ECONOMIC BULLSHIT.

         Here we go, here we go, millionaire Osborne will take centre stage this afternoon and deliver what is meant to be taken as a profound calculated analysis and plan. When in fact it is a series of calculated guesses, smoke and mirrors and a ridged following of ideology. His master plan when he was handed the job of Chancellor of the Exchequer by his millionaire mate, David, was to suck all the money out of the public purse and transfer it to his corporate friends. Of course we were told that this would be painful, but difficult choices had to be made. However our misery would be short lived, we would just have to suffer until 2015, then all our finances would be in great order and we would once again be living the good times, (which never were for the most of us). Now, as 2015 approaches, it is not quite sorted yet, so once again, difficult choices have to be made. That translates into, screw more money from the public purse, hand more money to the corporate world. Sadly that means we will have to wait until 2018, until those ever so rosy good times return. What a load of bullshit.

 "These are difficult times".

      We are on a downward spiral, as far as the living standards of the ordinary people of the developed world are concerned. According to recently released figures, Europe is sinking deeper into recession. The people of Greece have been brutally assaulted by the financial mafia, Spain, Potrugal and Italy are circling the plug hole, Ireland has to intoduce further austerity measures. Here, we are in the hands of a member of the millionaire Etonian old boys club, telling us that we will have to face a few more years of being screwed for the benefit of his corporate friends. What they are trying to get you to swallow is that after ten years or so of slashing our living standards and destroying the fabric of our society, we will all be better off!!! Tell that to the working families that are living in poverty at this moment in time. Tell it to the unemployed youth and the thousands of homeless. Tell it to the one third of our chidren who at present are living below the poverty line. 

       This certainly a master plan, a rigid following of ideology, for the Western corporate world to survive and grow, it has to create a Western wide sweatshop economy. A low wage, unregulated labour force is it last gasp to compete with its Eastern corporate adversary. You and I are intended to be part of that subservient corporate dream. Is that what you want for yourself, your kids and grandkids? If not, we have to organise, resist and act, very quickly, after all that is the way that they work.

ann arky's home.

IS CAPITALISM DYING OUT?

     I received the new edition of Ephemera, (on the net) and found it a very interesting magazine. I found one article in particular "Is capitalism dying out?"  by Steen Nepper Larsen, extremely thought provoking and recommend it as well worth a read. The entire magazine is packed full of thought provoking articles and well worth a visit.

     The following is just a very short quote from near the end of the above mentioned article:

Exit

Where Gorz envisages a capitalism dying out and negating itself in a fertile virtual sphere of communication that contains real political potentialities for radical social transformation, I see what Marx called ‘the civilizing influence of capital’ giving breath to ever newer forms of contradiction. Gorz is right in claiming that knowledge is not reducible to a commodity. He is also right to emphasize that neither the Marxist theory of value nor the dominant ‘liberal’ theory of economic value can grasp the process of transforming knowledge into value. But unfortunately he is mistaken in claiming that capitalism will soon disappear. Maybe it is capitalism’s ability to produce powerful conflicting and contradicting patterns of social life that keeps it alive and kicking. Capitalism manages to integrate major parts of human creativity, our innovative skills, desires and communicative utterances to foster and maintain its own logic of accumulation, and until now we have not been able to conquer its destructive aspects or find a way to live without its seemingly magnetic power.

490

ephemera 12(3): 486-491

reviews

Is capitalism dying out?

Steen Nepper Larsen

You can read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

BANISH THEM TO THE "SCUM VILLAGE"!!!

       I read this article in TheTelegraph and thought perhaps I should try to keep it quiet, as it is the sort of thing that our government of pampered Oxbridge millionaires would jump at. Think how it would fit into their austerity plans, think of the savings to the social spending bill, housing thousands in caravans with little or no facilities or amenities. It would be in keeping with their plans for tougher sentences, (more people in prison for longer terms). If you can't get them into prison to form a cheap pool of labour, then dump them in “scum villages” They already have plans to open up the prisons to more of their corporate friends as a means of a cheap captive labour force, not covered by the normal health and safety regulations and with no union rights. This Dutch plan  would just fit nicely into their "deficit reduction" plans.

