Healthy Cities.

       There is no doubt that this pandemic has brought about lots of changes in the way people think and act. Of course some of that will disappear after this covid19 thing is behind us, but some will stay. hopefully we will start to put together that better world we all talked about, and hopefully organised for, while our lives were suspended to a degree. Of course for our "frontline workers" life was never suspended, it was thrown into warp speed.
      One of the changes that came about during this lockdown was the booming cycle business. People started taking to their bikes big time, new bikes old bikes all started to be seen streaming through our streets and parks. If that continues it instills a wonderful feeling of joy, as we start living in cities and towns where we can breathe much cleaner air, and see a healthier population. Of course that is only one small change we will have to make to get to the better new world we want.
     As a keen cyclist can applaud this short piece from Not Buying Anything, it has started a little glow of hope that perhaps we are seeing the demise of the car jammed roads, each vehicle belching out poison and turning our living spaces into poison pods. Here's hoping, it's a start to that better world.

Overheard the other day:
     "What is something you are looking forward to doing after the pandemic is over?"
     "Continuing the family bike rides that we have started while staying at home."
        Does anyone else feel the Earth moving under their feet?
Is that the rumble of people giving up driving for riding? Right now car sales are down, and bicycle sales are up. Guaranteed no one saw that one coming just a short while ago.
       Not only are bike sales up, bike servicing is as well as people drag old bikes out of basements and garages and bring them in for a tune up.
       Whether it is to get out of the house, get exercise, spend more time with family and friends, or have a less expensive way to commute that doesn't involve being in close proximity to other commuters, people have been turning to the glory that is the bicycle.
One of the best headlines I have read recently is "Bike Business Booming During Pandemic". That booming you feel is a mass turn toward simplicity.
        The acquisition of a bicycle, after all, is one of the most simple (and wonderful) acts a modern person can engage in.
          To alter the H.G. Wells quote a bit, I can say that, "when I see an adult get set up on a bike, I no longer despair for the human race".
And when I see large masses of adults buying new bikes, and repairing old ones, I start to think, "Hey, we might actually turn this thing around."
        Here's to riding our way to a new, better world.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Land Of The Free!!

      This is an extract lifted from arrezafe it's from a book written in 1992, and things have deteriorated since then, poverty has increased significantly. Also this is a translation from English to Spanish and back to English, it is not the original English copy, though full English copy can be read here: http://www.michaelparenti.org/HiddenHolocaust.html thanks Loam for the link. The richest and most developed capitalist nation on the planet, and this is the miserable life it produces for millions of its citizens. What chance have the rest of us got if we follow the same Neo-Liberal policies of the capitalist master.

From the book Dirty Truths , [1992], by Michael Parenti
Translation from English: Arrezafe
       "I have seen strong men tear the floor, begging for a job. With some of them we have to do our best to avoid suicide. Many say they just want to die," says Charlie Tarrance, director of a private social agency. . Their task is to deal with the growing queues of desperate people looking for work, housing and food. The place is Gadsden, Alabama, but it could be anywhere in the United States.
      It could be Washington DC, at a Safeway supermarket just a mile from the White House, where an old man holding a can of dog food is crying. When asked what is wrong, he replies: “I am hungry. I'm hungry."
     It could be New York City, where a woman yells at the landlord to evict her from her home along with her children, whom, to her greatest distress, the Office of Child Welfare takes away. Desperate and sobbing, she is rushed to a New York psychiatric hospital to be treated by all-knowing psychiatrists and diagnosed as "paranoid schizophrenic."
      How much misery and cruelty on earth. As American leaders move decisively toward their Final Free Market Solution, stories of hunger, grief, and despair abound. Such tragedies exist a long time ago. Social pathology is part of this society as much as crime and capitalism. For a multitude of people, life becomes increasingly difficult.
Some grim statistics
      Conservatives like to proclaim how wonderful, happy, and prosperous our nation is. The only thing that coincides with their love for the country is the remarkable indifference they show towards the people who live in it. For them, the anguished cries of the dispossessed are nothing more than annoying whimpers of discontent. Those who criticize the existing living conditions are labeled as "complainers" and that we show some concern for our fellow citizens. But the dirty truth is that there is an alarming amount of inequalities, difficulties, abuses, afflictions, diseases, violence and pathologies in this country. The figures reveal a list that reaches millions of victims. Consider the following estimates for any given year:

