Essay time with Bailey. - Long read. [Topic: Symbolism & Appropriation]

Tl;DR - "Lest we forget" was never meant to be ironic but holy crap our generation has done it.

Recently in the U.S.A white men gathered to listen to a white man speak.
This man spoke of how we, the white people are the makers, employers, the producers and the explorers. He used imagery relating to the crusades and he forgot that he was preaching on lands stolen from indigenous people, built on the backs of black slaves and broken promises. If the white race was truly the most incredible and intelligent, we would do our race some credit by remembering our history correctly. 

Instead of remembering the history of the world, these would be white crusaders each performed the Nazi salute. Fascists are now running the White House and we have a clueless President-Elect at the helm of the Free World. 

Safety Pin Side Note:

Gold plated safety pins encrusted with jewels... those are a thing now. I'm sure they have existed for a while but a surge in demand, that is new.

I did a rant a week or so ago about how as a society we need to do more for veterans as a country than simply spending a few bob on a paper poppy. [Yes the Poppy is symbolic but symbolism means nothing unless you back it up with genuine support. If you disagree, I apologise - See that, I did something symbolic and it did not cost me a penny.]

Often the right wing capitalise and appropriate [read as: STEAL] the symbolism of patriotism and military memorials for their own ends. This is to say that the poppy the British use to remember veterans is now also sold by Britain First. B.F is a right wing terrorist organisation that portrays as itself as White Christian warriors that are defending English Christendom. 

Britain First volunteers often try to stand next to British Legion poppy volunteers and declare that they are "defending the volunteers" from traitors. The volunteers that they are "defending" tend to be elderly folks that do not fully know what Britain First stand for as they are primarily internet based. This is the problem with wearing tokens for symbolism, the traditional message behind remembering the veterans was being aware of the sacrifice, the militarisation of our society, the loss of life across the world by the soldiers. 

Nowadays we have a moment's silence and then our society gets right back to treating veterans like dirt but it's alright because we just did a charity event. Lest we forget but we have forgotten.

Britain First capitalises on our short-term memory, as have other right-wing organisations and they have effectively mobilised the genuine public outrage to suit their own warped ends. Farage even went as far to argue that he deserved to lay a wreath on Remembrance day. UKIP tried to pressure the Queen into intervening for their beloved leader.  This year hwoever Farage flew across the pond to meet Trump in a gilded elevator. Lest we forget and yet Farage did. The poppy that meant so much to Farage was nowhere to be seen.

White people, we are being severely duped.
Farage doesn't care about us, he barely cared about fallen soldiers, and this year he didn't even wear a poppy whilst meeting Trump on the same day.

Who do you think will have to round up Mexicans?
Who will be sent to stop the refugees?
Who will the State turn to in order to enforce it's warped intent?
We will be the one we they turn to and we need to take a stand now and quit swallowing this bile.

This safety pin thing could go the exact same way. Already I've seen reports of the right wing picking it up ironically. And already I've seen smart business folks capitalising on the safety pin with the gem encrusted variants. Our inability to reclaim the poppy from the hands of right wing fascists has enabled the treacherous people that call themselves "alt-right".

Dispel their verbal safe space by calling them for what the are.

The Alt-Right are fascists.

This has been a long time coming.

We need to get our act together my fellow white folks and make a stand against fascists once more. A lot of them feel entitled, a lot of them believe they have a God given right to rule. Christians need to act now and denounce the fascists that walk amongst us as many are saying that Trump's election was an act of God.

Cheers for reading.

Bailey

RE: Syria and September - A thing I made.

So back in September I created this:

I was asked a question about the Syrian refugee crisis and in a classic academic fashion I continued reading the literature until about 1am.

Right now Syria looks like Europe did after WW2..
Britain is currently fearful of the prospect of accepting 20,000 refugees over a five year period. That's 4,000 refugees a year.

To give a sense of perspective:
There are 9.5 million Syrians that are currently displaced.*
6.5 million displaced Syrians are still living within Syria.
3 million (out of the 9.5m) have fled Syria and are living within neighbouring countries.
There are over 4,000,000 registered Syrian refugees.
In 2014 there were 2,000,000 registered refugees from Syria.
In 2013 there were just under 500,000 registered refugees.
On the 17th of Feb 2012 we saw the figure of registered Syrian refugees sit at around 20,043.


This crisis is not new and our Government(s) have been aware of the rising level of refugees for quite some time.

