GLASGOW SOCIAL CENTRE.

       Glasgow Anarchists will be doing a stall and Kids Space at this event on Saturday 11th between 12 noon and 3pm. Help with this still welcome.

Launch of the Pop Up Social Centre @ Kinning Park Complex.

        Over the weekend of the 10-12th February, the KP will see the first Pop-up Social Centre. For more details of what the popup is read on. Here's the line-up:

Friday 6.30 - 9.45 talks, discussions and film (details below)

7pm: Urban Activism and the Commons

7.20pm: Kinning Park Complex story

7.40pm: Sustaining Activism over the Long Term

8.30pm: Film: The Garden

Urban Activism and the Commons

        Sometimes it seems that our city is drowning under the torrential logic of capital. A councillor’s retirement package amounts to more money than many of us will make in a working lifetime; private developers and monopoly landlords gorge on public assets fed to them by local government; and the ruling parties continue to propagate the most insulting sound-bite of the current crisis: "We’re all in this together". B*llsh*t, we’re not all in this together, the political, industrial and financial elites are doing very well on our labour, time and anxieties.

        Stopping the rot starts wherever we find ourselves. There is no big secret to enacting change. The knowledge and skills required to end the rule of the few resides within each of us. Tapping into that knowledge is itself a learning process that takes place in the here-and-now, not sometime in the future. Our communities are worth more than any number of pound, euro or dollar signs. We realise this worth when we come together and share what we have. This ‘coming together’ is the essence of the Glasgow Social Centre (GSC).

         From the 10th to the 12th of February, the GSC invites you to take part in a series of events spanning across the coming year in various locations around the city. These events, known as Pop-Up Social Centres, are intended to increase our collective confidence through

sharing our stories and ideas. These events are intended to produce practical actions that defy the possessive logic of capitalist greed by creating collective ways of being-in-the-world.

Saturday 3-10pm Roller disco, food, entertainment, stalls and more!

3-6pm Roller Skating

12-8pm People's Cafe

6-10pm Acoustic Cafe and pot luck. For pot luck bring along anything you want to share: food, tricks, games, music, instruments, ball pools etc. Also stalls during the day and free shop! Bring or take clothes for free.

Roller Disco Disco, Food & Chat

        The ‘Social’ in Social Centre is crucial to the ethos of the social centre movement. Theatre, poetry, music, dance and roller-skating discos: we use these mediums to tell our stories of love, adventure and resistance; we use these mediums to imagine new ways of being-in-the-world; and we use these mediums to simply make an arse of ourselves.

          Saturday is about roller-skating, food and fighting capitalism. Saturday is about coming along to share a song, a joke, a story, some cake, a recipe; or a piece of utterly useless information about clocks, owls, coat hangers or sand paper. If, for the time being, you’d like to hold on to such particulars, then that’s fine too: your company is more than enough.

        If you can, please bring along guitars, trumpets, mandolins, drums, shakers, wobble boards, sport socks, bean bags, post-its and egg-timers (the fancier, the better).

Sunday 11-6pm Gardening, craft and bikes

11-3pm Gardening workshop/skillshare

2-5pm Dr. Bike from the Bike Station (bring your broken bike!)

2-5pm Craft workshop

Gardening, Dr Bike & Craft

         My mate gave me his old racer when he bought himself a brand spank’n new Rally Grifter. The racer is gubbed and in need of some serious attention. On Sunday 12th February at the Pop-Up Social Centre our friends The Glasgow Bike Station are running a bike maintenance workshop. The winter is particularly harsh on our two-wheeler, ten-speeder dream machines: pop along for some Tender Lovin Bike Care. I’ll see you all there with ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ (that’s my new racers name).

        Other friends will be there too. We will be running a workshop on raised garden beds. Dominate your vegetable patch without backache. Erect a raised garden bed on your urban plot and let the worms work their magic.

