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.