Eating Or Heating.

      As you ruminate on your problem of eating or heating, your mate in workfare, your disabled neighbour facing ATOS, and your friend on zero hours contract, perhaps you could spare a thought for Bruce Rockowitz and Coco Lee. This couple got married recently and their wedding is reported to have cost $20 million, yes, $20 million. Bruce, is one of those products of the capitalist system, creating personal wealth from sweatshop exploitation, his 2012 income is reported as almost $7 million, while his bride Coco, a Hong Kong pop star, not short of a bob or two herself, likewise is a product of this system.

 

      This typifies the glaring injustice in the economic system we tolerate, two relatively young people have amassed an unbelievable fortune. One from exploiting desperate vulnerable people, the other by being the subject of media hype. While the most of us put in a full days work all our lives, creating the wealth that they enjoy, and we just about get by. We live amidst an abundance of wealth that we created, yet most live in poverty, is that the best we can do?

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

Are We Getting Angry?

        Are we getting angry? Workfare, where thousands of people are forced to work for multinationals and receive no pay. Are we getting angry? ATOS, in its quest to make money from ticking boxes has seen almost two thousand disabled people it claimed were fit for work, die within moths of their decision. Are we getting angry? The governments “bedroom tax” is threatening to break up families, force homes into debt, and have the threat of eviction hanging over the heads vulnerable people. Are we getting angry? The six big energy companies are making billions of pounds and are increasing their prices this winter, while there are almost 4 million people in the UK living in fuel poverty. Are we getting angry? 4 million children in the UK, one in every three, are living in poverty, this is the highest of any developed industrial nation in the world. Some districts in this country have a much higher rate, with Springburn in the north of Glasgow topping the league with a criminal rate of 52% of children living in poverty. Are we getting angry? Zero hours contracts are growing like weeds in an unkempt garden. Meaning you are employed but have no guarantee of hours, so no idea how much you will earn. You sit with your phone handy, hoping your boss will phone and offer you a few hours work, but you are off the unemployed figures. Are we getting angry? Here in the UK, average wages have, in real terms, fallen by approximately 10% since 2008, while the gap between rich and poor gets wider by the month. Are we getting angry? While ordinary families are squeezed by “austerity measures” meaning lower incomes and rising prices, the number of millionaire households in the UK grew by 98,000 in 2012. Whose recession? Are we getting angry? We are being driven to the deprivation of the Victorian era, by our lords and masters, as they plunder our public assets, Royal Mail etc., as gifts to their friends in the financial/corporate Mafia.

 

     Are we getting angry? If not why not? There is an old Korean saying that I think we should ponder during these times. Enjoy the ecstasy of your righteous anger. Our anger in the present circumstances, would most certainly be righteous.

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

Zero Hours Contracts - Deprivation Contracts.

      There is a lot of talk just now about “zero hours” contracts, as soon as you debate the matter you give it some legitimacy, as far as the ordinary people are concerned this con deserves no debate and has no legitimacy. You don't have to look back into the distant Dickensian history to find the deprivation caused by this casualisation of labour. Up until the end of the second World War it was a common scene to see people huddled outside factories and docks in the early hours in all weathers, hoping to get picked for a few hours casual work. Those who got picked felt themselves lucky and got a few hours work and would turn up the next day hoping to be lucky again. As for those who didn't get picked, well they could run to the next nearest workplace and hope to be picked there. Or they could just go home and try again next day. It was Attlee's government in 1947 that introduced the National Dock Labour Scheme in an attempt to give some sort of job security. Of course the employers and the usual rightwing millionaire class railed against it, and labelled it as a hindrance to business and a “job for life”. Of course they never forget and in 1989 Thatcher's government abolished the NDLS.

       The figures for those on “zero hours” contracts is put at 1 million+ and growing, it is another step towards the sweatshop Europe. The only difference between the hordes standing outside workplaces in that age of severe deprivation, and those on these contracts, is that they don't have to stand in groups outside, they can sit at home waiting for the phone to ring. When it does ring you could be offered anything from three or four hours work or a few days. You have no idea how much you will earn in any given week, it is impossible to budget for essentials. What is more, you are off the unemploymet records.

       How do you manage your affairs and tend to your familes needs if you are never sure just how many hours you will work and therefore no idea what your weekly wage will be? You could turn up eager, bright and early and after a few hours work things go quiet, so your boss tells you just go home and come back after teatime, or “I'll phone you when I need you”. This is the type of society that the corporate world are doing there damndest to create, you are a unit that can be used, or stored at your own expense, until you are needed again. A workforce of casual workers always on tap to suit the needs of big business. This is the road to insecurity and deprivation, but it is the road that we are being lead down as our corrupt political class do the bidding of the financial Mafia and the corporate cabal. They are nearing their dream, of a sweatshop Europe, is it your dream? If not, why can't we realise our dream, instead of them realising theirs?

ann arky's home.

Workers Know Your History, Dic Penderyn.

     Each improvement in the conditions of the ordinary people is paid for in the blood of one or more from our communities. Every increment of decent conditions we gain is at the heavy cost of blood, sweat and tears from our brothers and sisters. Despite this we can never relax in the belief that we have won those gains for all time. Those from whom we wrestled them will always try to take them back by stealth, duplicity, corruption, force and their brand of the "stamp of legitimacy". Today the attack to claw back the conditions we won over decades is in full swing, wages are cut/frozen, contracts are ripped up and replaced by "zero hours" contracts, working conditions are shredded, social benefits/services are decimated. If we accept this onslaught without an all out fight, we do an injustice to those from our communities who paid with their life to win them in the first place. Our history is littered with the blood of an army of our heroes, we can pick one from any era, they are there, calling on us to fight for justice.

      August 1831, Dic Penderyn was hanged on a trumped up charge, his real crime, he was a a union man, a fighter for better conditions, the type detested by this system of repression, exploitation and corruption. When our present lords and master come at us with their scythe of austerity and deregulation of working practices, let's remember we paid for these conditions by the blood of our own, we insult our heroes if we hand them back without a bloody fight.

ann arky's home.