         Sunday is about skill sharing. It’s about learning practical stuff with friends. As well as the above, the Glasgow Social Centre will be putting on an up-cycling workshop where you can learn how to turn bike tire inner tubes into wallets, purses and maybe even dinner jackets. There are all sorts of practical and fantastical things you can do with a wee bit of junk and imagination. We’ll let you what junk to bring over the coming week.

For directions please visit

http://www.kinningparkcomplex.org/directions/

http://glasgowsocialcentre.blogspot.com/2012/02/pop-up-social-centre-launch-kp.html

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HEALTH & PHARMACEUTICALS, PLC!!!

         In post after post I have went on about the ideological drive of this government to privatise everything in an attempt to recapitalise the corporate Mafia. This drive will change the way we live, will remove everything from public control into the hands of that corporate Mafia. It would appear that most people seem to think this means an array of businesses but don't connect this ideology to the health service. It's as if we are lulled into a sense of complacency believing that they can't privatise the health service. However we are just months away from having our National Health Service privatised for ever. The government's Health and Social Care Bill, if passed in to law, will mean the end of our free care at the point of need, Health Service. Our National Health Service will be opened up to market place competition between the big corporate beasts that seek profit before anything else. It means that those parts of the Health Service that don't make a profit will fall by the wayside, services like long term caring treatment, care of the elderly etc..

        Sixty years of free health care when you need it, will have been wiped out by a piece of legislation pushed through by a bunch of public school millionaire thugs who are working in the best interests of their millionaire friends in the corporate world. Neither the Conservatives or the Lib Dems had the privatising of the National Health Service in their manifestos. Neither of these parties have a mandate to privatise the National Health Service. No matter how they dress this bill up, it will not change the facts on the ground, big business will control the health service if this becomes law. Corporate this and corporate that, will control the shape, direction and content of the health service, it will no longer be OUR National Health Service, it will Health and Pharmaceuticals PLC.

          If you in any way think you live in a democracy, then this must be wrong on all counts. The public never asked for nor wants a corporate health service. The public never voted on or for a corporate health service, but that is what you are going to get unless you stop this bill becoming law. This can only be stopped by mass protests and mass lobbying of MPs, by the trade unions getting behind the public and organising to stop this decimation of our National Health Service. Grass roots organisations should for the time being, abandon other causes and direct their abilities and efforts to stopping this corporate grab to turn our National Health Service into a billion pounds gravy train for the shareholding parasites. This bill will become law in just a few months and then it will be too late, the National Health Service will be no more. Three months is not a lot of time but it is all we have.

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VIOLENCE VS NONVIOLENCE???

         I have always said that everybody has the right to self defence, it is a natural reaction to a physical threat to your person. However in this society there are those who are deemed to have the right to inflict violence, which is not called violence, and those who, if they defend themselves, are labelled violent. It all depends who writes the rule book. As far as this society is concerned the rules are stacked against the ordinary people, we have the freedom to do as we are told and not to defend yourself when attacked by the police. The following is an extract from an interesting post on Polizeros.

      "----- In contrast, when the police surround a group of peaceful Americans, who are committing no crimes, in full riot gear, deadly weapons at the ready, and plenty of potentially deadly less lethal weapons ready to be used at the drop of a hat, this is not considered violence. They irrationally bark out demands and no matter how ridiculous or irrational those demands are they are expected to be followed to the T in seconds. Any number of things can set these uniformed thugs off resulting in any number of injuries up to and including death. And yet this is not considered violence. It may be deemed an excessive use of force–interesting phrase. But it will not be deemed violent.-"

Continue READING.

          Obviously there needs to some discussion by the general public and activists in particular to what constitutes violence. The state's rule book is a loaded dice.

ann arky's blog.

WHAT ARE OUR OPTIONS?

          I consider myself, on the whole, an optimist, a person with a positive attitude, but there are moments when the view shifts and my muse takes me a different route.

OUR FUTURE.

Once upon a time,

in our not so distant past

stood a beautiful, a unique world,

laden with promise,

a world where our future was open,

our potential vast.

