A damming indictment of the inefficiency of the IRA

So it begins...

It’s the Week of Evil, or Tory Party Conference. And there’s perhaps none more evil than Gideon Osborne. The heir to an Anglo-Irish Baronetcy, whose only day job was folding towels in Selfridges, Osborne described a proposed mansion tax as the politics of envy. We wouldn’t want that when we incite people in work against against sick or unemployed people who, in Gideon’s imagination, are busy growing mushrooms. 

His big plan to save civilisation from endless, relentless doom is a scheme whereby workers swap employment rights for company shares. This is the future, folks. Unless we do something we will have the golden opportunity to give up our workplace protections in return for giving a portion of our wages back to the company to play with. Do you see the problem there? I hope you do because, let’s be realistic, given the 2.5 million unemployed, how many bosses are going to present this option as a fait accompli, take it or leave it?

Osborne has also warned parents on benefits against having more children. In his kind of future some children will be left behind. Does that include people tax credits, the biggest benefit claiming category there is, in which case that also means parents in low paid work? He displays a cavalier understanding of where babies come from. If there is now such a thing as surplus humanity (too many babies!) then what can we expect, workhouses, mass sterilisation, or just children starving to death? 

Words cannot express how truly repellent this man is.

The economy sinks but shit floats

Britain is back in recession. It hardly feels like we've ever been out of it, but our society is back in the doldrums... and that's OFFICIAL (to borrow a tabloid phrase). Who would have thought cutting services, cutting benefits, destroying jobs and lowering the general standard of living, would have been bad for the economy? This week's most egregious example, social cleansing of the poor from London has been kicking in... There's a solution to unemployment (and underemployment), banish the poor to areas with even fewer jobs. But manufacturing and services were supposed to lift the economy? For some occult reason the private sector is heading in reverse, construction -3%, manufacturing -0.4%. It's almost like there's some broader context to all this.

Who's responsible, where does the buck stop? Why it's supposed to stop with Gideon Osborne. I'm not normally one to place much emphasis on expertise, but look at this:

Osborne's first job was entering the names of people who had died in London into a National Health Service computer. He also briefly worked for Selfridges, re-folding towels. He originally intended to pursue a career in journalism, but instead got a job at Conservative Central Office.

That's his entire career... and he's in charge. Oh dear. The economy sinks but Mr Osborne floats.

By its own standards austerity is failing. Something has to change. We have to change it.

In related news there are a set of elections coming up, including the election for Mayor of London. I'm not going to vote for Ken Livingstone 1) because I'm not registered and 2) because he's a tax dodger and a scab, and that can't just be forgiven and forgotten. As a candidate he is a liability, however, if he returns to office on May 4th and carries out his programme, including fare reductions, rent caps, restoring the EMA and providing cheaper gas and electricity through bulk-buying, he will have done more for working-class Londoners than the whole of parliament put together.

That's the kind of change we need to effect. We needed to start yesterday, last month, last year. Let's not wait for Livingstone.

Unless you do something about it...

This is the future mapped out for us, you and me. The government holds you down while rich people rob you and the Labour Party and the union leaderships look the other way. This is the future. An upper class thug laughing in your face. Forever. If there is hope, even if at the moment it seems like one preposterously slim ray of hope, hope lies in the proles.