The so called “crisis” was in 2008
and here we are in 2014 and the ordinary people are still being
kicked in the teeth, under the guise of “balancing the books”.
The “crisis” was a wonderful opportunity for the
corporate/financial greed machine to put pressure on the political
class to create a sweatshop Europe. Of course the political class
willingly agreed, they are the managers of this ideology of
“austerity” and its resultant misery and deprivation.
The sad truth is that they seem to
be getting away with their callous disregard for human dignity. In
their eager endeavour to placate their corporate/financial masters
they have introduced a series of measures to syphon all wealth
upwards, to plunder public assets and privatise all social services.
In doing this they slash the living standards of all the ordinary
people.
We've had to make some tough decisions.
They have introduced slave
labour under the nice sounding name of “workfare”. This scheme
gives the corporate world an army of free labour to swell their
coffers. The big corporate names are queuing up to grab a share of
this free bonus to the balance sheet. At present there are more than
180,000 people in “government supported training and employment
programmes”. This is growing as the threat of sanctions force
people, who in most cases are already in poverty, to accept this
slave labour scheme, or face total deprivation.
Another inhumane scheme they
dreamed up to cut social spending, is the bedroom tax. If you, for
what ever circumstances, find you have a “spare room” you are
forced to move to a smaller house, and there aren't any, or lose a
portion of your council tax benefit. Recent statistics show that
there are well over 500,000 people facing the threat of homelessness
due to this inhumane, ideology driven, attack on the poorer section
of our communities.
Probably the most brutal and
callous of their schemes so far, is their attack on the disabled.
They always give these savage attacks nice sounding names, in this
case it is called the disability assessment process. This translates
as, cut disability allowance. The government has paid millions of pounds to the
firm ATOS, to carry out this attack on the wellbeing and dignity of
the disabled, and so far they have done this with an amazing
ineptitude and indifference to those being “assessed”.
The ATOS
assessment has seen more than 10,000 deaths that can be related to
this assessment process. That is 10,000 disabled people who have been
caught up in this ATOS assessment process, and dying. I think part of
Michael Meacher's statement in the House of Commons last year is
worth quoting,
"The fundamental issue is this: how can
pursuing with such insensitive rigour 1.6 million claimants on
incapacity benefit, at a rate of 11,000 assessments every week, be
justified when it has led, according to the Government’s own
figures, to 1,300 persons dying after being put into the work-related
activity group, 2,200 people dying before their assessment is
complete, and 7,100 people dying after being put into the support
group? Is it reasonable to pressurise seriously disabled persons into
work so ruthlessly when there are 2.5 million unemployed, and when on
average eight persons chase every vacancy, unless they are provided
with the active and extensive support they obviously need to get and
hold down work, which is certainly not the case currently?"
Six years on from the “crisis”
and these policies are set to continue indefinitely, they are
policies that suit the corporate world, privatising everything, cheap labour, zero hours
contracts, and eight people chasing every job, which helps to keep
down wages. So why should they change them? If we don't like them,
then we will have to be the ones to change things. The political
class are part and parcel of the corporate/financial world, they have
nothing to do with our world. We are mere dispensable units to be
used or discarded according to profit levels. We mine, make, grow,
and distribute everything on this planet, We don't need the parasites
on our back, we can create a much fairer world on our own, but they
do need us.
Visit ann arky's home at
www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