      Apartheid comes in many forms and in this corporate world, we are divided into our various groups, to be exclude or included. The most common form of Apartheid in the Western world is what I call “financial Apartheid”. You are exclude from whole speres of society because of your lack of money. With this “scum villages” plan you would be excluded because you behaviour doesn't fit their shape of “normal” and you would be banished to the shany towns dotted around their efficient profit producing labour camps.

Extract from The Telegraph article:

Amsterdam to create 'scum villages'

      Amsterdam is to create "Scum villages" where nuisance neighbours and anti-social tenants will be exiled from the city and rehoused in caravans or containers with "minimal services" under constant police supervision.

       The new punishment housing camps have been dubbed "scum villages" because the plan echoes a proposal from Geert Wilders, the leader of a populist Dutch Right-wing party, for special units to deal with persistent troublemakers. "Repeat offenders should be forcibly removed from their neighbourhood and sent to a village for scum," he suggested last year. "Put all the trash together." Whilst denying that the new projects would be punishment camps for "scum", a spokesman for the city mayor stressed that the special residential units would aim to enforce good behaviour.

Read the full article HERE:

ann arky's home.

IT'S A CLASS WAR INSTRUMENT!!

         All this hullabaloo about regulate the press, don't regulate the press, is a distraction from the real problem regarding our corrupt babbling brook of bullshit, the media. Anybody with a grain of sense would say a free press is essential, but our problem is that it is not a free press in the first place. It is a tightly controlled press in the hands of a small group of rich and powerful people who will always come down on the side of the rich and powerful people. For example, the Murdoch clan's global corporation, the Independent and the London Standard are the mouthpieces of Russian oligarchs and then we have Viscount Rothermere controlling shareholder and chairman of the Daily Mail. With such a rightwing bunch of extremely rich people controlling our “FREE” press, there is no way that they will advocate greater unionisation among the working class, workers control, true democracy, etc. What you get is them pushing their own agenda to suit their own class. Our “FREE” press is a propaganda machine for the corporate world we live in, and will always be biased against any organising by the ordinary people to take control of their own lives and shape society to the needs of the people. 

      The Lord Leveson “thingy” is just more smoke and mirrors, creating the illusion that something is being done and the real propblem is those few bad, bad people who have tainted this fine institution. Once we see a few wrists of the lesser mortals being slapped, they can get back to trying to mould public oppinion in favour of their beloved system of corporate capitalism. Our press is a class instrument, owned and controlled by the rich and powerful class, and will always be used against any group that might in any way attempt to re-dress that balance between the rich and powerful, and the ordinary people. Our “FREE” press is an instrument of control used by the state and the corporate world to further the ends of their class. A “FREE” press would be controlled by no one and be the voice of all the people to the benefit of all those people. So just view “The Leveson Report” as another chapter in one of the many soap operas with which our babbling brook of bullshit fill their pages. 

ann arky's home.

WORKERS KNOW YOUR HISTORY - ERNST TOLLER.

      A day late, but we should always remember our own, even if it is a wee bit late.

Ernst Toller:

     Born December 1st 1893, a German Expressionist involved with other writers in forming an insurrectionary Bavarian "government" during workers revolt, in which anarchists were among the principal activists: Ehrich Mühsam, Gustav Landauer, Ernst Toller, Ret Marut (aka B. Traven), & others, fought for the development of Workers' Councils & self-managed co-operatives. He spent several years in prison and was forced to flee Nazi Germany. Eventually settled in America, and despite success as playwright & poet, Ernst Toller committed suicide in his Manhattan hotel room, on May 22 1939, convinced his plays are passé.

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THE END OF THE WORLD!!

An interesting approach to news broadcasting with some interesting facts.

WHO CAN LIVE ON PIE-IN-THE-SKY?