Now, seduced by glinting tinsel of the mad

our reason quivers

on the edge of a dark abyss.

We have created a world

where wastelands abound

where we

the many, the marginalised, the ordinary,

struggle to survive in voracity that astounds

are seduced

to create wastelands in our minds,

slowly accepting chaos

in a world of insanity.

Here corporate monsters

of hypocrisy, contradictions,

sever the fragile cord

that unites being with being,

grow fatter

on the trade of emotions for illusions;

until our tormented minds

twist in silent pain

a searing pain

that sends the human spirit fleeing.

We struggle to let emotions guide our heart,

illuminate the shadows of our veiled sadness,

try to create a society

where love is not a dying art;

sadly falling to the seduction of consumer living

that leads us down the path

to eternal madness.

The future by today’s deeds is surely moulded,

yet we write tomorrow’s history

with an irradiated hand,

face the vision of yet unborn children

distorted, bleeding mortally

from wounds they know nothing of,

who’ll fall heir to a bleak,

chaotic, terrifying land.

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WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ERICH MUHSAM.

            Across the planet and through the years anarchist have come in for some brutal and truly barbaric treatment at the hands of the sadistic dupes of the state. We could probably fill the London telephone directory with names of our comrades who have suffered in this way. February marks the 78^th. anniversary of the arrest of one such comrade. The following from wikipedia.

Erich Mühsam (6 April 1878 – 10 July 1934) was a German-Jewish anarchist essayist, poet and playwright. He emerged at the end of World War I as one of the leading agitators for a federated Bavarian Soviet Republic. Also a cabaret performer, he achieved international prominence during the years of the Weimar Republic for works which, before Hitler came to power in 1933, condemned Nazism and satirized the future dictator. Mühsam was murdered in the Oranienburg concentration camp in 1934.

Mühsam was arrested on charges unknown in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, within a few hours after the Reichstag fire in Berlin. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, labelled him as one of "those Jewish subversives." It is alleged that Mühsam was planning to flee to Switzerland within the next day. Over the next seventeen months, he would be imprisoned in the concentration camps at Sonnenburg, Brandenburg and finally, Oranienburg.

         During his short stay in various concentration camps, Mühsam suffered dreadfully and was treated to unbelievable barbaric cruety. The following is one report of some of his treatment. Again from  Wikipedia.

"After breaking his teeth with musket blows; stamping a swastika on his scalp with a red-hot brand; subjecting him to tortures which caused him to be taken into a hospital, even now the fascist hyenas of the Sonninburg concentration camp continue their beastly attacks upon this defenseless man. The last news are really atrocious: the Nazi forced our comrade to dig his own grave and then with a simulated execution made him go through the agony of a doomed man. Although his body has been reduced to a mass of bleeding and tumefied flesh, his spirit is still very high: when his traducers tried to force him to sing the Horst-Wessel-Lied (the Nazi's anthem) he defied their anger by singing the Internationale."

It was even alleged that the camp's guards had even ripped out pieces of Mühsam's beard in order to make him look more like the caricatures of orthodox Jews seen in anti-semitic newspapers and tracts.

On 2 February 1934, Mühsam was transferred to the concentration camp at Oranienburg. The beatings and torture continued, until finally on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and murdered by the guards, his battered corpse found hanging in a latrine the next morning.[3]

        Those with power will always fear, revile and attempt to eliminate those who call for justice and freedom. The state will not tolerate those who will stand up to its threats, that is why it carries on its relentless propaganda against and repression of anarchists.

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THE SAD TALE OF A POINTLESS WAR.

             While the West continues with its Afghan adventure, the drug barons continue to make millions from the poppy fields of Afghanistan, The West while fighting the Taliban, now claim that their aim is to get rid of the opium poppy fields and choke the heroin trade. What they fail to mention is that the Taliban had already done that before the West went in to get rid of the Taliban. It was also the discontinuing of Western aid after the Soviet era that re-started the opium growing in Afganistan before the Taliban came to power. 

