Thoughts for the Brain... Geology vs Iain Duncan Smith

Here are a couple of stories to talk about. Firstly Geologists Erupt After Iain Duncan-Smith Shelf-Stacking Jibe. If nothing else the headline is a nice little pun. When Mr Bowel-Syndrome compares geology to shelf-stacking he is of course having a go at Cait Reilly, a geology graduate who quite rightly argued that stacking shelves for free in Poundland was a waste of time when she was already volunteering in a museum and searching for work herself. IBS really is a wretch. He is far too thin skinned to be in politics if he feels the need to denigrate a woman in her twenties looking for work. He most likely kicks puppies, squashes ants and breaks the wings off butterfly to pass the time between insults and hare-brained schemes.

But it is also indicative of a ruling class mindset that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Geology doesn’t make immediate profit for people with shares in retail but, as one of the secretaries of the Geology Society of London pointed out:

Geologists are a vital part of the [food] supply chain: mining the minerals essential for fertilisers, obtaining metal ores, discovering the fuel which transports produce to the store…

Furthermore geologists work in tough conditions, from oil rigs to mines, and in all weathers. Manual labour is part of what they do.

Meanwhile the government is proposing 40-year deals for new nuclear reactors to be built. It’s worth pointing out firstly that the estimated price of generation is just below £100 per gigawatt hour, currently double the market price of electricity. The pricing system for wholesale power is byzantine and reflects firstly the practical monopoly that private companies effectively have, there is no meaningful electricity market, but also the essential role it has in the wider economy. Since the formation of the UKAEA in 1954 nuclear power has been tightly bound to the state.

But the other thing to note is if new power stations were built tomorrow on 40 year contracts that would not mean they are done and dusted by 2053. I grew up near a nuclear power station that was closed down well over twenty years ago. It is still being dismantled and the site being decontaminated today and that will still be going on in another twenty years. This government is setting problems that our grandchildren will have to deal with.

What is it actually about?

See below: this is what workfare means, the sacrfice of the young, the vulnerable and the sick to pointless, degrading toil and to almost ritual insults from managers and bureaucrats. Workfare is destroying talent, breaking spirits and wasting time; all to prop up big business profit margins.

Asa Dawson was made to work at Poundland’s Bridlington branch last October. He is 18 and has qualifications in IT support, but was told he had to do it.

“The jobcentre said once it was offered to me I didn’t have the choice to refuse it".

“They said it’s ‘voluntary’, but if you refuse they cut your jobseekers’ allowance. And I’m using that to pay my rent.”

Tim Knight-Hughes says his experience was similar when he was made to work unpaid for door-to-door sales firm JM Enterprise in Norwich.

“I was told it would be ‘minimum wage’ with ‘commission based bonuses’,” he said.

“It was a lie. After completing three rounds of interviews I had to sign a contract saying I would work for free for a trial period without a guaranteed prospect of a job.

“If I walked out in disgust it would threaten my benefits.”

This is workfare in a nutshell:

Tim says the vast majority of people who worked for free at the sales firm didn’t get jobs at the end of it either. “After the ‘trial period’ I complained to the jobcentre that this job wasn’t really a job at all".

If there is work to be done let it be done, fine, but let it be done for a wage.

This is the attitude of our overlords:

“I was reprimanded by the jobcentre manager—and told that ‘beggars can’t be choosers’.”

You are not a human being with talent, verve and energy, you are not entitled to help, to dignity or respect; you are a beggar, be grateful for your scraps.

Workfare is a menace, to the employed as well as the unemployed, as it depresses the job market at a time of recession. No wonder the government is afraid of a tiny band of gimlet-eyed dialecticians (insignificant yet strangely able to bring major corporations to their knees). If the government is willing to go this far to grind working people down, how far are working people going to go to shake them off? Who knows? It can't come too soon.

Burning questions of our time

The British Government wants to give the Queen a yacht. Yeah, yeah, it's not going to be paid for out of the public purse, but that only begs the question: what does it have to do with the government then? Maybe it's because the Tories just like discussing the finer things in life, like love, gay love and screwing the working class; but enough crudity, back to yachts.

You might be interested to know that Prince Charles and Princess Anne back the idea of a new Royal Yacht (you remember electing these two...? No...?). With that kind of backing the yacht's almost certain to go ahead:

Gove wrote to the prime minister on 12 September, again supporting the project: "I believe that approving this ship to become a royal yacht would be an excellent way to mark the Queen's diamond jubilee and to thank her as a nation for her long and untiring service to this country."

In this letter he stated: "No money should be made available from the public purse", but in a second letter dated 11 December he did not make this point writing instead: "My suggestion would be a gift from the nation to the Queen thinking about, for example, David Willetts' excellent suggestion for a royal yacht – and something tangible to commemorate this momentous occasion. If there is not sufficient public money available then we could surely look for a generous private donation, for example, to give every school child a lasting memento of the occasion or possibly to allow every school to buy a permanent reminder."

Another lasting memento to go with the abolition of EMA, £9,000 annual university fees and selective free schools. In other news there's a million young unemployed - but what can you do about that eh?

Call careers information. Have you got yourself an occupation?

A million unemployed kids and all Cameron and co, mofos who never had to work a day in their lives, have is gas about 'aspiration' and 'opportunity'.



They should just change Britain to Poundland and have done with it. Abandon hope or take up struggle. All out on November 30th.