         As the “financial crisis” rumbles on and on, more and more people are becoming homeless, and in London alone there has been a 43% increase in “rough sleepers” in the year to March 2012. This is likely to be an under estimate, as it is almost impossible to get an accurate figure. Those unfortunate enough to find themselves homeless, face a multitude of problems, in spite of this, recent figures show that one in five homeless people have had their benefits cut or stopped altogether, in the first year of the government's workfare program. Will this situation be remedied any time soon?

       On Wednesday our millionaire Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne will make his up-date statement on the economy, and according to Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, “Since the budget, the outlook for the UK economy has deteriorated and government receipts have disappointed by even more than this year's weak growth would normally suggest," so it doesn't bode well for the most vulnerable in our society. The millionaire cabal of Tories have already annouced that the “austerity” will have to continue well beyond their orginal estimate, and could run to 2018. Again this is an estimate based on pie-in-the-sky figures of growth and guess work from the banksters who gambled and lost billions, creating this “financil crisis” in the first place.

 "You have to make sacrifices to get the debt down."

      So what does the future hold if your not one of the millionaires? For starters, working longer to get your pension, which will be buttons, assuming you still have a job to cling onto. Wage cuts/freezes, or at best a wage increase lower than inflation, which is in fact a wage cut. Social benefits cut or eliminated, social spending slashed. More cuts to education, a privatised health service, an if you are working, it is more likey to be part-time and low paid. And what for? Does anybody believe that even if they annouce in 2018 that the financial crisis is over, that we will all see a dramatic improvement in our living standards? Our employers will increase our wages above inflation to get us back to where we were? Our new smiling millionaire government will pour extra money into education, social spending and re-nationalise the health service? They will also see that we all have affordable housing, and homelessness, child poverty, fuel poverty, will all be things of the past? Dream on my friend, your “austerity” is here as a way for the future. The UK will be part of that great big European sweatshop to allow our corporate masters to compete with those Eastern sweatshops. That is the grand-plan, the deficit reduction is just the smoke and mirrors. Be warned, organise, take action and resist, or humbly wallk into their scheme of things. 

ann arky's home.

LEFT CAREERISTS!!

     Recently I posted an article advertising a conference to be held in London on December 1st, called "Up-the-Anti". Looking at the sponsors, it looked like it might be a  great springboard for greater things. I didn't manage to the conference but this report on the conference from The Commune dispelled my illusions. It would be interesting to hear other reports from other sources.

‘up the anti’ –

when will the left learn?

2 12 2012

     The Anti-Capitalist Initiative’s (ACI) gathering of elements of the British Left on the 1^st December 2012 in London was yet more proof of their inability to adapt to today’s world, says duvinrouge.

     Despite a promising start will an inspirational speech from Joana Ramiro, followed by Preeti Paul from IOPS setting out a vision of what we are fighting for, the day then descended into tedious waffle from pseudo-intellectuals lacking any ability to inspire. This wasn’t entirely the fault of the speakers; it was the old, out of date approach of having a top table of ‘experts’ preaching to an audience in that typical hierarchical fashion socialist organisations are so well known for. These high-priests of theory are often employed by universities, write books, & mainly come from middle-class families. Participation is limited to an handful of ‘questions’ which sound more like mini-speeches from windbags who aspire to be on the top table next time around.

     When will these people learn that this format will never appeal to the working class?

Read the full report HERE:  

ann arky's home.

OPEN UTOPIA.

A message from Anarchist Studies Network: 

Open Utopia
Thomas More & Stephen Duncombe

       Open Utopia is the first complete English language edition of Thomas More’s Utopia that honors the primary precept of Utopia itself: that all property is common property. Open Utopia, licensed under Creative Commons, is free to copy, to share, to use. But Utopia is more than the story of a far-off land with no private property. It is a text that instructs us how to approach texts, be they literary or political, in an open manner: open to criticism, open to participation, and open to re-creation. Utopia is no-place, and therefore it is up to all of us to imagine it. 