Another sense of perspective:

The Wembley stadium has about 90,000 seats...
In 2014 over 690,000 babies were born in the UK!
Britain is currently terrified of accepting 20,000 refugees by 2020.


Update: Over 400,000 have signed a petition to seal the UK borders... People are fleeing from ISIS and Assad and now they are fleeing from bombs that we are dropping on them.  The essentially argument against allowing refugees into Britain is that one of the terrorists in Paris was Syrian. Britain currently has an open border with Ireland and this might surprised people but the I.R.A were Irish! For the sake of peace we have held back on shutting down the borders and creating anti-Irish propaganda yet the Daily Mail has published a cartoon equating the Syrians to rats. See below:

The anti-refugee argument is purely a racial one developed on the back of fear and bigotry. People have only picked up on the Polish migrants as we have heard the Polish language being spoken and people only get angry when they hear the Polish langauge being spoken. When things appear 'white' and 'English' then our racist tendencies are put aside and we embrace one another and call each other brothers. Yet as soon as someone looks different or praises a different deity or speaks another language (Never mind that the British Empire was the most linguistically diverse empire ever until we crushed those languages) then all hell breaks loose. Cartoons like the one shown above are the same kind that were created and used against the Jews during the 1930s. Britain has a long way to go until it can pat itself on the back for being so "modern" and "accepting". If our media could stop using refugees as scapegoats that would go a long way. If the people of Britain could quit purchasing that vile piece of trash known as the Daily Mail that would be even better.

Links:

• 20,000 by 2020 : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34171148

• The figures about Syrian Refugees : syrianrefugees.eu/

•  Registered refugee numbers: http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/regional.php
  ^There is some really insightful reading and statistics on there.

• BABIES!!! ^_^ http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/birth-summary-tables--england-and-wales/2014/stb-births-in-england-and-wales-2014.html

• UNCHR: http://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/press/2015/7/559d67d46/unhcr-total-number-syrian-refugees-exceeds-four-million-first-time.html

If you found any of this useful please share what I've written with a friend that might have asked you some questions about this or send me a message if you have other sources that might be useful. Overall I think fleeing from violence is a natural human reaction.

*Although those figures are from September 2015, from a glance they appear to have remained roughly the same. If you notice any discrepenancies please contact me and I will thank you + ammend the figures on here

RE: PMQs - Not electrifying?

Good afternoon,

This blog is a quick response to the responses about how Corbyn's approach to PMQ's is underwhelming/unambitious. The problem with trying to criticise Corbyn's approach to PMQs is that we find ourselves judging Corbyn on his ability to get an answer from David Cameron. David Cameron however is a notorious liar that told a mother on national t.v that he would not cut tax credits. So we have two problems:

1. Cameron will always seek to dodge the question when it comes to inequality.

2. Cameron cannot be trusted when does answer a question.

Reading and listening to the criticism that Corbyn is not some electric, bombastic, enthusiastic, majestic orator that can swing punches at Cameron like this is all some game... I feel like we are missing the point of PMQs. PMQs should not be seen as a game because: 

Tax credit cuts, not a game.
Benefit sanctions are not a game.
Screwing around with Junior Doctors is not a game.
Freezing child benefit is not a game.
Closing down fire stations is not a game.
Houses costing over £450k is not a game.
100,000 children homeless by Christmas is not a game.Cutting the police budget is not a game.
When Remembrance Day parades are cancelled due to budget cuts, I must repeat that this is not a game.

Cameron can complain all he wants about PMQs getting "longer and longer" but Cameron will not go cold this winter, his children will not be hungry, their Christmas tree will not look barren and the gifts will not sparse in his household. 

Cameron will never answer the question. Essentially, the critics of Corbyn know that the Labour leader is being asked to play Chess with a pigeon. As the old story goes, the problem with playing Chess with a pigeon is that it will knock over all the pieces and then strut about the place like it won the game. Corbyn understands that this is not a game and that is why Jeremy waits for the Conservatives to quit jeering. 

If the Parliamentary Labour Party could come back to reality and back Corbyn as he attempts to play Chess against a party of pigeons that would be great! If the Tories could treat Governance like an actual job and not some schoolyard game that would even better.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog.

If you like what I have written please share my blog. If you have some sources or questions please drop me a message.

Bailey

Sources:

100,000 Homeless Children:

Remembrance Day Cancelled:

David Cameron lying:

David Cameron lying to a mother:

RE: Agency Work - The Dark Future.

Please give "The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp" a read before continuing.

