Showing posts with label Child Poverty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Child Poverty. Show all posts

Advice to scrimp and be thrifty is gaslighting. We need a deeper policy, we need a nurture life policy platform.


"Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less." Oscar Wilde


This image is doing the rounds at the moment - for whose benefit is this being viralised?

How would you feel if someone advised you to eat less if you and your children were already eating less, due to poverty and speculation on necessary commodities driving prices up?

1. Asking people who, for the most part earn a low income (in order for corporations to pay high dividends to shareholders) to scrimp on Energy use in our homes, by 'raising consciousness' of the expense of daily use, with a tacit implication suggesting that if we made better 'informed' choices, we'd not face such intense bills is deliberate cruelty.

2. The price rises are entirely a matter of market speculation. UK generates 97% of it's own Energy needs. It has not become more expensive to drill, produce and ship oil. Speculation is all about using Wealth as an economic weapon.

Extreme inequality is a form of economic violence, where policies and political decisions that perpetuate the wealth and power of a privileged few result in direct harm to the vast majority of ordinary people across the world and the planet itself. 

3. Where's the chart for the energy costs of Tanks, Jets, Missiles, AirCraft Carriers, Mars Missions, Moon Missions, Yachts and Palaces? 

4. Where's the chart advising industry to be 'thrifty' with using energy?

Ordinary folk are responsible for at most, 25% of all Carbon emissions. USUK and EU populations are often presented as the biggest per capita Carbon emitters. Industry accounts for the most of carbon emission, with the US Military being the single biggest institutional carbon polluter on Earth. People point at China as the biggest polluter but ignore the population differences. If you combine Europe, UK and USA as one population it turns out that it is a population similar to that of China, and China's Per Capita Carbon Emissions are still below those of USUK and EU. Well below.

5. Carbon Footprint was initially designed as a tool to help us become more aware of the environmental costs of our day to day activity. Most ordinary carbon use is in getting to and from work, and in working for the Industrial Systems that refuse to pay the costs to prevent pollution and prevent environmental degradation. Because to do so would erase their profitability.

6. In it's great wisdom and benevolence, in 2004 BP recycled and popularised Personal Carbon Footprint as a way to make us ordinary people feel guilt, shame and hopeless hope (if we all did our little bit - which amounts to less than 10% of total) we could help save the planet) whist the Industrial Cult continued stomping on us all with their Carbon Wealth Extraction Boot Print. 

We little people were directed to obsess about our day to day use, so that BP, Shell, Exxon and their allies in Finance Markets could continue to obsess about Wealth Extraction in the 'most efficient' manner - by refusing to pay the costs of prevention of harm (pollution, disease casued by pollution and environmental degradation) and by speculating the price of energy fuels.

7. The Ukraine War is not causing Energy prices to rise - England produces 97% of it's energy needs from available domestic supplies.

So whose carbon foot print matters, and why?

https://toxicnews.org/2017/08/07/whose-carbon-footprint-matters/

"consumption and market exchange only represents a thin surface of our economy and its ecological consequences.

150 years ago, Karl Marx argued that the secret to profit, or what he called surplus value, laid in analyzing the “hidden abode” of production. 

We need a similar project to understand climate accountability in our carbon-based society. Of course, the most obvious producers of climate change are the fossil fuel producers themselves. 

A recent study suggests a mere 100 companies are responsible for 71% of emissions since 1988 (in this case, it is important to remember that half of total historical emissions since the industrial revolution have come since that year of 1988).

Yet, fossil fuel companies are not the only ones profiting off carbon emissions. Energy-intensive industries like steel, chemicals, cement, and aluminum consume ungodly amounts of fossil fuels to power and materially feed their production. 

The cement industry alone is responsible for 5% of global carbon emissions. Fertilizer uses natural gas as a source of hydrogen to combine with atmospheric nitrogen to form ammonia (NH3). When they extract that hydrogen from methane (CH4) carbon dioxide is the main byproduct. 

A fertilizer plant I visited in southern Louisiana claimed to consume a staggering 9% of natural gas consumption in the entire state (a state that already hosts an enormous industry of natural gas consuming chemical factories). 

This single fertilizer plant has the highest carbon emissions in the entire chemical sector of the United States."

8. Calls to tax these companies are largely a way to distract attention from the hidden roots of all industrial profitability - the deep roots of Externalised Costs as the very foundation of industrial wealth extraction.

9. Nationalisation is a way to 'take back control' and set pricing according to the needs of the population, us little people, whose need for the utility of energy, water, transit systems, health care systems, education systems ect is a life need, it is not a luxury. Such a move would massively help to alleviate general poverty, and for that reason alone it must be done.