      In this volume, and its accompanying website, Utopia is re-imagined and brought into the digital age as a participatory technology for undermining authority and facilitating new imagination.

Website: http://theopenutopia.org

      “A welcome new intervention into an old text. Re-read through the lens of Duncombe’s extensive – and persuasive – introduction, More’s Utopia is revealed as a subversive methodology for approaching utopias, one that engages and expands our capacity for political invention and imagination. Open Utopia is an infinite demand that splits the subject open to new possible worlds rather than giving a closed plan.” – Simon Critchley, author of The Faith of the Faithless

     “Everybody knows the difference between an open and a closed door. Fewer know the difference between an open mind and a closed mind, especially on the American left, where intellectual policing often replaces intellectual encouragement. Stephen Duncombe, in conversation with More and the horrifying history of utopia and utopians, opens minds and doors and reaffirms the importance of utopian thinking. Adelante, excelsior!” – Reverend Donna Schaper
PDF available freely online (http://www.minorcompositions.info/?p=487).

Open Utopia
Thomas More & Stephen Duncombe

    Opinion polls, volatile voting patterns, and street protests demonstrate widespread dissatisfaction with the current system, yet the popular response so far has largely been limited to the angry outcry of No! But negation, by itself, affects nothing. The dominant system doesn’t dominate because people agree with it; it rules because we’re convinced there is no alternative.

        We need to be able to imagine a radical alternative – a Utopia – yet we are haunted by the disasters of “actually existing” Utopias of the past century, from fascism to authoritarian socialism. In this re-issue of Thomas More’s generative volume, scholar and activist Stephen Duncombe re-imagines Utopia as an open text, one designed by More as an imaginal machine freeing us from the tyranny of the present while undermining master plans for the future.

ann arky's home.

WHY PAY EMPLOYEES??

       It is obvious that employers will milk any situation to cut costs and increase profits. The horrendous conditions prevailing in Greece today mean that people will try to hold on to their job no matter what, as being paid off means dire poverty and deprivation. Employers are well aware of this and are useing the situation to withhold employees wages, and blame it all on the economic conditions. Of course to continue working under these conditions also means dire poverty and deprivation, but that doesn't matter to the employer, they are doing just fine with the free labour. Our own brand of scum corporate bosses are no different and would love such a situation in this country. However, our millionaire cabal in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, are doing their bit to move things along that road. They dress it up with a nice sounding name, "workfare", instead of the employer withholding the wages, our government offers them employees free of charge. And as we all know, the corporate greed beasts are queuing up to garb some of the free slave labour. The system stinks, it is corrupt, exploitative, unjust and only favours the rich.

This from teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

        Greek police raided the Aristotelion University of Thessaloniki this morning, arresting 11 employees who had been part of an ongoing occupation of the Dean's office. The protest has been in response to the refusal of contractors used by the university to pay workers salaries for over three months.

       Those arrested were released temporarily after their court case was adjourned till Monday.
        With lay offs skyrocketing many unscrupulous employers have been using the fear of unemployment to delay or even stop payment of salaries, banking on the fact that people will continue working rather than face certain joblessness.

ann arky's home.

INDYMEDIA ON CIRCLED "A" RADIO.

      The collective behind London Indymedia (http://london.indymedia.org) are closing shop. In the past twelve years, the collective have racked up over 100 years of involvement in radical political organising and media production and have provided invaluable resources, contributing to the proliferation of information, communication, opinion and discussion within the UK radical political movements in which they are situated. They recently published their decision (https://london.indymedia.org/articles/13128) to archive the site and close down the project, stating a desire to move on to other political work. This show features a conversation with several former members of the London Indymedia collective on reasons for wrapping up and moving on, with much time spent reflecting on the current state of independent media production in an information age with a vast majority of internet track going towards a handful of corporately owned and controlled social networking tools and publishing platforms. (You can listen to the full version of the interview on Dissident Island episode 111  HERE:

ann arky's home.

WHAT'S THE SHAPE OF A REVOLUTION?

