RE: UKIP and their band of merry mad men (and women).

I am sorry to harp on but UKIP and anyone that supports them genuinely terrifies me. 

History books have told us repeatedly that when you blame different ethnicities, other countries & homosexuals for your nation's problems then you are a stone's throw away from becoming something nasty. 

UKIP have members that have called for disabled people to be sterilised, UKIP supporters have said  various nasty things about gay people and one ex-UKIP member said that he would support schemes to cure homosexuality. Farage said he wants to move Britain towards an insurance based healthcare system and that women are worth less than men (words to that effect via his stance on maternity pay).

UKIP target foreigners, homosexuals, women, the unemployed and the disabled. They are going for the most vulnerable members of our society. Members that have been fighting for equal rights for centuries. Women still don't get equal pay to men, homosexuals still have to deal with prejudice, the unemployed are people too! (something we forget in a society that values people in accordance to their pay packet) and the disabled have to put up with remarks about how they are "not worth the minimum wage" by the very ministers that are meant to represent them.

How is voting for a bunch of insanely wealthy ex-finance sector workers a vote for change?
How will throwing everyone that doesn't fit into the white-heterosexual nuclear family b/s work for Britain? How will demolishing the NHS and signing everyone up to insurance schemes help the elderly, the sick or YOU?

Don't get me wrong. I think it is absolutely astounding that some passionate patriots have been able to stack crap that high and call it a party leader.

UKIP does not represent the British people.
Farage represents the wealthy white ruling elite.
A vote for UKIP is a vote for patriarchy, for inequality and nastiness in general.


Cheers for reading, 

Have a great week,

Bailey

War is hell. (I did not enjoy the Sainsburys advert)

Hey folks,

Disclaimer:
This is a blog and I am expressing my own personal opinion. This won't make me popular but I once told Mars to go burn itself after advising the public that buying a Mars Bar made me some kind of patriot. I lost a lot of friends on Faceache but what's new.

1. The advert was a piece of art. I am not denying that the whole thing was very well put together but there are areas that companies should not be allowed near and so close after Remembrance & Armistice Day....World War One is one such area that companies should be careful with.

If you haven't guessed already. I did not like Sainsburys using the Christmas Truce in an advert.
The advert was put together in a cinematic and respectable fashion but the content itself and the subject matter that we witnessed is something that should not be used by supermarkets. It strummed my heart strings but the topic is war. The advert was whitewashed. It evaded delving deep into war and why we remember those that fought.

A part of me wonders what the war poets themselves would think about this advert as Vera Brittain, Sasoon and Owen each loathed war being portrayed in any positive light. War is something to be abhorred. Remembered in anger and each of us should fight against the creation of all wars 'lest we wish to found ourselves once again flung onto some fields in the back end of France. (France, Iraq, wherever, the main thing about war is that men in power move the pieces (pieces made of human flesh and of humans that are usually not in power and those families get shattered.)

People were torn to shreds by bullets, land mines removed men from existence (some land mines still do). People were eradicated like some freaking video game and there was no second life for those men.  Soldiers were killed in a brutal, most unforgivable and state-sanctioned fashion. Gas flooded across fields, wiping out life in the way our pesticides dispose of insects. I tend to think about that during the minutes silence. I take solace in the fact that I have never had to face the choice of having to fight (and probably get killed) in some far away place or be put to death by firing squad. I also end up feeling a great shame that our country once forced men to make such harrowing decisions and I am thankful that we have moved on since then.

Entire nations tore entire communities apart so that those men would become soldiers and tear one another apart. Now an advert comes one and we're tearing ourselves apart. We're getting choked up too but in the comfort of our armchair but please bear in mind:

It is an advert.

The majority of adverts are not created out of the goodness of a person's heart. Adverts are created out of the soulless calculation that maybe people will see it, their heart will be moved and the person will become a customer popping into Sainsburys.

Supermarkets are constantly engaged in price wars and publishing such an advert so close to Armistice day, following on from the poppy exhibition in London and the fact it is the centenary of WW1 is nothing short of a smooth marketing ploy by some pricks in suits. John Lewis had their penguin now Sainsburys has the memory of the war dead. We did not just watch  some mini Dr Who episode, we just witnessed a large corporation dabble with that which should have never been touched. It is bad enough our politicians stand up to talk about the deceased whilst sending soldiers to far flung corners of the globe but now Sainsburys are doing it too? When will it stop? Who will create some heart strumming piece next and then slap on the logo of their company as well? (Answer: Britain First have been doing this the entire time, they are apparently "protecting" poppy sellers.)

Instead of having the profits from the sales going to the Royal British Legion why not just give your money straight to the Royal British Legion.  Alternatively you could donate to other charities that support soldiers and their families.

It was Armistice Day less than a week ago!
Get your hands off of the dead.
If you truly wanted to show support then there are a million ways to do so but slapping your logo on the end of it is shameless self promotion. Another step by corporations into taking things that the public cherish and utilising it to turn a profit. I feel damn nauseous just thinking about.

Kind regards,

Bailey

Thank you for reading.

Dabbling with words. Exhaling an emotion.

Things are not that bad.
We live in a place where things are alright.
There are no bad things happening here tonight.
Maybe somewhere out there a bad thing is going on.
Maybe elsewhere good people have done wrong...
What is "wrong" after bad people decide what is "right"?
That doesn't matter though because I think this is a place where things are alright.

0_o

Out on a Limb. Voting and Tyranny.

The idea of tyranny goes back a long way and this blog has no desire to serve as a history lesson. The key point that I want to get across is that a tyrant is a legal head of state/authority, when they pass legislation it is something we must abide to and destroying tyranny is no easy thing. In some cases simply chopping off a tyrant's head will not undo their actions as tyrants are often the result of a structural problem. (In our case the electoral system is broken).

What does some medieval political theory have to do with modern day Britain? I would argue it has everything to do with the political state of modern day Britain. Human beings have not evolved that drastically over the last few hundred years (Evolution takes a hell of a lot longer). We may understand ourselves more, we may have access to far superior technology but the actual psychology of humanity is something our scientists are still grappling with. That is to say we are still as greedy as ever and our Governments whilst claiming to be representative have continued to dismantle the the very mechanisms that helped our society become more equal. (Education, healthcare, access to legal representation).