It is important to understand that such a policy is designed to not touch the sides of Externalised Costs.

10. Cost externalizing is a socioeconomic term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off-loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party. An externalized cost is known to economists as a negative externality.

"The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs and risks to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation". Moving industries to where cheaper workers can be sourced is an externalising procedure. It's sole purpose is wealth extraction efficiency.

What we need. Starting now.

In my opinion Nationalisation must be followed by legislation that demands that industry prevents harm, pays the costs they have externalised from the beginnings of the Industrial 'Revolution' - from material sourcing through processing, manufacturing, distribution through to point of sale, use, consumption and end of life disposal - as the most basic measure of industrial health and legitimacy.

We must challenge every attempt to place the burden for such deep change upon us little people, many of us on low incomes, many more well paid yet trapped in mortgage debt; diligent workers and so-called 'scroungers' struggling to stay financially afloat are not the problem here.

We must not pass our life jackets to the Industrial Giants who are throwing us off the ship, as they sail towards the destination of continued, maximised Wealth Extraction.

We must mutiny, we must peacably take the ship over, be the majority in our legislatures that we fund, and we must plot a new course towards a nurturant industrial economic system that abolishes poverty, regulates industry well, eschews warfare as a a tool, prevents pollution and nurtures human and environment as one. and is honest and transparent.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

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Belief, Poverty, Death and COVID19

"The Government are committed to tackling child poverty." 



This tweet articulates a simple statistic.


Foodbanks have increased since 2004, and the need has grown more rapidly since 2010. Low wages and benefit changes including sanctions are the driving factors in this enlargement of need. A huge escalation has occurred in 2020. Foodbanks and their growth are a signal that ordinary folk care about each other, and that the Ruling class care little for the lowest income class, the most economically vulnerable.

The UK, allied to the US Military Giant, invaded another Sovereign State, Iraq  in 2003 on the pretext of a lie. Foodbank use started to grow after that.

Billions of UK Taxpayers funds have been wasted in UK/US sponsored bloodletting ever since. Where has all the money gone? It did not go to workers. It did not go to veterans. It did not go to the British people. It did not go to the British children. Some shareholders and CEOs made a lot of money out of this.

Foodbanks and Warfare.

Both are wholly avoidable phenomena. Both are the results of bad Government policy.

Poverty has been deliberately exacerbated by this run of Caring Conservative Governments since 2010.

It is also true, to be fair, that neither New Labour nor Conservative and Unionist or indeed Conservative - Liberal Democrat Coalition governments have ever had a policy of Abolishing Poverty, which is, to my mind,  the only sound, socially adept, humane and logical policy stance possible in a 21st Century Democracy.

To allow poverty to persist is a deliberate cruelty.

Reducing poverty merely maintains poverty, and that is a political choice that serves the owners, the Oligarchies, who make profits from low wages and who use poverty and destitution as behavioural nudges, whips that allow them to dominate the working population. Maintaining poverty harms the people as a whole.

The Minimum Wage is a very bad joke, a lie, a deceit. It is an act of cruelty.

This is an abuse dynamic and it is also masked by a key Christian ideological dynamic, one which underlies Capitalism.

"The poor you will always have with you" Matthew 26:11 is a core teaching of Christianity, we are told.

Jesus said so, it is written. There is, of course, no prima facie evidence He did say this. But it has been written so. And he was not the only one. It is previously mentioned in Deuteronomy.

"England is a Christian Nation" said Theresa May. She did say that. It is recorded in Hansard. There is no record in Hansard of any British Prime Minister proposing a policy of abolishing poverty. The Bible and Hansard are in accord, they are congruent. The poor you will always have with you.

For there will never cease to be poor in the land; that is why I am commanding you to open wide your hand to your brother and to the poor and needy in your land.



The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them whenever you want. But you will not always have Me.

The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me."


And in the hands of the Merchant Puritan, whose sponsorship built great Churches, invented Racism, provided Colonial conquest with a cover story, that teaching became Wealth is God's sign of approval, Poverty is His sign of  disapproval, and therefore Poverty is obviously a personal flaw, a sin of the poor, rather than the structural imposition that it really is.

Colston's Charity assuages guilt without correcting the problem.

Sir Edward Colston's statue stood the test of time, only because successive generations venerated his philanthropy over honesty in History.

Prosperity Gospel and New Age Abundance ideology are variations of the same toxic thinking. The arrogance and delusion of the billionaire class, the beautiful people, is that they believe that are innately superior to the ordinary folk, and that their innate superiority is why they are so wealthy.

Burning £50 notes in front of homeless rough sleepers. Spaffing £53 million on a paper bridge to nowhere. Spaffing £12 million on an already unworkable contact tracing app, when a free and entirely functional version was already available and on offer. Someone trousered a lot of cash for nothing. Value for money?