<img alt='buzzoole code' src='https://buzzoole.com/track-img.php?code=8ac5d1aedd9d248eb55d5957d518d983' />

I recently worked for about 9 hours without a break the other day for a famous British company. One of the managers was decent enough to state that there was no job at the end of it and considering that I want to make something of my life I packed the job in.  The work involved 10/15 miles worth of walking each day and I was making 1/3 less than the full-time staff, working on a zero-hour basis and at any moment I could have been shown the door. The level of stress that this style of business places upon employees cannot be understated and in most cases many refuse to leave first, they will work and work until they break. I decided to leave first.

There are others that may have children or a mortgage or a car, they don't have the option to walk away as I have done, before some company throws them away. In the case of the Amazon Warehouse Temp Jeff Lockhart Jr. was striving for a full-time job so that his family could live a decent life.

A lot of companies rely on temp staff these days. I have worked alongside people from all walks of life working as temps, from middle managers, engineers, pensioners, mothers and fathers, graduates, school leavers. You name it and someone is probably out there right now working as a temp, desperately trying to gain full-time employment.

From my experience of temping for several companies and having spoken to workers all along the chain of command. I can easily tell you that companies are hiring temp staff as they have bitten off more than they can chew. Instead of seeking to develop fully trained staff, companies can afford to spend the premium hourly agency rates because they find it more preferable to be able to discard a person at a moment's notice then to actually treat someone with respect and train them to do a job that needs doing. (E.G Delivering your NHS results, handling special mail, a good chunk of this is now being done by agency workers.) 

In order to keep costs low, this means paying people a low rate and demanding a lot of work from both agency & full-time staff. Requesting overtime from staff repeatedly and refraining from taking on actual staff is becoming accepted. In regards to building a stronger, sustainable and more equal society....this is not the way to go. We have a vampyric economy that physically drains workers and companies discard the individual like an old printer.

"One worker told officials from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that 15 people had collapsed in a single day." - Amazon sustains itself from the blood of it's workers. As do many other companies.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading,

I doubt I will be buying from Amazon any time soon.

From Keeping A Log

Afterthought:

The other day I had a dreadful dream and I awoke feeling drained, as if I had never slept. I envisioned a world where lives were forfeit for money. Families that loved one another dearly were watching their mothers and fathers sacrifice themselves for a few tokens of gold and before the family picked a single piece up some disgusting crawling husk of humanity dragged itself over to money and fell upon half the coins. Everyone was constantly running on wheels that powered some great train whilst the air turned black.  As one person collapsed, another was thrown in, the body cast aside and the machine kept on moving forward. Children were being shepherded from out of their schools and onto this machine. Some would climb into the wheel like an anxious babe before running on the wheel just like their parents had done. Every middle man and manager was grinning like a Hyena and the crowds kept repeating in a soulless monotonous tone that a "a job is a job, a job is a job".  A great weight, just a slab of black, was slowly lowered upon the creaking train. I heard crumbling noises, they kept on repeating their mantra until it all went silent. 

I'm not sleeping well at the moment.

RE: Why do graduates work in non-graduate jobs?

As an agency worker a few people have asked me how someone with a degree ends up working on zero hours in air vents or raising invoices or now working for a prestigious delivery service.

A fair question and I can offer a blunt answer:

Life doesn't always turn out how you want.

We can blame politicians, headteachers (regular hour long assemblies about why YOU need a degree), business leaders for failing to invest in the people of Britain however whilst we try to determine who crashed the car, a cold hard truth remains: We all need to bring in money one way or another. I cannot ignore my rent with the declaration of "I have a degree" and when the bailiffs come to repossess the home I cannot shoo them away with the fact that "I have a degree".

Having a degree does not guarantee anyone a decent UK based job. A degree enabled me to work in China and live independently outside the U.K. In Britain, gaining a degree no longer represents what it used to. The people of Britain have chosen a world view that puts profit first. Profit in an ideal situation represents efficiency and the ability to create more money than what a company needs to pay staff, materials and fuel costs. The best example I can find right now is the fact that the British Steelmill in Redcar is being shut down for reasons relating to profit. It is owned by foreign companies but the British have decided to let those from across the sea lay waste to the workers and their aspirations for the sake of profit. The individual dreams that we may have are cast aside whilst our business leaders and politicians worship greed and gold above everything else.

When weplace profits above all else, the general population are damned. If a person or company is incapable of generating money then that entire lot is condemned to destitution. Until the British learn that another way is possible, that our desire to see profits is irrelevant if workers are feeling cold and unable to prosper...we will continue to zero hours, we will continue to see hopes dashed and graduates will continue to take whatever job they can find in order to keep a roof over their head.