This blog is going to deal with the issues of what happens when you vote and whether it makes a difference considering that the system has continually empowered a set of complete self-interested individuals. There is a potential problem that when you vote you  from someone you have in fact empowered someone with no morals, or at least someone with a double standard. Once elected it is difficult to force an MP to stand down and we find ourselves stuck, forced to endure the machinations of madmen that seek to sell it all. A lot of voters have felt betrayed by our current coalition.

I have spoken to many people. A few elderly people informed me that will never vote Lib-Dem after witnessing the Atos assessments and bedroom tax that was essentially created in their name for the sake of austerity. They feel morally outraged that their support was used to legitimise actions that they feel are wrong. One person told me that is like we are marching back to pre-World War II Britain. By abstaining from voting one could argue that you are refusing to legitimise a  party of  tyrants that are seeking to drag us back. However I am arguing that these tyrants will rise regardless of how many do/don't vote.

In Yorkshire a 14% of voters actually turned up. Even with such a low percentage of the electorate turning up, a 14% turnout still counts. A man known as Alan Billings gained the position of Crime Commissioner. Labour's grand victory was given to them by 50% of 14% that bothered to vote. That means just over 7% of the population in South Yorkshire made a decision that affects the other 93%. How can such a vote be truly representative? Yet that vote stands. Alan Billings now holds the post of Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire. As far as I am concerned such a low turnout represents a vote of no-confidence from the people and the entire process needs an urgent overhaul.

Click on these words to learn about Yorkshire

If you voted for either party that is currently a part of the Coalition Government then you have inadvertently supported the cuts in legal aid, you have accidentally enabled the Bedroom Tax to become a thing (whilst it lasts), we enabled people like Ian Duncan Smith to treat the DWP like a China Shop at the World's Most Angry Bull Expo. (This is why a lot of voters have swung to the Greens, UKIP and other alternative parties). Raging bulls aside, the legal cuts have been ruining the lives of many people.

One prominent story that I have read involved two parents. The man is earning £34.64  above the threshold to qualify for legal aid. From my own experience, lawyers require a damn sight more than £34.64 per hour. So earning an additional £34.64 won't count for squat when some legal represents cost £150++ per hour.  A judge weighed in on this predicament and said the legal cuts are enabling the state to " to remove a child from the couple while simultaneously failing to provide them with adequate representation". This is the literal embodiment of the phrase "a crying shame". A child is being snatched from the parents and the parents are not even given legal representation. How can our system have any kind of moral integrity when such instances like this are occurring?

Click on these words to learn about the prominent story

Our entire political system is re-writing the books. When the leaders of a country re-write the law to serve themselves and re-write the rules so that you are unable to hold others accountable whilst you are being punished for having the audacity to earn a pittance you no longer live in a fair and equal society. You are living in a tyrannical one where your rights are uncertain as you cannot afford to fight for them. (Courts are expensive when you have no money.)

The odd thing about our state's state of tyranny is that for the most part we will not notice it.  Tyrannical laws are still legally binding and it is not until you hear about how soldiers have to pay the bedroom tax or how a dialysis patient was hit by the bedroom tax that people sort of notice (only a little). You can have immoral legislation (I.E The Bedroom Tax) and the only way to remove a tyrannical piece of legislation is to get into Government and re-write the book again... We think of tyranny being something of the past or a subject that relates to other regions of the planet. Tyranny can appear anywhere and it has been in the U.K for a long time. Thatcher made people angry, Blair made it evident when he took us to war despite the millions screaming against it and now this Coalition reveals it's true hand with idiots like Freud talking about £2 per hour for the disabled.

The big question is: If these tyrants are voted in...why would I want to vote?
Answer: You do not have to vote for them (Labour /Lib Dems / Tories.)
Problem: Our voting system however is bias, weighted in favour of the big three. How will my vote count?

UKIP are capitalising on this "they are all the same mentality" by presenting themselves as the rebels. I have seen UKIP campaign posters that have stated that the big three are all the same. People are angry and UKIP are gaining voters, this means they have seats in Europe and now thanks to Mark Reckless they have a seat in our Parliament. People are quite right to be angry but people that are quick to anger seldom read the fine print. (Myself included). We have to bear in mind that  Farage views himself as Thatcher's white knight. UKIP intend to continue the strip mining of state assets. No one is grasping that yet people have been voting for UKIP.

We can abstain, we can stand back, we can say "No i don't want to tactically support a tyranny" but these men will rise and claim the votes of disaffected. They will spin webs of lies and ensnare this nation again into more of the same old thing. I hope the Greens continue to rise and that they make Labour lurch left in the same way that UKIP forced the Tories into lurching right. Voting can work when enough people vote (See: UKIP & the ensuing media fire storm). If the angry UKIP supporters are out there spreading bile, why are not refusing to pick up the broom and sweep that crap of our streets? If a small percentage in South Yorkshire were able to fight against hate, we have no reason to be sitting on the fence.

Together we are able to hold our tyrants to account. We can occupy and make our anger visible for all to see, we can trash the place and we can blow up Parliament but the problem is structural. The structural problem is that our system lacks accountability, we cast a vote and get stuck with people that are essentially unaccountable until the next election day or until someone calls a copper "Pleb". We must cast off the fear and notions of wasted votes, of political leaders all being the same. They only the same to the extent that they are all human, even Tories are human (trust me I saw one shed tears when someone joined the Labour Party). I believe that even though our system is broken, there is no sense shouting at it from the outside. Only from within can change happen. The welfare state is undergoing a controlled demolition, the explosives were placed there by our elected representatives. I want this devastatingly damning demolition diffused before I see McDonalds running a primary schools as an academy or GPSs working for Virgin (OOPS TOO LATE). Awh heck...

