Another mining disaster with huge loss of life in Turkey concentrates the mind (or should concentrate the mind) on maintaining safety standards. As we well know from long and bitter experience it is likely to be the first thing that goes when private hands take over our industries and services. The low pay and shocking conditions described by Dickens is back with a vengeance. Instead of railing at the corporate interest that recreates and maintains servitude politicians of all major parties are paralysed with fear that the corporate lobbyists will withdraw the largesse and favours they like to bestow on the political elite. Don’t blame them, blame the foreigner as responsible for the countries ills. UKIP and the right thrive on it and the others trip over themselves to outdo thmm to create a climate of racism and xenophobia.
The history of opposition to the current power group all but vanishes as the corporate media represents its own and other corporate interest exclusively. However stories emerge that give a different picture. Seumas Milne reminds us of the emerging information correcting common views of the miners’ actions which shows not only the importance of the struggle but the lengths taken to close down any debate through misinformation and downright lies. In most cases it is just ignored as programmes like the BBC’s supposedly impartial question time goes out of its way to ignore the likes of Bob Crow and Arthur Scargill, but goes out of its way to drag in Nigel Farrage. It seems to justify this by selecting those who demonstrate the larger political interest, not stopping to think that it has been instrumental in creating the celebrity status of the so-called “fruit cake”.
It is not only the right that opposes European dictat from Brussels but lack of media oxygen does not allow the message of the left to be heard. It is to do with class, unions and targetting corporate interest as the problem creating crisis after crisis. Far from solving the problem it is recreated in ever more alarming form with ever increasing debt bubbles. Those with the control of huge financial resources look after themselves and their friends, including politicians of all the major parties using resources of the state (ie our money paid in taxes nationally and locally) to implement their disastrous projects. People don’t matter as greed overtakes need and the most vulnerable are discarded without a thought.