A comment taken from Italy Calling:

No one cares

No one cares
A few dissent
They're easily stifled
A few more get scared & distance themselves
Everyone else doesn't know/doesn't care
Repeat ad infinitum
The revolution will not be direct confrontation will cops. It will not be protests & square occupations.

What will the revolution look like, what will be the spark that ignites the fire?

ann arky's home.

BARE-KNUCKLE CAPITALISM.

        With unrest growing across Europe as each country pushes its own variation of the financial Mafia's "austerity" plan, we are seeing each country bring more draconian measures to control and repress any display of that unrest. In the "good times" we had nasty but polite capitalism, but now as their grab for the public purse becomes more desperate, we are entering what I call the bare-knuckle phase of capitalism. More legislation against public protest, more restrictions on public spaces, more control of any gatherings, be it sport or protest.

This from Italy Calling:

      The demonstrations that took place all over Italy on 14th November as part of a European Day of Action against austerity are already setting the pace of the new management of public order. In Rome in particular it’s been forbidden for months to get anywhere close to the political headquarters during demonstrations, despite the revocation of the decrees introduced last year by the Mayor to turn the whole of the city centre into a red zone.

     The first repressive measures announced by the government straight after the riots and violence of 14th November are already being sketched out, drawing inspiration from the “social repression workshop” that started a few years ago around football matches and stadiums.

Continue READING:

ann arky's home.

WE ASSIST IN BOMBING GAZA.

          On 14 November 2012, the Israeli army began attacking Gaza with drones, Apache helicopters, F-16 fighter jets and naval vessels. For 8 days, civilian areas of Gaza were bombarded by Israel from air and sea with over 150 men, women and children losing their lives. 

Tell the British government to stop funding Israel's brutal attacks on innocent people.
This attack was only made possible through the continued financial, military and diplomatic support Israel receives from Western states - including the British government. Take action to help end this suffering for good.
By selling arms to Israel, the British government is giving direct material support for Israel's aggression against the Palestinian people and sending a clear message of approval for its actions.
Call on Foreign Secretary William Hague to introduce an immediate arms embargo on Israel until it ends its violations of international law.

Thanks you for taking action.

ann arky's home.

CREATING MYTHS.

    And so the myth is spread, the lazy Greeks are responsible for the state of their country, it has nothing to do with the financial mafia and the corporate greed machine.

This from Teacher Dude's Grill and BBQ:

Supporters of Greek trade unionists 

charged with assaulting German official await verdict

      German CDU MP, Hans Joachim Fuchtel caused uproar during a visit to Greece when he claimed that 1000 Germans could do the work of 3000 Greeks. The remarks sparked off fierce protests by Greek trade unionists already angered by the latest round of public sector job cuts.
      During a joint German - Greek conference local government tempers flared and a German official was briefly attacked by angry public sector employees. The police arrested three in connection with the assault but all three were found not guilty yesterday.

ann arky's home.

WORKING POVERTY, TODAY'S PATTERN.

      Iain Duncan Smith, our well heeled, Works and Pensions Secretary, recently stated that poverty was the result of “ worklessness and welfare dependency, addiction, educational failure, debt or family breakdown” Strange that he should put worklessness first, considering that recent figures show that in this country we have more than 6 million working families living in poverty. We also have approximately 5 million adults living in poverty from homes where nobody works. So bang goes that theory that if you are unemployed and you get a job, whizz-bang, you're out of poverty. Another little fact about working gets you out of poverty, almost one third of children living in poverty in this country, come from working homes.

     It is obvious to any ordinary person that in-work poverty is as much a problem as is out of work poverty, in this system of capitalism. Even the apoligists for capitalism can't help but see that when you have one fifth of women and one seventh of men working for less than £7 an hour, you are goping to have working families in poverty. The situation is getting worse by the month, as “austerity” bites, and incomes shrink, more and more people are having to claim “tax credits”, (tax payers subsides to employers who don't pay a living wage).