All the damage done over the last few decades was primarily dished out by our elected officials. Private companies nudge them and coerce them but MPs are our legally elected tyrants wielding the authority to rule like a bat and our Welfare state is the piñata. On election day just do something, once everyone has cast their vote and seen it turn to dirt maybe then we will forcibly overthrow the state but until we have all pitched in I sincerely doubt the general population has the balls to pull it off if it struggle to even tick a box. (This is the same cynical outlook that tyrants have, it is why they have attacked the Welfare state and sold off Royal Mail on the cheap. They think no one will go after them and so far they are correct.)

The mainstream media does not help matters. It has essentially thrown in the towel when it comes to investigative journalism but there are plenty of writers out there. Scriptonite Daily and Another Angry Voice are two prime examples.

Scriptonite Daily 
Another Angry Voice (AAV)

Both are exceptionally better writers than myself and they tend to be up to their eyeballs in evidence.
The system is broken but unless you plan to physically overthrow the state, you must instead become a part of it and just like the Alien facehugger in Alien...well you know the rest. But instead of alien chestburster, you get equality, fair pay for women, all that jazz we've been fighting for and seeing little of.

If we do not get involved we will continue to see people elected into positions of power with a mere 7% of the vote. 7%,,,

Bear in mind that Boris Johnson thinks that trade union strikes should only go ahead if 50% of the union members turn up to vote.



Thank you for reading,

Have a great week,

The Common Sense Eccentric

RE: The Bedrock of British Society.

Hey folks,

These blogs represent un-planned writings where I draw from sources and put words onto a page. I re-structure the writing after completing the blog but in comparison to the work I created whilst writing in academia they are not well structured. I hope you find them informative on some level, or at least I help people realise the importance of the welfare state. 

As we all know, I am an insanely boring man that likes to obsess over politics, the future and the present lack of everything. I am currently resting in a chair that has long since lost it's cushion, my leg goes dead every few minutes if I do not move. 

Our welfare state was meant to provide a bedrock and from it would grow educators, nurses, professionals, people that after being given some support, they would grow into productive members of our society.

Instead we have a Government that will sell those people via the Workfare scheme. Instead of providing people with support, we have given them shackles. Claimants are being told to do X for a company otherwise they will lose their "benefits". I must be adamantly clear that when someone says the word "benefit" they are playing a game with your brain. We all love the word "benefit" as it means something good, an added bonus. Therefore when we are told that unemployed people are given "benefit", that phrase invokes a sense of rage from people that work for a living and to be frank, earn bugger all for their work as their company are DELIBERATELY underpaying staff.

The Department of Work and Pensions does not hand out benefits. They try their damnedest to restrict how much money is spent on welfare by sending people on never-ending assessments. The housing "benefit" form is 29 pages ¬____¬ Some claimants are given less money than there are pages in the  form. You may only be granted £20 towards your rent and this is after having some bureaucrat comb through every detail of your personal finances. 

Without the support of the welfare state I would have never have gone to university, school, to the doctors or elsewhere. My family would have been unable to flee from where we once were and these words may have never been written.   I view it as a "benefit" of living in a society that is compassionate, not a benefit of having the audacity to be poor, sick, disabled, unemployed or even a woman (because women are still fighting for equality and the welfare state picks up the tab when employers fail to pay women a decent wage too). A lot of men are not being paid a living wage either and the Welfare state supports them too if they are not overwhelmed by the anger of having a full-time job and still not earning enough to pay for rent.

Essentially our welfare state provides a floor for people to stand on when they have fallen through the cracks and into the horrifying dark void that is poverty, illness and ignorance. It was intended to enable people to move on. The Workfare scheme however demands that people work to receive their welfare payments instead of providing them with an actual job. There are people like Lord Freud that said disabled people are not really worth the minimum, he mentioned that they deserve around £2 an hour! How is one meant to stand tall when shackled into a system that tells you to work for peanuts or freeze in the cold?

You might work your entire life and think that you are safe but I ask you, how many have heard about elderly people lacking enough money to get fuel this winter? How many of you are human and will have the damn audacity to live long enough to claim your pension? (This is called a "straw man argument where writers or commentators or even leaders ask an outrageous question designed to get you angry, watch out for it!) The answer is "I don't intend to die in the next five days Bailey, I intend to live old enough to get that free bus pass damn it! What can I do?

There are people out there trying to dismantle the Welfare state and a good chunk of them are Members of Parliament that have been elected. If you think voting changes nothing why not given it a go anyway? Because it'll change nothing right? So what have you got to lose?

Revolutions will not happen over night and votes on their own will not change things. The rise of UKIP has gotten the Tories worked up about immigration like never before. I feel that we young folks have the power to swing it the other way. We cannot enable the older adults  that sold off OUR bloody council houses to get their own way again. ('cause how many 20 year olds have a mortgage? What's that?  HOUSES TOO EXPENSIVE?  There were these things called council houses but the last generation sold them. They voted for a woman that said she would sell them on the cheap. Honest. Voting helped them acquire a cheap house and screw with the markets. Ask your parents :D )

Russell Brand hasn't got a bloody clue. He has access to a remarkably spectacular and most verbose vocabulary that sometimes stupefies myself into silence. However Brand has failed to address the intrinsically pervasively  invasive nature that is our societies acceptance of apathy. Apathy that has become so imperative for the continuation of consumerist society because when we are sad we buy something, when we are happy we buy something and when we are outraged we do something. Usually people buy something. 

Naturally Brand would avoid tackling such an issue like apathy head on as the man needs to sell books, tickets and head out on tours so our media empowers him to speak and share words for as Brand himself admits, he does not lead the revolution. Brand's outrage generates a lot of hype but that is because he grants the young instantaneous sanctification via anger, he reaffirms the stigma held by older generations which is "young people are most amusing" by advising them about how doing nothing is more ideal than doing something. As we live in a society that prefers people to be apathetic than angry or involved with politics, you find yourself (someone anxious about talking to others about politics) listening to an appealing message as Brand says we need a revolution but y'know don't bother voting.

Votes enable politicians to carry out the misguided will of the people. A will that is cultivated via a bias media hell bent on selling us half the story. 

The great problem with Brand's idea is that people are still voting and the people that vote tend to be choose those that seek to destroy the welfare state. (Update: In 2015 the British public elected the Conservative party. I dislike being right.) People are voting UKIP. (In 2015 UKIP received 3.9 million vote). UKIP appear to love British values but if you talk to a few behind closed doors one can easily uncover that they want to flog the NHS, punish single mothers and one Councillor blamed gay people for having the power to change the weather.

