Now here’s something I didn’t think I would see. I (rather foolishly) thought our grandfathers had already fought this battle.
Time for a quick reminder……..
David Cameron wants to cut all benefit after 6 months in ‘work clubs’. That would be the work clubs designed by the government to teach skills to the unemployed to enable them to find work.
http://www.dwp.gov.uk/adviser/updates/work-clubs/
And that would be the same David Cameron who has an estimated personal wealth of £30 million.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1191155/Claims-David-Cameron-30m-fortune-sit-uneasily-taxpayers-So-truth-money.html
Back to the Jarrow March…..
Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ), a campaigning organisation, is marching from Jarrow to London, starting on 1 October 2011. This is on the 75th anniversary of the Jarrow Crusade, when 200 unemployed workers took a similar route to raise awareness of mass unemployment.And just in case anyone has forgotton 1936
‘’The global Great Depression brought particular distress to North East England, where many citizens were miners and ship workers. The collapse of domestic and international trade in shipbuilding, coal mining, and steel industries led to even more severe unemployment and poverty than seen in other parts of the country. At the time, unemployment benefit lasted only for 26 weeks, and the Unemployment Assistance Board, created in 1934, provided inadequate relief for long-term unemployed people, who were put under the Poor Law, which forced them to do service for less money than normal. Senior generations of families were forcibly evicted from their family homes.’’apparently the lessons of 1936 have to be learned all over again 75 years later.
Bravo!! Perhaps you have heard many of our citizens are occupying Wall St. where they are being tear-gassed and arrested. We will need to fight this battle over and over because the rich are heartless and many of the poor have, as we say here, drunk the kool-aid (bought the propaganda).
ReplyDeleteWell done you for blogging this! :o)
ReplyDeleteIts good for people to see that not all young people are rioters. I really hope they encourage others to march with them.
Ironically, the minimum wage went up this week to £6.15 an hour. Only works if you have a job though :o/
ReplyDeleteI really don't remember the Jarra March. Ah wez only 3 at the time and we hed aalready moved from Geordieland to Lunnon that year. Mind ye Ah wez back four yors lateh.
ReplyDeleteHere in Michigan, US, thousands of people will be kicked off benefits this month. We do not have a Socialist party because it apparently scares people more than having their children go hungry.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to see people organizing again, we have two generations to educate on the principals of collective bargaining. ~ J L retired shop steward local 23 TWU.
ReplyDeleteHi Bennett... yes I know of the Wall Street protests and of the news blackout that has prevented the world seeing this. The media blackout seems to have ended and now we are beginning to see some of what is going on. I think maybe you do have a socialist part, when you have people carrying red banners saying people not profit that seems pretty socialist to me.Maybe soon they will organise themselves into an official party.
ReplyDeleteIF you have a job you are guaranteed £6.50 per hour.....................and David Cameron..............who doesn't really like ANY sort of minimum wage still owns £30 million in personal wealth...........£6.50 is peanuts compared to profits and the personal wealth of the top 10%, are we supposed to celebrate this? or be grateful or something? I think not.........I'll celebrate when we have more equality in this country.
ReplyDeleteMy local news is the Washington, D.C. news, from the same studios that produce the US national news programs, so they share the same news feeds. The campaign in the UK has received no coverage here.
ReplyDeleteThe demonstrations and police activity in the US are receiving less coverage than the pumpkin crop shortage for Halloween.
There is something seriously wrong when the people need to be heard and the media charged with reporting all of the news for all of the people sets the priorities for what is reported.
To get full reporting on events, I check in on the BBC news programs. They can be found on BBC America and many PBS channels.
I hear what you are saying, Wall Street has been the stage for massive protests from 17th Sept onwards and it was reported by the BBC only a couple of days ago. The Jarrow march is barely mentioned in mainstream news. If you want to know whats going on in the world don't rely on the BBC.. they appear to be very selective in the news they report.
ReplyDeleteYes, me too.
ReplyDeleteI'm in horrors at what's happening in Aussie politics. We have a prime minister that has virtually no popularity appeal and the looming threat of the conservative party taking over in the next election. The conservatives (called the Liberal party here) will want to bring back a policy called "Work Choices" (sic on the word "choices" there - for it gives all 'choice' to employers who are mostly big business and far less choice to workers. Basically it would put individual workers on private contracts. Maybe it would be the end of the unions as we know it here? But, whatever, the conseratives are pro-capitalists and the divide between rich and poor will grow ever wide. There would go job security too. Enslavement.
It's good to see the common people rise up and take a stand. Why put up with all this pro-capitalist control anyway?
Bit of a joke really , what would IMF employee David Cameron know about work, he has never done a day's work in his life.
ReplyDeleteAn old Etonian layabout of the parasitical minor (i.e. illegitimate) royalty, he only got his loot by being from a long line of bastards, his great great great great great grandmother was an "actress" who had an affair with King William IV....we've been paying for spawn of that dalliance ever since.
Dave is just the latest hanger-on given the job of representing Wall Street here in Occupied Britain, basically because he couldn't do anything useful.
A congenital imbecile who just happens to be married to another one.... he is related to the Queen (her 5th cousin) and also to half the cabinet by illicit affairs and inbred love children of the British landed classes.
So who could be surprised he talks complete nonsense when he is told what to say by his controllers in America anyway?
He is an upper class twit of Greater Bilderbergia which is the Bullington Club for colonials, he works for an alien power and is an enemy of the people... whose urgent removal from unelected and unmandated office is something of a national priority now.
Cameron is of course really nothing more than a bankers 'moll' ....which in public school parlance is the equivalent of being Obama's fag.
He's got nothing to do with work, the interests of the British people, or anything remotely resembling conventional reality...he's not just a buffoon, but a quisling buffoon.
A confirmed Liar, no less.
ReplyDelete"There will be no Carbon Tax under any government I lead" !!!!!
he's not alone..............ALL of the government ministers have personal wealth in excess of £1 million, and these are the people who inflict public spending cuts, job losses and loss of benefits on the rest of us.
ReplyDelete