being sliced into money making packages for the greed merchants in the corporate club. It's our social services that are being slashed, to allow their business buddies to step in and provide them, at a profit of course. 

     Is there anyone out there who still believes this cabal of thieving Oxbridge parasites, have anything but the interests of their own class in mind, as they wheel and deal in those corrupt corridors of power, in that decadent encampment on the banks of the Thames, The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption?

     The following is from The Sum Of Us:

     A Tory MP's mates are about to get an £80 million payout from the NHS. At stake is a 10-year contract to provide high-tech medical imaging to cancer patients in five counties. The "winning" bid comes from a private company called Alliance Medical -- whose board of directors includes Sir Malcom Rifkind, Conservative MP for Kensington.

     It's suspicious enough to see a government contract going to a company led by a sitting politician. But it gets worse. There's a rejected bid from a consortium of NHS hospitals -- and that bid would cost the government £7 million less than Sir Rifkind's! For his services to Alliance Medical, Sir Rifkind receives about £60k per annum, so it seems that the company makes quite a profit off his friendship.

     Let's ask the NHS head office: does having a Tory on board make for better medicine? Make your contracting policies transparent so that we can tell!

What's happening is clear. This is another attempt to steal our NHS and hand it off piece by piece to private corporations that will charge us more and serve us less. The government happily announced that this contract was going to a private company -- but hid the fact that Alliance was underbid by a state-run group!

     Healthcare advocates say it's almost impossible to get a glimpse into this kind of procurement deal. That has to change. Privatising the NHS affects us all, yet we're being shut out from the decision and denied public oversight of contracts that take public funds. Whether it's a favour for Sir Rifkind's cronies or simply a willful waste of money, the result is to blind our eyes and yank the NHS from our hands.

     Tell NHS England to put its procurement process where we can see it, and stop sneaking in handouts for corporations and politicians!

Thanks for all that you do,
Angus, Deanna, and the team at SumOfUs 

More information:

NHS Contract Awarded To Private Firm Despite Rival Bid Being “£7 Million Cheaper” Buzzfeed, 27 January 2015

'Selling off NHS for profit': Full list of MPs with links to private healthcare firms, The Mirror, 27 November 2014

Privatisation of the NHS means that
a job the state could do for £73 million is going
to a corporation that wants £80 million.
We don't know how many other handouts
are going to corporations and politicians' mates
-- but we want to find out.
Sign the petition to make NHS contracting processes transparent
and show us where the money's gone!

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

Future Suspended.

      This video by Ross Domoney, may have been post before, but is well worth a second viewing, as it show some very basics of how the system works. Privatisation, plundering public assets and exclude the ordinary people. Creating poverty, breeding racism, dividing the people, while the financial Mafia walk off with the loot.

Future Suspended (2014)

Filmed and edited by Ross Domoney
Co-edited and script by Jaya Klara Brekke
Music composed, performed and recorded by Giorgos Triantafyllou
Assistant editing by Antonis Vradis, Christos Filippidis and Dimitris Dalakoglou
Research by Christos Filippidis, Dimitris Dalakoglou and Antonis Vradis

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

TTIP = Corporatism.

 

        We all know, or we should by now, that TTIP is corporate domination being sorted out behind closed doors, by the private club of corporate parasites and corrupt politicians. It will lead to the privatisation of all public assets, and the corporate world dictating to governments to organise their affairs to the benefit of big business. It will give big business the right to sue governments if they feel that the government is in anyway impeding their profits. In a simple phrase, it will erase any shred of democracy that you may feel you still have.

This weekend there will be anti-TTIP stalls and signature gathering around Glasgow and Renfrewshire:

 TTIP Action Day, Scottish Greens Saturday 13th December

   This Saturday Glasgow and West of Scotland Greens will be out in various areas campaigning against TTIP – Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Join other Greens to support *street stalls, and door knocking to gather petition signatures* and build the campaign against TTIP. Please bring along any clipboards you have.

*East Glasgow*

Time: 11am-2pm // Location: Outside Tapa, Dennistoun
<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Tapa+organic+bakery/%4056.170203%2c-4.8281548%2c8z/data=%214m5%211m2%212m1%211stapa%2c+dennistoun%213m1%211s0x488841549739fb7f:0x421a4049da7040c3?hl=en> //
Contact on the day: Raemond Bradford – 0743 556 8959.