 The Welfare State was created for politicians represent the will of a nation and when the people chose to elect those that suggested the creation of a welfare state, the people of Britain found themselves with a welfare state. When the people of Britain wanted to see unions weakened for the sake of economic stability and for the ability to buy a council house on the cheap, they chose to elect a Government that promised to do just that. The media told us to hate people on benefits and following  the lies of how we live in "bankrupt Britain" the people chose...nothing. We had a hung Parliament but the Coalition stepped up and did attacked poor people anyway because bankers are usually able to afford decent lawyers. Our Government is not as brave as the Icelandic one.

I understand why people do not want to vote. No one willingly voted Liberal hoping to see the Tories get in. No one voted Labour and expected Saddam to be swinging from a noose whilst Iraq burned to the ground. No one voted Thatcher and expected unemployment to reach a point that it decimated communities.  
All of that is our fault for failing to remain eternally vigilant whilst living in an age tyranny.*  

The welfare state is being dismantled. We can stop this. We can be the generation to say "No". What is Britishness? Well at one point it was about creating a nation where people could not worry about ignorance, hunger, poverty and sickness. I want to see us bring those ideals back into the forefront.

I have now found myself employed and again I feel urged to persuade people that the Welfare state is something worth protecting. That means protecting the NHS, free education, social security (pensions, disability payments, "benefits".) and hopefully council housing if we haven't sold the last lot off to a subsidiary of a larger housing association.  

I like this web page. It is a decent webpage and yes it is a GCSE webpage but it explains things in bitesize chunks. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/history/mwh/britain/welfarestaterev1.shtml

Please think twice and support the welfare state.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog.
This was Bailey's blog.

If you want to see more...scroll down. 


*The problem with voting is that whomever wins the election is given the legitimacy to rule however legitimacy to rule is bad for the country when those ruling it have no moral integrity. To rule without any moral integrity is to rule as a tyrant. Tyrants are able to pass legislation that is legally binding but morally bankrupt and in the end a country will suffer for it. 

Whilst we lack an alternative voting structure I feel we cannot simply give into apathy. I will probably throw my vote at the Greens because austerity can go to hell. 

RE: I was in London for the demonstration. #Britain Needs a Payrise.

Evening everyone,

Yesterday I went down to London on a coach to be a part of the TUC Britain Needs a Pay Rise demonstration.* On the coach journey I was taught a great deal about the potential causes for concern that academies represent and a few neat points about history. None of specifically related to Britain needing a pay rise but primary schools being turned into for-profit organisations did not seem too grand.

I wondered whether temps even had unions and with whom I would be marching alongside.   I ended up marching alongside the National Union of Teachers and with The Woodcraft Folk. Despite being a temp and not a part of any particular union they were happy for me to be there so that took a weight off of my chest. 

The march (from where I was located) started from Cleopatra's Needle. There were so many people. I felt somewhat lost as the last march I went on was in Aberystwyth and did not consist of so many people. Thankfully I made some friends on the coach and they kindly accepted my request to stick by them. I also offered to carry a big drum case, 'cause I dislike feeling useless. 

During the march I wandered off to have a look around. There was a strong police presence and near the police where people from an organisation called Liberty. They were observers and the function of the observers was to ensure that the police did not overstep their mark. Over then the occasional stops so we did not fall over one another like the Elephants from The Jungle Book, the march went off without a fault.

A few odd moments were when people shouted pay your taxes at Vodafone and Starbucks. This struck me as odd because the person inside was probably just some bog standard retail clerk, paid next to nothing and has no say in the management of those companies. So whilst people felt they were screaming at the company, they were just buggering up some poor (literally poor) sod's day. Today it is business as usual for that store anyway.

After passing through that street and away from the Starbucks we all turned a corner and marched onwards towards Hyde Park. Whilst en route to the park I noticed that a lot of people kept trying to sell me things. My lack of funds made saying "No" pretty easy.

Hyde Park itself just felt like a field. So many people present, police barely noticeable and in the distance were some ruddy great big T.V screens and a stage. Listening to the speakers was great and like the nerd that I am, I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down some notes.

• Increasing number of families are relying on foodbanks.
• More working families are being pushed into poverty.
• There are essentially two welfare states
  - For the workers
  - Another for corporations. I am aware that my previous employer received money from the Government for employing me and prior to my employment for reasons unknown to myself.
• In March 2014 over 5 million workers were earning below £6.50
• Currently 6.7m people in the U.K live in poverty.
• The current apathy that exists enables our leaders to dismantle the welfare state.
• Not all politicians are the same.
• Financial prudence is important but holding onto the values of our society is important as well. 

Then Andy Parsons introduced Harry Leslie Smith and Harry's stories about his life almost had me in tears. I know that the only reason as to my family never endured the bitter cold or the hunger or had to experience the terror of losing a sibling to illness like Mr Smith did, is because of the Welfare State. 

If you have been reading my blogs for a while then you should know that Britain's Welfare State covers more than the JSA. The Welfare state represents the ideals of free education, free healthcare, care for the elderly and the disabled, the promotion of equality and the  promotion of the social as well as economic well-being of the people. I was informed by one retired teacher that it also once included social housing for teachers, this enabled him to remain within a city whilst not being bled dry by the high cost of rent. That has gone!

The Welfare State is being dismantled because not enough of us are fighting for it.

Seán McGovern pointed out that we should not "fall into the trap" as any one of us is potentially disabled. When scum like Lord Freud talk about having disabled people earn £2, such words represent an attack upon the Welfare State. Women are still fighting for equal pay. certain apprentices only make £2.68 an hour!!!!

A fair few speakers pointed out that if you are not earning enough to live, if you are not earning enough for you to save for a future, then you are essentially paying to work. You are being exploited. (Over half my monthly wage from my old job went straight onto rent/council tax/bills, half of what was left went towards paying off my overdraft and I had less then £50 left for my own personal use. To say that the speaker's word stirred my heart would be an understatement.)

