Goodbye 2011 - beginning of my life but the beginning of the end

Around two and a half weeks ago I decided to get married, I thought fuck it what am I waiting for, being the rebellious woman I am this was the closest thing I could get to eloping, plus the year of 2012 is forever (well maybe not forever) going to be associated with the London Olympics so I may as well make the year of 2011 associated with my marriage! So it was planned in 3 days and I am now officially a 'we'. The day of my marriage 'our' parents officially met, at one point our dads started debating about the financial crisis, my dad, working in the jaded world of banking said there is just way too much debt and this is the root of the problem, my other dad said that the financial crisis was simply a ploy for austerity and that there was money and the corrupt governments are just pissing it up the wall (to paraphrase somewhat). It got me thinking, minus the sweeping general statements they're probably both right.

America has not yet implemented the necessary or heinous cuts, depending on your perspective, that parts of Europe has, instead focusing on stimulating economic growth and their economy is growing, slowly, but it is growing and unemployment is declining. Whereas the UK and let's face it Conservative government (I'm missing the Liberal Democratic element of this so-called coalition) have focussed on cuts which has directly resulted in stagnation. They have gone about cutting EMA; cutting housing benefits; cutting public sector jobs; whilst raising VAT; tripling tuition fees and simultaneously raising the interest rates on student loans; going after fraudulent benefit claimants but not tax evading corporations or rich people; re-jigging the NHS; making NEETs like me stack Tesco shelves for free, lest they cut off our generous allowance of £7 a day. Soon, there will be no such thing as Job Seekers Allowance, Housing Benefit etc as the Tories want to simplify everything (that they have never had to use and therefore do not understand) and make one universal credit. I asked my job seekers parole officer how he thought this was going to work in practice, he replied that 'the government are broke, so one credit system will probably mean they pay out less and so the recipients ends up with less money'. Anyway, I don't know if it's just me but it seems like this year has not only been the year I got married but also the year of austerity/privatisation/attack on the already fucking poor!!

Whether or not this crisis is mostly about debt the governments are struggling to pay back, compiled with the bad investments they and banks have made, it seems an obvious statement to make but why does joe taxpayer have to literally pay for it? The price of food, travel, goods and services keep rising and joe taxpayer has to keep getting poorer, and yet joe taxpayer is one of the lucky ones as that means he has a job!

The suggestion that a certain amount of debt, public and private should just be wiped out has been ridiculed as infeasible (see occupylsx.org). Prior to this crisis, many were campaigning for third world debt to be wiped out, it created a deep ditch of poverty which poor countries would never be able to dig their way out of because as much as they dug, the mud would still keep pouring in. All of this being designed on purpose of course. OK it's a crap analogy as I'm tired and it's midnight but my point is debt is fine if you are able to pay it back, it's interest or usury which has turned out to be the source of EVIL! The people who govern us are slavish to the speculators who have to be able to trust that our governments can pay their debts back. If they, whoever 'they' are, decide that the chances are slim, they up the interest rate, thereby making it harder and harder for the countries to return to economic health. People didn't seem to care too much about this before but now it's happening to the rich countries Western governments are even turning on each other, accusing other country's credit ratings of being worse than theirs <cough cough Sarkozy>, akin to the snitch in school who gets told off by the teacher and asks why another has not been told off too.

More privatisation in the UK cannot surely be the answer? Can you resolve a problem with what created it in the first place? Whether it's been through the front door or back door this has been the year of not so subtle privatisation, kicking the poor when they're already down. The free market has already ensured a massive wealth and class divide, the government has just exacerbated it. How dare Labour have wanted more than 50% of our young to go university?! says David Cameron. What a croc, let's make our universities as elite as they were in the Bullingdon days ay? They have also restored the Thatcher policy of discounting council houses HEAVILY (50% of market rate and only a 5% deposit needed) in order for tenants to buy them, thereby allowing them to get on the housing market, buy and sell until they attain coveted middle class status and reducing council housing even further. Thereby eliminating some poverty and exacerbating others! This is how the free market resolves 'itself' of course! Sometimes I wake up and think I'm either dreaming or the world is some sort of sick joke* This was 2011 bitches...

*For more sick jokes see North Koreans hysterically sobbing at the death of Kim-Jong Il and the Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama ordering a troop surge in Afghanistan, collusion of militiary action in Libya and a few days ago approving arm sales of $11b to Iraq so the sectarian massacres can continue.

See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

No1 Rule of Life (and Law Students)

Just wanted to say a few things about capitalism, based on Anro's blog http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/12/stupid-american-capitalists.html

Many Americans seem worryingly brainwashed by their media, it's difficult to get a balanced picture there. The powerful right-wing own most of the media so of course they would peddle rampant capitalism because they are the ones that have benefited in the first place. The same goes for the all-powerful lobby groups, who buy and financially blackmail their way to government influence. Then because these same groups dominate the media, they propagate the madness of the capitalist system and everyone believes it.

No1 Rule of Life - check your sources people!! Journalists and news corporations are not the word of God!! They have agendas and opinions just like everyone else, what would most people do if they became powerful enough? Influence people to think their way of life is right, right? It's just common sense, how can the public still have faith in capitalism when it's proven to be disastrous to families all over the world?

And then politicians there want LESS regulation and smaller government?? So greedy and careless investments can take priority over THE PEOPLE yet again? This is insanity. I read an article that in a majority of a poll, the question posed was 'Should a sick 17-year-old die because they have no medical insurance?' The resounding answer was YES. What has the world come to when people would choose capitalism over the life of a child? The fact that the US is the only developed country to not provide universal healthcare is something they should be ashamed of, not revel in.

