Create ripples, one day they’ll become tidal waves.

The biggest threat to our way of life is not the government or the terrorists they claim to be chasing across the globe. Its is our apathy.

The Royal Mail, educational system, NHS and emergency services have been built by the blood, sweat and tears of you and you grandparents going back 100 years. Today they are seen as cash cows for corrupt politicians and their privateer friends to siphon off billions in public money to line their private pockets and they are using the veil of austerity to do so. They have managed, somewhat convincingly, to persuade a large section of society that austerity is both real and necessary.

Alessio Rastani told us that a recession is not bad for everyone, it is an opportunity to make money; This is not a recession, it is a robbery.

Worryingly this agenda is something that is pursued by both Labour and Conservatives, one hard and fast and the other a kind of “I can’t believe it’s not austerity”, or “austerity-lite” approach. Either way the end result is the same. Working people are forced to bear the brunt of paying for a crisis created by corrupt politicians, rogue bankers and immoral (if not illegal) banking practices with their banking and economic terrorism.

The leaders of both these parties are no longer interested in popularity contests at election time because there are common themes, goals and aims amongst them. They are ultimately all gorging themselves at the same trough of public money and broadly speaking, their sole interest is themselves.

The NHS as I mentioned is already paid for by our parents and grandparents, the problem we have is that far too few of us dare old enough to remember a time when you would have to pay for a doctor call out and all the associated care that goes with it and even less have stopped to think about the danger we face because of privatisation. Some may think that they will see no real problem because they already have some form of private medical care, paid for either by their employer or privately but the key point here is that these private firms are backed up by the publicly funded NHS. Even the Royal spawn, despite all its top private care, was delivered in a private hospital, ably supported by the resources of the NHS should anything have gone wrong.

Where will the support network be once the entire lot has been sold of to the great bearded one, Richard Branson?

In the case of the NHS the politicians have gone to great lengths to show us how badly the NHS is failing and have been duly assisted by a complicit media, none more so than our publicly funded BBC who reel off story after story about “nurses on safari” looking for patients or failing trusts. As bad as some of these stories may be on the face of it, these are an infinitesimally small percentage of the millions of people treated by wonderful doctors and nurses every day of the year, any time we call on them.

Where are our survivor stories?

Along with the horrors show run by the mainstream media, the government also repeatedly tell us that the immigrants (who are not even here yet) are to blame for the failure and over capacity of our A&E departments etc. These are blatant lies, used to prey on people’s fears and prejudice that is manufactured by a corrupt elite intent on walking away with billions in profit at the cost of our health. The process to privatisation is a simple but effective one; first the government go through a period of defunding which creates an environment for failure, the failures are reported and the cost to make improvements is amplified and then the privateers swoop in with the answer to take an ever-increasing cost off of the tax payers hands. All the while feeding you distraction stories of immigrants, bad nurses and creating apathy to convince you that a nice guy like Branson will make a good job of it.

Really? He is a businessman about making money. Would you really want someone in charge of something that makes money solely off of the death and illness of people? The only way they will make profit is by charging us for treatments, reducing wages of the nurses providing the majority of the care (not the execs, they get paid off to push through change) and generally hanging us out to dry. See how cheap health insurance will be then when they know you cannot rely on the NHS. These firms will have cornered the market and will drive up prices. Just look at what the energy firms are preparing to do this winter, nearly 10% increase in price’s!

The apathy they are trying to foster enables them to impose these changes because we feel we cannot make a difference and that we cannot make a change. We have given up our power and we have to take it back. One person can make a difference and everyone should do so, if we do not start offering a resistance to these attacks now and come to realise we have more in common with each other than with these merciless privateers and criminals running the country, then we will quite literally be cut adrift and priced out of even a base level of living.

We can do this by winning the hearts and minds of the people around us, taking interest in each other’s causes and not waiting for people to come to us and ours, we can withdraw economically from certain corporations to redistribute the pain, we can write music, draw, sing and create art – the true way of protesting and engaging the hearts and minds of others. If we create ripples they can one day become tidal waves.

We inherited a world of opportunity from our parents, we have a duty to hand it on to the next generation in a better state and not sell it from under them for a dollar.

America, land of the free?

No. Not really.

A recent trip to America yielded the usual jokes about rendition and being sent to “Guacamole Bay” as one of my mates called it but I was not concerned, that was until I approached the immigration desk and saw that they were taking everyone’s biometric data (retina scans and fingerprinting) I was not amused.