A very public school boy aptitude, and such teachings were also aimed at the patriotic working class who were urged to move up the property ladder, who were  conned into servicing debt (£1.8 trillion as we write today, and rising) to gain wealth, to convince them of their own worthiness, to assert their innate superiority, and to underpin the inferiority of those who are forced to endure poverty, or who come to this country to do the essential but low paid work. People who are then blamed for 'stealing our jobs'.

The 'comedic' abuse of Little Britain, and 'edutainments' such as 'Benefits Street' and others serve to embed that discrimination, disguised as culture, into the patriotic consciousness. Shop for Britain.

Laughing at, rather than with, the vulnerable. Very British.

Iain Duncan Smith opposes Universal Basic Income as one method to assist the working population through the worst of the Corona Virus epidemic on the basis that it will work as a disincentive to work.

Treasury officials claim that furlough has become an addiction.

Boris Johnson hopes the virus will go away, urges that we get back to work before it is eliminated from the population.

He means 'we the workers' given that his personal work rate is minimal for someone in his position.

He also has the happy arrogance of assumed immunity. The Reaper passed him by. I am glad of that for his sake, and for the sake of his fiance and new child. That does not mean I am glad he is in office. How could this be, knowing what he is participating in, understanding the harm it is causing?

Gavin Williamson tried to bully parents, students and teachings by shaming them with the distress his Governments policies are creating for many people, as emotional blackmail.

Ministers have misled,  lied and gaslighted the public.

Observing this one is drawn to the conclusion that this is indeed an abusive relationship dynamic, posing as a system of Democratic Governance.

150,000 excess deaths over a decade.

60,000 excess deaths over a 4 month first wave of an epidemic.

All wholly avoidable, all caused by UK Government policy.

An abuse dynamic if ever I have seen one. 

This begs the question, what on earth is happening within the UK? Why is this being allowed to continue? Who is responsible for this?

Corona Virus Policy variations, Evidence, Belief and Opinion.

The worlds best researchers in epidemiology, public health science and health and social care are an international, supra national collective of serious minded, open minded people whose entire focus is evidence based.

New Zealand Government studied the work and  the experience of that community with regards to COVID19,  and they took action based on that evidence and experience.

The New Zealander people are now free of the virus - it is not being transmitted person to person within the population - apart from two British residents who imported it as they were allowed entry to see a dying parent, and who are now in treatment and isolation, along with c.300 people they might have infected - and New Zealand economy is strong. It took the New Zealanders, Government and people together, 11 weeks to achieve this happy state. They remain vigilant.

The UK Government chose a different path. Deliberately. Just as they continue to choose not to abolish poverty. Just as they chose to invade Iraq.

They chose to game the virus to rerig the economy in Shock Doctrine fashion. The policy is obviously not based on evidence, rather it is based on a belief, an opinion. But what belief, what opinion?

That choice has caused 60,000+ excess deaths in 4 months.

The policy decisions of the UK Government have caused a whole other bunch of problems that have exacerbated the situation.

Deliberate choices.

PPE shortages, sending patients back into care homes, permitting care workers to move from facility to facility, no provision of Fever Hospitals, focus on home made contact trace apps when there already were apps up and running and offered for free, in Europe, repetitive patterns of wasteful expenditure that did not stop the spread, rather each new policy decision guaranteed the spread, in toto imposing shut down without much effort to stop the spread or to provide fullest support to the  people going through the shut down, easing their pre-existing burdens, lying all the time, even going as far as gaslighting the public.

The UK Government and it's sponsors - Robert Mercer, Arron Banks, right wing Hedge Funders, Cambridge Analytica et al - have been very carefully blaming those problems on the virus and the people, there has been a dedicated online campaign across many platforms to whisper in people's ears this narrative of the Hoax, the Chinese Virus, the Flu, the NWO across New Ager, Alt-right and Christian networks of influence.

All designed to groom vulnerable and gullible targets into breaking the stay home, stay safe protocol so that they can be blamed for any resurgent peaks. And of course, being arrogant, the believers are falling for the play.

It takes humility to stand on evidence, to eschew opinion and belief.

The arrogance of the the believers and the opinionated walking hand in hand with the callous cruelty of the Establishment whilst they believe, crying "Freedom!" and "Take Back Control!" that they are resisting the Establishment.

Satire or Irony are inadequate to this horrific situation.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

This blog, like all my other content creation work is not monetised via advertising. If you like what I present, consider sharing my content. If you can afford the price of a cup of coffee or a pint of beer/ale/cider for a few months, please donate via my Patreon account.

Thank you for reading this blog.

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