*South Glasgow*

Time: Meet 10am upstairs in Costa Coffee, Shawlands
<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Costa+Coffee/%4055.8250683%2c-4.2868614%2c15z/data=%214m5%211m2%212m1%211scosta%2c+shawlands%213m1%211s0x0000000000000000:0xab91d6487f08adcb?hl=en> //
Stall: 11am-2pm (location tbc on the day) // Contact on the day:
Jennifer Jones – 07738865651

*West Glasgow*

Time: 11am-2pm // Location: Outside Hillhead Underground
<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Hillhead+SPT+Subway+Station/%4055.8752419%2c-4.2934647%2c18z/data=%214m6%211m3%213m2%211s0x488845cef7651901:0xbb916d37cef55843%212sHillhead+%28Glasgow%29%2c+At+Hillhead+Underground%213m1%211s0x488845cef700cb93:0x1b28a6dc4a6a1388?hl=en> //
Contact on the day: Kieran Wild – 07840863508

*Renfrewshire*

Time: 11am-2pm // Location: Paisley, Cenotaph
<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/The+Paisley+Cenotaph/%4055.845612%2c-4.424058%2c17z/data=%213m1%214b1%214m2%213m1%211s0x4888493788bd23d9:0x2320db9d0c023b07?hl=en> //
Contact on the day: Ryan Morrison – 07983488001

*East Renfrewshire*

Time: 11am-2pm // Location:Clarkston, outside Edinburgh Woolen Mill
<https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/The+Edinburgh+Woollen+Mill/%4055.788684%2c-4.276457%2c17z/data=%213m1%214b1%214m2%213m1%211s0x4888479c060a7f55:0x4d7d9935b1201d10?hl=en> //
Contact on the day: Ciaran Roarty – 07983488001

*Inverclyde*

Please get in touch if you are interested in supporting a stall or door knocking in Inverclyde.

TTIP is a trade deal that will give global corporations the power to sue our Government for millions and wreck the NHS. Scottish Greens are campaigning to protect the NHS and worker’s rights from corporate attack. For more information, email Zara Kitson
atdevelopment@glasgowgreens.org.uk development@glasgowgreens.org.uk
>

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

The Struggle Goes On.

        May day is celebration  day, but it is also a day to remind us that the struggle still goes on. Nothing has been resolved, we are still in struggle to protect our living conditions and to change the world for the benefit of all peoples. The corporate world is relentless as it works with the various governments to privatise everything in  the attempt to remove any social fabric from our society. The effects of privatisation has been more devasting and more brutal in some of those countries  where natinalisation was the norm. Below is an extract of a recent and inspiring struggle from  Bosnia Herzegovina, in particular, Tuzla.

       The multi-ethnic, industrial town of Tuzla in Bosnia and Herzegovina counts on a long tradition of workers’ struggle: at the entrance of the city a huge monument representing a miner holding a gun in place of a pick celebrates the miners’ armed rebellion of 1920 against industrial slavery, known as Husinska buna.
        After the nationalization of its factories under the socialist system of Tito’s Yugoslavia, in the last decades the industrial apparatus underwent a process of privatization which resulted in their bankruptcy and consequent job loss for most of the workers. The detergent factory DITA represents an emblematic case: while before the war it guaranteed 1,400 working places, after its privatization in 2007 its major owner — heavily indebted with bank loans — stopped paying pension funds and health insurance to the workers. Following the closure of their firm, in December 2012 the workers of DITA started pickets night and day outside the factory, unfortunately without succeeding to prosecute the owner

Read the full article HERE:

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

We Need To Organise Pan-European.

       Does anybody still think that the UK austerity plan and the privatisation of everything, including the health service, is purely a UK government plan? It is happening across the planet, in the new era of capitalism, public is evil, private is good. Populations will be impoverished as all wealth is syphoned up to the privileged parasite class, at an ever increasing rate.

         Greece, a country I visited regularly over a number of years, and in my earlier visits in and around Athens, I never saw a begger. Now it is not uncommon to see people sleeping in doorways, including children. You will see people rummaging through waste bins in search of something to eat or sell. Suicides and substance abuse have rocketed in the last few years. 

