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Massive Mayday March: Music, Munchies And Messages

Aberdeen City, Featured, Information 5 Responses »

May 092013

Barney Crockett Addresses Rally 2013 By J. Aberdein

By Suzanne Kelly.

This year’s Mayday March in Aberdeen impressed everyone with a sizeable turnout.

Some 500 people marched down Union Street to the Castlegate, where speeches were delivered by Trade Union representatives, politicians, and local activists.

Unison, Aberdeen Trade Unions Council, UCATT, CWU, PCS, EIS, Aberdeen Against Austerity and campaign group ‘Save Bramble Brae School’ were among those represented.

Len Ironside, Barney Crockett, Willie Young, Dame Anne Begg and Lewis MacDonald were among the marchers, as was local writer John Aberdein.

It was hardly surprising the turnout was so high. Severe budget cuts, austerity measures, economic uncertainty, bizarre taxes (i.e. bedroom tax) and arcane health checks on benefit claimants imposed by the ruling Conservative-Liberal Democrat government (which is also creating tax loopholes for the wealthy): there was no shortage of reasons to march.

The speeches were arguably the most important part of the day.

Barney Crockett, Aberdeen City Council Leader welcomed everyone.

Dame Anne Begg spoke of many labour issues – there are those who want jobs and cannot find them; young people are being given low (if any) wages, people are forced to take jobs they are unsuited to in order to retain benefits, and people with special needs and different abilities have problems finding employers who are willing to make it easier for them to work.

Anne Begg Addresses May Day Rally By J. Aberdein

As to ATOS and other companies giving such assessments, Anne commented that government health agents should be there to help us, not to make us feel ill.

Ian Tasker of STUC reminded all that the Conservatives had wanted to do away with the tradition of Mayday being a holiday and a celebration of workers completely; Cameron had feebly suggested moving this ancient, worldwide tradition to November – hardly a conducive time to get people together for marches and outdoor rallies.

Speakers highlighted virtually all of the issues facing workers at this time when wages are not increasing nearly enough to meet inflation and increasing (and increasingly bizarre and punitive) taxes.

Aberdeen Against Austerity members wrote a speech, delivered by member Jill. Jill went for a positive approach to the current situation; saying:-

“Everyone here cares enough to march down Union Street on a Saturday morning. What we need to do is harness this energy and focus it on dealing with the problem we face today.

“The problem is not corporate tax avoidance.

“The problem is not even the Con-Dem government.

“The problem is much bigger than that!

“The problem is that we live in a world where profit comes before people.

“A world where the price of a T-shirt is £5, but the cost is the lives of 500 Bangladeshi workers. The problem is that we live in a world where corporations have more power than half the countries. The problem is our whole capitalist system.

“So what can we do about it?

“First, we can change the way we think.

“We need to challenge the myth that austerity is the answer to the nation’s economic problems. Austerity measures are simply a deepening of the neo-liberal experiment that got us here in the first place. The drive to cut welfare and privatise our services is purely ideological- the free market economy loved so by Margaret Thatcher and expanded by Tony Blair.

“We must also challenge the current strategy of demonising benefit claimants and immigrants. It is a cynical ploy by the establishment to deflect criticism away from themselves…. Through small personal actions we can start to change the world:

“Sign an online petition. Write to your MP. Tell them you don’t want to pay to bail out banks just so that they can continue to make profits for their shareholders!

“Join a credit union. Boycott companies who do bad things. Better still, opt out of the consumer culture which exists only to fill the offshore bank accounts of people like Philip Green.

“If we look at the cost of an item in human and environmental terms we might start to say no to the automatic phone upgrade or yet another pair of cheap trainers made by a child on the other side of the world. We can change the way we think and take small personal actions but we can also join together and reclaim democracy. Then we can really start to make a change.”

The speeches concluded, and everyone was treated to a celebration in Union Terrace Gardens. Even the sun eventually showed up.

Children enjoyed face painting and comedy from Wildly Unprepared; all enjoyed food from Café 52, music from a variety of acts, and the Guarana Street Drummers, who had led the march.

Things are changing fast economically, socially and politically with amazing speed at present; it remains to be seen where will we be next year.

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Workfare? Unfair, Says Aberdeen Against Austerity

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Information, News No Responses »

Mar 012012

Aberdeen Against Austerity informs Voice of its intention to take to the city’s streets this Saturday (3rd March).

This action is part of a national day of protest against the UK Government’s Workfare Scheme under which multi-national companies, whose profits run into billions of pounds, receive countless hours of free man/womanpower courtesy of taxpayers.

