This Cost Of Living Crisis Is State Sponsored Poverty: Enough Means Enough
Your politicians are a disgrace, from across the political spectrum. They are failing to grasp the gravity of the cost of capitalism crisis and the devastating impact it is having on the people they are elected to serve.
Honestly, I have never known a time where the apparent ‘leaders’ have been so out-of-touch with reality. The most powerful tool our politicians should possess is their own personal example.
Let’s explain this slowly for the honourable (lol) political leaders.
The energy firms are announcing record profits on an almost daily basis. The people of Britain are facing average utility bills of £5,000 a year, with £571 coming in January. Can you see where I’m going with this, Mr Johnson and Mr Starmer?
This broken immoral government is giving your money to Shell, a corporation that’s just announced a £7 billion profit for 3 months of trading, while foodbanks are running out of food, working people are rationing their electric, and drought and destitution rips through our country.
I’m absolutely fucking furious, aren’t you?
The big oil and gas companies are making £600 a second, and I’m sure the shareholders are delighted, but the human cost of this unrestrained corporate greed is immeasurable.
The people are on their knees, and the politicians aren’t just looking the other way, they’re kicking you in the face first. The callous indifference to human suffering is an absolutely shameful disgrace.
I don’t want to hear another fucking word about “standing up to Putin” when you are throwing your own people off a cliff to fund it. You stand up for us first and foremost. Call yourself “patriots”? Fuck off.
Johnson, the caretaker Prime Minister that certainly doesn’t care, and is undoubtedly a taker, refuses to step in because it’s not his problem, obviously.
Starmer, the Blairites caretaker Labour leader, returns from his holiday tomorrow, full of radical solutions to address the cost of living crisis such as a trial of Universal Basic Income, an ‘energy furlough’ scheme, a demand for a £15 minimum wage, and a fully costed plan that sets out how Labour will begin to nationalise energy, rail, and mail.
I literally chuckled typing that last paragraph, such is the unlikeliness of the establishment quisling Starmer behaving like a Labour leader should behave.
Gordon Brown’s idea of temporarily renationalising these utilities doesn’t go anywhere near far enough, I’m sure you’ll agree?
To Brown’s credit, he came up with more ideas in 3 days than the government and the opposition have scraped together throughout this lengthy crisis.
Permanent public ownership is both popular and necessary. Electric, gas, and water are essential services that must be run for the benefit of us. We told you this in 2017, 2019, and we are telling you this now. Nationalise them.
Successive Conservative governments have pledged to bring the big energy firms under control, but none of them pledged to give them copious amounts of cash from the public purse.
The energy firms have catastrophically failed to bring their greed under control, so that has to be the end of it. No more bailouts, no more freebies, no temporary measures, and not another contract. Nationalise them.
Labour’s plan to cut VAT on energy bills exemplifies the diabolical and tragic inadequacy of today’s Labour Party. £160 off a £5,000 electric bill? Shove it, Starmer, you fraudulent traitor.
Why on earth are we paying VAT on essential services anyway? Nationalise it.
But don’t worry if you’re on a prepayment meter, because Labour has got a plan for that too, and you will save £1.62 each week while £113 million gets sent to the greedy energy firms.
Underwhelmed? You should be. It’s less generous than the help that is already on offer from the most right-wing government in history, heaping further shame upon the shoulders of the malignant dullard Starmer.
Further measures are expected from Starmer when he returns to work tomorrow, but it seems he had to be forced to come off the fence following widespread fury at his inability to act when it mattered the most.
The idea of the capitalist project is to open up the market for private companies to compete for our business. This has quite clearly failed. It failed years ago and it is taking a ridiculous squeeze in living standards to highlight what a monstrosity it has become.
For starters, do you choose where you get your water from? Of course not. It’s a fucking cartel. How stupid were the government of the day when they literally sold our water?
Go and see how many other countries have privatised water. Can’t be bothered? I don’t blame you.
England and Wales are the only countries in the entire world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system. Believe me, the Tories would privatise the air in your lungs if they could.