         Spain, remember that country that you went to on holiday, bustling streets and shops and a friendly atmosphere? Well, regarding child poverty, Spain has now dropped to the second worst in Europe, just above Romania.

        Of course both of these countries always had poverty, under capitalism every country has poverty. The difference now is that it is widespread, endemic and getting worse, not because of the lack of wealth, but because of the ever increasing rate at which that wealth is being sucked upwards.

        Even those countries that are considered the leaders in social welfare, Sweden for example, are now seeing their public services being gobbled up by the corporate greed machine, to the detriment of the general population.

Two short quotes from The International Journal of Socialist Renewal: 

       Tonight’s public meeting is standing room only. The mood is cheerful, earnest, disciplined and, dare I say it, rather churchly. Fittingly, we begin with songs: first a hymn tune with the refrain "Everything is for sale", then a jazzier number that goes "Got any money? (Then you can buy a place in the queue)". Next there’s a short dystopian pantomime set in a hospital waiting room: the man with the private plan goes straight upstairs while the lady on the public option has to wait in line. The sheepish uninsured fellow with the broken leg is shown a price list, then the door. 

       Sweden’s welfare system is famously extensive: long parental leave, free childcare, free tertiary education, generous social security. After the economic crisis of the early 1990s successive governments have reduced entitlements and cut public spending, but what has changed the most is the incorporation of the private sector at every level of the welfare state. All public contracts are subject to competitive tendering and most new clinics and hospitals are built with private funds. Communal clinics, nursing homes and schools compete with private firms for pupils and patients. Last year the state paid almost 100 billion kronor (£11 billion) to private welfare operators, overwhelmingly to 10 large corporations all owned by private equity funds.

Read the full article HERE:

           Bearing in  mind the above facts, do you honestly believe that changing the smiling face of the Etonian millionaire, sitting on the throne at the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, for another smiling Oxford educated suit, will make one bleeding bit of difference in the direction this country and every other country in Europe, is being driven? Will running and putting a X in a box in favour of party machine that is in the thrall of the financial mafia and the corporate world, stop the UK slide into a sweatshop economy, reverse the child poverty in Spain, reduce the deprivation and suicides in Greece, and bring back Sweden's social welfare system? Don't hold your breath. 

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

Future Suspended.

     Over half an hour long, but well worth seeing through to the end, an explanation of what is going on in Greece, but could, and probably will, come to the rest of Europe. Spain is well down that road already, can the rest of us be far behind?

Future Suspended:

    How does a global financial crisis permeate the spaces of the everyday in a city? Our final 35' documentary film traces the multiple transformations of crisis-ridden Athenian public space and those who traverse it.
     Future Suspended is divided in three sections. “Privatised” explores the legacy of mass privatisation projects that preceded the 2004 Olympics, placing them in the context of present day privatisation schemes. “Devalued” gazes at the ever-shrinking spaces of migrants in the city and the devaluation of their lives that comes as a result. “Militarised” shows how, in face of the crisis, this devaluation turns into a generalised condition.
   Through its cinematic traversal of today's Athens, "Future Suspended" traces the rise of the authoritarian-financial complex and how this shrinks public space in the city, fuelling social despair and anger in return.
     Future Suspended is part of the research project at crisis-scape.net. The research team consists of Christos Filippidis, Antonis Vradis, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Ross Domoney and Jaya Klara Brekke. All music for Future Suspended was composed by Giorgos Triantafyllou.
    This film is released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence. Details here:

creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_GB

Future Suspended (english) from Ross Domoney on Vimeo.

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

Tomorrow's World, A Privatised World??

      In this country we don't seem to be alive to the fact that there is an ideological driven policy of privatisation of everything, not just here in the UK but across the globe. Here in the UK it is happening in towns and cities across the country. The latest, and one of the largest city public assets to be considered for sale to the corporate world, is the Manchester Arena. Manchester, short of cash, has to raise more than £1 billion, so in come the corporate greed merchants and plunder the public assets. Because of the governments policy of "austerity", councils are short of cash and start to sell off the family silver to make up the short fall. They are selling off public art treasures, all public assets, to the private world. Of course we all know that the NHS is being privatised pieces by piece, energy, railways, telephone communications, Royal Mail, already gone, water, arenas, museums, all got to go to make a profit for the corporate greed machine.

