Let’s see action

The Government’s desire to coerce charities into doing some of their work will backfire. It will decimate the workforce in the civil service, local government and other agencies, thus adding to overall unemployment, it will lead to inadequate and second-class services and it will come at a price ultimately for the government. As I’ve said on many an occasion cost savings in reality relatively are. At the end of the day you usually get what you pay for. Charities also have different agendas to governments, and unlike public servants they are not apolitical. I’m not knocking charities although in a perfect world there wouldn’t be a need for them. Charities are focused on helping people, the ConDem government isn’t, so there is bound to be a conflict of interest. Charities tend to speak up for the people they wish to help; they will probably do so even if their paymasters are the government. They will bite the hand that feeds, and quite rightly so.

I like charities that take positive action to forward their campaign. If this news story from Sky is to be believed the charity ActionAid are mounting a passive guerrilla type campaign against Asda to highlight the exploitation of foreign worker in the Asda supply chain. I’m not sure how effective ActionAid will be at getting their message understood by the average Asda shopper but I wish them success. A bit more direct action from charities can only be a good thing.

Bastard!

Got back last night from a few days in Edinburgh. Will be blogging about it soon but in the meantime here’s a photo I took in the High Street. Why the Scots want to commemorate one of their ain folk that has caused much pain in the world god only knows.

This bastard has got a lot to answer for!

Thank goodness there is an antidote – shame no one in power wants to use it.

Pete Molinari - Streetcar Named Desire

Top quality tune

“Poor in UK dying 10 years earlier than rich, despite years of government action”

That’s a headline from the Guardian website today. It is sub-titled: “Department of Health and NHS criticised for making too little progress on tackling key barometer of inequality”. I think the point is being missed, big time!

Medical science and the health service have both come a long way in my lifetime. I think the NHS do a great job under the circumstances, and that’s not damning with faint praise. The NHS can only do so much on the life expectancy front. Throwing more money, resources and new procedures at ‘the problem’ I suspect would not really yield a significant return. It is not an NHS problem. There is a clue to the proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ in the Guardian headline. It is the poor who are dying. The poor! Perhaps some of it is down to the standard of health care delivered, but I expect the greatest reason for the poor dying earlier than the rich is because they are poor. Poverty is a curable disease, but I don’t think it will be cured by a wonder-drug from some mega-rip-off-pharmaceutical company. Poverty might be a health issue but it is surely outside of the remit of the NHS.

Whilst we have poverty in this country, and whilst we continue to lack the courage to tackle the great wealth inequalities, the poor will continue to die prematurely, prisons will remain full, crime rates will soar, drug and alcohol dependency will continue to wreak havoc and social cohesion will remain a far off dream.

Equality saves lives.

There's more to Iran than a Marti Pellow lookalike!

The Iranian regime seems to engender much polarised viewpoints throughout the world. If you take the US Imperialist stance then the Iranian government is evil personified. If you are a Muslim you possibly see the US stance as yet another western attack on Islam. There is another viewpoint that rarely gets reported and some very brave people risk their liberty and their lives because of their passion and commitment to a secular socialist movement in Iran.

I was very moved by this ‘Message from workers in Iran to 2nd ITUC World Congress, Vancouver, Canada’ on the Worker-communist Party of Iran blog. Please take some time to read it and to visit Maryam Namazie’s blog.

I’m not suggesting that I totally support the Worker-communist Party of Iran but I think they deserve the right to exist and operate in a free and democratic environment.




n.b. the title of this post was inspired by this older post of mine. 

Did you listen to John Peel?

Ken Garner, who put together the, quite frankly anal, tome known as The Peel Sessions is soliciting information from listeners to John Peel’s shows; my thanks to John Osborne for bringing this to my attention. If you were a listener to John’s programmes why not help Ken with his survey – click here.

Workers Playtime

It is my belief that education should exist for the enlightenment, enrichment and stimulation of all. It should not be confused with training and it should not be considered the domain solely of the young. Education should be a life-long experience. That doesn’t mean that you have to permanently on a course or always studying for exams. Education is much broader than that. It can be studying for a degree but equally it can just be reading a book. Education should be for education’s sake and not be about producing candidates for jobs.

The Workers Education Association has always struck me as a laudable organisation. An organisation whose raison d’être is to bring knowledge and inspiration to the working masses. Recently and for the first time in my life I was fortunate enough to attend one of their day classes. The day school was about place names in Norwich, and it was both interesting and informative. The class was well subscribed. I would guess there would have been at least fifty of us there. Ironically, despite it being run by the Workers Education Association, I would suggest that at most half a dozen of us would have been in some kind of paid employment. The rest of the class was made up of people over retiring age, the majority women, and most well into their retirement. It was like a convention of aged ex-schoolma’ams. All Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail readers to a man and many apparent groupies of the short, rotund, balding, slightly camp pedant* running what was essentially a lecture. Strangely a large proportion of the assembled masses present seemed to know a hefty bit about the subject matter before they went. That’s the middle classes for you; swots! I went knowing nothing at all, but came away knowing a whole lot more about my new home. I also came away slightly saddened by the news that there is no longer a Gropekunte Lane in this fine city.

* Not a term of abuse. Absolutely nothing wrong with pedantry!