This country is home to 177 billionaires, and what are we, the fifth or sixth biggest economy in the world? How has the state so miserably failed the people that rely upon it the most?
The only thing growing quicker than the damaging poverty that blights our struggling communities are the profits of the mega wealthy - the greatest moral obscenity of our times.
Where are the Jacob Rees-Mogg’s and Nadine Dorries’s of this world, the ludicrous pantomime Brexiteers? All of our main utilities are owned by foreign companies, isn’t it time for us to take back control, and nationalise the fucking corporate parasites? The correct answer is yes.
And what of the 2 Johnson-enabling candidates vying to become the next Prime Minister?
The favourite, Thick Lizzy, is promising a tax cut of 76p a month for Britain’s lowest earners, although if you’re the richest tenth it’s worth £93.19 a month. Haven’t we got this the wrong way round?
Rishi Sunak has mumbled something about £400-500 going to Britain’s most vulnerable people, and pensioners, but let’s be honest, this isn’t even a sticking plaster when you’re presented with a bill for more than £5,000 that you do not have the means to pay.
Ofgem isn’t fit for purpose. If you find that view even slightly controversial I humbly suggest you haven’t been paying close attention to the disaster that is unfolding.
They are supposed to be a regulator, making sure we don’t get ripped off, if you like, but they are facilitating the cost of living crisis, be in no doubt whatsoever.
If renationalisation is a last resort we need to get moving with it now. For me it is a first resort, we have to get a grip of this crisis, and that requires authentic leadership not seen in Britain for as long as I have lived.
So where are the authentic leaders in positions of power in 2022? Truss, Sunak, Johnson and Starmer *are* the establishment, and the slaves to neoliberalism, the no fucking change candidate dates, and I’m not even wasting my time on that pointless splodge of mediocrity, Sir Ed Davey.
I can only point you in one direction if you are looking for genuine leadership, and that direction is leftwards.
Mick Lynch, Zarah Sultana and Dave Ward, currently fronting the Enough is Enough campaign is a good starting point.
Their launch video has been seen more than 5 million times and such was the interest in signing up for the campaign the Enough is Enough website crashed. Hundreds of thousands have already joined the campaign, and I urge you to do so.
Lynch commented on Friday: “Energy prices have to come down – and to do that, we need people on the streets. We can’t wait for politicians.”
Once again, Lynch displays more leadership in two sentences than Keir Starmer has managed in more than two years.
Labour has confirmed they will not nationalise rail, energy, or water, so what on earth is the point of the Labour Party anyway?
Nationalisation isn’t an argument from the 1970’s, it is a necessity for today.
All of the huge corporations take their grotesque profits off the labour and suffering of others, and when they need bailing out the public purse obliges.
If they want public money we want public control.
I know I am not alone in wondering when, not if, this ever-worsening crisis is the trigger for civil unrest that we haven’t seen in Britain since the days of the Thatcher government.
Maybe this is what the government wants?
They can pin the blame for civil unrest on the Unions, striking workers, lefty activists, Marxists, refugees, and of course, declare a whole new ‘war on woke’, pressing the buttons of the same people that delivered a big Brexity majority for Boris Johnson in 2019.
Too far-fetched?
This government gave their mates a debit card to use in the Covid contracts ATM. They gifted Serco £37 billion for next to fuck all. They made billions of pounds of Covid fraud magically disappear. They are corrupt, from top to bottom.
The Tories wanted the rail strikes because they thought they could make political capital from ‘union barons holding the country to ransom’, but it didn’t wash with the British public this time, because we’ve had enough.
Buckle up my friends, we’ve only just sailed into this terrifying storm, and some unpredictable and difficult times are ahead for many of us thanks to this avalanche of state sponsored poverty.
Our unity has always been our greatest strength, and we are going to need that unity more than ever.
We’re tired, we’re hurting, and we’re pretty damn broke, but if the ruling class want a fight, by fuck we’ll give them one.
Thanks for reading.
Rachael
Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, if you want to chip in towards improving my ongoing campaign, and it would cause you *no hardship*, you can do so here:
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