      This is being repeated across the world in country after country, as corporatism attempts to gobble up the planet, but in some countries they are not taking it lying down. In Korea there has been a massive strike against the privatisation of their railways. Of course the government there like all the others, will attempt brutally crush any resistance to the financial Mafia's grand plan of, no public assets, everything privatised.

This from International Journal of Socialist Renewal:

January 8, 2014 -- Labor Notes -- South Korea’s railway workers have ended a 22-day strike, the longest such stoppage in the country’s history. Though they didn’t win a clear victory, they succeeded in placing the issue of privatisation in public focus.

The government’s and management’s attack on the strike was ruthless to the point of recklessness, while the public’s solidarity and sympathy with the striking workers continued to rise.

And the full impact of the action has yet to ripple out. Amid rising political tensions, the country’s biggest union umbrella, the 700,000-strong Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), has called for a one-day general strike February 25.

Read the full article HERE:

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

What Do You Expect?

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        There should be no gasps of surprise and raising arms in horror at the privatisation of the Royal Mail, it should have been expected. The ideology hasn't changed in years, it is the same direction as always, everything must be owned by the corporate/financial Mafia. We have been moving in that direction continuously, coal mines, railways, telephone company, gas, electricity, if it is deemed to be an essential service, it will be privatised, and if it starts to lose money it will be subsidised by the tax payer, or it will be handed back to the tax payer until it is profitable, and then hand back to the corporate greed machine. An example of this is Network Rail. Another is the banks, they were going bust, so time to subsides them or hand them to the taxpayer. Now that they are beginning to show a profit, hand them back to the Corporate juggernaut. This policy of privatisation will continue with education, more and more “free” academies, and with the health service, Hitchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire is already being run by a private company, with the George Elliot Hospital in Warwickshire being told to seek a partner in the private sector to run it affairs. All public assets are set to be sold off to the corporate/financial Mafia, education, NHS, libraries, museums, public parks, you name it, it will go, all that is ours has to be transferred to the corporate world, it is an ideology that wont change unless we the ordinary people call a halt, and destroy this capitalist cancer that is devouring all that is social and shiting out greed driven rotten corporatism.

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

How Much Profit In A Child's Illness?

      As the ConDem bunch of millionaires spout their usual crap about the NHS being safe in their hands, another NHS hospital is being set up to be run by a private company. The George Elliot Hospital in Warwickshire has been given the nod to go into discussions with a private company to run its affairs, at a profit of course. Last year the Hitchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire had the dubious honour of becoming the first NHS hospital to be run by a private company. So this year we have another, privatisation by creep. Two hospitals in the NHS system being run privately and for profit, no doubt it will be deemed such a success by our millionaire cabal, and their corporate parasitic friends, that there will be a gallop towards privately run hospitals within the NHS, until the NHS is privately run in its entirety. Above the entrance of every hospital will be the motto, "We Can Heal You, But Only If Profitable."
    The agenda never changes, everything to be run by corporations, no public services, no public assets, everything at a profit for our parasitic shareholders. Soon anything with the word “social” attached to it will be deemed evil, to utter such a word will be seen as worse than racism. We must all honour and worship profit, bow down before the altar of “the economy” 

 

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

Spiraling Into Planned Deprivation.

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       Hello Greece, we in the UK are following hard on your heels, as you plunge into orchestrated deprivation, we are right behind you. Recent figures show that we in the UK saw average hourly wages fall faster than most European countries. Since 2010 UK average hourly wages, adjusted for inflation, have fallen 5.5%. This is worse than Spain, 3.3%, Cyprus, 3%, countries that have faced financial turmoil. The only countries that suffered a worse deteriorating hourly wage were Greece, Portugal and Holland. Compare the UK drop with the European average drop of 0.7% and you see the rate at which we are racing towards the sweatshop economy. The UK workers will have lost £6,660 by the time the next election comes round. The present millionaire cabal sitting in The Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption have presided over 35 consecutive months of falling real wages. The pattern is set to continue as price rises outstrip wage increases, where there are any wage increases.
       Do you honestly see this changing? Do you believe that voting in another smiling suit will make up any of that lost income? Only a fool would accept that a change of party, from tweedle-dee to tweedle-dum will sort out the falling living standards of the ordinary people. I suppose it is wrong to say “falling” living standards, “falling” implies some sort of unavoidable accident, the correct phrase in this instant should be “driven down” living standards. There is no accident in the way things are going and it is certainly not unavoidable. Everything is going to plan, cheap labour and everything privatised, that is the real aim of this financial Mafia plan. We are well on our way to be part of that corporate dream, sweatshop Europe.

ann arky's home.