          During the Taliban rule, Afghanistan saw a bumper opium crop of 4,500 metric tons in 1999,.[13] However, in July 2000, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.[14]  (wikipedia)

            It is only since the West invaded that the heroin trade has once again flourished and grown to the multi-million dollar business that it is now. The Afghan puppet government is riddled with corruption and drug barons, who are making millions while the Western troops fight a losing battle.

         11 years of bloodshed and misery to remove the Taliban and as the West pulls out the Taliban are ready to move in and take control. However what we have left is a country in ruins with massive unemployment, heart breaking drug addiction, unbelievable poverty and wealthy drug barons in control. This is the legacy the West hands to the Afghan people, they paid in lives and misery, we paid in billions of dollars and the pointless deaths of far too many of our young people. The story in Iraq is much the same, the ordinary people pay and are left to cope with depleted uranium, deaths in every family, destroyed infrastructure, homelessness, poverty and deprivation. Where is the benefit of either of these actions, where is the public outrage in the West. We accept this slaughter and no doubt if the powers that be decide, for what ever insane reason, to do the same to Syria and /or Iran, the people of the West will put up with it with the usual anti-war protest by the handful. We live under a state of international corporate fascism and the public seem to want it, accept it, or are blind to the fact. WHY.

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DEATH IN POLICE CUSTODY.

        Not a new film but still just as relevant today as when it was made.

INJUSTICE

Winner Best Documentary - BFM London Film Festival 2002, Winner National Social Justice Award 2003, Winner Best Documentary (Human Rights) - One World Film Festival 2003, Winner New Nation Campaign group of the Year 2004.

(2001/98 minutes/UK/Dir: Ken Fero & Tariq Mehmood/Migrant Media)

   http://vimeo.com/34633260

The struggles for justice by the families of people that have died in police custody.

         In 1969 David Oluwale became the first black person to die in police custody in Britain. Many others have died since then. None of the police officers involved have been convicted of these deaths. In this documentary, the families of these victims ask "Why not?"

         This is a blow by blow account of the relentless struggles of the families as they find out how they lost their loved ones in extremely violent deaths at the hands of police officers.
Each family is met with a wall of official secrecy and the film documents how they unite and challenge this together. The documentary uses powerful exclusive footage filmed over a five year period and witnesses the families pain and anger at the killings. It documents the fight to retrieve the bodies for burial, the mockery of police self-investigation and the collusion of the legal system in the deaths. The film asks why an accused killer in a police uniform is not judged by the same standards as the rest of society.

I N J U S T I C E documents the horrific loss of life at the hands of the state and it's attempts to cover up these killings. The British police have been responsible for hundreds of deaths and have walked free. The families of the dead want justice and they will not stop until they have got it.

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SOUP KITCHENS NOT ALLOWED.

         While the Greek political class prostrate themselves in front of the financial Mafia, trying to get a deal that will not cost the financial moguls too much, what is happening to the Greek people? In freezing conditions, yes it is very cold in Athens at the moment, the homeless of the city, approximately 20,000 in Athens alone, were being helped out by various political groups setting up soup kitchens. However the caring compassionate government has issued a decree, which, claiming public health issues, closes these soup kitchens. Secretary of Public Health, Dimopoulos, obviously thinks that getting free food is more dangerous than going hungry in a freezing city. His decree states that only formal agencies can publicly offer free food, churches, municipalities and NGOs. Others wishing to offer help to the hungry have to get official approval from the authorities.

        It was not just the homeless that were turning up at these soup kitchens, even those who still have a roof over their head can't afford to eat. Spontaneous self help and mutual aid, are terms that are an anathema to the authority worshipping political class. In another recent show of compassionate government, in Athens, while it was snowing and the temperature plummeting 24 or so of the 20,000 homeless in Athens squatted an empty municipal coffee house. The Mayor of Athens, Kaminis, order action to be taken against them and the riot police arrived and arrested 15 of the squatters. The Mayor, for whatever reason withdrew his complaint but the General Attorney of Athens charged the 15 with criminal damage and theft (of electricity). The arrestees were detained at Exarcheia Police Station where 100 or so people gathered outside in protest. The detainees were then transferred to Police HQ, where as far as is known, they are still there.

