Edinburgh Anarchists

Quick-quiz: How many of you out there think that “non-executive” means the same as “doesn’t do anything”? As in “non-executive director”?

I thought that being a NED meant to turn up to the meeting, eat the biscuits, read the minutes, send texts to your mistress and nod through pay rises. Their performance at scrutinising RBS, among others, says I’m right.

But maybe I’m wrong. They must be working awfy hard, because according to this story, they’ve been given a payrise of more than 5% across big companies. Meanwhile, workers are seeing pay freezes (always a cut in real-terms, remember) if they’ve not been put on short hours to “save” their jobs.

What happened to “fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay?” Seems like that was only ever meant to work one way. Fuck the wages system.

Anyone on the average salary (that’s £25,000, more than most people globally could dream of) knows that buying a home to live in has become virtually impossible. This isn’t the story usually told in newspapers (who have very profitable property supplements), where rises in house prices are prayed for as fervently as visions of the Madonna in Ireland, with just as much basis in reality.

If you had a house before prices went crazy, you have a huge amount of pretend money. If you didn’t, you won’t. Ever. A house no longer costs 3-4 times your salary, it’s 7 or 8.

Now some minor government functionary says: fugged abaht it. You ain’t getting one. Rent forever. Raise kids in a place where you can be turfed out at the whim of one of the Propertied Classes. Don’t decorate. Don’t even put posters up. No you can’t insulate better, pay the ever-increasing heating bill instead.

Which we knew anyway. What’s the solution?

Here’s one. Since there’s a drought of nice, secure council / social housing since the introduction of the Right to Buy in the 1980s, why don’t we level the playing field a bit?

Let’s not abandon the Right to Buy, let’s extend it to privately-owned homes. If I’ve lived in a place for a certain number of years, it is mine, treat it the same as if it were a mortgage. Landlord’s got their money back several times over.

It takes the sound principle of ownership by use, the proven popularity of right-to-buy and it’s a win in terms of increasing equality.

What do you think?

EDL reveal their Scots roots by pissing on English Heritage

We owe the English Scottish Defence League an apology. We thought that they were just a bunch of racist football hooligans who wanted to see some rain and hills, so transplanted their wannabe-race war to Glasgow last month.

We thought the fact that their SDL hoodies have the English St Georges Cross on them was proof that they had no links here.

However. The photo here proves us wrong. It shows “English” patriots pissing against the historic and very English Nottingham Castle.

Clearly there’s only one explanation. The English Defence League are all secretly Scottish. Having got a taste for bamming up English cops in Manchester last year, a paramilitary branch of the Tartan Army set up the EDL using “dirty war” tactics learned in Northern Ireland.

Now their secret is out, claims that the Scottish Defence League are an attempt to franchise dumbfuck English Nationalism can be shown up for what they are.

Much handwringing in the news this week over an apparent “epidemic of middle class shoplifting”. Turns out we’re the best in Europe at it, and look at what’s happening:

Hundreds of retailers said shoplifting surged as goods were taken for personal use and not for re-sale by organised criminal gangs.[...]

employee theft is also rising. Branded “silent shoplifters” in the trade, employee thieves are more prolific and steal goods worth £1,585.

First off, these aren’t separate groups of people. “Middle class” is a cultural category, but these are workers as much as the ones in the stockroom. (If you have to go to work, you’re working class, whether that’s as a teacher or a mechanic.)

I think that people are waking up to the fact that they’ve been sold down the river. Their pensions are under attack, their wages are being cut, their jobs are under threat. Our electricity bills rise at the same time as massive profiteering by the privatised utilities (Scottish & Southern Energy also called one of their workers a terrorist). And at the same time, our services are being cut to pay for a deficit caused by an economic crisis we had no part in creating. And yet there’s literal billions of our money thrown at the banks.

They’ve been taking the piss and maybe, just maybe this is a sign of more of us waking up to the lies.

Schnews report on Scottish & Southern Electricity’s attempted use of a Terrorism Act against a blacklisted electrician:

A judge has dismissed a power company’s attempts to prevent a one-man picket with an injunction under the Terrorism Act as “fanciful and bordering on paranoia”. Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) attempted to suggest that the picket represented a “threat to national security”.

Electrician Steve Acheson was dismissed from from his job at the Fiddlers Ferry power station project in December 2008. Although he was technically made redundant, at the time of his dismissal the firm took on another 300 workers. Since then he’s maintained a regular picket outside the construction site with a banner saying “STOP VICTIMISING UNION WORKERS – END THE BLACKLISTING NOW”

Although the judge in this case called SSE out on their nonsense, the attempt itself shows that companies are ready to take this Act to places where they’ve succesfully used the Prevention of Harrassment Act. If a single picket can be branded a threat to “national security”, what about a whole group of them occupying their factory?

The “blacklisting” referred to is the one run by sleazy voyeur Ian Kerr of “the Consulting Agency” who maintained, illegally and at great profit, a database of more than 3000 workers suspected of union activity. This he sold to every large contractor you could name. Net result: workers reduced to poverty, and an insultingly token fine of £5000 for the spy.

A good source of information on this: The Blacklist Support Group.

Getting chubby around the face, Dave

David Cameron’s giving his speech to the Tory party conference today.

Clearly, after a government attacking the working class while sucking up to plutocratic media tycoons, lead by a money-grabbing ex-private school boy all about image instead of policy, we need a change!

It’s time for attacks on the working class from a friend of hardworking newspaper barons, who’s wife’s so rich he doesn’t have  to pick up a £100 note from the pavement, who went to the best private school and who used to work in PR.

…and they wonder why anarchists don’t believe in voting. The only way to beat the rich’s attempt to make us pay for their crisis is to fight against every attack on our pay & conditions and to support the struggles near you.

PS: Isn’t David Cameron looking heavy round the face. He better not squint in case he’s mistaken for Nick Griffin.