   

Water, A Right Or Just Another Marketable Commodity?

      Continuing with the plunder of the public purse, Greece is pushing ahead with the privatisation of water and sewage. Is water a necessity of life, or just a marketable commodity. In 2010 the UN registered water as a human right. Of course that will not deter the financial Mafia in conjunction with the corporate greed machine from demanding that their puppet governments get on and privatise water where ever possible.  What the parasitic corporate bosses think of water is explained in this extract from an article by Augustine Zenakos:

------“The idea that water is a human right comes from ‘extremist’ NGOs. Water is a food like any other, and must have a market value,” said the president of Nestlé in 2005. This is perhaps the only man who found it in him to label the UN, which registered water as a human right in 2010 by 122 votes in favor and 41 abstentions, “extremist” – though it has to be said that, interestingly, one of the countries that abstained was Greece.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

What Has Been Lost.

      Having  been a regular visitor to Greece for a number of years, what has been inflicted on the people of that country hurts me deeply. It hurts all the more because it wasn't necessary, it was all part of a deliberate policy, all part of the financial Mafia's grand plan to plunder the public purse, and they were fully aware of what the consequences would be for the ordinary people. It is now a country ripe for the corporate world to move in and set up the first of the great European sweatshops. Other European countries are on the same conveyor belt, heading in the same direction. It can only be stopped by the combined action of the people of Europe, only a move to take control of our lives and shape society the way we wish it to be. To wrestle the power from the hands of the corporate greed merchants and their accomplices, the financial Mafia.

         This article from Teacher Dude gives some idea of what has happened to the people of Greece.

What Has Been Lost

      I have been very quiet recently, at least as far as this blog is concerned. While I still tweet quite a lot about what is happening in Greece, over the last month or so I have lost the desire to go out on the streets and cover what has been happening in the city. Perhaps the fact that the end of the academic year is approaching and everyone is feeling worn out is to blame, or maybe the endless stream of bad news I hear from those around me is getting to me.

      More friends are leaving the country to escape the crisis, others are struggling on but the cost is enormous both financially and in terms of dignity. It's hard to be sanguine when so many people you know are fighting to just retain their self respect in the face of grinding poverty which seems to have no end.

    On the other hand the international press, or at least The Economist, FT, CNN and even the Guardian have decided that no matter what your eyes tell you every time you go out the worst of the crisis in Greece is over. Business confidence is up, the government's privatisation plan is finally going ahead, and the banking sector is stabilising. All of which is fine as long as your main interests are in finance and not out there in the "Real Economy"with the rest of us schmucks.

        Despite the euphoria in the mainstream media the economy is still collapsing,unemployment hasn't stopped rising, let alone dropped, the suicide rate is the highest in 50 years, 200% increase in new AIDS cases reported and just to add yet more joy to everyday life a new drug, Sisa or Shisha is doing a roaring trade in Athens.-------

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

The Mask Is Slipping.

      The following is an extract taken from a post on the Anarchist Federation Scotland site. I believe it is well worth being read as widely as possible and repeated in as many places as possible. It allows us to see the real face behind the mask of the so called "democratic" state. Here in the UK the mask hasn't quite slipped, but we have had glimpses of that vile face of greed and repression that lurks just out of sight, and should be aware that the mask will come off and we will have, what I refer to as "bare-knuckle" capitalism, similar to what the people of Greece are experiencing at present. A dying beast can be a dangerous beast.

     ------The financial surplus that would buy off the people, then, no longer existed and the state was failing to maintain control through propaganda.  So instead its mask slipped and it began using all of its violent repression methods against all rebellious social spaces. It was more than obvious that from this stage on any form of resistance would be made illegal and repressed.  The main receiver of the state’s violent repression was of course the anarchist movement, as an example of what would happen to anyone that was willing to question the established oppressive system. The incidents of the massive state repression against the anarchist movement in Greece are innumerable.

