I found out yesterday apparently most of the proceeds from the ongoing public sector pay freeze (and pension contribution rise) have gone toward the £5 billion capital investment announced today. Public sector workers, doesn’t that make you feel better all that money going to good causes, like Michael Gove Novelty Schools ™ ? You’d have only spent it on things like food, clothing, rent and whatnot. Surely now this year can be written off as the worst, most calamitous year in working class memory, living memory. A year of Olympics, Royals and no strikes, no big ones anyway. There was the Olympic bus strike, on balance a success, but after that things kept on rolling the ruling class’s way. Unite the resistance: what resistance? There has been a vital question posed of the public sector unions, to be or not to be, to fight austerity at the point it’s being applied, to fight and to lead the wider population in that struggle, or not. They chose not to fight. We need a drastic re-evaluation of British trade unionism (let alone what the fuck the alleged Party of Labour thinks it’s up to).
The latest statement from Gideon Osborne is yet another flip-off to the poor. There are further benefit cuts (the biggest benefit payout being working tax credit – in the end a subsidy for low wages and underemployment). We already have seen a 23% rise in homelessness , concentrated among the young. April will certainly be the cruellest month, when universal credit and the room tax kick in. On the other hand he has cut corporation tax (the optional tax, judging by Starbucks, Amazon and so on) by 1% and cancelled a planned 3% rise in fuel duty, so that’s Nigel from the golf club sorted. The rest of you can fuck off.
Merry Christmas, you scum.