Mental Health Prisons!!!

   This system throws up many anomalies, for example, we produce an abundance of wealth, but the majority struggle for a decent life. Is that beyond our imagination to put right? I'm sure we can all come up with a fairer way of producing and distributing the wealth we create, but it would have to be outside capitalism to have any pretence at fairness. Another anomaly in this quagmire of greed we call the capitalist system, is “law and order”. The figures for England and Wales, for the year ending March 2013, state that there were 8.6 million crimes. This is a decrease of 9% on the previous year, it is also the lowest figure since 1981 and is less than half the peak figure of 1995.

     So there we have it, falling crime rates across the country, and that's where the anomaly comes in. The prison population in this country has been rising steadily over the years. In England and Wales since 1993 to the present time the prison population has grown from 40,000, to today's figure of 97,000, in Scotland it rose from approximately 6,000 in 1997 to today's figure of around 7,000. Only in Northern Ireland has the figure fallen I,600 in 1996 to approximately 1,400 today, but Northern Ireland is a special case because of the “troubles” and the state's brutal repression, in the 80's and 90's.

        This land of falling crime has more than 150 prisons and we incarcerate more of our people than any other European country. In England and Wales it is 149 per 100,000 of the population, with Scotland following close behind with 139 per 100,000. How do you square that circle, falling crime, increase prison population? One way to look at it, is that across the country as a whole, we have approximately 1% of the population with mental health problems, our prison population has 10% with mental health problems. So that would be one answer, we lock people up who have mental health problems, instead of offering them care and treatment. Just another brutal statistic from a brutal, uncaring, exploitative system.

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Wealth Tourists.

     Our Etonian millionaires in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, at the moment are on their bandwagon of "health tourists". People they deem to be coming to this country, getting health treatment and not contributing. With their dodgy accountancy they reckon that we are being done for about £500 million. Of course there is no way of verifying their figures, but to them, that sounds like a nice number, and it gives them another stick to beat up immigrants. However, they are not saying or doing much about those "wealth tourists", those who  make a killing in this country and plant the loot in a cosy wee tax haven. Now we know that figure is into the billions, but most of those indulging in that, happen to belong to the same club as our Etonian parasites. These "wealth tourists" use all the facilities in this country, its infrastructure, and contribute virtually nothing, they live in the world of tax loopholes, tax havens, off-shore accounts, hedge funds, Eurobonds, and they own most of this country's assets. We the tax payer provide them with all the infrastructure to allow them to rip us off.  It is this ratbag of "wealth tourists" that are bleeding us dry, not the odd immigrant that gets health treatment. 

     Of course to you and I, we believe that in any civilised society, everybody is entitled to the health care they need, no matter where they are from or where they live, but to our millionaire parasites, health care is a commodity to be sold and make a profit from. That is a fundamental difference between a social society and a corporate society.

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Why Vote?

     It is nice when that shit producing box call a TV pours out something resembling the truth, and nice to see pompous, arrogant Paxman eventually silenced.

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Their Power Is Illusionary.

       A week away indulging myself, coffee, reading, walking, looking and talking, but as they say, a week is a long time in politics. In that week there were riots in Hamburg, in Rio de Janeiro the cops dragged an eighteen year old youth up a dark alleyway and beat him to death, in Barcelona there was a weekend of demonstrations against austerity. Also in Barcelona, October 20 saw an animal rights demonstration in the city centre, and on October 22, in Rome there were protests against evictions. Here in the UK, Chinatown in London shut down in protest at UK Border Agency raids. If you work your way through the various news avenues, you'll find these sort of events occurring across the globe. City after city sees the population in discontent, disgust and anger, at a system the produces an abundance of wealth, but leaves the people who produce that wealth, in various levels of poverty and deprivation, a system that requires violence and repression to keep it in place.


 

 

      It is obvious that this system is not what the people want, it is forced on them by the power of the state and their masters, the financial/corporate Mafia. It can be destroyed, and a system created that sees to the needs of all our people, those who produce and transport everything on this Earth. The planet is being raped and plundered, and we are being shafted, by a small well organised bunch of parasites, but their power is illusionary, they have power if you believe they have power, however, without our obedience, they are nothing.

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Yeeha.

Hi,

    to all you friendly readers, ann arky will be off for a wee break and will not be back until Monday 21st. October. So the blog will be sleeping until then, but I have no doubt that the world will still keep turning. Thanks for following, see you then.

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

Flying Repairs, Or Areo-Dynamics!!.

     I don't think she had heard of health and safety regulations. Perhaps not political, but worthy of admiration.

Mid air repair by a woman, in 1924.