27,000 Americans commit suicide.
5,000 suicide attempts. Some estimates are higher.
23,000 are killed.
85,000 are wounded by firearms.
38,000 of these die, including 2,600 children.
13,000,000 are victims of crimes including assault, rape, armed robbery, theft and arson.
135,000 children carry weapons to school.
5,500,000 people are arrested for various crimes (not including traffic offenses).
125,000 die prematurely from alcohol abuse.
6,500,000 use heroin, crack, speed, PCP, cocaine, or some other hard drug on a regular basis.
37,000,000 , one in six Americans, regularly use medical drugs to control their mood. Users are mostly women, medical sponsors, pharmaceutical company providers: astronomical profits.
2,000,000 outpatients receive powerful mind control drugs, sometimes described as "chemical straitjackets."
5,000 die from psychoactive drug treatments.
200,000 are subject to treatments of electrical shock damaging to the brain and nervous system.
From 600 to 1,000 people, mostly women, are lobotomized.
25,000,000, or one in 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic, or medical sources to address mental and emotional problems, at a cost of more than $ 4 billion annually.
6,800,000 turn to non-medical services, such as clergy, welfare agencies, and social counselors, for help with their emotional problems. In total, some 80,000,000 have sought some form of psychological counseling in their lives.
1,300,000 suffer some form of treatment-related injury in hospitals.
2,000,000 undergo unnecessary surgical operations, 10,000 of which die as a result.
180,000 die from adverse reactions to medical treatments, more than those who die from combined plane and car accidents.
More than 14,000 people die from overdoses of legally prescribed medications.
45,000 die in car accidents. However, the number of cars and highways is increasing while funding for safer forms of public transportation is shrinking.
Of the 1,800,000 victims who suffer non-fatal injuries from car accidents, 150,000 suffer permanent disabilities.
126,000 children are born with significant defects, mainly due to insufficient prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or drug addiction by the mother.
2,900,000 children are subjected to gross neglect or abuse, including physical torture and willful starvation.
5,000 children are killed by their parents or grandparents.
More than 30,000 children are permanently physically disabled due to abuse or neglect. Child abuse in the United States affects more children each year than leukemia, car accidents, and infectious diseases combined. Cases of abuse by unemployed parents are increasing dramatically.
1,000,000 children run away from home, mainly due to abuse, including sexual abuse, of parents and other adults. 83 percent of fugitive children sexually abused come from white families.
150,000 children are reported as missing.
50,000 of these simply disappear. Their ages range from 15 to 15. According to the New York Times, "Some of these children are dead, perhaps half of them, buried annually in this country, are unidentified children."
900,000 children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor in the United States, serving as underpaid farm workers, dishwashers, laundry, and housework for up to ten hours a day in violation of child labor laws.
From 2,000,000 to 4,000,000 women are battered. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury and the second leading cause of death for American women.
700,000 women are raped, one every 45 seconds.

And so the list goes on read the full list HERE: 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Open Door!!

      Since this covid19 pandemic I, like lots of others, have been reading articles on how we should tackle it and the problems that it has thrown up in the running of this society. What I find very disappointing is that a tremendous amount of articles, even some from the so called "left", keep advocating what the government should be doing and how it can solve this problem better than it seems to be doing at present. It seems to be impossible for some people to think and act outside the the rule book they have been handed, and they also fail to realise that the government and the large corporations are one and the same thing. To discuss how the government can solve this problem in favour of the ordinary people, is a bit like asking you gaoler to help you escape.

      To me the first step is to throw away the rule book which is based on a growing economy, stop playing the game to their rules. All solutions to our problems must be human based, not corporate balance sheet orientated. The present economic model is there to serve the millionaire/billionaire parasite class, why should we, the ordinary people, do anything to preserve such an unequal exploitative system. Let's not forget, all that money that is being thrown at big multi billion pound corporate businesses is your tax money. One way or another we will be asked to pick up the bill. Our future will be tied that that mountain of "debt" for generations to come with the resulting austerity demanded to reduce the debt and balance the books. You've heard it all before.