Current developments
    The social war in Greece is now at its peak and the once ‘democratic’ state has stopped pretending and been transformed into a totalitarian regime that has as its only purpose to establish the regime necessary in neoliberal conditions for the local and foreign capitalist to exploit in the maximum possible level the social wealth and the people of Greece. A full analysis of the repressive violent attacks of the state to the movement would probably need a lot of pages starting from the new established legislation that label terrorist any form of political action that the authoritarians don’t like – even a political document that questions the capitalist structures can with the new legislation be considered as act of terrorism - to the countless attacks on squats and protests that have led to the imprisonment of hundreds comrades. Such an organised and massive attack towards a social movement hasn’t been seen before in a ‘democratic’ state, let us mention that only in the last few months the state has attacked more than ten anarchist squats and dozens of comrades have been imprisoned.------

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

Profit From People's Misfortunes.

      There is one thing that most people in the UK are sure of, is that at no time did they vote for the privatisation of The National Health Service. Yet we are well on the way to having a privatised health system in this country. Bit by devious bit, the market is being slotted in to all aspects of the NHS. One sector of the health service that has seen a dramatic rise in health service for profit, is the ambulance service. This service is an integral and necessary part of the NHS, but to the corporate world it is just another money spinner. The recent rise in the use of private ambulance companies within the NHS is quite staggering, it is big money. During the year 2010/11 in Yorkshire the NHS spent approximately £500,000, on private ambulance services, for the year 2012/13 that had risen to £1.8m. an increase of £1.3m. London showed an even more dramatic increase in NHS money going into the coffers of the corporate ambulance business, growing from approximately £400,000 in 2010/11, to £4.2m. in 2012/13. Other areas are seeing the same sort of increases, that's a lot of NHS money being creamed off for a bunch of well-heeled shareholders, and at the same time jeopardising a core service at the NHS. Of course as we all know that when it comes to the corporate world, profit comes first, safety and standards come somewhere down the line. There has already been complaints about lives being put at risk by this creeping privatisation, and the body set up to check those standards is not quite doing its bit, "Last year the Care Quality Commission (CQC) released figures revealing that of the 245 private ambulance companies that it has registered, only 54 have been inspected."

       Of course we mustn't forget that £5 billion, "money from ill health", giant BUPA and the five private-sector hospital operators – General Healthcare Group, Nuffield Health Hospitals, Ramsay Health Care UK, Spire Healthcare and HCA, running alongside the NHS bleeding its resource for the benefit of those well-heeled shareholders. Is this what you voted for, is this what you want? No matter who you vote for, this is what your going to get, after all it was Labour that introduced the private ambulance service to the NHS, The millionaire ConDems are just oiling the wheels.

ann arky's home.

Who Owns The Basics of Life?

    Some things are necessary for survival, like water, shelter and food, without any one of these basics your survival is in jeopardy, yet we tolerate a system where by if you don't have enough of that stuff called money, you can be denied these basic necessities. Probably one reason this cruel unjust system survives is because you don't die suddenly. With poverty you can be denied one or all of these basics, not enough money means cheap crap food, not enough food, and you die, rather slowly. We won't see people fall over and die in the street, they will just simply deteriorate and die young, the shock factor isn't there. Likewise the homeless, a hidden slow death by poverty, murder by shareholders. Across the world day in day out, millions of lives are shortened by not having access to clean drinking water. Why should the flow and distribution of the very basics of life be under the control of the Davos Club, that group of greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders?

      Under our millionaire's scheme of "debt reduction" and "austerity cuts" we are seeing more and more of our public assets being handed over to those shiny suits of the Davos Club. Soon there will be nothing that belongs to the people. In the UK they already own, among other things, our energy resources and we have seen the prices rocket, as they pursue ever greater profits. Social housing has long been under attack and is disappearing, financial institutions own our homes, and they are working hard at getting our water.

      These corporate conditions will produce a world where we will be completely at the mercy of those greedy, pampered, parasitical, millionaire shareholders of the Davos Club, for everything we need, and if you are poor, your only means of survival will be dependent on charity organisations. Of course we can take everything back, creating co-operatives and community controlled enterprises, it is happening in all sorts of places across the globe. People have seen enough of "free market", "neo-liberalism", which translates into ripping-off the people and widespread deprivation. The tide is turning, it has to, it must be our world, or it is a destroyed world of abject poverty.