      This woman has more guts than a sausage factory. Take a look at this film. Fabulous footage, although grainy due to time and bad equipment in those days compared to today but what nerve this gal had.
     Gladys Ingles was a member of a barnstorming troupe, called the 13 Black Cats, in the 1920's. Ingles was a wing walker. In this film, she shows her fearlessness in classic barnstorming fashion to save an airplane that has lost one of its main landing gear wheels.
      Ingles is shown with a replacement wheel being strapped to her back and then off she goes as "Up She Goes," a duet from the era, provides the soundtrack. In the film, Ingles transfers herself from the rescue plane to the one missing the main landing gear tire.
     She then expertly works herself down to the undercarriage, only a few feet from a spinning propeller. It's certainly a feat many mechanics wouldn't even try on the ground with the engine running.
She died at age 82.

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All We Need Is Love!!

     

    The world appears to be sucked into an illusion that happiness comes in fancy containers and since money gets these fancy containers, then money is all we need. However, money is the central part of the con-trick, in reality it is the one thing we can live without, if only we would organise our lives true to our nature. We are social creatures, it is each other that we need, it is sharing that makes us richer and happier. We have enough in this world for everybody, but we screwed up, and fell for the illusion that acquiring more means more happiness. We handed our lives to the illusionists, we live confused and frustrated in their world of smoke and mirrors. Let's get out of the smoke, dispel the illusion and create that world of sharing, co-operation and mutual aid.

This from Not Buying Anything:

     Most people would consider being the last person on earth to be the supreme torture. It would be a form of solitary confinement except the entire globe would be your cell.
      Humans are social creatures, and we do best together whether we like it or not. When it comes right down to it, each other is all we really need.
     Ask anyone that has had to abandon their home in a moments notice during an emergency or disaster.
     Victims of natural disasters like wildfires have reported on what goes through their minds at the moment of reckoning.
     Hint: it has nothing to do with stuff.
We don't need money - we need each other. We don't need to buy things - we need to share things. Yes, our stuff, but also our thoughts, our ideas, our dreams.
       Working together while sharing our creativity has the power to create change and build a better world. A world that recognizes what is really important and what we really need. Then maybe we can prevent there ever being a "last person on earth".

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Feeding Off The Blood Of The Vulnerable.

     True to form, as the temperature drops, and more and more people are facing fuel poverty, along come the corporate highway thugs. We in Scotland have seen the first real drop in temperature since last winter and this is met by SSE energy company announcing that it will raise it prices as from November. We can expect to see an 8.2% increase in energy costs this winter. This is a company that last year (2012) announced profits in the region of £1,500 A MINUTE!!! While they are shaking their heads and saying we have to increase prices, the top three parasites in the company are now looking at almost doubling of their salaries. The top blood sucking leech, in this rip-off company will this year stash almost £2 million salary into his already fat bank account. As you see this is just a slight increase from his miserly £1.1million salary for 2012. This, of course, is in keeping with our wage freeze/cuts, proving that we are all in this together. Fat salaries and bonuses, as you and I know, are not a new thing, the corporate world throws them around their little circle of friends, as you and I would pass round the crisps. Recently Ian Marchant stepped down as chief executive of SSE and left with a smile on his face, as his little parting gift was salary and bonuses worth £1 million and a pension pot of £9 million and just in case he found things difficult after leaving, he also got share options worth £4.8 million.

      In this greed driven exploitative system of injustice, winter is seen as an opportunity to rip people off. In any decent compassionate society we would see winter as a time to help each other, to see that nobody suffers because of the cold winters. Energy price increases mean increases in avoidable deaths from cold related diseases. This is criminal in a country where fuel poverty is rife and rising. Price increase are not a matter of survival for the big energy companies, there are a desire and policy. The big 6 energy companies have seen their profits rise by 74% since 2009. In the same period prices have risen by 13%. For the first six months of 2013, Centrica, owner of British Gas, saw their operating profits rise by 9% giving them a staggering £1.58 billion.

      While our elderly and vulnerable suffer and die in our cold damp winters, we tolerate the leeches feeding of their blood. There is no grounds on which this type of behaviour can be acceptable. Energy is not a commodity, to be sold to those who can afford it, in any decent society, it is a necessity available to all. Don't expect them to change things. If we think this is intolerable and inexcusable behaviour, then we will have to change the system. Remember, the energy companies used to belong to us! It is up to us and us alone.

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Anarchists As Artists.

      As well as involvement in all aspects of our communities, we need publicity, propaganda, call it what you will, but we must continually put our ideas on the table of everyday life. If our ideas are not known to the ordinary people when they find themselves in conflict, then our ideas will not be taken up. Anarchist have a very colourful palette, let's paint our communities, leaflets, posters, conversations, meetings, stalls, stickers, an avalanche of anarchist ideas flooding this festering mess they call capitalist society. Every opportunity to put our ideas, beliefs, theories out there, should be embraced, from pub and bus stop chats to graffiti, it all adds up.

A Mural from Zurich in Switzerland. 