Those present at the demo were told that to find another period in British history where wages had stagnated for so long, you would have to look back at the 1870's. I think that the only reason why people have tolerated their exploitation for so long is because they are feel so stressed and isolated by their financial plight. Turns out over 50% of the population is in the same sort of trouble. We need to start talking, we need to start pushing for change because those wages aren't going to push themselves higher are they?

My last boss told me that I had a better chance of winning the lottery than receiving a pay review. Then when I left suddenly things had the chance to change but when you've made the step to leave a place because your pay is so crap that it's basically ruining you...well it's a no brainer. Truth is that people should be paid a living wage anyway and we need to start making our politicians known that this is what we need.

One union leader said that we should push for  a £10 minimum wage, especially when you consider that there are people out there in some corporations making £1000+ an hour whilst their workers in warehouses do the physical work that brings in the actual money.

Plus if sociology taught me one thing, poor people spend their money. It is one of the defining reasons as to why they are poor. Their money is spent in the local community, not invested in stocks or shares or plunged into some off-shore tax haven. Workers need a raise, it would stimulate the economy to no end as Britain is a service based economy and there is literally no reason for us to continue in relative poverty. 

We have every right to be angry as the economy may have improved but it has not improved for the nurses, the midwives, the teachers, the shop staff, for civil servants, for the temps or workers in warehouses. Basically Britain is buggered unless it's people start getting a fair wage. A hard days work no longer pays.

The one thing that did blow me away was that so many people evidently give a damn.

So many young, old, middle aged and even retired people feel so strongly about this that 90,000 people marched. Some travelled from Aberystwyth on a coach that left at 3am (According to a mate), some travelled from the furthest reaches of the U.K to make their voices heard. 

I feel we can do this. We can campaign. We can demand that political parties like Labour and the Greens hear our demands and push for it in the next election. Employers should hopefully be aware that we're pissed off about this current state of affairs.

We shouldered the bank bail outs. we sacrificed Sure Start nurseries for the sake of cutting the deficit. The least they could do is give us a decent wage. With a fairer wage we would be able to put money back into local communities ourselves after Whitehall and the local councils have suctioned all the funding out.  Fewer working class families would be dependant upon food banks and housing benefit. I wouldn't have to sign on to protect my ass from rent bleeding me dry whilst I work as a temp. 

Long story short:

Britain needs a pay rise. Together we can make this happen.

Check out  http://britainneedsapayrise.org for more information.

Cheers for reading

Bailey

For photos of the demo follow the link below:
My Album from the Demo

*(I did not think I would be going as the trains are expensive and I work as a temp so my wages are kinda crap. However local unions had organised a coach to go. It only cost me £5 to get there.)

RE: The Turd on the Toilet Seat.

Hey folks,

Bad stuff is happening.
See the image below:


More info: http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2014/05/letter-fans-workfare-labour-confiscation.html

Anyone can make a profit when your workforce is essentially a bunch of slaves.

I am aware of employers that have hired apprentices for the sake of cutting costs as opposed to training someone for a job at the end of their studies. But meh, fuck it, we all want to send our kids to work for free for Argos and Poundland right? Amirite? That is the British Dream. Giving future generations a shite deal. 

Why folks refuse to get angry about how academies are essentially cash cows for upper management careerists is beyond me.  Why people seem content to blame the Polish whilst their tax money is siphoned away to pay for those middle managers salaries, privately run social houses and the golden parachutes used by bankers. Why people willingly allow themselves to get shafted is a question that I ask myself daily. 

For more info about academies please follow the link below:

http://anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/michael-gove-ideological-vandalism.html

Neither of us have the option of flogging Royal Mail when we reach middle age and growing fat off of the share price increases. So instead we will just outright flog our children for sod all to the lowest bidder. A fair few do voluntary work in care homes, administration...any company that basically wants a free work force can get a freee worrrk foooorce.  

A few commuters informed me that as wages continue to go lower and lower for people entering the profession, it will become increasingly harder and harder for younger generations to get a decent wage. One commuter told me that he believes, hand on heart, that my generation will not make the same as his when we reach his age due to the wage squeeze.

(This is called non-funny satire). This is a warning.
Folks we are getting fucked, in the ass, without the common courtesy of a reach around on offer. (That line from Full Metal Jacket is burned into my brain)

Apathy is going to have us all living in squalor. 

Lol, at least I've got temp work but shit son the "non-profit" organisation  that we flogged the council houses to have been shaking my family down for non-existent funds. Might win the lottery and just take the family to someone sane like...Scotland? Wales? 

This was a rant, I'm grumpy. But my job is alright so I feel alright and my book arrived today.
I can escape to a career or something but even then, those folks are being squeezed too.

I.E The nurses that have had to strike for a 1% pay rise. 1%.
Just let that set in, they requested a 1% pay rise.
And the Government are all "Nope".

There is no escape, no matter how high up the ladder you go, you're probably going to get a raw deal.
It starts in Poundland and the wage squeeze has worked it's way up to nurses. It will work its way up to teachers...or maybe it has? I need to speak to more teachers but I sincerely doubt it'll happen as I'm just a bottle of joy.

Thank you for reading, feedback appreciated,

Sorry for the excessive rage, I'm all trying to secure a future and seeing all the ways that other folks are getting done over.  Never mind...it's just a ride :D

Have a great week, 

Cheers for reading An Eccentric.

Typical rant. Nothing to see here.

Why people think leaving the E.U is a grand deal is an idea I understand whole heartedly. When you've ballsed things up, lost the money, a job or the future looks bleak nothing can be more comforting than pinning the blame on someone else.

When you're a teenager you might have an angry atheist stage blaming religion for all the ills, as you get older you might go apathetic and blame politics but the honest to God truth is that we are to blame for our past, present and future. Things can be done to make our world a better place but instead of pointing fingers, get up and do something.

Utilising public transport cam cost about the same as it would cost one to build an improvised explosive, but my family spent a small bomb today and went leafleting in Brackley.  What I found were elderly people that gave a damn, UKIP supporters that were bitter and a lot of young people that said "I don't do politics".

