Crumbs from the rich man’s table – a rant

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I want to say something about the Tories.

I was distinctly unimpressed with Labour, particularly in their ‘NEW’ or ‘RIGHT WING’ format. They were pretty poor. They never said anything particularly radical and they did some pretty shitty things in the name of the MAN, such as war, cancelling of student grants the instant they got in etc etc. Their radical ‘NEW’ approach was all about showing the MAN that they were all cuddly and loved rich people , in fact many of them were in the cabinet.

‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after capitalism for you, we won’t let those nasty unions have any power, we’ll make it quite clear that that’s old hat now, unions are old-fashioned, trying to get better working conditions and rights is old fashioned.’

So, the MAN was relatively happy for quite some time and the fact that the Tories could be far far worse began to fade away with Thatcher, or so it seemed.

Now though, the motherfuckers are back and they’re worse than before. They still want to fuck us up the arse, they still want us to work much harder and produce even more wealth for them and their filthy rich mates, but they have also assumed some of the bullshit and smarm of NEW labour. They call it spin, its really just bullshit and lies and they do it quite well, it has to be said.

They almost had me convinced in the first few weeks of their hideous reign, that there really is nothing we can do but pay up now – more than we usually do.

Its unrealistic to fight job cuts, its unrealistic to expect your pay to go up , even to expect it not to go down, its unrealistic to expect public services to survive, nothing they could do it seemed, poor bastards.

Hold on a minute though. They’ve done the usual trick of a new government and blamed all the shit on the previous one and obviously, Labour have to take some responsibility, but it would be very foolish to suggest (as they are constantly suggesting) that all the dreadful economic troubles we now find ourselves in are a result of the Labour government. That the worldwide economic crash is all Labour’s fault.

True they perpetuated it, they sat there while the bankers gambled more and more and more and more with our money and borrowed off each other and back again so no one could actually see that the debts that they owed to each other meant that there wasn’t actually any money left.

The lie was started in the 80’s by the fuckwit Tories and the witch Thatcher. They sold us the idea that somehow, once we all owned our own houses and got rid of unions we could have whatever we wanted and if we had to borrow it and then borrow a bit more to pay it back and then re-borrow to refinance and buy something extra and add a bit onto our houses and have a new car and two new computers and a new mobile phone each year and go on holiday to more and more exotic and far away places, it wouldn’t be a problem. Capitalism would sort it out, growth would sort it out, constant never ending growth, constantly increasing house prices would sort it out and anyone that said, this doesn’t make sense was living in the past. Capitalism, you see would self- regulate, the market would look after it all.

These same bastards who now blame Labour for not controlling things told us that we should basically let the market run the fucking world.

We did and look what happened, you arseholes.

The lie is over.

We’re not all the same

We don’t live in a classless society

Most of us are just producing profits or providing services for those who own the vast majority of the worlds wealth and we need to wake up and realise exactly how fucking much we are being ripped off.

They would much prefer it though if we blamed the latest immigrants, or the greedy unions, or the excessive public sector workers with their giant pensions (not something I’ve noticed).

‘ Look down there, look at the poor people. Watch them fight amongst themselves wha ha ha ha ha’.

They must be pissing themselves, looking down on us from their lofty boardrooms and penthouses.

There is a ridiculous notion, maintained on a daily basis by the raft of reality TV competitions, that everyone can be great in this system as long as we have good old competition. The idea that there can only be one winner and that winner will be the one who wants it the most (or is prepared to shit on people the most) is also sold to us at the same time and more fool us for not saying , hold on a minute, you make no sense oh capitalist tool. If there can only be one winner how can we all be winners.

Imagine a cake as big as your house. This is the wealth of the world. Occasionally a few crumbs, the size of actual crumbs on a normal cake, fall off the table and we, the working class of the world, scramble around at the foot of the table trying to grab them.

Let’s get the whole cake and then we can all decide what to do with it.

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Working sucks

So, its apparently a good thing, or an expected thing  in most jobs now that you should work longer hours than you’re supposed to. OK, so everyone moans about it and thinks its not fair that they are always expected to do more and no one cares about them or looks after them or considers them and there’s always more and more pressure coming from above and not enough hours in the day etc etc.

BUT, if you, agreeing with this, demonstrate your agreement by actually going home when you’re supposed to or, sometimes, going home a bit early because after all isn’t it shitty the way we just have to go to work every day and do things for other people for not enough money and the weekends are always too short and the holidays are a bit depressing and not long enough and when you come back all you can think about is that you don’t want to be there and you wish that you were still on that beach or up that mountain or touring that vineyard or sitting on your arse at home getting stoned or whatever it was that you loved about your holiday.

Most people seem to agree about these things, work is a bit of a shitty deal for most people and they talk about it and they moan about it and they often seem to really fucking hate it.