        What we can take from these type of political actions is that the state apparatus is more concerned with the protection of property and maintenance of authority, than it is in the well being of the people. To them it is acceptable to have empty property and people sleeping on the streets in freezing temperatures, rather than free up that property. It is acceptable to have people go hungry in cold winter conditions rather than have unauthorised concerned groups offer them warm food. These are the standard procedures of this profit drive system of corporate financial fascism that we the ordinary people suffer under. This system cannot be modified to take care of all our people, there is no such beast as caring, compassionate capitalism and the call for “moral markets” is a call for the fox to walk with the chicken.

The information in this post was taken from OCCUPIED LONDON.

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PAN-EUROPEAN DAY OF ACTION.

          Today the ordinary people of Europe are facing the most concerted and vicious attack on their living conditions since the second world war. This is not an attack by your own particular government, this is an attack my the financial corporate world, your own national government is merely a tool in the hands of that financial corporate monster. Organising at local level is essential but we have to realise that the enemy is not your local tweedle-dee or tweedle-dum political party, they are just the managers of the system being run by international corporate fascism. The enemy is organised across borders, to defeat hem we also have to organise across borders.

This from Germany www.march31.net

Dear comrades!

       I am writing in the name of an left wing and libertarian initiative, which wants to set up an European day of action against crisis and capitalism. On a long term, we see this project not only to organise one common day of mobilisation in Europe, but seize to establish a continuous networking (exchange of experiences, discussions, actions) between anti capitalist groups and initiatives on an European wide level.
        In order to get an impression of our motivation and our aims for this project on March 31st, you can have a look at this excerpt of our call for action:

        "Current policies in the EU and in Europe as a whole are as speculative as capitalism has ever been. That’s because austerity measures are jeopardising economic stability just as much as debt-inflated growth. There can never be salvation in capitalism, only endlessly recurring crises. So why continue wasting our lives for this? Let’s fight neoliberal ideology, let’s get organised on a European level. Our Day of Action on March 31st 2012 will be a first step. Simultaneous demonstrations in many European countries are more than just a signal of solidarity. They’re already sparking transnational discussion and cooperation. We invite all emancipatory initiatives to join this process. We strive to grow independent of official institutions, and are prepared for a persistent struggle. “
        You can get to read the whole call and receive much more information about this project on the international homepage www.march31.net.

       The practical concept of this action day is clearly decentral. It's up to the local groups/initiatives/assemblies, with which kind of an action they want to participate. In Germany, for example, we decided on a central demonstration and actions in Frankfurt (location of the European Central Bank), while in Greece different actions will probably take place in several cities.
      The UK and especially England, though not part of the currency union of the Euro, is concerned by the crisis. Besides, it plays a tremendous role in the European Union and also in the European wide policies.
        This is why we would appreciate it, if at least some of you would be interested in this project and on the long term for a better network for anti capitalist structures throughout Europe. If you have any questions or would like to participate, write an email to m31@umsganze.org. In the case you are interested in the project we can imagine to visit you and organise together with you closed or public meetings

Hope to see you in the streets! Best,

Arthur (Cologne, Germany)
Antifa AK Cologne

www.march31.net

www.umsganze.de
www.no-racism.de

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THE POP-UP SOCIAL CENTRE.

Pop-Up Social Centre Friday 10the February Kinning Park Complex

Urban Activism and the Commons (free entry)

6.30pm: Doors Open (Tea and Coffee and biscuits)

        7pm: Urban Activism and the Commons: This introduction to the evening attempts to dspel some of the myths surrounding common property in terms of what distinguishes it from private and public property and what rights we have in relation to it. By paying particular attention to ‘City Property (Glasgow) LLP’ (an Arm’s Length External Organization) the talk will also introduce the harsh reality for the future of both common and public property in our city if privatization is allowed to continue unchallenged.