I know that a bunch of our generation are on the minimum wage. I know many are working weird ass shifts randomly placed across the week with gaps in the middle of a week or working hours that start from 9am to 8pm because places are "understaffed". (Understaffed = we cannot be bothered to hire the people we need, do the job of 3 people and get paid a fraction of your own value peasant). Wages start low because you will "get experience" but then those wages never shift because most workers fail to understand their market value. I know for some that within the space of an hours work that person would have handled their monthly wage for a company. The second they have kids, the children will be born into poverty. 

Why is no one feeling angry that the future is being robbed from underneath them whilst they are working? Everyone is working hard, merely working hard does not mean you are going to be safe. I have a plan, I will be safe but I want the entirety of British society to get what it deserves: A bloody fair chance to succeed in life. I believe that right now we are pretty far from that ideal.


Every time I hear someone say that they don't do politics my mind replies "But you do get fisted...daily". I don't do politics = whatever happens, I will endure. Which is exactly what a Government hell bent on austerity likes to hear because we give them free reign to lord over us.

Politics is not about knowing the world around you. Protecting yourself.
Hiding in your burrow as the ground above gets bulldozed is not an ideal form of self-preservation.

Thank you for reading,
This was The Common Sense Eccentric

Have a nice weekend :)

Chapter: Something. - New Places etc.

Good evening everyone,

Soon I'm going to start a new job but to be frank I'm still miserable as sin.
Some folks might go "But Mike, a job is a job, you are making money!"

The cost of living and building a future for citizens that live in the U.K is astounding. 
Unless you're earning over £18k+ a year I genuinely believe that no one is making money. We are simply covering our bills and saving what we can when we can until that car breaks or our teeth need fixing. (I'm trying to say "We gotta get angry folks".)

I remember a story about a father earning £14k and barely being able to provide for his family because of the current cuts. Despite working  full-time, his family could apply for help because the wages were not enough to cover the cost of living. Our welfare state is subsidising companies that are being too cheap to pay their staff a respectable wage. (What is a respectable wage? The kind of salary where you can stand on your own two feet and control your own life without financial assistance). This man has kids whilst working full time and the wages from essentially acting like a blood vessel for some company is tragic. If this is what happens to a full-time father what hope is there for future generations that are now entering the job market?

So many people keep this country functioning and allow this entire show to take place and are they getting their fair share? No.

We are engaged in a race to the bottom, in which as many functions will be given to as few a persons as humanely possible. Such a notion terrifies me. We are humans, not machines and yet we are expected to act like them until a machine is finally introduced that would make us all redundant anyway. 

I guess the irony here is the race to the bottom would squeeze wages so much that implementing such a machine would not be cost effective as you would have an army of drones fulfilling the functions that your company requires anyway. This is what happened during the British Industrial Revolution.

The fact that I can see all of this makes me sad, furious and cold.
The fact that people simply accept this reality because "A job is a job is a job is a job..." mantra seems to be so wide place.Why are people afraid to stand up and declare "I am human, I am not a machine, I have dreams and my function here won't help that".   


Never mind that the people taken off of the JSA and placed into workfare  are counted as employed, or those in sanctions are taken off the statistics too. Never mind the fact that entry level wages are going down lower and lower and our apprentice minimum wage is £2.60 an hour.
Never mind that kids are the future and this is the world we are going to give them.
Never mind that houses are gold dust and we haven't built enough.
Never mind  that the staff in the care homes are paid a pittance and when we sell our houses that we worked aeons for, the sell off won't cover the costs of our place in some care home. Never mind this race to the bottom for after all, a job is a job is a job.

I feel so sad (and angry) by all this.
I want to build a fort of duvets and hide from it all.

The trick is, find a job you love, hopefully one that will pay enough for you to build a future and you should be alright.  (That is as close as Britain comes to the American Dream.)

Yet many British folks do not have that. That is why UKIP, Britain First and hate is everywhere.
We are slaving off our asses, getting nowhere fast, the mere idea that someone could get something for nothing brings our blood to a fine boil. But it is easier to point the finger at an the vulnerable than to look at ourselves and accept that we have the power to change this world that we live on and it starts by changing how we interact with it.

Soon I will have hours around train times and I won't work on Fridays (but on Sundays).
This means I can finally practise my saxophone before 7pm on a weekday. ^___^

My main aim in life is to lift everything up. To try and raise everything higher.
People  tell me that you should only look out for yourself but the NHS, universal suffrage, equality, our social housing, free education and our justice system only came into being because our grandparents and their ancestors looked out for one another. I see no sense in standing tall and proud, all on my own, if the society around me crumbles to dust and becomes a mess of self interest and scape goating. 

Once upon a time my family had nothing, quite literally nothing. Everything that I have today is partly the result of my own determination but mostly because of the support given to me and the faith that folks have in me.  Maybe that is why our society has become selfish? Not as many people  believe in one another any more? I believe in people though, I think if we push ourselves and push others to give us a better deal then we can achieve a decent place in this world.

I think people are all a lot smarter than what they give themselves credit for.
If people are given the right support then anything is possible.

This ramble was a half blog by The Common Sense Eccentric.

Chapter: 15.5 - A Mad Ramble - On Tyranny, Best Men, Rent and Work Fallacies..

Rambling.

This is not a blog. It is an unconnected series of ideas, mad rambles and tangents.


Tyranny is a subject close to my heart. As a student I read about all sorts of state sanctioned madness more than a sane person should. I can safely say I have a keen understanding of the concept of Tyranny. If you are interested in what this means feel free to read on. The quickest answer to what makes someone a tyrant is that a tyrant is:

A figure of authority in a legal sense.
They act purely on self-interest.
They have no moral integrity. *

My original intention was not to write a book on tyranny but about the importance of voting in our modern age. However as my research progressed I realised that voting is no longer as powerful a tool as it used to be. Voting and votes are essentially purchased via misinformation and a bias media.. The main problem with voting is that once we have elected someone we have essentially given them a mandate to rule however they see fit. Britain does not have an actual constitution and so our politicians are free to pass whatever they wish. There are no real balances in place to prevent any abuses of power and the fact that old scandals dating back decades have only just come to light should be a sure sign that there are undoubtedly many things at hand that we are not being told about.  

