Why the Grenfell Tower Blaze stands as a monument to Tory UK austerity measures

Why the Grenfell Tower Blaze stands as a monument to Tory UK austerity measures

By Dark Politricks

I am writing this one handed as I currently have a broken right arm which really makes it hard to blog at the moment, however after another sleepless night of watching YouTube I thought it necessary to at least post some of my views on the austerity measures that have infected both the UK and USA.

Whilst our Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn gets attacked daily in the mainstream news like Bernie Sanders is in the US, at least with his progressive agenda that many people thought would wipe the party out he actually increased Labour's vote in the recent unnecessary general election. On the other hand the Democrats seem happy to have a Republican in power than a progressive one any cost.

Our Prime Minister Theresa May has fought her last election and will probably be gone soon. Good!

However the performance of Labour showed us how many people are crying out out for more progressive policies and have had enough of the Tories austerity measures which have cut disability benefits to people who need them, increased rent on social housing if  you had a spare room and cut funding for many local authorities which has seen the closure of police stations (two in two towns near me), plus much much more.

Instead of boosting her power before BREXIT negotiations it has weakened them as she has gone from a majority government to a minority government propped up by the terrorist linked UDP. This is a party who are linked to the UDA terrorists in Northern Ireland.

As the Independent headline puts it in a recent article.

The UDA is a violent loyalist paramilitary group, which is still active today. Just weeks ago, it murdered a man in broad daylight in Northern Ireland – he was shot dead in a Sainsbury’s car park in front of horrified shoppers and his three-year-old son.

People in the UK are slowly realising that a Corbyn Labour government is not at bad as the Blairite's would have you think and when he explains his policies they are not so crazy after all.

You van see this at any Corbyn rally which sees huge crowds of people turn out, just like Sanders in the USA, and his compassion after the recent Grenfell Tower Block fire which killed 79 people.


The aftermath of the Grenfell Tower Block fire

Whilst Jeremy Corbyn was walking with the victims and bereaved people from the local community. The PM Theresa May was being booed and shouted at by local people. She had to be protected by a police line as she refused to meet residents and victims.

Jeremy Corbyn comfits the victims of the Grenfell Tower Block blaze



Police protect PM Theresa May from residents shouting coward at her for refusing to speak to them

Personally I think this stands as a monument to the Tory austerity measures which had including "Cutting Red Tape". In this instance it meant that no sprinklers were on each floor and no fire extinguishers. Instead the local government decided to plaster the building in flammable cladding around the tower block to make it look "nicer" to the more affluent residents of the borough who can afford the extortionate prices of housing in the area.

Whilst rich Chinese and Russians buy up huge swathes of London housing pushing up prices and closing local communities whose local shops have no customers due to their purchasing being a way of tax avoidance and holding overseas assets rather than being used as homes.

The people of London have no choice but to move out of the areas their families have lived in for years to more cheaper areas, making it more costly to travel in to work each morning. They should be given a government discount on housing in expensive areas to keep them in the local community.

People such as nurses, carers, police, firemen, and many other important jobs that are needed for running London should not have to travel miles into the city due to Chinese buying up extremely expensive apartments and houses that kill local communities.

If I had my way there would be a law that if you did not live in your property for at least half of the year then it becomes a "usable government asset", one in which homeless people from Grenfell could go and stay in whilst waiting to be re-housed.

Why should we let London become a home purely for the rich and overseas businessmen to "stash their cash" by buying up housing.

There is not enough new houses being built in the UK and especially in London.

We used to have council estates but Thatcher sold many of the homes off which was good in some situations but not in others as the people who couldn't afford private ownership or rent had a dwindling supply of homes to live in.

We now have housing associations which mean many areas are filled with a mixture of private and council owned owned housing. This means that the rich live next door to the poor and we have a more integrated living arrangement. The problem is the people building new flats and homes want to sell them for high prices which the council cannot afford.

In some boroughs there is no housing available, even if you are homeless. You are given a list of private landlords who will take Housing Benefit cheques from the government. Guaranteed money.

However many of their homes are run down and need fixing, yet they let people who they know won't complain too much due to being scared of eviction, with guaranteed cheques from the government. Many of these landlords will take out a mortgage, buy a block of flats or a house, turn it all into bedsits with shared bathrooms and kitchens and then rent it purely to people on state benefits.
 The mortgage is paid off in a year or less due to it being guaranteed money and the landlord get to live in a nice big mansion.