     There is also the wild claim that our country is riddled with families who have never worked, yet the true figures state that only 2% of all working age households contain no one who has never worked.

     Of course their ideological thinking to create a UK sweatshop economy, pushes them to say, get them off benefit and into work and the poverty problem is solved, it would not cross their tiny twisted minds to say that they are being paid too little. Nor do they open their eyes to the fact that shouting about getting people into work, when there are no jobs, doesn't fit rational thinking. Then again, this is capitalism and those making the legislation are mainly millionaires with bundles of shares in the corporate world and a vested interest to keep wages down and profits up to fatten there bank accounts and those of their shareholder friends.

ann arky's home.

LET'S GET TOGETHER.

      The book that should be on everybody's bookshelf, and the end of year social that every anarchist/libertarian socialist, freethinking individual should be attending. Forget the works night out, (if you still have a job) this is the one.

End of Year Anarchist Social & AFAQ Vol.2 Book Launch

Kinning Park Complex

14/12/2012
7PM-1030PM

     You are invited an end of year anarchist social. We will be providing soup, bread and beverages, as well as opening up the main hall for stalls from the Radical Independent Bookfair, Glasgow Anarchist Federation and the Solidarity Federation amongst others.

This event will also mark the launch of the Anarchist FAQ Vol.2 by AK Press. It’s author, Iain McKay, will be on hand to undertake an informal Q&A session between 7:30 and 9:30. The RiB mini-stall will also be on hand to browse and pick up any radical literature that takes your fancy (including the AFAQ vol. 1 & 2).

 It's a great big social, so i' is.

      Feel free to spread the word and we look forward to seeing you there!

ann arky's home.

A LAND OF OPPORTUNITY - FOR WHO??

       Quite often, from that babbling brook of bullshit, the media, we hear about the economic hardship being faced by people in Greece, Spain and even now and again hints of what is happening here. Seldom are we told of the misery and deprivation in America. After all, it is the world's biggest economy, the pinnacle of corporate capitalism, so things must be better there, right? Well not quite, a recent Reuters report states that due to the “sub-prime mortgage crisis” (corporate greed) and the stratospheric rise in foreclosures of owner occupier houses, there is now a record number of vacant homes in that land of freedom and opportunity. It seems that the number of vacant homes in America now numbers more than 18.6 million, and according to the national Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, there are 3.5 million homeless people in America. So, that should mean that the homeless problem is solved, each homeless person now has more than 5 homes from which to make a choice of that basic right, a roof over your head!!! Of course it won't happen, so it is obvious that in that land of plenty, the the capital of corporate capitalism, the system is just as screwed up as any other capitalist country. Another little fact from the land of opportunity, there is no other city in the developed world with a greater divide between rich and poor than New York. The bottom 20% of its citizens get by with less than $10,000 a year, you can guess what the top 20% have to struggle by with in glitzy New York, New York??

ann arky's home.

FREE ACCESS TO ALL KNOWLEDGE.

      Open access? Should that not apply to all knowledge? Well it would in a free really democratic system, which at the moment is still just a dream, but we will get there.

ann arky's home.

THE STATE'S PACK OF ANIMALS.

       What the babbling brook of bullshit, the media, put out about Germany is about its "wonderful" economic success, how it is the bank manger of the Euro, the powerhouse of Europe, etc.. What they never mention is the fascist attacks and the complicity of the state in trying to cover these up. Nor do they report the strength of the anti-fascist resistance. One such attack by fascists took place on 21 November 1992 and resulted in the death of one Silvio Meier, the police cover up and false evidence eventually collapsed and there was an "investigation". Since then November 21 has become an annual event and a rallying of anti-fascists. This year in Berlin 6,000 took part in the march and demonstration marking the 20th. anniversary of Silvio's murder.