We are the ones who knead and yet we have no bread,
we are the ones who dig for coal and yet we are cold.

We are the ones who have nothing,
and we are coming to take the world.

~ Tassos Livaditis (Greek poet, 1922-1988)

ann arky's home.

FUTURE SLAVERY.

    Part of the bailout deal forced onto the people of Greece by the Troika, is that Greece privatises its public assets. These are assets that bring money into the public purse of Greece and could be spent on social services. One of the companies, soon to be privatised, in which the Greek state is the principle shareholder is ELPE (Hellenic Petroleum), while anther big money spinner that is set to be privatised on instructions from the troika is OPAP the state owned gambling monopoly. Two enterprises from which, it is virtually impossible not to make pots of money, to be handed over to the friends of the troika, the corporate world. While the troika are stating that Greece is bankrupt, they are forcing it to sell off that from which it could earn income.

      Of course it is all going to plan, the blatant and barefaced plundering of all that is public and transferring it to the private corporate world, the impoverishing of the people to replenish the gambling losses of the financial Mafia. What is more it is not just Greece that is being plundered in this fashion, it is world wide. Take a look closer to home, we here in the UK have already lost a host of rich assets to the corporate greed merchants, coal, gas, electricity, telephone, railway, now instead of being money earners for the public purse are part of the rip-off machine that grinds us ever nearer deprivation. However it doesn't end there, bit by bit education is being privatised, the National Health Service is halfway down the road to privatisation, social housing has all but disappeared, and there is much more to come. The corporate world will attempt to make money from anything, we are already seeing the development of a lucrative prison system. Which will of course mean that policies will turn to making sure that it has a steady and ever increasing flow of people to keep it profitable, it's called growth. The corporate world are not investing in large prisons as a short stopgap to help us out, their eyes are on future profits. Capitalism, no matter its shape or form, that is the direction it keeps moving.

      Do we really want to live in the faceless world of corporatism, a world over which you have no control what-so-ever? A world where you have no say in the shape and direction of your community, a world where everything is available to the rich and nothing available to the poor? Look carefully at what is happening, that is the road we are sleepwalking down, if we don't wake up soon, it will be too late and we will leave a heritage of slavery to the corporate world for our kids and grand-kids.

ann arky's home.

PRIVATE OR PUBLIC -- WHOSE WORLD WILL IT BE?

        The latest move by the Greek government to appease the financial Mafia makes it obvious that this whole austerity thing is nothing really to do with debt reduction. The Greek government has a very profitable 34% stake in one of Europe's largest gambling companies OPAP, so one would imagine that it should hold on to that and use the profits to help fund its services. But no, to try to impress their masters in Brussels, they have decided to sell most of its money making share to the corporate greed mongers and allow them to reap the profits instead of the public. More and more of the public assets will be handed over to the corporate greed machine, and this is not just in Greece. It is the grand plan of the financial Mafia, not just in Europe, but across the world, to get its hands on all public assets to swell its coffers, and put an end for once and for all to anything being publicly owned or managed. 

         In this country the privatisation goes on unabated, with Gove breaking up the education system and Lansley being fired for not moving fast enough in the privatisation of the National Health Service. We are rapidly moving into a society where there will be no public assets and no public space, It will be a corporate world, everything will be under the control of those shiny suits in far away places, and their only criteria will be profit. The world as we know it will have gone and we will be mere products to be used or discarded as the various Chief Executives decide the best policies for their shareholders. They'll continue to shuffle their money around the globe in an attempt to keep down wage costs and fatten the bank accounts of the little army of parasitic shareholders.

        Of course there is another world, a world where we share the resources and see to the needs of all our people. a world where we work in co-operation with one and other, creating a rich and sustainable future for our children and grandchildren. A world based on mutual aid where all those involved in that world shape that world, a world free from the profit motive and the greed of those corporate parasites that infest our world at present, a world free from capitalism.

TOMORROW’S WORLD!!

See the fat cat’s grinning smile

as Corporate Capitalism runs amok,

Chasing profit as it goes

firing millions of ordinary folk.