I need a taxpayer's bailout to keep this thing going. 

 

     Our answer lies not in getting the economy growing again, but bring it crashing down. What we need we should be the owners of that production and the distributors, and doing it for our selves and our communities, not shoveling the wealth we produce into the coffers of that millionaire/billionaire parasite class that grow fat off your effort and sweat.

      Sustainability, human needs based, mutual aid, co-operation between communities, taking control of our work places and distribution centres, and free from the profit motive, are the only foundation stones of a truly civilised society. Anything else is walking back into your cell when the door was open to leave.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Quiet Cruelty.

       Some people might say that I go on about prisons, but I probably do. They are massive institutions of human torture, cruelty and violence, sitting quietly in every city in the world and most people pass them by without much of a thought of what goes on behind those walls, a stain of our humanity. "Man's inhumanity to man" no sexism intend, it is a well know saying to highlight how some of us treat our fellow beings, is no better portrayed than in the state's prison system. Institutions where vindictive and arbitrary actions are the norm, and rules and laws are broken on a whim, all in an attempt to break the incarcerated into a submissive, member of their system.
     All of this is carried out by people in structures that they try to make you believe that they are doing it to protect you and I. However it is a strange human who accepts that locking up other humans under these conditions is something to be done voluntarily and for money.
    We could fill a large library with pages of this type of inhumane treatment handed out in these institutions, in country after country, on a daily basis. No matter the arguments put forward, their is no rational justification in a civilised society for these institutions to exist. They are simply institutions for the repression of dissent, a place where all means are used to bring to submission those who would dare oppose this system of inequality, injustice and greed. Even although, no matter where you look, they are over crowded, unhygienic and lacking in decent health care facilities, but thanks to the human spirit and desire for freedom and justice this doesn't always work.
      This is just another incident from one country, but it could be anywhere you care to drop a pin on a map.

      The following from 325: 

From the South isolation section of the Pagliarelli prison in Palermo
        We are two prisoners who have been thrown into the isolation section “South” of the Pagliarelli prison (in Palermo) without any judicial measure to justify it. We are Carmine Lanzetta (AS3 [detained in “High Surveillance 3” circuit]) from January in total continuous isolation started with the disciplinary isolation for 10 days that still continues, and Davide Delogu, Sardinian anarchist, from February in continuous isolation for reasons of order and security for which we should not do more than 15 days, held hostage with the revenge of total isolation.
       Both of us do not bow to the annihilation in which our torturers would have us and fight against the hellish misery of this infamous section to be closed, with the consequent transfer. In half of the section there are the two of us in cells with nothing inside, far from each other. In the other half they put the prisoners in precautionary quarantine and we all use the same shower and the same phone. So we became their guinea pigs. Someone even before us tried to make a complaint to the prosecutor and complain to the magistrate, but these instances are blocked or made to disappear. There is no response to our lawyers’ complaint send via PEC e-mail either; prison administration taking advantage of the emergency of Covid-19 so the lawyers can’t enter the prison to visit us. We are in a section of isolation that had been abolished since 2000 because of the inhumanity embodied there and which is still being put in place. The cells have nothing inside, are deprived of everything: TV, radio, bathroom door, window, rags, brooms and cleaning sticks, hot water with a mini sink always plugged, a walking space that is a cubicle without a bathroom, but there’s no shortage of excrement of any kind, something we don’t dwell on. They inflict all kinds of abuse without being able to subjugate us, however, does not change the antiphon. Those who hold power in this prison are dangerous people, starting with commander Rizzo who feels omnipotent and all the hierarchs who continue with their harassment, like the deputy director who inflicts disciplinary isolation with natural ease, even though he knows in what non-human conditions he leads people. And the director Francesca Vezzana is co-responsible for all this. All this must end and we demand the closure of this section of isolation “South” and our transfer to another prison.
      Therefore, from today, May 14th, 2020, we begin the food strike, refusing to go to the cubicles and unworthy walking spaces, trying to beat the bars every day for 20-30 minutes.
      Let’s start the strike permanently, for now let’s avoid the hunger and thirst strike in order to keep us strong for when we will lead more incisive forms of struggle, since by limiting ourselves to these we won’t go very far, so that we can face the squadrette [groups of guards specialized in beating and massacre prisoners] that abound here, to get what we want until the end.

