Liberty for Who?

As The Seagreen Society have mentioned…

Today, all around Britain, people are meeting for the first Convention on Modern Liberty (CoML) in an attempt to highlight and counter the ongoing erosion of our basic human rights. With infringements like the abandonment of Habeas corpus, privately owned central databases and the introduction of ID cards we are facing very real threats to our basic liberties, as the CoML website says…

We are entering a dangerous period in our country. Economic turmoil threatens profound hardship and disharmony. Disenchantment with politics is growing and even legitimate protest is threatened by an unprecedented programme of challenges to our rights, freedoms and democracy. Sixty years ago Britain was a proud co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Now it is increasingly centralized, abandoning its historic principles some of which date back to the Magna Carta.

Magna Carta may be 800 years old, but it remains central to our understanding of human liberties and it heavily influenced the Levellers during the English Revolution. And there’s good reason to believe that Magna Carta will soon play it’s part once again. Find out more about the the Convention here.

We feel we must add a word of caution though, among the partners involved with the convention – groups like No2ID and Liberty – are none other than our old class enemies, The Countryside Alliance. They have argued their case for joining the convention here and here, but we have our own feelings on the matter…

Come tell me and mine about ‘liberty’, John Jackson, come tell us of our ‘rights’. Being from an ex-mining community we’d love to hear how you and yours are going to help us after all these years. Your true colours shone through with the statement – “Coal mining was a huge rural industry and it was right that it yielded, finally, to the pressure for economic efficiency.” When, in fact the miners were crushed because they posed a very real obstacle to the neo-liberal gravy train – which has now derailed itself to spectacular effect
‘Liberty & Livelihood’ reflects John’s somewhat romantic view of a doff-capping, forelock-tugging, passive workforce happy as Larry in their service to the well deserving rich. But the countryside I know is a very different place where the stark realities of our still blatantly class divided society are like open sores on John’s ‘green and pleasant land’. Liberty without equality is no liberty at all. When the Countryside Alliance talks of ‘rights’ it is like the mention of ‘rope’ in the house of a hanged man.

Nothing will change for working class people without significant changes to the class structure!

Bankers – will they ever learn?

‘Round our way they have a saying – “If you’re in the shit, close your mouth.”

Unfortunately bankers show no signs of such wisdom. The greedy bastards have dragged us all into a global depression and they still think they should be rewarded for their efforts. An article in The Independent quotes Shaun Springer, chief executive of Napier Scott -which specialises in recruiting senior bankers, as saying…

“Base salaries are being increased by somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent, by rule of thumb, to compensate for an overall fall in the remunerative package. This is being done in recognition of perhaps a long-term change, in which one can envisage basic salaries in the long term doubling or tripling or quadrupling compared to where they are today and bonuses falling by as much as 80 per cent. People used to, say, earn between £100,000 and £150,000 and receive bonuses of 10 times multiples of their base salary. But a trend is now developing where someone has a basic pay of, say, £300,000 but with bonus multiple of only two or three times that.”

In other words the cheeky fuckers are demanding a pay rise to compensate for a drop in bonuses.

Gordon Brown said recently that we need a return to old fashioned banking. We say we should go all the way back to the twenties when bankers knew what to do during a collapse – jump, you fuckers, jump!!!

Police fear UK ‘Summer of Rage’ – but will Summer lead to Fall?

The BBC are running this article about how certain elements (who could they be?) will be trying to agitate those who are disillusioned and impoverished by the economic downturn (which is most of us). The angriest photo they could find to illustrate the point was this…

Which does look more ’slightly miffed’ than ‘outraged’. Unfortunately it’s not a bad illustration for the state of organised protest in Britain. Don’t get us wrong. I’m sure we’ll all have lots of fun venting our spleens this summer, but come Autumn will anything have changed?

The truth is that we have the all the resources, skills and technology we need to completely do away with bureaucracy, hierarchy and class division that are in place to ensure that the rich get ever richer whilst the vast majority of people on the planet struggle to survive.  Riots might be good for getting peoples attention, but the real work that “known activists” need to focus on is deliverying the right message when the time comes.

New Banking Act – Now They’re Like Doctors, They Bury Their Mistakes!

The new Banking Act – which is really an extension to temporary laws introduced in the wake of the collapse of Northern Rock – is about to come into force.

The Bank of England will be allowed to give ‘hidden support’ to banks that are in financial trouble. This effectively allows the bank of England to ignore Freedom of Information laws so that they can protect troubled banks from negative market speculation. But secrecy can only be detrimental to people who have their savings in a troubled bank.

The Banking Act promises that if a bank collapses  savers will receive compensation within a week. What this law is really saying to savers is that bankers and politicians know some banks will collapse during the recession, but we’re not going to tell you if your at risk just in case you’re inclined to take your money away – which really wouldn’t be a bad idea. Fuck usury – it’s time to return to Banco De Mattress!

Burn The Bastards

We were going to write something about Raley’s, but Snookcocker has already said all that needs to be said…

First Jim Beresford and his mate, now six of the buggers at Raleys Solicitors scavenged the fat from miners’ compensation claims.