So housing is big problem in one of the most over crowded countries on the planet and the Tories only seem interested in allowing foreign investors to ruin communities by buying property as assets and not homes and building private housing where a one bedroom flat could be as much as £300k+.

I'm not kidding some private flats and houses just went up near me and in the space where there used to be a few houses with big gardens they have managed to squash in dozens of home and flats with walls so thin you could rows three flats away. I was given a brochure for this new housing area which stated I too could own a new two bedroom house for as little as £350,000!

Personally I think the burned out shell of Grenfell Tower should stand as a reminder to what austerity does to normal people due to the burden of the banking crisis being placed on the backs of the poor instead of the Banksters who caused it.

 

By Dark Politricks

View the original article at www.darkpolitricks.com


© 2017 Dark Politricks

Why did the Unelectable Corbyn get elected again?

Why did the Unelectable Corbyn get elected again?

By Dark Politricks

Once again the satirist, Johnathan Pie hits the nail on the head with Jeremy Corbyn's 2nd leadership election victory in a year.

Uneletable?

Well he now has an even bigger mandate to run Labour than he did before. Plus the Labour party now is the biggest political party in Europe with half a million members.

At a time when other political parties are dying. We have witnessed something akin to a reverse takeover of the Labour party. It is incomplete and it is certainly contested, but it is real.

Also by invoking the victories of Sadiq Khan in London and Marvin Rees in Bristol, he was showing that a social movement can yield victory at the ballot box -  - theguardian.com.

Let's see what Johnathan Pie has to say about the unelectable Labour leader.



What do you think of Jeremy Corbyn's 2nd massive victory to stay Labour leader within a year?

Is he really unelectable or are you just falling for the Murdoch press media?

The Tory spin in the Daily Mail and Telegraph that spews out the lies that we cannot spend our money investing in the country but rather on wars, Trident and filling the holes in the Treasury caused by austerity measures?

View the original article at brexit-to-leave-or-stay.blogspot.co.uk.

Jeremy Corbyn wins another Labour victory but will it stop the Blairites?

Jeremy Corbyn wins another Labour victory but will it stop the Blairites?

By Dark Poltircks
Dark Politricks


Jeremy Corbyn wins yet another Labour election victory but will it stop the Blairites?

Guess what...

Jeremy Corbyn has won his Labour Leadership election battle against the unknown (to me at least until this content), Owen Smith.

I don't find it a surprise, I don't find it a shock I find it a waste of time and a stupid exercise by Blairites and their followers who they co-erced into joining their coup as a massive custard pie in the face. They have really wasted some important months when they should have been attacking the Tories on

• BREXIT and what's happening with it (I have no clue).
• Our new unelecte PM Theresa May and how she has gone back on many of David Cameron's policies, which should really trigger a general election, but as the Labour party were in no fit state to fight one they got away with it.
• Examples include the re-introduction of Grammar Schools.
• The possibility of Scotland holding another referendum to leave the UK.
• China building our nuclear power station and security issues around this.
• So many other items to mention.

This is what satirist Jonathan Pie thinks about the re-election of Jermey Corbyn.


This year he won with 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%. Last year he won with 59.5% of the vote against the other 3 candidates.

This must tell you something. Maybe that the people and the Labour members want him as their leader no matter how much the press attack him all the time and try and portray him as unelectable?

Are the Blairites mad, do they not realise that the Labour party and the part of the country who are left wing actually WANT Jeremy Corbyn as the leader.

Not some air brushed, PR managed, speaker phone in a suit, controlled by HQ who says what he is told to, and has no real opinions or beliefs of his own like Tony Blair - except when it came to God telling him to fight Iraq with Bush as it might be Armagedom.

We don't want constant US led war, like a puppy on a lead.

"Lets go bomb this country now UK our Special Friend", and then afterwards whilst the people are all still fighting in a civil war, or forming new terrorist groups we can later control for our own ends, we can let all the US corporations get the oil rights such as Halliburton.

Plus all the contracts to rebuild the roads and hospitals that we bombed for no reason in the first place can go to US companies formed for exactly this reason. Got to keep the US war economy GDP rolling by passing tax payers money to US military contractors.

Special Friend? The only thing special about our relationship with the USA is that we get to sleep in the wet patch afterwards and have little say when the "special" part is about to start.

We don't want to to give banks money at 0% interest rates whilst we all have to suffer with 10%+ or if your stuck then WONGA or 1 of the hundreds of pay day loans that have sprung up much more.

Is that not a sign something is wrong?

When the public have to pay 1000s of % APR for their money? Do you know the pay day loans interest rates at the moment.