 Updates will follow.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Now Six.

 

 Photo courtesy of MyPark

         A second visit to Springburn Park to see the swans and their five cygnets. At the last visit there were five cygnets but we thought the parents were still sitting on at least one more egg. Well today proved that to be correct, as there were six cygnets merrily paddling around their parents. It was interesting to see the parents drag weeds up from the bottom of the pond and drop it in front of the cygnets and watch them feeding on it. Another pleasant outing, Stasia as usual, was the hand behind the camera.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Fascism Tomorrow?

       There's a lot of talk and thought about after this pandemic, perhaps not enough by the general public on how we can scrap the old system of inequality, injustice, and destruction of the planet for greed. If we don't come together to sort this out the way we want it, to a system that sees to the needs of all our people, based on mutual aid, equality, justice, respect for all and sustainability, we will end up in a worse state than we were in before this covid19 pandemic struck.

      To help to focus our minds on our future if we don't grab the initiative now, I nicked this poem from Tayside Wobbly's site, I'm sure they won't mind.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Welcome Signs.

     For our pandemic permitted evening exercise today, Stasia and I went for a wee walk in a part of our quieter, cleaner air city. It was very unusual, instead of being wary of cars, it was watch out for the bikes. I reckon at the present time that there are more bikes on our city's roads than cars, to me a lover of cycling, a welcome sight. While ambling along it was also good to see that some of our friends had been about as well and left a few signs to say that they had been there before us. Nice to have met you friends.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Cages Are Cruelty.

      There can be no rationale for prisons in a civilised society, locking animals in cages is considered cruel, but we tolerate humans being lock up in cages.  Locking large numbers of people up in overcrowded, unhygienic conditions with poor or nonexistent medical facilities, more so during this coronavirus pandemic, must be considered a crime against humanity. Across the world we are talking about millions of individuals, a vast amount of them suffering from physical and/or psychological problems that should treated by the medical profession, but instead are lock up in what can only be described as state institutions of repression and torture. Recently the Turkish state stood callously by and watched two prisoners die, a week or so apart, from the results of a hunger strike, that is the way of states and prisons. Now the states across the world have turned society in to what it has always desired, a totally controlled environment a large open prison, where obedience and submission are seen as a duty. This is the true nature of any state. All those unfortunate enough to be enmeshed in the state's institutions of torture and repression deserve our fullest solidarity and support. 

    Freedom and justice cannot co-exist with prisons, such a situation is a contradiction, freedom and justice will only grow from the ashes of all prisons.

The following from ATHENS Indymedia:

SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS ALL OVER THE WORLD

CALL FOR INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION
         The existing health crisis and its management from governments until now, globally, has unmasked the real character of authority, which was hiding itself behind the democratic mask. This oppressive system imposed an ultimate control of life, forbidding everything. Now, all civil liberties have become senseless words. This extreme condition that we live in, reveals that the prison-model is the true capitalistic model of society.
       Prison is the most extreme form of bio-politics and extermination. Prisoners are under constant surveillance and control, something that, nowadays is happening to the whole society.
      In this period of time, prisoners in greek prisons are dying, one after another, from minor causes such as rotten teeth etc. Selim Zerolari and Azizel Demiroglou were two prisoners that we were informed about their deaths, this month. Mass media, of course, managed to conceal or distort these news. Furthermore, the state has grabbed the opportunity, due to the curfew, to move the most active prisoners, anarchists and others, into other prisons. Silence in the streets gives more power to the state to repress the voices of the imprisoned people.
      Incarceration has always been, and remains, a form of torture and a tool of submission for authority. If we don't resist to this modern totalitarianism, we will live in this prison-society, which states systematically impose.
     Throughout the planet, in the face of the corona virus threat, prisoners stacked in prisons and migrant concentration camps are shouting: We are prisoners, not death row convicts!