Britain faces a crisis of underemployment.

Every year we have more graduates leaving university and they will take any job they can find whilst looking for that "dream job". The jobs we take are often for a fraction of the wage that is normally paid for that job and in my case done under a  zero hour arrangement. Britain faces a tide of potential "scabs" (workers that will take your job, for next to nothing and agencies are the ones looking for to fill those gaps caused by strikes). I have been called into companies after staff have been laid off or lost. I do the jobs that other people used to do and agents do the work for a few quid less. This destroys the ability of existing staff to fight for stronger wages or any sort of job security because managers know that at the drop of a hat, many people will come running to pick that hat up and fulfil that job. When looking for work, often we don't mind entering at a low wage if it means after a few months we can push for a raise after proving ourselves. Sadly after a few months people tend to wake up and realise that the job barely pays and they need another, or there is no real review coming and "you're better off buying a lottery ticket".. (It is not uncommon for people to have more than 1 or 2 jobs now as they try to make ends meet.)

This race to the bottom shall never cease and until the working class wake up and realise what is happening then things will continue down this path. I work alongside many migrants, I wouldn't pin our downfall on migrants for they are just like me, simply trying to survive and we are both physically getting out there and trying to work to survive. We no longer work to live, we work to merely survive. #StayPositive :D

I am off to watch cartoons, have a shower and sleep.

Take it easy and thank you for reading.

Michael

RE: Rant: Fight Club, Education, Jobs and Europe.

Hey people,

This is one a series of rants. Rants are not always meant to make people laugh. They are often a genuine expression of rage at serious issues. Issues that have been allowed to become so insane that the person ranting has been sent off tilt into an illogical frenzy about the maddening times that we live in.


Ever seen the Fight Club movie? There is a scene in it where one of the characters talks about how in their youth American society had told them that they would be movie stars or millionaires or rock stars. (Link)

In Europe we did not tell our children that they would be movie stars. Our vision has always been slightly tamer and we simply drummed into every student's skull that if you study hard and work hard then you will find a job that pays cold hard cash. Inspirational speakers are sent into schools and they reinforce the incredibly basic message that our society rewards intelligence, hard graft and determination. Yet just like in Fight Club, many are entering the world and finding that the horse sold to us in school has long since died.

Competition is fierce, money IS out there but it has been tied up and cut off from the rest of the population. Together we have generated enough wealth to place Britain up there amongst the world's wealthiest nations but the people that create that wealth have not been duly rewarded. Our wealth divide is threatening the very fabric of our society. More and more people are stuck living at home with their parents or caught in a constant debt cycle in an attempt to stave off the costs of living vs actually trying to live their life.

I feel that if Britain leaves the E.U we will be sent back in time. Tougher rules on migrant workers will strengthen the power and relevance of unions. Social unrest will become more widespread and many jobs will go unfilled. In Banbury a local recruiter told me that if they are unable to fill the current vacancies then they will hire Hungarian workers from an agency. Immigrants come here to do jobs that we have not chosen for one reason or another. I have done all sorts of minor jobs as an agency worker and I have worked alongside migrants. They come here for wages, for work, a few are aware of those that use our system but the real scroungers of Great Britain go by the title Right Honourable Member of Parliament and we need to watch those 10% pay rise giving jerks instead of WhatsHerFace that does the cleaning for £6.50. Evidently WhatsHerFace is the one that crashed the society, bankrupted the NHS trust through a series of private finance initiatives and has inflicted austerity upon every teacher, nurse, public sector worker under the sun.


I'm half tempted to vote Yes to an E.U exit and then stand before those right wing nuts and go "so...Who will you blame now?!!? "....But I will not vote for an exit because I know who gets blamed next, single mothers, minorities and anyone that doesn't fit the mould. Whether or not the rest of the electorate feels the same way is unknowable as we are many, with our different experiences, work habits and life styles.

I feel that the E.U referendum we face is in effect recreating that Joker scene where Heath Ledger set fire to the giant mountain of cash. Many of us will not become millionaires, some of are struggling to find work and come next year David Cameron and Co will give us the chance to set that money pile on fire. We were never going to be given a single dime of that money, they would keep us on min wage with no rights and 1 week notice if given the option... It's so tempting to drop a match and watch Cameron's chums panic as our economic future becomes crystal clear... I think if the E.U implodes let it do so on it's own accord. We should continue being a part of it, retain our own currency and allow workers to travel freely. If we build a great wall, people will still come to Great Britain as the clue is in the title. People have attempted to run down the Eurotunnel to try and get here. No act written up on the warm cosy benches of Parliament is going to stop a human being from trying to find a better life.