Raping and polluting land after land,

starting bloody wars.

Toxic waste, sweat shop wages

and oil covered sea shores.

Where have all the flowers gone

beneath this ozone free sky?

To join the birds, to join the fox

on yonder plutonium field to die.

Mercury fish, strontium lamb

trees that never show a leaf,

radio active beaches, toxic streams

good lean BSE-antibiotic beef.

In a world of epidemic, plague and famine

it’s bottled water and chemical food.

Of course, it’s all tested on rats and mice

so you know its got to be good.

Beneath a sky that’s always black,

hurricane winds and endless drought,

its oxygen masks for the toxic air,

corporate profit’s what its all about. 

ann arky's home.

CIRCLING VULTURES WAITING FOR HUNT TO DELIVER.

        We now have a new Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, remember how he squirmed out of a spot of bother not so long ago, it seems now, as usual with the members of the old boys club, all is forgiven. Obviously Andrew Lansley wasn't offering up the Health Service to the corporate world fast enough. The corporate vultures will be perched near by to see just how fast this new guy will get on with the carve up.

This from Lansbury's Lido:

How to make a homoeopathic solution

• Take the original solution and dilute 1 part solution with 9 parts distilled water
• Take this new solution and dilute 1 part solution with 9 parts distilled water
• Repeat until the desired potency is achieved

How to sell off the NHS

• Take a fully public funded national health service and hand over key services to private capital
• Take this 'low fat' NHS and hand over critical assets to private capital
• Take this NHS Lite and dilute with yet more private capital
• Repeat until the vultures are fed and there's no meat left on the carcass.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

SECURING WHOSE WORLD?

        With the hullabaloo about Olympic security and G4S, a little information on the Goliath corporate beast that goes by the name of G4S is perhaps welcome. This is no ordinary corporate beast, this one is the spearhead of the financial Mafia's privatisation program and in being so has made billions from tax payers money taking over security, prisons, police stations, migrant detention and a host of other parts of the state's control and repression facilities. It's tentacles reach across the world and slither into any area of repression that any state wants to privatise. All done with tax payers money at an extortionate profit to G4S.

 

This from A World to Win:

G4S - 'securing' their world, not ours

        Despite its inability to fulfil its London 2012 contract, the rise and rise of G4S is the story of the privatisation of the state and an increasing emphasis on “threats” and “security concerns” aimed at keeping people in thrall to authority.
     G4S is no ordinary corporation. It operates in more than 125 countries and has 675,000 employees. Group turnover last year was £7.5 billion, mostly derived from state contracts around the world, with 30% of revenues coming from “developing markets”. Pre-tax profits were up 2.1% to £531m.
      The self-styled “world's leading international security solutions group” has cashed in on the drive by the state to divest itself of more and more functions like prisons, crowd control and significant parts of the police service. As the company’s website declares: “In more ways than you might realise, G4S is securing your world.”
Of course, it’s not “our world” so much as their world – the rich, the bankers, the state, and the corporations that G4S helps to secure. And nowhere is “security” more on the state’s lips than in Israel, which continues to occupy Palestinian lands in defiance of countless UN resolutions.

 ann arky's home.

THE AIM, BRITAIN, PLC.

         The plan's of the millionaire cabal, sitting pretty in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, are still going full steam ahead. It is a Tory government in spite of the “coalition” label, and it will always look upon public expenditure as unnecessary and wasteful spending, they will never see it as the provision of necessary public services. Their line of double speak is that the flow of more going to the fortunate, and less to the vulnerable, is in some way fair and just, what they call, “economically sound”. This government is hell bent on pursuing its ideology of privatisation, their latest grand plan, running in parallel with the privatising of the NHS, being the privatising of the road network. It is an ideology of the dominance of the private over the public, the pursuit of capital over civic. This millionaire cabal will continue to ram their ideology through the entire fabric of our society and will not relent until they achieve their goal, a corporate Britain that they can sell to the highest bidders among their millionaire friends.

 

          However, changing the smile and suit that sits at the helm, by voting in another party will in no way change the direction of the ideology, it will merely change the pace at which they follow the financial Mafia's grand plan, it is just that the Tories are more eager and willing as it suits their personal fortunes and that of their millionaire friends.