Divide and rule

I’m so tired of all these silly little factions.

If the last few years since the financial system crashed have taught us anything it’s this….

The majority of people are used as cashcows for a tiny minority to grow wealthy.

Here in UK we see a widening gap between rich and poor with the most vulnerable being denied even the meanest living whilst the mega rich receive major tax cuts. We see disabled people denied all benefits via ATOS and unemployed people forced into slavery via workfare under threat of destitution and starvation. Rents are rising whilst housing benefits fall and there are calls to remove the minimum wage whilst its hardworking recipients are demonised as ‘scroungers’. And all the time the richest citizens grow wealthier as others literally are starving to death on the streets.

There’s a name for this sort of unfairness: Exploitation.

And yet it doesn’t have to be this way. If only the exploited majority could stand together the whole sordid system would change – it would have to. But that would take something that the human race seems unable to provide as yet. It would take solidarity.

Instead we have polarisation and factionalisation. We have downtrodden whites blaming oppressed blacks. We have exploited women blaming (allegedly) privileged men. We have underprivileged, undereducated natives blaming equally exploited immigrants and we have religious factions clamouring to outdo each other in conspicuous ‘victimhood’.

And all the time, while each exploited group bemoans its lot at the hands of every other exploited group, the mega rich continue to advance their own, selfish interests.

We see nationalist groups like the BNP, EDL & UKIP spreading their racist narrative of hatred. We see extremist groups like Radfem blaming all men and trans women for all the evils of the world whilst their male counterparts in the MRA make equally ludicrous claims against all women in opposition. It’s silly, it’s divisive and if society is ever going to deal with all this shit then it has to stop. For pity’s sake grow up people!

I had an interesting twitter conversation last night with a black women who complains that white people dislike being called ‘white’. I pointed out that I didn’t object which, judging from her response, seemed to confuse her a bit. She didn’t address it at all – presumably I don’t fit in with her prejudiced worldview.

I also pointed out a little later that I don’t think white working class people are all that privileged. After all where I come from the main privilege of working people, whatever their colour, heritage, religion, sex or sexual orientation seems primarily to involve the luxury of working themselves to death. Her response to that didn’t really surprise me, unfortunately. She wrote….

“Look this is redundant. All white people have privilege even poor white people. Let it go. If you can’t see it then you’re being willfully ignorant. Something you can do on your own tl. Not on mine.”

There’s a name for the way that such people play into the hands of those who would exploit them too.
The bigger the chips on our shoulders about our own victimhood and about each other’s abuses the easier it is for us to be exploited. The more we fight amongst ourselves the harder it will be for us to stand united and refuse to waste our lives in the service of wealthy bankers and multinational abusers.

What this blinkered, divisive approach achieves is far from positive. It is the exploiters’ greatest weapon and we turn it upon ourselves with all this infighting and special-pleading. The name of this weapon is well known and simple to understand…..

Divide and rule

PS: I’ll check my privilege when you check your bigoted assumptions about me!

Reblog: Iain Duncan Smith has committed contempt of Parliament and should be expelled | Vox Political

http://mikesivier.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/iain-duncan-smith-has-committed-contempt-of-parliament-and-should-be-expelled/

An old lady was cremated today

Today an old lady with dementia called Margaret Thatcher was cremated amid a media circus and very limited interest from the general public. The crowds were more or less gone from the capital by 11:30 in spite of the hype.

Meanwhile in the former mining community of Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire Mrs. T was cremated in effigy. These people showed far less respect than did the likes of Cameron and Osborne for the woman they blame for the destruction of their little community.

And yet I can’t help but feel uncomfortable at the idea that a death, anyone’s death is a cause for celebration. Don’t get me wrong, I hated Thatcher. I hated her policies and I hated what she did to working people, especially in the North. I rejoiced when she was kicked out of office by her own party and again when the tories were defeated in ’97. But that was about removing an aggressor. The death of an old woman with dementia is different. I won’t mourn her but I can’t celebrate.