• WONGA - 1,177% APR
• Satsuma Loans - 1575% APR
• Sunny - 1,299% APR
• Square Today Short Term Loan - 1265% APR

I could go on, but that seems wrong to me, especially when all these payday banks are owned by the same main banks at the top anyway. It seems to be one of our only growth industries in the UK at the moment along with online Bingo, Poker and Gambling sites. That doesn't say much for our economy does it?

If your a normal person, I consider myself normal believe it or not, then we don't want our economy to built on services that milk the common person so that big banks get even richer and the poor poorer. No, we want to re-focus it so that we have a skilled manufacturing base, a decent job for university and apprentices to enter into after work not fill the shelves at Lidl.

We want high tech, high skilled people and a way for those who have fallen off the track due to ill health or long term joblessness to get back into those jobs through free training. Not punishment by taking away benefits because they have an extra room in their flat, or they don't have a computer so that have to spend their meager benefits on bus fares into town to use the library to search for jobs as they currently have to do.

Call me stupid but we don't want to privatize everything from education to the NHS. Privatising the National Railways when you think about it can't be competitive anyway due to not having the ability to have 2 trains running on the same line at the same time to the same place. Isn't that what competitiveness should all be about?

Unless you are going to allow each railyway company to build their own tracks through the country (which would take decades due to planning permission and all the rest) then you should make our railways a decent public transport option for the nation by making them fast, on time, reliable and cheap. If you did all that more people would leave their cars at home, help the environment and use the trains like they do in Spain and France.

Why is it in Spain I could travel overnight and back to a place the same distance as London for a couple of pounds on a clean railway when here it costs me the best part of twenty pounds, and more if it's overnight?

No it has to be all about money and putting it into the pockets of companies after we have sold the rights for a few billion. It's a stupid mentality only dreamt up by the Tories and Blairites.

The same goes for education. Education should be for life. People should be able to re-skill throughout their lives without forking out thousands in loan repayments. You should be able to go to University for free, another Blairite scheme that has just expanded the cost of education to those that can afford it again and again.

Cut the amount of money we spend on a useless Trident scheme that relies on US GPS (so they could turn it off if we went rogue), and the trillions we have spent on wars over the last decade and we could easily afford free education for all for life.

If you are unemployed you should be able to get onto any workplace training scheme or educational course you want for free. It costs a lot more to have a jobless person claiming benefits for their home, pocket and council tax for years on end than it would for a year or two at a college.

We also have to admit that some of the things Blair and his cronies and followers did were bad for the country and it's future e.g Iraq, and voting in the Tories time again won't sort that out.

PFI was a nightmare for a start, one that will cost over £200 billion in the next 35 years. This will lead to hospitals and schools going broke if not already due to these huge debts they are with debts for the next 20+ years. Yes we may have build a lot of new schools and hospitals due to PFI, but the one thing we didn't build was houses - why not?

Was that because we couldn't find a way to allow the private sector to milk the taxpayer as they do with the others. Currently schools and hospitals have to pay contractors up to £100 or more to change a single light bulb if it breaks in a classroom instead of just calling out their handy man to do the job for them.

I remember being at school with a handy man who did all the odd jobs around the place and we all loved him more than the teachers.

He did everything that needed to be done and he cost a hell of a lot less than what schools are currently paying for fixing anything broken at the moment. Just think of the waiting time for the private contractors to arrive for one, and then the inflated costs all to fill their pockets. What is the point apart from a one off payment from the private company to fill whatever gaping hole the treasury currently has and then face decades of debt?

Of course it doesn't worry the MP's who put it into action as they will be long gone by then. Probably working for the companies who are running the PFI schemes they helped push through parliament no doubt.

Also I don't want to bail out the banks without jailing the directors as Iceland did. The people who led us into the 2008 crisis in the first place should be punished like any other criminal. I want some justice for all this mess and austerity everyone is facing.

Why are we giving banks money at 0% when we could be making National Bonds for investments in house building that will return a nice profit for investors, much needed jobs flooding in and most of all provide the housing people need?

These are all things Jeremy Corbyn wants to do. I can't find a fault in it so please leave your comments to what is so stupid about these policies please.

From the Guardian

Jeremy Corbyn has pledged to “wipe the slate clean” after winning a convincing victory in Labour’s bitter leadership battle, securing 62% of the vote.

Speaking after the result was declared in Liverpool, Corbyn thanked his rival, Owen Smith, and urged the “Labour family” to unite after the summer-long contest.