Korinthos migrant concentration camp, Greece: 1,200 migrants go on hunger strike, March ‘20

Italy, March ‘20: 27 prisons in revolt due to the corona virus, many prisoners killed in the clashes

Argentina, April ‘20: revolt in Concordia prison, guards respond with shootings

Palmasola, Bolivia, May ‘20: 2 prisoners left to die from the corona virus, prisoners revolt

Chile: stirke mobilization at high security prison in Santiago, May ‘20

Thebes prison, Greece: prisoners revolt after prisoner dies beause she was not taken to hospital, April ‘20

MEET ALL PRISONERS DEMANDS
FREEDOM TO ALL WHO ARE IN THE CELLS
PUBLIC HEALTH CARE FOR ALL – PRISONERS AND MIGRANTS
OPEN ALL CONCENTRATION CAMPS FOR MIGRANTS
AS LONG AS BORDERS AND PRISONS EXIST NOBODY IS FREE
CALL TO INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH PRISONERS

29-30-31 MAY 2020

comrades, solidarians with prisoners’ struggles

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Leaving Sweetener.

      Have you ever thought of walking away from your job with immediate effect, then thought of the financial strain you might be under? Well it seems that some firms treat those who do so rather nicely. This morning I read about a guy who did just that, after just two years in the job. He had been working from home and for some reason or other, decided to leave with immediate effect. However, he doesn't need to worry too much about his financial state, his firm has treated him very nicely.  
      He has been put on "garden" leave until the middle of August, during which period he will receive full salary and benefits. At the end of his "garden" leave, he will be given the sum of the equivalent of nine months salary in lieu of working his notice, giving him another tidy little sum of £480,000. His company has also agreed to give him £50,000 towards his legal fees incurred relating to his departure, and a further little sum of £25,000 towards "outplacement support" 

 

      Now that's what I call a nice way to depart your job. However I wouldn't rush for the door just yet, you see he happens to be Rico Back, head of Royal Mail, think of how many stamps you had to buy to pay him that little cushion. They certainly know how to treat their own. Just remember, we are all in this together, and other bullshit platitudes.

 

        I don't suppose they'll receive the same treatment as Rico, but then again, they're not leaving, they are being pushed out the door.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Losing Battle.

     We have all sorts of theories on this pandemic, but we can be sure that human activity is causing dramatic changes in our planets ecosystem, the results of which we don't fully understand and can't possible predict accurately. What we can be sure of is that we are, by human greed and blind ideology, creating a world vastly different from the one we inhabit at present. Habitats and species disappear, new forms of bacteria and viruses emerge and we have no idea how they will affect us as a species.

      By the illusion of ever increasing growth, we are opening a Pandora's box of complexities, and few are in our favour. Covid19 could be just another new pattern emerging in natures fight for survival against human plundering and destruction of its delicate balance. What we can be very sure of is, in any battle of humans against nature, nature will prevail and the human species will fall. We work with nature as part of it, or we fall as a damaging parasite, sadly we may take millions of innocent species with us.  

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk 

Freedom Is A Crime.

       In the eyes of the state and its institutions, the greatest crime is to try to change society to a true democratic system of equality and justice. Those who push hardest for such a change are likely to feel the full savage brutality of the state enforcement apparatus. Not the far right, not the plunders from the millionaire/billionaire parasite class, but the advocates for freedom and justice. The state will do all it can to intimidate, silence, repress and eliminate such voices. Hence anarchists, being the loudest and most persistent in that drive for true freedom, justice and equality, free from the capitalist system, are always a target for the state's repressive machine.  

       The following is just one incident from one country, but it is being repeated across the developed and developing world. We most highlight these acts of state repression and show solidarity with those at the receiving end of these brutal acts of intimidation.

