By a chap called Gareth.
“The unions are greedy, feckless, irresponsible and holding the country to ransom…. The pay they are asking for (to be enough to live on and reflect their value and training in parallel with living costs) is unreasonable and an irresponsible use of public funds and taxpayers’ money”… is the narrative the government, and every paper/ news media outlet which they own/ own them is pushing…
OK.
Can we just clarify a few points before we uncritically swallow that idea? That the money isn’t there? That it would be reckless and squanderous? Are you willing to listen?
OK then.
Our last PM blew a 30 billion pound hole in the economy overnight, by allowing a ‘Think Tank’ called the IEA with charity status, meaning they can hide who funds them (it’s hedge funds, billionaires and corporations in the fossil fuel industry and other such lovely people), to convince her, nay, write the budget, that in the midst of a cost of living crisis for ordinary people on low incomes, decided that what the country really needed was a 5% tax break for the wealthiest. The international markets said ‘WTF?! That’s insane’, the pound bombed, and the cost of our debts skyrocketed- the bank of England had to PRINT, metaphorically speaking, tens of billions of pounds to shore up our pensions system from collapse as a result. And raise interest rates. People’s mortgages went through the roof and will not come back down. Inflation and the concurrent cost to all of us on everyday items jumped even higher than it already was to 14%. It’s now at another record high of 17.1% as of this morning for grocerires (supermarket goods).
As has the cost of everything, because as a direct result of that catastrophic ‘mini budget’, the value of our currency plummeted to historic lows, worth less than a dollar for the first time in its history. Our ability to effectively manage and pay back our national debt became orders of magnitude less valuable because our currency, used to pay the debts, was now worth so little. It has still some way to recover.
Test and Trace cost us 37 billion pounds. It never worked. The ‘creators’, associates and friends of Dominic Cummings and Matt Hancock, never paid back a penny. The government refuses to release figures on the unnecessary deaths caused by the system’s failure.
Useless PPE wasted 8.7 billion pounds which largely ended up in the pockets of Tory donors, members, associates and in several cases, MPs and Peers’ pockets (at least 27 million just in the case of Michelle Mone- let alone her offshore billionaire husband)- she was made a baroness after buying the peerage, by the way. Now she has a say in government. Though she has retired from the chamber and lives on her yacht whilst she waits for hr friends in parliament and the media to help her brush it under the carpet and not report on it.
A shambolically executed Brexit lost us 40 billion a year in tax revenue alone.
Rishi Sunak lost 11 billion pounds by overpaying interest on UK debt.
And yet, if you read the front pages- it’s nurses who are greedy and irresponsible. It’s the Fire Service who are ‘holding the country to ransom’- because they all just decided they preferred to lose a day’s pay and drink tea on a freezing picket line than save children from burning buildings set on fire by Tory landlords refusing to adhere to minimum safety standards (Grenfell, anyone?).
It wasn’t so long ago, we were clapping them. Hailing them as heroes because they were risking their lives more than they already do.
They were hailed as ‘key workers’ during the pandemic- can’t do without them.
Bus drivers, teachers, nurses, train staff… everybody else tucked away safely at home.
Now they’re called radical, militant, commy, lazy, work-shy after all the sacrifices, the way they stepped up, and the way they have seen their income destroyed by government for a decade or more. Because they’ve had enough?
Postal workers striking to save what the Tories have left us of our Royal Mail- it having been sold off to the lowest bidder in Westminster by (you guessed it) the Tories, for a quick buckby the millionaires in Westminster. But it’s your POSTMAN who is destroying your country.
Education defunded to the point we are running out of teachers willing to stay in a highly skilled and demanding graduate-level professional job because they are paid like an unqualified worker- and demanded to do 7 hours of unpaid overtime every day- meaning students have at least 1 cover teacher every day and tens of thousands of our children have not had a specialist teacher for years. But it’s the TEACHERS who are damaging your kids chances by saying they can’t continue to enable this destruction.
The entire Northern Rail Network on the brink of collapse whilst rail companies and their shareholders make record profits, reinvest practically nothing from those obscene profits, record executive salaries and bonuses, whilst their employees eat record pay cuts and a massive deprecation of their rights and conditions, with safety regimes scrapped left right and center. But it’s the fat lazy fucker behind the ‘unnecessary’ ticket desk or the ‘unnecessary’ train guard, asking for a bit of job security who’s destroying our rail infrastructure.
50% of households have been unable to meet their costs of living- their basic bills- going further into debt throughout the winter- and it is getting worse because of these disastrous Tory governments not learning from their repeated errors. Not realising that the very foundation of their ideology is pure sophistry.
Heat or eat- whilst energy companies announced record breaking profits last quarter. Then broke those records again with even more profits this quarter.
In 2021, Shell paid zero pounds tax on their oil production in the UK (nice one Boris), and received 100 million pounds in subsidies of taxpayers’ money.
Working people are suffering at the hands of corporate greed, as prices are elevated despite costs of production remaining the same or lowering (gas dropped by 75% market value since Feb last year, but the bills didn’t move- generating huge windfall profits).
Working people are suffering at the hands of gross and unbridled political and economic mismanagement, where profiteering is protected and practically encouraged, and this is why people are striking.
For better pay. To protect and improve conditions. To protect and improve outcomes.
And for some semblance of job security.
Recently, the government have given us wonderful new laws like the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 which treats protestors like perpetrators of knife crime, limits protest, and criminalises dissent. Encourages police officers to stop and search without cause, and does nothing to prevent, in fact encourages, racial profiling. And many other pearls.
This act was described by even a Tory peer as an affront to civilised society and the removal of democratic rights.
Crackdowns on peaceful protest and the right to voice dissent is the purview of Iran, China, North Korea, or any extinct/ extant dictatorship you care to name. Not the parliamentary democracy of the UK.
Or the Border Act 2022, which closed all legal asylum application routes, gave no alternatives, allows the government to put refugees in concentration camps and granted the ability of this government to strip British citizens of their passports and citizenship if they curry the displeasure of government for whatever reason, deported back to an ancestral country they may never have visited. And many other pearls.
And yet these reactionary and disingenuous ‘leaders’ tell us it’s Scottish primary school teachers who are holding us hostage.
The very people who wrecked the economy, squandered our reputation and standing on the international stage (by leaving the world’s single biggest diplomatic trading entity in history, breaking treaties and international laws), sold off all and any of the country’s assets and services to privatisation for a quick buck (water, energy, rail, prisons, schools, transport and on and on…) are getting their propagandist friends and funders who own all of our news media (practically) to convince you that it’s bus drivers, teachers, nurses, binmen, civil servants, doctors, postmen, border force staff, and railworkers who are throwing the country to the dogs.
Don’t believe them.
They are lying to you.
Use your brain.
Wake up.
Gareth
Join us in helping to bring reality and decency back by SUBSCRIBING to our Youtube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ1Ll1ylCg8U19AhNl-NoTg
and SUPPORTING US where you can: Award Winning Independent Citizen Media Needs Your Help. PLEASE SUPPORT US FOR JUST £2 A MONTH
