Recently The Sun launched an attack on Paul Mason, who unlike the low life scum who wallow in the gutter at The Sun is a reputable journalist.
If you read The Sun, it is like raising a flag you are a complete moron.
Take direct action against The Sun. When you see it in the bins at a supermarket or W H Smith, turn the top copies back to front and upside down, then pile other papers on top.
John McDonnell, The People’s Chancellor, a breath of fresh air compared with Ed Balls or Alistair Darling. Unlike economic illiterate chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, John McDonnell has some understanding of economics.
Once upon a time students had free university education (now £9,000 per annum with Tories wishing to hike the fees), and students got a grant, ie they were paid to study and go to university.
Students not wishing to be at university full-time, could do a part-time course or a sandwich course and study over a longer period, and be in employment.
Now students on a full-time course, are having to put in the hours at work as though on a part-time or sandwich course, not only that, it will be dreary, precarious McJobs, on low wages, often on zero hours.
Apple is relocating its factories to the US. These new factories will not employ American workers, they will employ robots.
Robots will work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they do not need to be watered and fed, they do not need to be paid.
The price of stuff is tending to zero.
There is a growing mismatch between GDP and percentage going on wages.
Where we once had well-paid skilled workers with money jingling in their pockets to spend on the High Street we now have precarious workers on low wages, often below the minimum wage, robots on no wages.
This creates a downward spiral. Decimated town centres, slum housing estates.
With tax dodging, low corporation tax, corporations are amassing huge cash mountains, money that is not being invested in the economy.
The polices pursued by George Osborne in cutting money to the poor, are not only morally indefensible, they are also economic illiteracy. The poor spend money in the local economy.
Does society benefit by closing libraries, cutting to a bare minimum social services, the NHS, by privatising these public services?
We need investment, in education, in infrastructure, in green technologies.
We need alternative forms of ownership, democratisation of he workplace, open co-ops, collaborative commons.
Apple is not a good model to follow. A high-tech death star, like Uber, like Airbnb, that is creating a monopoly, control of intellectual property rights (to benefit the few not the many), serfs working for apps, where once unions negotiated for better working conditions and pay, we have atomised workers bidding against each other in a negative auction to force wages and working conditions ever downwards on a race to the bottom.
I for one, was very impressed by John McDonnell yesterday afternoon at Beyond Austerity at Methodist Central Hall Westminster. It is unfortunate the entire meeting was not dedicated to a discussion between former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and John McDonnell, as it would have been a far more informative and productive meeting.
We had excellent analysis, and intelligent proposals.
A breath of fresh air compared with Ed Balls or Alistair Darling.
Maybe that is why both he and Yanis Varoufakis are being attacked in the mainstream media, to drown out what they are saying.
Mass media has become rabid propaganda channels for the 1%, spewing a daily drip, drip, drip feed of misinformation, lies, smears and hate.
We must form our own communication channels. The media must be broken up. We cannot have people like Murdoch, Lord Rothermere, Barclay Brothers owning large chunks of the media.
Media channels that give an alternative view and help nail many of the lies.
Meeting at Methodist Central Hall. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, professor of economics and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, various trade union leaders, antiwar, looking at how we move beyond austerity. Overshadowed by the atrocities in Paris and looming war with Isis.
The meeting started with a minute silence for all the victims of terrorist violence.
With the election of Jeremy Corby and with John McDonnell as finance, Labour for the first time has an anti-austerity team. For the first time there is hope.
Austerity is an excuse for Shock Doctrine, slash and burn of public services, mass sell-off, cuts to social services.
The worst affected are the disabled.
The probation service is being privatised, with all that means with criminals being put back into the community and if they re-offend where are the police to respond when police numbers are being cut and police stations closed?
Councils are facing serious financial cuts. They will provide what they have a statutory obligation to provide and nothing more. Social services are in crisis.
Collapse in social services, means people do not receive the care they need. They end up in hospital, which puts further strain on an already overstretched NHS, and costs more.
Lincolnshire is closing thirty out of forty-five libraries, with the remaining fifteen on reduced hours. But this has less to do with funding, than the leader of the council Martin Hill a moron and a Philistine.
Councils will offer the bare minimum they are under a statutory obligation to provide, nothing more, services will be outsourced and privatised, dependency upon charities.
In the constituency of John McDonnell, there are families living in sheds.
Go to Aldershot, there are families living in a multi-story car park, or there was.
George Osborne will announce more cuts in his Autumn Statement, be lauded in the press as a wizard, a genius. But is he?
He has increased both the deficit and the debt. Balance of payment is at a record high. There is no investment. He wants to cut corporation tax to only 18%. As a country we earn very little, as everything has been sold off.
Companies are paying out record dividends, sitting on a cash mountain, but not investing, they see no future.
John McDonnell gives a conservative estimate of a £400 to £500 billion cash surplus, Yanis Varoufakis put it at £750 billion.
This is idle cash. We must invest it, put it to productive use.
UK is a leader in scientific research, but lags on investment.
We should invest in green infrastructure, invest in education.
People have no future. It used to be each generation had better prospects, now it is the opposite.
People need to have creative work, where they contribute to the greater good of society.
We have to end the tax avoidance and tax evasion by global corporations.
Banks have to be split, casino banking from retail banking, they must be broken up, subject to better regulation. If they wish to gamble, do with their own money. They do not contribute to society. We reduce their stranglehold by investment in other sectors of the economy, in skills.
Mass media has become rabid propaganda channels for the 1%, spewing a daily drip, drip, drip feed of misinformation, lies, smears and hate. We must form our own communication channels. The media must be broken up. We cannot have people like Murdoch, Lord Rothermere, Barclay Brothers owning large chunks of the media.
Media channels that give an alternative view and help nail many of the lies.
The Tories do not have a mandate. They got 11 million out of 46 million votes.
The election of Jeremy Corbyn and the immediate aftermath has shown Labour has a problem. Members of Parliament who do not represent their constituents.
What is a good society? Think of a good family. They help to develop, look after the weakest and the sick, those who have strayed they try to bring back.
We are facing a return to the 1930s. That is where the Tories are taking us.
We must opposes austerity. This includes taking direct action. All progressive forces, anti-austerity campaigners, disability rights activists, climate activists, must all join forces to oppose austerity and map out an alternative.
On leaving the meeting, walking through Whitehall, to Piccadilly Circus, along Oxford Street, through Soho, to Covent Garden, then at night after eating at Home Slice in Covent Garden, I was shocked at the number of homeless bedding down and sleeping on the street. I have never seen this number before. It was worse than what I saw of homeless on the streets of Athens.
As with the homeless bedding down for a night on the street, my journey by train was also indicative of all that is wrong. A train of only five coaches, overcrowded, standing room only, for which we pay some of the highest fares in Europe.
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