       7.20pm: Kinning Park Complex: Given by a long-term and active participant in the Kinning Park Complex, this talk tells the remarkable story of the building thus far. This is a story of struggle, community solidarity and commitment in the face of powerful actors in local government and big business. Recent developments in the management of Glasgow’s property portfolio, would suggest that Kinning Park’s story is by no means over.

       7.40: Sustaining Activism over the Long Term: Towards the end of last year fellow activists from Glasgow and Edinburgh, along with likeminded folk from around Europe, took part in a week-long series of workshops in Northern Spain. These workshops were geared towards sustaining a commitment to social and environmental justice over the long-term. Some of those who attended the event invite you to participate in a workshop built around reflections of their experience.

       8.30pm: Film: The Garden – The 14 acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles was the largest of its kind in the United States. It was started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992. Since that time, members of south central’s community have created a green oasis in one of the country's most blighted urban neighborhoods. Growing their own food; feeding their families; creating a community. But now bulldozers threaten their oasis. The Garden is an unflinching look at the struggle between these urban farmers and the City of Los Angeles and a powerful developer who wants to evict them. Beer, softdrinks and pop-corn available throughout the duration of the film.

        9.45pm: Finished in time for last tube. Kinning Park tube station is directly across from Complex.

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THAT'S JUST A BONUS, NOT THE SALARY.

          Trying to grasp the extent of the wealth that we produce to give to the army of parasites that feed of our backs is difficult. We tend to live in the real world of wages that keep you scurring back to work to pay next months bills. While sums of money that look like your mates phone number just don't register properly and are impossible to imagine dropping into your bank account on a regular basis. Staying with Think Left, this article helps put it into some perspective.

Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester has agreed to waive his bonusof approaching £1million after the Labour Party threatened to call a parliamentary debate on the issue.

“these men can afford to refuse what the rest of us would consider a fortune”

       This follows close on the heels of the RBS chairman, Sir Philip Hampton’s, decision to refuse his own bonus of £1.4million. As a measure of wealth these figures are pretty striking. They are bonuses not pay. Mr Heston still stands to pocket in the region of £39million during his time with RBS.

       Apparently these men can afford to refuse what the rest of us would consider a fortune. To put it into perspective, if you were to put £1.4million into a savings account at 5% interest, this would earn you £70,000 a year.

Continue reading:

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STITCHED UP.

             This society that we live is is always spouting that it gives you choice, but seldom is the choice what you REALLY want or really need. It is a choice from what others say you want and need, the others being the ones that make billions from your illusionary need. There is another factor that governs your choice, money, we live in a society of financial apartheid, you don't have the money you are excluded from any choice. One of the biggest money spinner for the parasite class is the fashion industry. An industry where the bright colours, luxury feel and the exotic launch of the latest offering, conceals the poverty, deprivation and health hazards at the production end of your latest must have necessity.

An interesting article from ThinkLeft.    

     What’s on your back today? Is it exploited children and abused women, products of a rapidly disappearing and polluting fossil fuel, or is it toxic dyes polluting our planet and our people?

     What we wear really reflects the fabric of our society. It reflects power, hence shoulder pads, Roman togas and Eton ties. It leads women to starve themselves, leads children to become sexualised at young age and makes billions for the fashion industry. A close look at the fashion industry reveals how the greediest in the world shamefully make their unethical profits without thought for the environment or the workers who produce it. For the vast majority consumers who buy the cheap and poor quality, quick-to-be-discarded goods, there is little information as to how their must-have garment came to be.

Continue reading:

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PIZZA HUT PICKET GLASGOW.