So, hearing this and agreeing with this what happens when you act on it? You say, fuck this, there’s too  much to do, this is too stressful I’m going home early. I’ve done what I consider is a good days work and I feel OK in my conscience about fucking off early.

Aah, well, they say, that’s just lazy, that’s taking the piss. I mean we all moan and we’d all love to go home when we want or not stay late or not have all this extra work given to us but, come on. Someone’s got to do it and if we don’t do it there’s going to be hell to pay.

Or maybe they’ll say something like, well you go, lucky old you. Go home, wish I could. Because you see they’re much busier or much more important or much more caring or have a much bigger conscience. They couldn’t possibly go home early or even at 5 o’clock. I wish I could, they say, I don’t know how you do it (subtext, you must have a fucking easy job, not like mine, I have much more to do than you and I am the sort of person who just gets on with it – you on the other hand are clearly a waster and a lazy fucker and if it wasn’t for people like you I wouldn’t have so much to do)

Or, maybe there’ll be something on the news, ‘today the blah blah union announced that they are going to call a strike in reaction to the way that their members are being treated.’

Basically the story is that their pay is being eroded or they are striking to stop it being eroded or their conditions are being worsened, pensions reduced, perks taken away hours lengthened, all the sorts of things that people at work hate and moan about all the time but when they hear about a group of people deciding to try and stop that happen or even, God forbid, to try and improve their  working lives, have some more perks, better pay, fewer hours, more flexible working conditions; the same old bullshit gets spouted.

These people are lazy apparently, I wish I could get their pay, I wish I could have their  hours – how the fuck do you think that comes about you fuckwits?

By working long hours , by never complaining by agreeing to all the extra work by complaining about each other, by actually realising that you have something in common, the need and the desire to make your working lives better and more enjoyable and less stressful and, surprise surprise, if you don’t ask, and sometimes insist, it won’t happen that way.

How many times have you been invited into your managers office or asked to come along to a meeting with your directors or shareholders or whoever the fuck is in charge and told, look, we’ve been thinking about it and we recognise that you all work too hard for too little pay and we get much more money than you for much less effort. We want to improve your working lives. We’re announcing today, with no pressure from anyone, reduced hours and increased pay.

Maybe if we keep our heads down and don’t complain and slag off anyone who isn’t prepared to work harder than they’re supposed to and anyone who make a fuss or asks for more, maybe then this will happen?

intrusion

Sounds that pierce my brain like the fire alarm that just started the instant I decided to try writing, need to be silenced and destroyed.  Why can’t there be less loud sounds or more soft calming sounds. As I get older sounds seem to be both harder to hear and harder to stop hearing once I’ve noticed them and become annoyed by them. I find it increasingly difficult to put these intrusive sounds to the back of my mind, as I think I could before – before I became this old fart.

Are they an assault? Am I an old fart? Yes and yes I think. When I finished working in my garden a few weeks ago in the first weekend of fine weather, making it nice, so I could sit out and relax and be peaceful, it did feel like an assault to have to listen to the music of the people at the bottom of the garden. They’d  thoughtfully decided that rather than letting people waste electricity playing their own music; or waste money buying a stereo; or spend hours fretting about how to spend their time on such a wonderful afternoon, they would provide an instant all-pervasive, choice-free solution.

Maybe they’re not selfish, maybe they’re just misguided philanthropists.

‘I want to help the poor people of the street (poor in terms of ideas and culture and ability to choose their occupation on this glorious sunny afternoon.)’

‘I know best, they’ll love this crap-imitation reggae , all the chart stuff, nothing decent, just tacky, tinny, “accessible” stuff that we ALL love once we get a chance. I’m going to give them that chance. ‘

‘OR I might sometimes even play some of the music they already have but have forgotten about. It won’t spoil it for them; it won’t make them think:’

“Oh my god I have some shared tastes with the fuckwits at the bottom of the garden, I’ll never play that again.”

‘No, it’ll reawaken their obviously forgotten interest and they’ll be dancing in their gardens.  They’re probably shouting over the fence at me asking me to turn it up right now, but I can’t hear, obviously, as I have it on full blast. Still, I’ve got all my doors and windows open so they should be able to hear it, after all my windows are vibrating and the sound’s so loud it’s distorted in here. I don’t mind doing that for my neighbours – it’s all about community spirit –INNIT!’

It could be that or it could be that they’re as I imagine: brainless, selfish cocksuckers who don’t give  a single thought  for me or their other neighbours and are so pathetic and feel so little of themselves that they have to have their music as loud as possible to try and demonstrate in some pitiful ill-fated way that they are powerful, that  they do have a voice and that they don’t need to listen to anyone,  especially that old fart at the bottom of the garden who keeps poking his balding four-eyed head over the fence and asking in his posh-nobby  voice if they could please turn it down.