Are all solicitors money grabbing thieving twats?

Has the NUM become just like any other top down bureaucratic union?

Children are “on the front line of the recession”

According to the Children’s Society our kids are being directly and indirectly affected by the recession. Almost half of 11 to 13-year-olds surveyed said their parents were worried about their economic situation and one in five 17 to 19-year-olds looking for a job said they could not find one. The vast majority of kids surveyed said they knew what the credit crunch was, and a third said they worried about what they heard on the news. Only around 15% said they hadn’t been affected by it.

A spokesman for Department of Children, Schools and Families, said it was “disappointing” that some young people were concerned about the economy. “Disappointing!”, what’s truly disappointing is that we’re bailing out greedy bankers when a fraction of that money could be used to provide people with a little security in hard times. What’s “disappointing” is that the poor will continue to pay for the mistakes of the rich.

ACAB = All Coppers Are Bashful

Today is the day that Section 58 of the Terrorist Act 2000 comes into play. This makes it illegal for anyone to take pictures of police officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism’. If you do take a ‘piccie of a piggie’ then you may face up to ten years imprisonment.

Will this law be open to abuse? You bet your sweet arse it will…

Abuses of the act so far include…

Sally Cameron was arrested under the Terrorism Act and held for four hours for walking along a cycle path in Dundee. She said:

“I’ve been walking to work every morning for months and months to keep fit. One day, I was told by a guard on the gate that I couldn’t use the route any more because it was solely a cycle path and he said, if I was caught doing it again, I’d be arrested…The next thing I knew, the harbour master had driven up behind me with a megaphone, saying, ‘You’re trespassing, please turn back’. It was totally ridiculous. I started laughing and kept on walking. Cyclists going past were also laughing…But then two police cars roared up beside me and cut me off, like a scene from Starsky and Hutch, and officers told me I was being arrested under the Terrorism Act. The harbour master was waffling on and (saying that), because of September 11, I would be arrested and charged.”

—“Two wheels: good. Two legs: terrorist suspect“. The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1829289,00.html. Retrieved on 2008-01-01.

An 11-year-old girl was required to empty her pockets, before being handed a notification slip under the Act.^[3]

During the G8 protests in 2005, a cricketer on his way to a match was stopped at King’s Cross station in London under Section 44 powers and questioned over his possession of a bat.^[3]

Taken from Wikipedia

Fit Watch have produced a fine aid for defenders of freedom everywhere – available here

ACAB = All Coppers Are Blatant…

…Blatant hypocrites that is!

Turns out that South Yorkshire’s very own Rocket Pig, Meredydd Hughes – the South Yorkshire Chief Constable disqualified after being caught doing 90mph in a 60mph zone – is now heading a body of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) which is offering advice and training regarding speed cameras!!!

ACPO themselves are dodgy. They’re largely financed by the taxpayer but not controlled by Parliament or subject to Freedom of Information laws. They’re a private company who have been put in charge of the creation of Labour’s new Confidential Intelligence Unit (CIU), a Stasi type organisation in charge of investigating anyone who isn’t a member of the Labour party which will answer to nobody but Jacqui Smith – a woman who is in charge of crime reduction, but is herself being accused of corruption!

So not only are those in authority are not only abusing their position of privilege, but they’re changing the law to protect them from people who would challenge that abuse!

When The Going Gets Tough – The Tough Turn On Each Other!

With HBOS losses now predicted to be around 11 billion pounds (more than twice the amount needed to end child poverty by 2020 – see here) Gordon Brown has placed the blame firmly at the bank’s door by saying that HBOS’s difficulties were due to its ‘flawed business model’. But the former head of risk at HBOS, Paul Moore, claims to have over 30 documents that prove Brown’s complicity in the collapse of the UK banking system and is calling for the Prime Sinister’s resignation.

Let’s not forget that the government, the banks and big business were as thick as thieves (…’thieves’ being the operative word!) during the boom years – which, of course, meant a ‘boom’ for the rich, but impoverishment, loss of liberties and an abandonment of human and worker’s rights for the rest of us. The middle class have conspired to rob the poor for years, but now, as their cosy little number comes crashing down, they’re turning on each other. Oh, how the mighty have fallen – lets tread them further into the ground!

Banker = Genius – NOT!

The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, has warned that the UK is facing a ‘deep recession’ in 2009 and said ‘further action may be necessary’ - by ‘further action’ does the cheeky bastard mean further pay-outs using public money?

Merv the Perv and his parasitic cronies know full well that the current global economic system goes way beyond recession – however ‘deep’ – and probably a long way beyond depression. We’re witnessing the breakdown of the ‘neo-liberal’ mode of capitalism championed by Thatcher and Reagan that has impoverished great swathes of society and pushed back workers rights; we’re heading for completely new territory and at the moment it’s anybody’s guess what’s going to happen next. Merv and his cronies know this, they’re just lining their pockets to protect their own interests. The best we can hope for is that we can create a world that favours the working class instead of greedy bankers and rich scum.