“We have much more in common than that which divides us,” he said. “Let’s wipe that slate clean from today and get on with the work we’ve got to do as a party together.”

Corbyn secured 61.8% of the vote to Smith’s 38.2%. The victory strengthens his hold on a party that has expanded dramatically since the 2015 general election and now has more than 500,000 members. In last year’s contest, he won 59.5% of the vote.

Corbyn won a majority over Smith in every category – members (59%), registered supporters (70%) and trades union affiliates (60%).

 

View the original article at the main Dark Poltricks web site at Dark Politricks where you can get even more #altnews and daily politics away from the mainstream.

By Dark Poltircks



© 2016 By Dark Poltircks

Why Their Is No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans

Why Their Is No Difference Between Democrats and Republicans

By Dark Politricks


There is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats

I know that Conservatives in the US call Obama a Marxist and the Democrats attack the GOP as money grabbers for the rich, but in reality there is very little difference between the GOP and the Democrats.

From my perspective across the pond I haven't seen the US change for the better since all my years of being interested in US politics. This includes both Republican and Democratic Presidencies as well as times where the President was of the same party that controlled both houses of Congress yet still didn't push through policies you would expect them to.

Both the GOP and Democratic parties are:

• Pro war, even if it means possible world war with Russia/China.
• Pro Israel and pro AIPAC / JDL plus anti Palestinian rights.
• Pro regime change (Iraq, Libya, Ukraine & Syria to name a few).
• Pro drone strikes even on US citizens without judicial review.
• Pro Bankster & Wall St and anti Working Class & main street.
• Pro Police arbitrary killings. It feels as if the streets of some US cities are full of uninformed paramilitary death squads at the moment.
• Pro NSA/FBI/CIA/Homeland security spying on you through your cars GPS, phones microphone/cameras, websites visited from your ISPs and server log files and even now through your TV!

If you have a new "Smart TV", have you actually read the privacy statement they make you sign in detail?

If not do so!

I read my new 4k TVs statement the other night and it mentioned built-in microphones and cameras installed into the TV to take photos of you for facial recognition and even to record your height, weight and vocal patterns.

Of course they claim that this is just to help deliver you tailored adverts and help with certain smart apps such as those that use voice commands or hand gestures but all this data goes off to a 3rd party company first to be analysed.

The legalese didn't mention who got access to this data or how long it was stored just that it could be used by the appropriate authorities and that non compliance was covered by New York Law.

Therefore if you break your new Smart TV's terms and conditions in any way you can have US policemen coming to arrest you wherever you are in the world. I have to wonder which 3 letter agencies get access to all this data, it really has become that Telescreen from George Orwell's 1984, if not I don't know how much closer they can become.

Just like phones which when switched off still have enough power to ping the phone masts and therefore record your whereabouts, I'd have a good bet that there is just enough power when your TV is in standby mode to record you through the microphone and camera.

Therefore don't rely on turning off your camera/microphone in the settings, if you are that paranoid go back to basics and cover them with masking tape. The simplest methods are best. However when even your TV is a sophisticated computer that can spy on you and record your actions and speech then we really have entered George Orwell's dystopian world.

Also people forget that our phones are those microchips everybody worried about having implanted in them to keep track of them by the Government in the 90s. It was the big thing, being chipped, a conspiracy theory that was just in the mind of tin foil hat wearing loons. However we happily take our phones with us everywhere we go. We constantly "Sign In", and "log where we are", "tag who we are with", and write down everything we are doing. Leaving a nice long trail of our life on the Internet to be remembered for decades to come.

To the youngsters of today there is no concept of privacy and they seem happy to give that away for the ability to communicate and therefore be logged and recorded.

With our mobile and household tracking devices we can now be located and spied on 24/7 and if you are a terrorist, domestic extremist, protester or even a citizen journalist (under new US combatant rules), you could find yourself being the target of something nasty flying through the air.

Microsoft, Facebook and Google constantly hand over all your private chat data, search requests, emails, and history of websites that we've visited to the authorities. Both if asked and sometimes just as standard due to their close relationships with the alphabet agencies of the US surveillance state. Google took seed money from the CIA and helped them design some of the NSA's searching algorithms for programs similar to those Snowden leaked such as PRISM and XKeyScore. Plus Microsoft was adding chips into their PC's from the 90's to help the NSA override any secure cryptography so that they could access your PC at will. Even the BBC reported on it in this 1999 article.

There is no difference between Democrats and Republicans on the issue of national security which means knowing as much as possible about as many people as possible.