I can’t blame those who do though. Thatcher was cruel and vindictive and the hypocritical, sycophantic eulogising by ConDem MPs and others over the last week has stirred up some very bitter memories. Not that all our politicians tried to rewrite history. Some were much more honest.

Although I can’t celebrate, I do object strongly to the waste of public money on a funeral that very few people thought appropriate. Crowds were sparse for the spectacle and many that were there turned up only to protest.

Many more people protested the bedroom tax in Glasgow recently than watched Maggie Thatcher’s state funeral. More people bought copies of ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead’ than turned out for the ‘send off’ and social media is awash with people complaining bitterly about the whole travesty.

So before you fall for the misleading hype spilling out of the sycophantic BBC stop and think for a moment. No truly great stateswoman would have engendered such hatred that it spans the generations and left whole communities devastated for decades.

This was the scene in Leeds and Edinburgh today where the service was televised live for the ‘benefit’ of locals. Not the most compelling viewing, it seems.

For my own part – I wore red. That was my protest. ‘Wear red Wednesday’ wasn’t a celebration of death but a low key, dignified protest at pointless extravagance that really seems to be little more than an extended party political broadcast for the conservatives. Others pointedly turned their backs as the gun carriage bearing Mrs. T.’s corpse trundled past. No cheering, no rejoicing there – just a dignified rejection.

Margaret Thatcher has been described as Britain’s best peacetime Prime Minister. So here’s an opportunity to test that claim. The image below compares her legacy with that of Clement Atlee (“That nice Mr. Atlee” as my late grandmother described him). Go on – judge for yourself.

I saw a newspaper picture

It’s been an interesting week – and a traumatic one. So many memories and so many parallels with the modern world, all brought to a head with a single news item:

Margaret Thatcher is dead!

I confess that I really don’t know how to react. The compassionate side of me wants to send condolences to her family. You know, the way decent people do. And I am a decent bloke. I know what it’s like to lose someone and I most certainly won’t gloat (although I can’t blame those friends who do).

What this week has done for me, more than anything has stirred up memories of my youth, my desperate, hopeless youth. Memories of my home town after the steelworks and the pits had gone and our working men found themselves unemployed and obsolete – useless by the only measure they and their culture knew.

I was 14 years old when Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister. Two years later I was a jobless school-leaver with no future that I could see and no way to change it. I have friends who still haven’t worked over 30 years later. Such was the devastation not only of my home region but of the psychology of my generation. Teenagers and grown men and women alike just gave up in those dark days of Thatcherism and many have never recovered.

I was lucky – I found a way through but it wasn’t easy. I was one of the stupid ones. I followed Lord Tebbit’s advice and ‘got on my bike’ to find work. Yes – that really was the message from Thatcher’s callous cabinet – ‘get on yer bike’.

I left home and found myself homeless for two years. That was fun. I really don’t know how to describe homelessness and hostel living to those who haven’t experienced it. I met some fine people and made some excellent (and lifelong) friends, but I also saw the worst of humanity. I saw teenagers, children really, thrown on the scrapheap before they’d even had a chance to find their way in the world. And I saw the wealthy get wealthier while we lost everything.

The narrative then was the same tory story we hear now. A tale of scroungers and layabouts. I cannot describe the shame I felt as I stood at the Dole Office every fortnight to sign on for my unemployment benefit – a benefit I’d gladly have foregone for the chance of a job.

I heard stories of young women getting pregnant just so they could have a council house and being roundly condemned for their callousness. In truth I know of one (and only one) young lass who did that – and I can’t blame her for it. She was cold and she was hungry and she had no hope. But the rest of us just wanted a chance.

I walked miles throughout the South and East of England trying to find work in those dark days but nobody’s going to employ a homeless man – we smell. And even if we can find a hostel and a shower (eventually I was lucky enough to get a place at Lincoln YMCA) our clothes are raggy and our address ‘isn’t quite right’.

