Hope your weekends are pleasantly free of wage-slavery!
Cheers, Mike B)
19th June 2003
LATEST NEWS - Since Tony Blair's Labour government came to power, the gap between rich and poor has grown. The "Gini coeffient", an international measure of inequality, rose from 34 to 36 points since 1997. Under Margaret Thatcher it averaged 29 points. (The Independent, 12/5/2003)
- The Guardian reports the research group, IraqBodyCount.org, claiming that the number of civilian deaths caused by the war on Iraq could be as high as 10,000. No figures for the number of Iraqi conscript deaths or total wounded, but educated guesses would start at a minimum of 100,000 lives snuffed out or fucked up by our courageous leaders. (The Guardian, 13/6/2003)
- The inept "historian" Andrew Roberts, in one of his numerous media appearances (does he give sexual favours to TV chiefs, or is he related, or both?), described the war as "brilliant".
- According to a study of US war reporting (by FAIR), nearly two thirds (64%) of all sources featured in US media reports were pro-war, while 71% of US guests favoured the war. Anti-war voices were 10% of all sources, but just 3% of US sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; with US guests alone, the ratio increases to 25 to 1. (http://www.fair.org/extra/0305/warstudy.html)
BOOK REVIEW 'Hard Work' by Polly Toynbee (Bloomsbury Publishing 2003). In Britain, Toynbee seems to be despised by both the right and left, for belonging to the "liberal elite". I was interested in her book because it's a UK equivalent of Barbara Ehrenreich's excellent "Nickel and Dimed", in which Ehrenreich took low-pay jobs in America to see if she could survive.
Toynbee concludes that poverty-level work in Britain isn't quite as bad as in America - due mainly to Britain's still-existing (although declining) welfare system - but that it's nevertheless appallingly bad and getting worse. She provides some relevant facts and statistics:
- America has twice the poverty rate of Europe.
- But child poverty in Britain has tripled since 1970.
- There are more working poor than there are unemployed. "It becomes ever clearer that most poor people are not the feckless/hopeless/helpless but people who work very hard for long hours and yet still fall below the official poverty line."
- Blair's promise of greater "opportunity" and "social mobility" looks like a fallacy. A study comparing children born in 1958 and 1970 found a sharp drop in social mobility between the two dates - ie less chance of movement up the social or wages scale.
- Since 1970, national income (GDP) has doubled, but the low-paid are worse off in real terms. In 1970 the bottom 10% of workers earned 67.3% of median earnings - equivalent in today's terms to a minimum wage of £6.55 per hour, or £262 a week, compared to the pathetic £164 of the current minimum wage. "That is the true measure of how far social justice has slid backwards since then."
- 70% of the low-paid are women.
- "Study after study is showing a sharp increase in hours worked, causing rising stress and a matching sharp decrease in work satisfaction in the last decade, reaching right from professional and managerial down to low-paid jobs."
- The government-funded ESRC's 'Future of Work Programme' finds people working harder and longer, with only 16% happy with the hours they work (half as many as in 1992). 81% work long hours not because they enjoy it but because they need the money. (ESRC stands for 'Economic and Social Research Council').
- Toynbee mentions the Work Foundation's 2002 report that "job satisfaction has plummeted over the last decade"... "the so-called 'high performance management techniques' introduced over the same period have made the entire workforce profoundly unhappy, yet have delivered no measurable increase in productivity."
QUOTE OF THE WEEK - From The Onion: Banks Introduce 75-Cent Surcharge For Using Word 'Bank' NEW YORK - Executives from the nation's 50 largest banks announced Monday that, effective July 1, all customers will be assessed a 75-cent surcharge each time they use the word "bank." "Now, each time a customer uses the word 'bank' in either its spoken or written form, 75 cents will be automatically deducted from his or her account," said Kenneth Nordland, 54, president of the American Banking Association. "For instance, if you say, 'I bank with Bank of America,' that would cost you $1.50." Nordland added that customers wishing to avoid the penalty are encouraged to use the alternate phrase "financial institution".
Brian http://www.anxietyculture.com email at anxietyculture.com
===== ***************************************************************** The unreal unity proclaimed by the spectacle masks the class division underlying the real unity of the capitalist mode of production. What obliges the producers to participate in the construction of the world is also what excludes them from it. What brings people into relation with each other by liberating them from their local and national limitations is also what keeps them apart. What requires increased rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchical exploitation and repression. What produces society’s abstract power also produces its concrete lack of freedom.
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