ISIS which is a creation of US/UK Middle Eastern foreign policy, just as al-Qaeda was a database of CIA cut out agents/Jihadists, used to destabilise countries as ex UK Foreign Minister, Robin Cook wrote about, are used to scare us into just handing over all our civil liberties that the terrorists supposedly hate us for having. The US were bombing ISIS for a year as their Caliphate grew in size. Therefore they were either very bad at their bombing campaign compared to the Russians or they were allowing them to survive. Using the existence of these terrorists as an excuse to cut our civil liberties is basically doing their job for them.

If they truly "hate us for our freedoms", as George W Bush famously said, we shouldn't hand all our freedoms away never for them to return with laws like the Patriot ACT and the NDAA and in the UK the multitude of anti-terrorism bills that have been passed.

So it's the same with all 3 states in the Axis of War, the UK, France and the USA who have all suspended certain rights and freedoms due to the "threat" of terrorism.

I'd really like to see both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn be leaders of both the USA and UK at the same time JUST TO SEE if REAL CHANGE is even possible from the top down.

When Obama came into office on a wave of support due to his meaningless chant of "We Can Change", it seemed to me that the slogan was purely about the colour of the White House occupants. Therefore I don't even believe real change from the top is actually possible, never been tried, or just stopped by the main string pullers from behind the curtains.

Having two characters like Bernie and Corbyn in power would at least show us if it was still possible to change the world for the better whether you like their policies or not.
If both these men did have full control and held true to the principles they currently state then in power we should see:

• Less prison for drugs and minor offences.
• Less Banksters running a mock with our tax payers money and no "too big to fail or jail" companies allowed to bank roll terrorists and drug cartels (e.g HSBC).
• Less spending on the department of war and more on education, job creation, house building and investment in the people and country instead of wasting it on £800,000 missiles that are fired into rubble in pointless overseas wars.
• Less stupid overtures that suggest our leaders want to start a new cold (or even hot) war with Russia. They seem to forget Russia helped solve the Iran nuclear deal, remove chemical weapons from Syria and are basically crushing DAESH in Syria despite Turkey and Saudi Arabian support for the Jihadists.
• Less power to corporations who are NOT real people with feelings and emotions yet in the USA under law they are treated as such and so during elections pump millions into campaigns of people who will benefit them if they get into power.
• Better and cheaper health care free at the point of use in the US, and less middle management and PPI hospitals in the UK that are bankrupting us into the future.
• Free adult education and the ability to retrain and gain new skills throughout your life to keep you in a job. Having taxpaying workers is much better than people relying on state handouts.
• Oh and all the stolen civil liberties we have had removed from us due to the "War on Terror" returned in the hundreds.

The Two Faced Janus Coin of American Politics

Both Main Parties in the USA Serve The Same Interests

These are all good reasons why we need strong 3rd parties in the USA and UK.

Many Europeans don't even realise that 3rd parties exist in the USA. Parties such as the Greens, Libertarians, Justice Party and even (shock horror) socialists!

Major political reform is needed so that these parties get a fair shake of the whip during elections, can debate the other parties on the major networks, and get the air time they require to make a dent into the two-faced Janus coin called American Democratic elections.

Of course the reason they don't is that the debates are all staged collusion with the networks who are all filled with COINTELPRO government mouthpieces. They have no urge to see REAL change come to the USA and actually do something to shake up the status quo.

How many Americans know they are still living under "Emergency Laws" enacted after 9 11 giving the President ultimate power. When will this end?

How good would an alliance be between the UK and the USA that would get on with other nations better and stop real evil e.g Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and Chinese/Saudi treatment of their people instead of selling weapons and outsourcing all our jobs to them.

Money should not matter more than morals but to George Osborne, Obama and the US/UK arms companies who must carry on their trade it seemingly does.

Our allies are not dissimilar to our enemies e.g ISIS and Saudi Arabia, yet we allow the 7th century hypocritical scum that the Saudi's are to continue with own Janus act of both funding and fighting terrorism.

However will this ever happen or will the establishment prevent the elections of such men as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn  due to the threat of real change?

The realistic outcome is that some idiot like Donald Trump or a warmonger like Hillary Clinton will get into power in the USA to reign alongside an equally right-wing Tory party in the UK and the Axis of War will roll on.....

One can only wish.....

Remember, as George Orwell famously said:

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

Oh, and you do have a real choice in your elections.

 
View the original article at the main site www.darkpolitricks.com.

By Dark Politricks
 
© 2015 Dark Politricks