Aside from the media propaganda, other reasons that I can fathom as to why they hold capitalism so dear is that less government means less taxes, especially for healthcare. So private companies stepping in where government agencies would have been means more competition and therefore higher efficiency and less cost. Is this what happened with oil companies? Well the prices at your local filling station will tell you otherwise. The price of oil can just keep on going up as the oil barons please, where is the competitiveness and efficiency in that? The price of oil then affects everything, the price of food, the sick and disabled who need to use their car to get around, EVERYTHING. The US government contracts out their war machines to private contractors too, thus ensuring the safety of nations in the hands of people who profit from war. How can this kind of privatisation be right?

Just because Americans  lost many soldiers in fighting communism it doesn't mean the polar opposite; unfettered capitalism, is the solution!!!

FYI ever-worshipping free marketeers, I am not a socialist, I just do not believe in an ever increasing and destructive divide between rich and poor...

See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

CHAV - Council House and Violent - Do They Deserve All The Derision?

 *Inspired by http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/11/rent-goes-up-again.html & the attack on the poor*

There are not many societies which deride the poor i.e. the working class as much as we do (see Pippa Middleton dressed at a fancy dress party as a chav). I'm going to join on this for a minute but just bear with me for a minute... I have known so many people throughout my life who have pretended to be homeless, with their parents' encouragement, in order to get themselves in a hostel. Thus ensuring a coveted London council flat in the future, heavily subsidised by the taxpayer. Many council workers are in on this scam and actively tell their friends to get on the housing list, I have been offered this myself. I turned it down and although my morals are intact I cannot help kicking myself as property prices continue to soar and rents becoming more expensive than mortgages. As a child of a parent with those horrific endowment mortgages (after 25 years of an interest based mortgage we will still owe more than a third of the cost of the house, thanks Conservative government and an unregulated mortgage market!) I find myself getting annoyed that council and housing association tenants are paying about 10% of what private renters pay and less if they are on housing benefits.

But this is what the government wants us to do!! To feel angry at the poorer members of society who are just trying to secure their own lives, rather than redirecting anger at the state and how they have let things get to the stage where a studio flat i.e. a box, can cost £300 a week excluding bills and council tax. Instead of facing down greed and forcing landlords to downsize their rent demands or tax them according to how many properties they have etc. they would rather, yep you guessed it bow down to the FREE MARKET system. Nooo don't tax the bankers too much, they will leave the country, Nooo don't sort out the housing prices, that will mess up the free market system. So they are wilfully ignoring the unaffordability (yes I made up a word) of a basic human need and even more absurdly, they would rather stump up the cash in the form of housing benefit.

Many estate agencies do not accept housing benefit tenants anyway for security reasons. Furthermore, housing benefit has been cut in an attempt to move the poor where they should be, in cheap, crap housing just like the good old tower block days. Instead of being unwilling to pay for poor people's sky high rent, why not make sure the rent is not that high in the 1st place? Radical idea I know! If they were forced down, what would really happen? Will the landlords themselves become poor? Err no, obviously not. If tenants had a little more shopping change, would that also not better this flawed economy? Err, obviously YES.

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

My 1st try at this blogging thing

I don't know who will end up reading this, if anyone at all, so I guess I will just speak my mind on this October morning...
Who am I? As part of a nation obsessed with categories and (unsubstantiated) statistics what particular box do I fit into? Seeing as I did not get the 3rd job I have interviewed for yesterday in just as many weeks, I've decided that today my not so unique selling point is that I am a N,E,E,T, the lovingly coined phrase for those of us who are a burden to society, the state and our parents - not in employment education or training. I am the one in ten in London who is unemployed, the one in five 'young' people who are not employed etc.

We are the future!! Yes the majority of the UK rioters are the future yay! We are the ones that are going to be paying for the baby boomers' decreasing pensions. But how will we pay for them in taxes if we cannot find jobs and to make matters worse they will be in the jobs that we need until they're 67!

As a nation of moaners it is difficult for all of our concerns to be taken seriously, so what's a fresh out of carefree childhood Briton to do? When you're in your teens you inevitably think you're invincible and that you will be forever young. Wrong! Perhaps that's part of the reason we are seemingly in a state of chaos? The sense of entitlement that led to the plethora of graduates with a piece of paper but no life and/or work skills to the rioters that did not give it a second thought to joining the looting frenzy as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Since we seem to be a slave to this enigmatic thing called the free market maybe we should just accept a number of things; that the market is down and we just need to wait it out until things improve? Even more depressingly, some even think that the good times will never return as the era of credit with no questions asked and 100% mortgages were always a fallacy waiting to be exposed. Should we camp at St Pauls to protest against capitalism et al? Try innovative ways to get a job e.g. advertising yourself on youtube or walk with a board in the City etc? Live with our parents forever, who are also struggling with redundancies, pay cuts, lower pensions and increasing utility bills? Start a business in a climate where people have no money to spare and the European tourists are surely to fall sharply as they're suffering even more than us? Use our shiny EU passports to up sticks to another Member State? Or languish where one of my teachers at school said I would be - on the dole? Well at the moment I've chosen the last option, but only until March - as that's when my government I did not vote for will cut the apron strings.

C'est la vie - should we accept it or try to find answers? Til my next rant, an unproud NEET

See also http://raraproductions.blogspot.com/ & http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/