I used to busk for pennies with my guitar in a Lincoln underpass (beneath the level crossing on High Street if you know Lincoln) but even that carried the risk of losing your benefits if the DHSS snoopers spotted you. And every two weeks (on Giro day) a few of us would go and have a couple of pints at Sippers (our local). We’d have loved the chance to socialise more often but there was hostel rent to pay and food to buy. Even a couple of pints a fortnight was frowned on by the rest of society. It was as though they thought that since we were unemployed we should at least have the decency to suffer. Well I have news for you – we suffered enough.

And this week I saw a newspaper picture. Margaret Thatcher is dead. And I just don’t know how to feel. So let me tell you where the title of this blog comes from…..

“I saw a newspaper picture
From the political campaign
A woman was kissing a child
Who was obviously in pain.
She spills with compassion,
As that young child’s face in her hands she grips
Can you imagine all that greed
And avarice coming down on that child’s lips?”

That’s the opening stanza of a song about Margaret Thatcher by Elvis Costello. The title of the song is ‘Tramp the dirt down’…

“And when they finally lay you in the ground
I’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down”

These days I have no wish to desecrate Mrs. T.’s grave. What would be the point? Anyway I’m better than that.

But I understand the sentiment – I remember the sentiment. For years I swore that I’d do just that, such was my anger at the woman who stole my future (or so it seemed). That woman was not the saint that our right wing press claim. Nor was she the compassionate angel that the modern crop of sycophantic MPs seem to think they must pretend. She was a vicious, cruel, avaricious tory whose policies destroyed the hopes and dreams of countless working people. And I cannot grieve for her.

If you remember the true Thatcher….. if you see the similarities between her cruelty and the callous disregard for human suffering recreated by the present ConDem government then you have a duty…..

Tell your children. And make sure they get it. My generation failed to keep the memory alive, that’s why the tory ideologues got in again in 2010 – and look at what’s happening.

Pass the memory down through the generations – not just for 2015 but for all the elections to come. Never again let the tories destroy our society. And never again trust the treacherous LibDem enablers without whose support this current crop of tories would be impotent. It’ll take years to repair the damage they’ve done already. Don’t let them have another chance.

In case you were wondering.

Yesterday’s ATOS/Kitten post was a hoax – an April Fool’s Day joke.

http://stuartsorensen.wordpress.com/2013/04/01/tiddles-atos-and-the-dept-of-health/

If you believed it that’s because it’s exactly the sort of callous stupidity so many of us have come to expect from this cruel, disgraceful government.

Just so you know.

Cheers,

Stuart

An April Fool’s Day prank from the ConDem Coalition

Here we are again. The Easter weekend is almost over, British summertime has begun (allegedly) and the internet is awash with April Fool japes of every description. Some of these jokes are really witty, some satirical and some downright nonsensical but all are good-natured and light-hearted. Well… I say ‘all’…..

There is one particular prankster who seems to have missed the point completely. Actually it’s a group of pranksters known collectively as the ConDem Coalition. This unholy conglomeration of parasites, the apparent fruit of some monstrous coupling in Hell seems to have missed the memo about everything being a joke – a hoax – not real.

So when they they say that they’ll  remove legal aid from the weakest and most vulnerable they’re not supposed to mean it;
When they impose a new bedroom tax that will drive even more British citizens into poverty it’s supposed to be a joke;
When they starve the Citizens’ Advice Bureau to prevent effective assistance that should be a hoax;
When they drive the final nail into the coffin of the NHS they’re not supposed to be serious about that either;
And when they give massive tax cuts to multi millionaires (including their own cabinet ministers)… well you get the message.

Of course they might be holding on until tomorrow before they come clean and admit their jolly jape to the nation. Maybe it is just another April Fool’s Day joke. Perhaps the government’s sense of humour really is so well-developed that they just can’t bear to end the joke early.