The only thing keeping our MPs and political leaders in check is their moral integrity and peer pressure. (Don't choke) If the Iraq War is anything to go by we know that the moral integrity is bloody lacking and peer pressure led us off a cliff into a damn mess. 
The key difference between a good leader and a tyrant is that tyrants lack moral integrity.  "Moral integrity" is such a subjective term but there are instances when a human being demonstrates that they have none.  Any example that I offer would turn into an entirely separate blog. Y

In Britain we think of tyranny being something related to Stalin, the Third Reich or despots but tyranny is not always a bloodbath. Tyrants can have winning smiles for how else does someone hold onto power whilst robbing a nation blind?  <That link is about how George Osborne's best man made millions from the Royal Mail sell off and donated £500k to the Tories.

------
Considering how much rent devours my income....I kinda wish I was allowed to buy the council house for £5k when they were sold off for that much. Sure I was a teenager but I will essentially have paid what the company spent on this house after 53 rent paying weeks. Why are the middle classes saddled with mortgages that shackle them to the land and their job until they get lucky or pay it all off whereas the company that owns my house have a free ride? In some cases it will be housing benefit that pays off the costs of purchasing the property. Essentially the state sells off an asset only to pay for it with the tax money. People are paying twice for the thing they are paying to live in. Especially if there are people claiming housing benefit in the first place within the house you live in on account of being the main earner. This is madness. Universal basic income would minimise paperwork. 29 pages to claim housing benefit. 29 PAGE FORM! The Housing Benefit in some cases is less than £30 a week. You can tell the state pays it workers without any care for efficiency and costs. How long would assessing a 29 page form take?
This is why the Green's idea of a Universal Basic income is superior to the other ideas on offer.
It would essentially force people to take responsibility of their own lives for they are being given the means to do so. 

-----

There is a work fallacy where we value people by their income or the job that they do yet the job that soemone does may not provide enough for them to grow as a person or family. The fact of the matter is this: The welfare cuts are hitting working families hardest.  Work is only worth as much it enables you develop yourself whether by saving up money so you can enter something else or by having programs in place that help you hone in your skills. The fact that a family can be working and receiving welfare means that their job is not paying enough. The state is essentially enabling companies to get away with paying workers low wages as the state will pick up where Scrooge McDuck does not!

Merely working for the sake of working is a modern form of mental bondage that hinders the nation as a whole. Workers that refuse to claim because our welfare system is a humilating process get punished for daring to be independent. At the Job Centre in Banbury I would sit and wait for my appointment with a member of staff whilst other claimants were interviewed IN FRONT OF ME. I saw staff laying into people for not doing enough, cutting their welfare and telling them to try harder. What sort of person kicks the crutch from under someone and demands that the person stand up straight? You are judged, it is a spectacle and nothing short of embarrassing. This frustration against the system and the world we live in however taken on on the immigrants or citizens from other ethnicities BUT the fact is that our system is purely a business model about squeezing as much out of someone for the lowest possible pay. This is why the retail environments have shifts all across the place, this is why people might be trainees for long after they've actually trained, this is why we have an apprentice minimum wage of £2.80 an hour!

Outside of the welfare state we see each generation being offered lower wages as they enter a job. We will recreate a bunch of working class people unaware of their powerlessness for they are wearing suits.

Thank you for reading.
I currently have no major blog plans in mind but I will continue to write.

The Common Sense Eccentric.

*I will find sauces and share those sources once I start writing it.

Chapter ? - 4 Pages to leave the country. 29 pages to stay.

There are days when I think about shows like Benefits Street and see how such blatant propaganda is being used to cultivate public opinion that I find myself saying yet again "F--- it all, I am off to China".

Only 4 pieces of paper are required for me to waltz back into China yet Housing Benefit requires 29 TWENTY NINE pages

Twenty freaking Nine.

The Tories have no desire to cut red tape or to make Government smaller (They just outsource Govt. functions to things like academies and there have been reports of academies creating non-bid/non-tendered contracts (essentially handing a contract to a specific body without any attempt to see if the market would have created a cheaper option for the school through competition). Another example of the Coalition's refusal to shrink the state can be seen in the creation of DRIP.

Not water, DRIP is a policy of data retention wherein the Govt. will store as much data about your internet browsing habits as it so desires. Knowing the British, our Govt. would probably lose half of it on a USB stick in the London tube or have that data stored by an external body (private company) that gets attacked. 0_o

Cameron's move could win him votes... but only from the people that have no idea how soiled their beds have become and think that blaming poor people, the foreign people, the LGBT people, non-white people or the E.U will result in something good. (I must have missed the memo where Nigerian nurses and Eastern European Laborers were running the banks instead of rich white men...)

Shows like Benefits Street and see how such blatant propaganda is being used to cultivate public opinion that I find myself saying yet again "F--- it all, I am off to China". Only 4 pieces of paper are required for me to waltz back into China yet Housing Benefit requires 29 TWENTY NINE pages

Twenty freaking Nine. Yet apparently our system is so easy, people are flocking to claim from the welfare state, they are all eager to fill out TWENTY NINE PAGES TO CLAIM A BLOODY PITTANCE that they will never see. I find such claims that immigrants come here to claim a depressingly small sum of cash an unlikely story. Now I am working I am able to buy things, like a Saxophone. Whilst claiming from welfare I had to fill in lengthy documents and receive £140 once a fortnight.

DRIP, despite what the acronym implies, is in fact a massive goosestep towards huge state surveillance.  DRIP is a policy of data retention wherein the Govt. will store as much data about your internet browsing habits as it so desires. Knowing the British, our Govt. would probably lose half of it on a USB stick in the London tube or have that data stored by an external body (private company) that gets attacked.

Labour should have opposed this, they would have taken heavy fire from the Coalition on account of Labour’s role in the mass surveillance that was rolled out post 9/11. However in all honesty DRIP never needed to be pushed through…it never needed to exist in the first place. But never mind that, some poor person has just claimed the JSA that shirker is the real evil! ¬____¬

This was not a blog.

Just a meander.

Not even a chapter.

Thank you for reading though.