The following from Act For Freedom Now:

EN/IT,Italy: «Ritrovo» repressive operation. Seven anarchists arrested
       May 14, 2020 by actforfreedom Actforfree received on 13.5.20
During the night of May 13, 2020, seven anarchists were arrested between Bologna, Milan and Tuscany, five others were required to reside in the municipality of residence and the anarchist documentation space Il Tribolo in Bologna was searched. The repressive operation, called «Ritrovo», was coordinated by the public prosecutor Stefano Dambruoso and the Carabinieri of the ROS (Raggruppamento Operativo Speciale), who carried out the arrests and searches jointly with the provincial command of the Carabinieri of Bologna.
      The seven arrested are charged with article 270bis of the penal code (subversive association with the purpose of terrorism or subversion of the democratic order), the other charges relate to articles 414 (incitement to commit a crime), 639 (defacement and soiling) and 635 (damage). One person is accused of article 423 (fire) for the incendiary attack of December 16, 2018, against some telecommunications antennas located in Monte Donato in Bologna and intended for the transmission of national and local television networks. On the site was left the writing «Turn off the antennas, awaken consciences. Solidarity with the anarchists detained and under surveillance».
       The repressive forces affirm that the arrested anarchists are accused of having created a subversive-terrorist association having «the objective of affirming and spreading the anarchic-insurrectionalist ideology, as well as instigating, with the diffusion of propaganda material, the commission of acts of violence against the institutions». Furthermore, the public prosecutor’s office of Bologna, with the help of the regime’s media, underlined that the precautionary measures assume a «strategic preventive value aimed at avoiding that in any further moments of social tension, arising from the particular emergency situation [linked to the coronavirus epidemic], other moments of more general anti-State struggle campaign can take place».
These are the current addresses of the arrested comrades:
Giuseppe Caprioli
C. R. di Alessandria “San Michele”
strada statale per Casale 50/A
15121 Alessandria
 

Stefania Carolei
C. C. di Vigevano
via Gravellona 240
27029 Vigevano (PV)
 

Duccio Cenni
C. C. di Ferrara
via Arginone 327
44122 Ferrara
 

Leonardo Neri
C. R. di Alessandria “San Michele”
strada statale per Casale 50/A
15121 Alessandria
 

Guido Paoletti
C. C. di Ferrara
via Arginone 327
44122 Ferrara
 

Elena Riva
C. C. di Piacenza
strada delle Novate 65
29122 Piacenza
 

Nicole Savoia
C. C. di Piacenza
strada delle Novate 65
29122 Piacenza

 

Solidarity  

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk  

New Normal!!

       I hope the public are alive to the possible outcomes of the legislation being put in place and experimented with by the establishment. They are not thinking of your welfare, they are not taking care of you, they are doing their best to protect the business world, the millionaire/billionaire/shareholders that is where the bulk of taxpayers money is going, yes there is a spin off and we get some wage support, but that is to keep their partners and shareholders afloat, and to placate public anger from spilling over.   

     They are putting in place a world where congregating in numbers will be limited and controlled, social distancing will be the norm, total surveillance will be a way of life. Let's not sleepwalk quietly into the new advanced 21st century Orwellian world, let's not blindly accept that the state knows best and will protect you. It is a state controlled world once entered, it will be extremely difficult to exit.

The following is an extract from Acorn:   

 No to the "New Normal"

        Looking beyond the immediate measures being taken to “control the virus”, there is also criticism of the “new normal” which seems to be on its way, a post-coronavirus world of “biosecurity” and virtual “connectivity” which looks very much like the beginnings of a nightmare high-tech dystopia.

        “We’re accelerating into a future in which a digitally connected privileged class performs virtual labor in isolation while a massive police state protects them from an expendable underclass that takes most of the risks. In this context, there is bound to be revolt. It is likely that we will see some social reforms aimed at placating the population—at least temporary ones to mitigate the impact of the pandemic—but that they will arrive alongside the ever-increasing violence of a state that no one can imagine doing without, insofar as it is misunderstood as the protector of our health”.

         “This outbreak is the dream and an experimental laboratory for the expansion of surveillance and control and the enforcement of power”.

“Once the pandemic is finally over, we don’t want to see a permanent shift to cashless payment and the eventual elimination of cash”.

             Among the details of this “new normal” now emerging are “terrifying” plans for a mobile phone app that tracks people to check if they have been in contact with someone testing positive for the virus – initially optional, this may become obligatory in the post-crisis smart-fascist world.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Evening Walk.