This from ContraInfo:

    Anti-authoritarian Silvio Meier was stabbed to death by neo-Nazi scum on November 21st, 1992 at the Samariterstraße metro station in Berlin.
     The State tried to water down the murder, presenting it as if it were a common bar brawl among youths. Furthermore, the German police and the mainstream media spread lies based on false statements by the neo-Nazis, who claimed that Silvio attacked them first with a knife, and they allegedly stabbed him in self-defense. Initially Silvio’s three companions, who survived the attack, faced charges and were questioned by cops even while in hospital (two of them suffered serious injuries). The police attempted to hold them responsible for the death of their own friend.*

Continue READING:

ann arky's home

IT'S FRACKING OUT OF ORDER!!

       It is fracking out of order!! Tar sands oil, and fracking gas, probably two of the most environmentally devastating process the corporate greed machine has come up with. What is more they are both backed up by a massive PR campaign to paint them people friendly, just as they told us tobacco wasn't harmful.

This from Artists against Fracking:

Why is fracking dangerous?
     Aquifer. To drill down to the shale, one must drill through the aquifer. These drills are known to leak and sometimes even explode, releasing chemicals into this precious source of water.
   Chemicals. The 2011 U.S. House of Representatives investigative report states that out of 2,500 hydraulic fracturing products, more than 650 contain chemicals that are known carcinogens. One would think that the Safe Drinking Water Act – a Federal law – would make such willful contamination illegal, but it is not being applied to Fracking.
    Also, most of these chemicals are not biodegradable. Once they are introduced to the aquifer, they will remain there forever.
Wastewater. Each gas well requires 1-8 million gallons of fresh water. The used water is one of the most hazardous wastes in the U.S., containing carcinogenic Fracking chemicals,remnant oil and hydrocarbons, biocides, as well as naturally occurring radioactive materials, like radon, which is heavier than air and sinks into the communities where people work and live.
      Air Pollution. There are air emissions associated with Fracking, which include methane leaks originating from wells, as well as emissions from the diesel or natural gas-powered equipment such as compressors, drilling rigs, pumps etc..

ann arky's home.

WORKFARE TO WORKHOUSE.

     Not a new article, but still very interesting and relevant. It also makes the connection between workfare and the governments plans for expanding the the prison population by "tough" on crime, "tougher" sentencing. After all a prison population is a captive, union free work population, and more and more companies are using prisons as cheap labour pots.

This from Libcom:

      Workfare isn’t just an austerity measure, it’s part of a longer term restructuring of the labour market. That makes it all the more important to kill it while we still can.

      Workfare has been kicking up a twitter-storm again lately. First with such joys as a permanent job stacking shelves on the Tesco night shift for your £67/week JSA, and unpaid ‘pre-employment training’ which is “mandatory; (...) Claimant informed consent is not required.” Then later it was announced that “disabled people face unlimited unpaid work or cuts in benefit.” This got me thinking. Workfare significantly pre-dates austerity. Labour introduced the New Deal in 1998 during the supposed ‘boom’ years, which was rebranded the Flexible New Deal in 2009. The idea was to ‘help’ people who’d been unemployed for more than 6 months back into work with ‘voluntary’ training and work placements. This went hand in hand with demonising the unemployed as work-shy scroungers – workfare was purportedly to get them back into work.
     In the world of workfare, ‘voluntary’ of course means ‘we’ll sanction you if you refuse’. And if your JSA is sanctioned, it can interrupt other claims such as for housing benefit and cause serious cash-flow problems for claimants. The LSE professor who devised the New Deal was made a Labour peer – Baron Layard – and loads of private sector firms (many with links to Labour) got on the gravy train as ‘providers’. Notionally, this was about ‘helping’ people back to work in a context of relatively full employment and economic growth. The whole thing merrily rolled along until the recession hit, when the scheme was revamped and continued to do exactly the same thing – mandatory unpaid work on pain of losing benefits. Bizarrely, the rhetoric demonising ‘scroungers’ has escalated in keeping with the ratio of jobseekers to jobs. As someone pithily put it on twitter, “JOBSEEKERS: Empirically, there are no jobs, but ideologically, we have potential full employment IF YOU WEREN'T SO LAZY.”

Read the full article HERE:

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