What do you think?

Tiddles, ATOS and the Dept of Health

ATOS, the hated French firm responsible for denying benefits to more disabled and incapacitated people than you can shake a stick at, have done it again. This time they’ve come up with a money-saving scheme that looks set to save the Department of Work & Pensions a veritable fortune without having to deny the health needs of claimants.

Previous attempts to victimise seriously ill and disabled Britons involved declaring them fit for work so that they could be denied benefits. The basic idea was that once these unfortunate former taxpayers had starved to death the government would save a few quid looking after them – money that would be better spent elsewhere. After all – relieving hard-pressed multi-millionaires of their financial responsibilities to the welfare state is far more important than keeping their less fortunate compatriots alive to leech off the wealthy.

Recently it has become clear that ATOS’ original approach of denying medical evidence and just ignoring the hardship of claimants has been more bother than it was worth. Thousands of claimants have appealed against their judgements and the subsequent exposure of ATOS’ cynical cruelty has been damaging not only to the French firm of venture capitalists but to the beleaguered UK government as well. So ATOS has come up with another, less obvious suggestion and the government has been grateful enough for their inspiration to pay them handsomely. ATOS executive Pierre Le Chat has been paid an undisclosed 6 figure sum for the idea which the government claims will save billions of pounds for the independent health providers now profiteering in the newly privatised NHS.

Instead of merely pretending that people are healthy ATOS suggests that the mode of treatment changes. A classic example of this is the newly recommended treatment for cardiac patients. Previously such people have been treated with a range of drugs and exercise-based physiotherapies, none of which come cheap. And yet, as Le Chat pointed out in familiarly superficial style, they all do essentially the same thing. They are all intended to lower blood pressure.

Lowering blood pressure isn’t particularly hard to do. Exercise works. So does stroking and cuddling pets. So the solution is easy – at least so far as the Dept of Work and Pensions is concerned.

From tomorrow, new cardiac patients will not be prescribed medication at all. Instead they are to be given a kitten to stroke. The kitten will be provided free on the NHS although it will be the responsibility of the individual patient and their family to feed it and pay any associated veterinary bills. It is expected that patients will have their kittens sterilised as soon as they are old enough but should this not happen and more kittens are produced they can be returned to the NHS for redistribution to other workshy malingerers.

Obviously some patients will need more than just a new pet cat to resolve their physical health needs. Monsieur Le chat wasn’t available to comment on provision for these people but junior health minister, Kitty Laville, perhaps in a bid to rise above her hitherto obscurity has been prepared to comment. In a truly stunning illustration of her government’s callous stupidity this inept Lib Dem turncoat, a latter day version of Judas Iscariot, told the BBC:

“When there’s no money for health care some people will die. That’s a shame but at least it’ll be the undeserving poor that leave us. That will save precious resources for those who are prepared to work for a living.”

Oh well. So long as the nice Tory and Lib Dem voters stay around to vote for their right wing heroes next time who cares? I mean really, who cares? Do you?

Laville was equally unsympathetic when asked about cardiac sufferers who also experience pet allergies, itself a major contributor to elevated blood pressure. In the now familiar style of this callous, divisive government she replied:

“All medical interventions have side effects. We have to accept that not everyone will respond to treatment. However the new regime won’t start until after the bank holiday.”

Click here for more information.

The old (archived) blog content

If you were wondering where all the blog’s content has gone it’s here (well most of it is) in downloadable PDF and other formats.

You’ll find loads of stuff on mental health, human rights, and a few other topics as well. Go and have a look. You know you want to

Enjoy

The older posts

Just for info.

Although I removed much of this blog’s content I saved some of it as PDF, audio and video files. They include many of my writings on human rights, mental health, the fight against Project Prevention and more.

Start here to browse and follow the links (or the tabs at the top of the page) for more