 

The mural reads:
     “We are growing old among men and women without dreams, strangers in a present time which leaves us no room for outbursts of generosity. The best this society can offer us (a career, a reputation, a sudden, big win, ‘love’) simply doesn’t interest us. Giving orders disgusts us just as much as obedience. What we are and what we want begins with a no. We are exploited like everyone else and want to put an end to exploitation right away. For us, revolt needs no other justification. Our life is escaping us, and any class discourse that fails to start from this is simply a lie. Revolt needs everything—papers and books, arms and explosives, reflection and blasphemy, poisons, daggers and arsons. The only interesting question is how to combine them.”
“NEVER PJZ!”

Read the article HERE:

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Protect Our Right To Organise.

      Across the globe, the corporate fascists that control the various governments are working towards the destruction of organised labour. They are pushing their puppet governments to bring in ever more draconian anti-union legislation, while they rip up contracts, abolishing hard won rights that the workers have struggled for decades to achieve. It is a relentless onslaught. Cameron at the recent Tory Conference, announced that they would be bringing in more "de-regulation" in the work place, this translates as more anti-union laws. This is the twin prongs of the same attack on the ordinary people of this world, austerity measures, to reduce the wages, and the destruction of organised labour, to create that corporate world dream, a world of unorganised sweatshop labour. Every attack on our working conditions must be repelled, as they will not stop until we have nothing and they have complete control of a mass of unorganised, subservient, desperate, cheap labour.

 This from Labour Start:

     If your union allowed retired workers, or workers who were fired from their jobs, to be members -- would your government delegalise your union?
    That's exactly what's happening in South Korea, where both the government employees union and the teachers' union face the imminent threat of deregistration.
The teachers have been given until October 23 to change their constitution or else face delegalisation.
    This is a flagrant violation of international labour standards and represents yet another attempt by the South Korean government to break public sector unions.

They will not succeed.
    The Education International, representing teachers unions around the world, together with Public Services International, the International Trade Union Confederation and three Korean unions have called for a massive global online campaign of protest.
     This is very urgent -- if we don't act, the Korean teachers will no longer have a legal trade union by October 23.

Please click here to send off your message today:

http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1995&src=lsmm

     If you share this link with your friends, family and fellow union members on email, Twitter and Facebook, it will help spread the word.
Let's send thousands of messages today to the South Korean president and let's stop the attempt to crush public sector unions.

Thanks very much.

Eric Lee

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A Call From The Scotia Bar Glasgow.

An appeal to all those thousands of 

Friends of The Scotia Bar. 

A meeting in the Scotia Bar 

October 9th. 7:30. 

 

       I have been a regular visitor to the Scotia Bar, over more years than I would ever admit, and I have always been amazed at the shear variety, breadth and depth of the people you meet there. All the world is there, you are as likely to meet a physicist as a writer or a singer, and actor or a plumber, a busker. The person standing beside you is just as likely to be a bus driver, an actor or a doctor of literature. Apart from the magic nights of music, poetry, banter, warm company and laughter, it was a place to go that you knew you would be welcome and receive friendly service, and if you wanted to sit and have a long look into your glass, so be it, you would get the peace to do so. It is an institution, a beacon in the city, a true open Glasgow Club.

 

     However it seems that Greene King who run the pub haven't grasped the fact that the Scotia is not just a building where you buy booze, it is an archive of history, it is a hub, it is a cultural broth-pot, it is everything Glasgow can be proud of, but as such it needs to be supported financially to maintain its rich character and realise its full potential to the company.

Friends of the Scotia 

 

     ''Cosiest pub in Glasgow. Cheekiest face in Scotland. Biggest welcome in the world. Glasgowfolk club and writers' retreat. Real ales and Real people served... Gluttons and garglers' especially welcome.''

Mission Statement: 

      To uphold and enhance the aims and traditions of The Scotia. Arguably the most famous pub in Glasgow, The Scotia Bar has a long and illustrious history of

music, writing and political discussion. Known more commonly among musicians as an old favourite haunt for Billy Connolly, Gerry Rafferty and Hamish Imlach, it is a place where aspiring musicians hope to attain a much sought after music sIot. And if they don't, then they come along anyway and strike up a grand session with a mouth organ and the pub guitar.

     The writers club meets once a month, a poet laureate and a short story competition is held once a year, perhaps to unearth the next James Kelman, William Mcllvanney or Liz Lochead, who are all Scotia people.

    Home also to the historians, the anarchists and the ghost hunters, who maintain that not all the spirits are on the gantry, The Scotia is the pub where your dad had his first beer; where you relax with a cold pint of the latest ale on your way home from work; where you know you'll meet an old friend or an amicable stranger to share a malt o' the month with. 

 

    A few weeks ago, Greene King, the company who run The Scotia, cut the entertainment budget. We want to convince them to increase it and invest in the pub that has stood the test of time and has as many stories to it as layers of varnish. 

     Anyone with an interest in preserving and upholding this famous pub is invited to a meeting in the Scotia Bar on October 9th. @7:30 to discuss this. 

 

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