        Along with other UK cities there was a Solidarity Picket with IWW Pizza Hut Workers Satuday 4th February, Time12:00 until 13:30 at Pizza Hut Argyle St, Glasgow, G2 8BU. with Solidarity Federation and Clydeside IWW members participating, with an appeal to Refuse to eat at Pizza Hut until management negotiate with the collective demands of organised workers in Sheffield. At the Glasgow picket over 500 flyers were given out with considerable interest being shown from people walking past, also several people were convinced by the information, not to eat there.
The Sheffield Pizza Hut Workers Union, part of the Industrial Workers Of The World demand for all Pizza Hut workers:

1. Bank Holiday Pay – Standard practice time and a half for unsociable shifts.

2. Delivery Drivers Commission – Delivery commissions have not risen despite a changing delivery radius and the rising price of petrol. The recommended rate from the AA is 45p per mile.

SOLIDARITY.

pizzaHutIU640@IWW.org.uk
More info: iwwgmbsheffield.wordpress.com/

Pizza Hut Workers Union.

           Welcome to the home page of Sheffield Pizza Hut Workers Union - 460. Sheffield is the birth place of our union, which started up the hill in Crookes. Get Organised Get Involved - email us at pizzah..

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CHILD POVERTY, IT ISN'T AN ACCIDENT.

            As the cold spell continues to bite, we have to admit that we can't do a lot about the weather. It is not the decisions of politicians or financiers that causes the cold spell. However, what we should realise is that in this very rich country there are families living in fuel poverty and children living in severe poverty. Here in Scotland the percentage of children living in severe poverty is 20% with lots of areas where the percentage is over 30%, Springburn in the north of Glasgow being the worst with a staggering 52% of children living in severe poverty. These figures are not an accident of nature, a natural phenomenon. These figures are the result of politicians choices, of politicians following the dictate of the financial Mafia. It is human beings sitting in the comfort and luxury of marble halls that are the cause of children living in severe poverty in the middle of winter in a very rich country, no accident. In a sane society where the purpose was to see to the needs of all our people, we would not have kids pulling on a scarf and hat, keeping their jackets, on while huddling over a two bar fire in an attempt to keep warm in their home. It is not an unavoidable natural event, it is an engineered situation. A situation brought about by the desire by the millionaire class to protect their ill gotten gains. While children and the elderly freeze in their homes, and in some cases die from cold related disease, we are awash with money. We have billions to spend on subsidising the corporate world, billions to spend on armaments, billions to spend on nuclear submarines and billions to spend killing the people of Libya and Afghanistan, but we can't afford to heat the homes of our elderly or our kids. If that isn't an insane, unjust, immoral corrupt system, then Lord Archer is a saint.

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UK POLICE,PLC.

         A recent report states that Richard Branson's Virgin company paid the London Metropolitan Police more than £5,000 after police raids aimed at proving television set-boxes were being used to view channels without paying. It is very likely that the police only conducted the raids because of the money offered by Virgin. This is a trend that we will see more of as the state hands over more and more to the corporate world. The present philosophy of privatising everything from education to health will continue and there is no ideological reason why the police can't be run by the highest bidder. Police priorities will shift according to who is prepared to pay the most, as state funding dwindles the police force will be obliged to raise money from its activities and eventually show a profit. What chance will you have then if your house is burgled, or a member of your family is ripped of in some scam, if the big paying police customers want them to spend their time trying to track down those who might be downloading their stuff for free on the internet. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Corporate fascism is well and truly embedded.

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GLOBAL SOLIDARITY.

An injury to one is an injury to all. This from Labour Start.

They're calling it the "uprising of the invisible." Cleaning workers in the Netherlands have been on strike for 30 days and have now asked for international solidarity.

 Please send off your message today and spread the word.