Have a great week,

The Common Sense Eccentric

Chapter: 15 - Mental Health

Hey folks,

Normally I try to keep things optimistic or I reflect upon current events and outline some things we could do to help influence the world that we live on. Today however I am going to reflect upon my past and discuss a big old regret of mine.

If you are going to regret anything at least let it be a regret that you can learn from, something that will help you take future challenges in your stride and handle situations in a more humane way. Basically I regret refusing to acknowledge something and that refusal undoubtedly made life a pain in the ass for everyone around me.

Today I am talking about mental heath. At university I hired a personal tutor because I was undergoing some therapy and I was confronting things that brought up a mixture of emotions. The personal tutor that I hired is a really great guy filled with a lot of compassion. He informed me though, during one of our sessions that the way in which I view the world and how I act is a cause for concern and as a friend he warned  me that he felt I had depression. Like any sane rational being I quickly spat acid, cut him out of my circle and I acted like an even more arrogant dick.

The thing with depression or any mental illness, is that you can't wish it away or simply "man up" about it. The illness can be the result of either your past or your attempt at processing/handling the world around you. I had spent most of my life avoiding situations where I would have to talk to someone about my emotions. This is why therapy had done a number on my mind because everything that I had kept locked up was now running around my mind like a monster that sprung out of the closet.  I thought if I simply pushed those emotions aside I could easily get on with things. Pushing emotions to the side though usually requires a lot of drugs or an overriding emotion that dominates the rest.

 I told myself I could not have depression, that is something that people get when give up. Depression is obviously a thing that cry babies get. I have risen from nothing what the hell am I depressed about?
So my friend's attempt to help me, I saw as his way of calling me weak...and as an arrogant prideful young adult male I reacted in a most callous way. One day I will muster up the courage to see him and apologise. I was able to get a 2:1 thanks to his help. Thing is I am not so forgiving and how do I work up the courage to ask for an apology when I would not even give myself one in such an instance?

Many years later my doctor would explain to me that depression is more than simply feeling sad and the self-loathing and anger I felt (combined with a few other markers). The big clue for me that something was not right (apart from going through hell in China and finding unemployment really hard) was when I had been asked to move an old broken T.V. Moving something that is broken is easy enough but ths T.V was massive. I dropped the object on my foot...I grabbed something and just went mad. I repeatedly smashed the T.V until I was out of breath. I was in my front garden, holding some metal pole, looking down on the T.V breathing heavily just like Ed from Shaun of the Dead after he killed that Zombie. 

It was just a T.V. But I wasn't thinking about the T.V when I smashed it, I was angry at being some unemployed guy that had done a great deal of things and still I was back at home, in England, with no job and no money and indistinguishable prospects. I felt as if I was broken too  and then I remembered back those few years ago when my tutor warned me of my depression. "Oh crap", I thought.

We have already established what the doctor said and they did put me on some magical drug called Citalopram. I know someone people cannot stand the drug(s) but in my case they helped. I had no desire to talk to others as the way I talk makes me feel like crap and I know it makes others feel like crap when I start letting my emotions out. The Citalopram did something that talking could not do, it helped me focus. I was able to see beyond my emotions for the first time and I developed a strange mental bubble where all negative interaction would bounce off. I did not realise at the time but the Citalopram was getting me quite high.
My sleeping pattern became more stable, I was eating healthily and most importantly I did not hate myself. Either happiness is a high to me or getting off my head helped me become more grounded. Before seeing the  doctor and accepting that I had depression I had found it borderline impossible to show affection towards those I loved or  liked because of my self-loathing. I knew that I loved my family but I could not show it. It is really hard to explain but it means I spent years pushing those that tried to help me, away from me. The drug only worked because I did not like being  angry and I wanted a way out of that cycle. After a few months I found myself employed and I felt "too happy". I was beginning to feel manic. I saw another doctor and she agreed that my new outlook and circumstances meant I was able to lower the dosage. We discussed how I would come off of the drug and things felt great. I gradually felt less over-energised and I felt a pace returning.

Without the constant high though I felt all of my emotions creeping back to me. Mostly sadness and regret for spending so many years being a bastard to everyone when free help was available if I had simply shed my arrogance and asked for help then the lives of others in my own life would have undoubtedly been better. 

From this chunk  of my life I was able to learn depression is more than experiencing despair or feeling sad. It is a really invasive illness that weaves itself into your being. Mine was brought about by refusing to look into the  mirror and accept that there are things that made me feel sad, I simply drove myself forward, never looking back and when you find yourself unemployed, essentially stuck then you can't help but glimpse back. I guess unemployment helped me as well because it put me in contact with a really good old friend and he nudged me to get myself looked at. If I found myself a job the second I returned to Blighty I would have continued to live my little lie of "everything is o.k".

I just wish I took mental health seriously a lot sooner. I cannot dwell on this regret though because the past cannot be changed and I would gain nothing by simply feeling sad. A part of me wants to flee the country, start a new life elsewhere and hope to forget that this never happened but to do so would be to repeat the same mistake.  Another chunk wishes I could tell my past self to get some serious help and that is why I have written this blog so all those reading this that might have a problem get out there and get the help that they require. The NHS is free and it will not affect your job prospects. I secured a job whilst on the medication ^__^.

The final part of me is just thankful that I had people close by that stuck with me no matter how twisted and abhorrent I was. I have no idea how I can make it up to them so right now I am just gathering all the money I can and being damn thrifty. With money I can make other people's problems vanish and that helps me sleep easier at night. I have a bed(ish), a decent job, a loving family and I want to see my family succeed. My head is finally screwed on, personally I feel a bit bloody late in the day...better late than never.

This was The Common Sense Eccentric.
Cheers for reading,
I wonder who reads  this?
Apparently a lot of people do 0_o
Thank you ^_^

P.S People warn me about putting up stuff like this but growing up I did not have a male role model and that can really mess with a guy in a culture like ours. I just hope my words help others that are trying to make some sense of the world around them. I do not mean to sound preachy but I am compensating for that which I lacked. My mother is amazing and I would not give her up for anything in the world but father  figures have their own role too and I think the lack of one caused me to hate society whilst growing up.