Having never been in trouble I was miffed as to why I, along with the thousands of others, was being arbitrarily finger printed just to enter the land of the free. I entered into a lengthy debate with my immigration officer, my first question being: “Why are you taking my fingerprints?” The answer: “So that we have your prints on record incase anything happens during your stay.”

What happened to being innocent until being proved guilty?

I tried to explain the absurdity that they were taking people’s finger prints on the assumption that they may be a (shh) “terrorist” or a criminal of some sort. Would they then destroy my records if I left the country without incident I asked? “No, we will now have your records on file and so will others.”

So not only do they steal your biometric data but they then palm it off to every man and his dog. If you are concerned about identity fraud and shred your papers on a weekly basis, don’t bother. At the rate they are stealing your information it is already open source.

The lady at the immigration desk was pleasant enough, although she seemed mildly amused at my agitation for having never been in trouble and yet still having to be vetted like a criminal. I asked if she thought it was bad that in the year 2013 we treat everyone as an enemy of the state but she declined to comment.

I tried not to let it sour my experience of what was a relatively pleasant journey (minus the coach ride but that’s another story) and reluctantly put my hand on the scanning device. As I was doing this I wondered how the public have allowed themselves to be railroaded and sleep walked into this 1930’s Germany style security checking. Would these people be as happy to do their finger printing if say they had to get thick black ink on their hands and have it pressed into paper like they did not so many years ago? Probably not. Technology has advanced our lives in so many ways yet at the same time, due to the actions of war criminals and the worst purveyors of violence – our governments, we are having this technology turned against us and the simplicity of it is convincing us it is fine.

People will say if you have nothing to hide then you should have nothing to worry about, that these are fantastic ways of ensuring people are who they say they are and getting their data onto file. If that is the case shall we just start finger printing children when they start school? After all, it is the children that go on to become criminals and “terrorists” when they grow up, so we might was well get them young and get them early! I do not agree with the idea if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about. I feel that is the apologist’s way of bending to the will of the state and justifying blatant, daylight attacks on our liberties.

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever” ~ George Orwell -1984

boot stamping on a human face forever

Not since Alessio Rastani have I laughed that much at the BBC

Every now and then, TV IS GOD, throws you a bone and last night was one of those nights.

Last night BBC Question Time devoted a considerable amount of time to the recent Daily Mail attacks on Ed Miliband’s father Ralph. They have decided to label Miliband’s late father as an enemy of that state because he dared to write (as a 17-year-old) that Britain could do with being taught a lesson about empire by losing the war. He went on to serve with the Royal Navy and was there at Normandy. Very much a hero for the very freedom of expression I am enjoying right now. Let us not forget that the empire that Britain has desperately fought to protect over the years was built on the blood, bones and tears of people deemed to either be weaker, less human or less important than ourselves and we called ourselves “the motherland”.

The Daily Mail however, as the self-appointed conscience of the UK, decided to take an opportunity to throw mud at Ed Miliband by disgracefully attacking the memory of his father and Quentin Letts, who works for the Daily Mail was mid-flow explaining it was a fair political comment when Mehdi Hasan asked the question: “Who really hates Britain” What followed was one of the most brilliant pieces of television I’ve seen since Alessio Rastani told the BBC that Goldman Sachs ruled the world and that they did not care about us. The endorphin rush I received at that point was worth every minute of staying up for. I had just had a battle with myself on whether I could stomach Question Time and thanks to Hasan I am glad I did.

Medhi Hassan who hates britain

The Daily Mail owner Lord Rothermere courted Hitler in the build up to the war, counting Mussolini as his friend too. They may not have been the only title who printed pro fascist pieces in the 1930’s but for some context on the absurd attack that the Mail have engaged in over Ed Miliband’s, it is priceless.

Rothrmere.Hitler

The Daily Mail loved to tell us of the ‘scum’ dancing around our streets following the death of Margaret Thatcher and have used this is a way of justifying what they are doing with Ed Miliband. What confuses me more is that the very people that tend to read this paper are the very people it hates the most, working class people, that they manage to help convince everyday that they are middle class and above the strife we face on daily basis.

As Mehdi put it, they hate women, bait gay people, smear Muslim’s, encourage the vote for fascists in France, called Mo Farrah a plastic Brit and poured scorn on Danny Boyle for having a mixed race couple during the Olympic opening ceremony. Who hates Britain? The Daily Mail.