In US the Occupy Wall Street movement is beginning to encounter the force of the state with the armoury it has to impose its authority being brought out. This will be very familiar to people in occupied Palestine who weekly face rubber-coated bullets, tear gas, foul water and even live ammunition. Northern Ireland similarly. Those who have gained power through being in the right place at the right time are not going to relinquish it readily. Protesters occupying land outside St Paul’s Cathedral are being threatened with eviction, a move which is seriously challenging for some who take their Christianity seriously.
Greece. It has new been agreed to write off 50% of the debt, but still interest runs into unimaginable figures. Who gains from this? Presumably the banks who, Goldman Sachs prominent among them, advised their government and those of many other indebted countries to spend like there was no tomorrow.
In Birmingham the City Council is either axing the work force or slashing already low salaries by thousands. A few years back the Con Dem authority hired Capita to “modernise” services, including finance. I haven’t heard if Capita employees are being cut back or receiving wage reductions. I wouldn’t mind betting that they will be asking more for their services in reducing the city’s essential services or passing them to the private sector for profit. So OUR Council Tax no longer pays for services we need, it goes into the n(gr)eedy hands of the financiers who have been ever more adept at creating useless, self[serving work for themselves. http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/exporting-corruption-0 to perform tasks local government did for itself. It falls into the hands of Cameron who has declared he wants to roll back the state. As with Thatcher the intention is to dismantle. Since Thatcher we have seen New Labour come in, but instead of turning round Thatcherism Blairism became an effective twist privatising more than Thatcher dreamed of in her worst nightmare.
What else does Capita run? http://brixtonblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/lambeth-council-capita-contract/has just awarded a contract for collecting its taxes amid concern from it tax payers. Some years ago it took over the Teachers’ Pension Fund and will presumably help with the reduction of payments those, like myself, thought we would get. This year a move from increases based on final salary to average salary has helped reduce costs. Some have been saying that teachers’ pensions are unaffordable. When I started teaching in the 60s there was some embarrassment over the size of the teachers’ pension pot which was considered then over large and needed to be reduced! We note that those in the 1% (likely to include Capita et al executives at least) can name their pension in telephone number terms. Clearly the 1% will be happy to run the earth without the encumberence of the rest of humanity.