 

           Thousands of Dutch cleaners, members of trade union FNV Bondenoten, are standing up to fight their invisibility in society. They have been on strike for more than 30 days to demand respect and fair pay on the job. The cleaners' work is important: it provides a healthy and clean atmosphere to executives, doctors, bankers and ministers. The cleaners aren’t asking for millions or great riches. They just want ordinary things, such as sick pay, enough time to do the job, security for timeworkers and a fair wage to take care of their families. Big, wealthy clients like Philips, ING, Ahold, Dutch government ministries, the tax authorities and universities expect miracles for impossibly cheap cleaning deals. FNV Bondgenoten members need your help. Please support the cleaners and send a message to their bosses and the most important clients: Hans Simons the chairman of the empoyers’ group, Anton Witte is the main negotiator for the employers and Norma van den Berg represents cleaning giant ISS in the negotiations. Hans Schelbergen is responsible for the cleaning contract at Philips, which cut 1.3 million euros from its cleaning budget while paying out 3 million euros to six executives. Peter Specker is responsible for the government cleaning contracting. The cleaners ask their friends around the globe to support their Uprising of the Invisible. Let us never be silent or invisible anymore. The price of outsourcing is the same around the globe: it has negative effects on quality, health and prosperity. The cleaners of the Netherlands, who have roots in all the countries of the world, are standing up and speaking loud and clear: SCHOONGENOEG (Clean enough!)

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ANOTHER LITTLE SLIMY CHEAT.

          At last, after an eight month investigation concerning an offence that took place 9 years ago, Chris Huhne is to be charged with perverting the course of justice. The charge is in relation to trying to get someone else, his wife at that time, to take his speeding offence so the he would not lose his licence.    

        So another one of our “Honourable Gentlemen” bites the dust. They all strut about full of self importance, spouting to us lesser mortals about how to live our lives, they take the fat salary and all the perks as if they were worth it and more, when in actual fact so many of them are no more than little greedy shits and cheats. How many of those “Honourable Gentlemen” from the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, have been caught with the hands in the till, how many have fiddled and twisted the rules so as to extract as much as they can from the public purse? Fiddling and cheating seems to be par for the course, in that establishment. It would be difficult to find more millionaires and very rich people collected in one place anywhere else in the country than in Parliament, yet the place keeps turning out fiddlers, liars and cheats. They will start to foam at the mouth and shout kill them, kill them, at the very mention of so called, “benefit cheats”, but will stay dumb or merely tut-tut at any of their members caught fiddling. The main difference between “benefit cheats” and our “Honourable Gentlemen” is that the former is usually someone trying to survive one step above the gutter, while the latter are usually stinking rich and trying to get their hands on more and more, while preaching austerity to the rest of us.

As an MP, I know what I would do with those benefit cheats.

          Chris Huhne's offence may have been a fiddle with his licence, and not one of his hand in the till, but was committed to make sure he stayed on the gravy train as an MEP, as he was at that time. He was sitting pretty on a fat salary plus mouth watering expenses from the public purse, and for that amount of money that we were paying him, we were not under the impression that we were paying for a little shit of a cheat. I'm sure if we had wanted a cheat we could have got one much cheaper than what we paid Mr. Chris Huhne. Of course Chris is no stranger to cheating, he also cheated on his wife.

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DON'T EAT AT PIZZA HUT.

Solidarity Picket With IWW Pizza Hut Workers

Pizza Hut Argyle St

Glasgow

G2 8BU

Saturday 4th February

12 noon-1.30pm

           Refuse to eat at Pizza Hut until management negotiate with the collective demands of organised workers in Sheffield. The Sheffield Pizza Hut Workers Union, part of the Industrial Workers Of The World demand for all Pizza Hut workers:

1. Bank Holiday Pay – Standard practice time and a half for unsociable shifts.

2. Delivery Drivers Commission – Delivery commissions have not risen despite a changing delivery radius and the rising price of petrol. The recommended rate from the AA is 45p per mile.

PizzaHutIU640@IWW.org.uk

iwwgmbsheffield.wordpress.com/pizza-hut-workers-union

Facebook Event Page:

http://www.facebook.com/events/289515507775551/?context=create#!/events/289515507775551/

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