       Pandemic or no pandemic, nature just keeps on going. This wee video was shot this evening in Springburn Park on one of our walking exercise outings. There is always something new, something different each time we wander around the park. We counted five cygnets and four ducklings, but we think the swan is still sitting on at least one egg. There are more ducks of different varieties, but so far we haven't seen any other ducklings. The irises around the duck pond are just starting to open, should be quite a sight when they do, worth another visit.

Enjoy.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Leopard & Spots.

      It is surprising that so many people thought that bumbling Boris, self centred, inconsistent, incoherent, buffoon, and foreigner to the truth, would somehow, when elected, become a reliable dedicated servant of the people, a leader worth following. Now the truth is suddenly clear as we find ourselves in the midst of the worst crisis in generations. He remains Boris, the self centred, inconsistent, incoherent, buffoon and a foreigner to the truth, but now more dangerous. What could possible have gone wrong? Once again the arrival of the new and latest Messiah has failed us. When will we ever learn. Why we should ever rely on a parasite from the elitist pampered privileged class to look after our interests, is, to me, always a mystery.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Asbestos Repeat.

 

       As a young apprentice I worked in the shipyards, when the use of asbestos was wide and lavish. Its effects are still being felt today. To me, to a degree, the asbestos scandal mirrors the coronavirus pandemic, but to a slower degree. There was medical papers written and advice given on the dangers of asbestos as far back as the 20's, but the governments of the world ignored all that and it wasn't until around 1970, that a ban was started to be imposed. This was after countless deaths from the incurable lung disease of mesothelioma, the reason for its continued use, against 50 years of medical advice and lobbying from trade unions, was that it was an excellent insulator and very cheap, in monitory terms, but expensive in human suffering and deaths, to ban it would obviously hurt the economy. Today thousands of people still die from asbestos related illnesses.

      More than 39,000 American lives are lost to asbestos-related disease every year. Asbestos facts and statistics summarize the devastating impact the toxic mineral has had in the U.S. and around the world.

      The same factors are still driving the governments policy today on the coronavirus, it is hurting the economy, so we must get people back to work. So some will die, to the capitalist that is a risk worth taking. Just as deaths from asbestos killed thousands but the economy must be saved, now it is covid19 that is killing thousands, but the economy must be saved.

       It is estimated that an average of 13 people a day in the UK die from conditions caused by previous exposure to asbestos – more than double the number of people who die on the roads.

      The first health fears associated with asbestos were raised at the end of the 19th century. Asbestosis, an inflammatory condition affecting the lungs that causes shortness of breath, severe coughing and other damage to the lung was described in medical writing in the 1920s.

       For how long and how many more times will we tolerate the economy being put before the health and well-being of the ordinary people? Why should we tolerate the price of shares and the profits for millionaires/billionaires to be placed ahead of the life of ordinary people?  Refuse to go anywhere near your employers profit making machine until your are completely satisfied that it is 110% safe for you to do so. My belief is, that safety guarantee will never materialise under the capitalist economic system. Change the system if you wish a safe working environment, that's the only answer worth considering. Generations of ill health and deaths from working conditions must surely by now, have convinced you of that fact.

When the Time-Bomb Goes Off

The bike just sits there,

dust covering its lovely sheen,

puffing up the Fintry Hills

well, it’s no longer my scene.

Y’see, as a Clydeside apprentice

I proudly learnt the tradesman’s skill,

little did I know then

the price, asbestos lungs that kill.

Now I just sit here through the painful day

gasping each mouthful of air, wondering

how can I make the bastards pay.

They new it was a killer

a time-bomb in our lungs

but, because it was so quick and cheap

they firmly held their tongues.

So what, if it cost the workman’s life,

there’s always a couple of new workers

in the care of the worker’s wife.

Please try to understand my anger

as I and others bear their cost,

a slow death from asbestos lungs,

a vibrant life lost.

Anguish for family and friends,

all in the name of profit;

now that really does offend.

Our anger without direction

is a blind archer behind the bow,

we have to use our anger

to smash the status-quo.

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk