No greater insult or contempt has ever been visited on ordinary working people than the advent of waged work and stealing the fruits of the bulk of our labour and calling it profit. Organised labour has gained us many hard won concessions and protections, but even today a wage does not in any way represent […]
Tag: minimum wage
No. Probably the greatest word in the world, in any language
No! Probably the greatest word in the world, in any language. Many years ago, following a suicide attempt which ended my marriage and estranged me from my wife and daughter, I vowed never to do such a thing again. Like so many people who despair of life, my thinking was distorted, if not downright wrong. […]
Rediscovering anger and violence
As a hippy, back in the sixties, I had my awakening to the awareness of war, nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction (MAD), the horrors of the Vietnam war, and I became a self declared (ignorant) pacifist – a peacenik. I faced a, then, common question to pacifists, “What would you do if someone was […]
The Tories are ripe for an extinction event
It is not the strongest of a species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one most adaptable to change, that survives. Charles Darwin. The growth of civilisation was made possible because every able bodied person is capable of producing more goods than they need for their own personal survival, bearing in mind […]
The Tories must go!
In the Tory mindset, the lives of ordinary people have no intrinsic value. Our value is measured only in terms of our utility in creating wealth, all other aspects of our humanity are treated as useless and a drain on the ‘free’ markets, including thought, child birth and rearing and our most basic human rights […]
Life’s protectors and the enemies of life
In a speech to students at DePauw University in Indiana (December 2016), David Cameron apparently said that western leaders must take steps to help those who feel left behind by globalisation and address the “movement of unhappiness” about the state of the world. He called for leaders to change course, ‘So you will see a […]
The unsung revolution
There are many people who cannot give praise, encouragement or a kind word. It’s almost as if they are regarded as sparse commodities that might run out. The point is that they are a give, a gift, from one person to another (or many others), they are the expression of an innate regard for the […]
The utter contempt of those in power for ordinary people
A letter a day to number 10. No 1,538 Tuesday 30 August 2016. Dear Mrs May, What is happening within the Labour party has repercussions for all of us, but more broadly what the parliamentary Labour party and you Tories have in common is utter contempt for ordinary people and democracy. What has been revealed […]
The poor cannot afford those who get rich on their backs
A letter a day to number 10. No 1,513 Friday 05 August 2016. Dear Mrs May, It is expensive being poor. Being poor comes at a premium cost, whether it is food, health, essential services, transport, life expectancy, being exploited as cheap labour, lack of choice, mental health and quality of life, the poor pay […]
Osborne to cut corporation tax – he’s not backing Britain
A letter a day to number 10. No 1,484 Tuesday 05 July 2016. Dear Mr Cameron, I see that George Osborne is set to lower corporation tax to 15% and there are even calls for it to be lower to woo investors to Britain, not least from China. The problem with overseas investment is that […]
Fear and Loathing in Great Britain 