Thank you for reading.

Bailey

Migrants entering the tunnel:
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/29/calais-one-dead-1500-migrants-storm-eurotunnel-terminal

Joker burns the money:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqcbgSpHMFs

RE: Dismaland. I do not like it.

Good morning everyone :D

I really do not like the concept nor the existence of Dismaland. 

Life is a miserable boring slog as it is riddled with rejection letters, excitement over the inane and moments of quiet being our sole moment of joy within the day. I don't want to see something like Dismaland.

Our society has absolutely zero vision beyond consumerism. We have placed ourselves into shackles of debt through the creation of mortgages, student loans and high rent. Ruthless competition for low paid jobs runs rampant across our nation and a continual line of politicians telling us that things are getting better whilst our lives seem to drag along rapidly going nowhere fast. We work to cover the basic costs of living, with those costs keeping pace or sometimes extend over our income. I don't need some potentially rich prick reminding me how the yolk of my existence has long since gone rotten.

We might attend a gig, or venture out somewhere nice for a week if we're lucky or a few days. After our holidays only to return to our great grey domain and power away at work in the vain hope of escaping again if we're not laid off, replaced or called in to do extra shifts. Maybe we will see something magical on our morning commute but most likely it will be a silent affair with everyone avoiding eye contact. We know our lives head nowhere fast, we are deeply ashamed of what our society has become for we know deep down that the Empire is dead but that hatred spawned by colonialism was never truly replaced. We never replaced hate with love, we just replaced it with work and electronics and colourful products.

This is why the British get riled up by immigration, for we know our jobs pay next to nothing in real terms, we know that we are powerless to market forces and that for every job we refuse to do as the money won't meet our own ends, a migrant is more than ready to pick up that role. Is it wrong that someone can make do with less? Is it wrong that instead of fighting for them as well as ourselves, we just blame them for daring to dream or aspire? We claim to live in an aspirational society but we do not understand one another I know nothing about what you hope to achieve by the end of today and you have little clue about what it is I do. Yet each of us are inextricably linked as our tax money is collected and used to enact the machinations of mad men and mad women that dare to declare that they speak in our name whilst committing our nation(s) to acts most insane with the police acting as the brawn for this twisted brain. We know our society has long since gone rotten, we know that genuine revolution would be met with a man in black. Despite knowing thing, despite knowing how flawed and broken Democracy has become, we point the finger at the vulnerable, or the mentally ill or the refugees.

I look at Dismaland and I'm thinking "Could you just not, maybe?" . With a mental health crisis, a genuine collapse of community at hand and low wages, the last thing I need is some artist reminding me that it's all gone to heck. And if it makes us as a nation think? I can picture it now: We will think for a few moments and then swiftly move on. That's the British way. We donate a few quid to charity each month or once a year for Comic Relief and then continue committing the same acts we do every damn day that continues to extend the misery that we have become tangled up in. We'll do the bare minimum and expect someone else to take up our fight of equality, better wages, social housing or affordable homes, because "I work X to Y, I already work hard etc etc etc". A bunch of miners and factory workers once campaigned for an 8 hour day, not so we could get back to work and claim that we were doing our bit, but so that once we did some work we can get time off and genuinely do something with our precious and soon to be expired lives.

I look around and think what kind of legacy will we leave for the future and the answer is: A battered landscape, more debt than WW2 and a most odious form of consumerism that only seeks to break down social barriers so that we have another market to exploit. Our technology is moving forward but our society and the genuine soul of this nation has regressed back a century.

Right now there is a family that have to bathe in a paddling pool because our Government enacted policies that saw a disabled person evicted from a home that was converted for them to use. The fact that the genuine misery that now constitutes the basic fabric of many people's lives can be turned into something like Dismaland seems like trivalising a life that has already been reduced to a cruel mockery.

Reality is depressing as it is without some POPULAR artist hammering that point home. Banksy is already famous, I'm certain there are other artists there but people are going along to see the new Banksy thing and maybe, maybe some one else will get somewhere but this is just another stunt. Regardless of who their intended audience might be, the general public will be bombarded with stories about Dismaland because someone somewhere will be expecting it to make money. People are buy tickets to see something miserable when they need only to read about sanction related deaths. People have literally died over less than the price of a Dismaland ticket.

Life is cruel as it is.