At least thirty other cities around the UK will host similar demonstrations.

How does the Workfare Scheme operate?

The jobseeker labours for perhaps eight hours daily, receives no wages from the company, creates wealth for the bosses and shareholders and in return receives only his/her Job Seeker’s Allowance (JSA). As a result, participants in the programme receive well below £2 per hour for time they have been forced to give to multi-billionaire companies.

Many fear that these phenomenally low wages are being used by bosses to drive down existing staff wages under threat of replacement by Workfare participants. Commentators have used the term ‘slave labour’ to describe this Tory policy, with some even challenging the legality of the Scheme under Human Rights Law.

Not looking hard enough for work

Conservative ministers and right-wing journalists have tried to justify the Scheme in recent weeks using the same tired old argument that JSA claimants are responsible for their own misery because they are ‘workshy’, ‘lazy’ and ‘lacking in drive’.

“These ‘lazy’ individuals just aren’t looking hard enough for work,” cries the right.

Figures show these ludicrous opinions to be baseless whilst revealing the underlying structural problems of our economic system. We have 2.67m unemployed, although the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has reported that the true figure might be 6.3m, and only 476,000 job vacancies. That means 5.6 people are applying for every job, or 13.2 people if the TUC figures are used.

Joblessness is a very real and serious issue woven into the fabric of our economy and it cannot simply be blamed on the ‘feckless unemployed’.

The proponents of Workfare claim that the most effective way to get ‘workshy’ claimants back to work is by threat of the loss of their JSA. This is very misguided. The Government’s own review, commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions in 2008, concluded:

“There is little evidence that Workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers.”

Political and ideological

It’s clear. Workfare is a political programme, designed and carried out by a government of millionaires with a strong ideological undercurrent, through which they seek to:

Undermine the legal minimum wage.
Continue the demonisation of those out of work to justify the increasing wealth gap between the rich and poor.
Strengthen the very close ties between big business and government.
Ensure that the most vulnerable in society pay for the economic crisis rather than those who caused or played a major role in it.
Continue to apply downward pressure to existing workers’ pay and terms and conditions

Aberdeen Against Austerity and many other groups will be raising awareness nationwide by naming and shaming Workfare providers this Saturday (3rd March) in Aberdeen city centre. We’ll meet in the Castlegate at 12 noon.

See you on the streets.

At the Eleventh Hour Of The Eleventh Day – Or Whenever’s Convenient

Articles, Community, Featured, History, Information, Opinion No Responses »

Nov 082011

With Remembrance Sunday approaching fast and the wearing of a poppy being de rigueur for every stuffed shirt and empty suit on TV, Voice’s Dave Watt thinks about 11 November.

11 November falls on a Friday this year, so the dead will have to wait until Sunday to be remembered, as the powers that be don’t seem to think that remembering them on the actual Armistice Day would be convenient.
I mean, businesses might lose a whole two minutes profit and think what a disaster that would be for our thriving economy. After all, big business interests shovel money into party funds and one and a quarter million dead servicemen and women don’t. So, balls to them.

Armistice Day on 11 November was originally meant to signal the end of The War to End Wars, back in a time when that phrase wouldn’t bring forth a cynical snigger.

In fact, on my grandfather’s medals, hanging in a frame in my hallway, it refers to The Great War For Civilisation which shows that there were politicians in the 1920s capable of coming out with the same kind of drivel as George W Bush did with his ludicrous War on Terror ten years ago.

Presumably, at some time in the future there will be a War For Straight Bananas or a War For Fashionable Sandals or something equally weird.

Hopefully, this year will not feature such irretrievable tat as the Royal British Legion inviting The Saturdays to frolic half-naked in a sea of poppies or getting the judges on X Factor to wear grotesque poppy fashion items – two tasteless frolics which inspired ex-SAS soldier Ben Griffin to describe them as ‘stunts to trivialise, normalise and satirise war’. Griffin, in fact, went on to state that remembrance has been turned into ‘a month long drum roll of support for current wars’, a point of view it is increasingly difficult to disagree with.

My grandfather joined up in 1914 in the surge of patriotism engendered by Germany illegally invading Belgium; my uncle joined up in 1939 when Hitler illegally subjugated Poland. Presumably, if Tony Blair had been Prime Minister in 1914, we’d have joined in the illegal invasion and attacked tiny Belgium as we did with impoverished third world Afghanistan, not one of whose citizens had previously done us the slightest harm.

Then again, if Tony had been in charge in 1939 he’d surely have produced some shoddy dossiers to our gullible Parliament showing how those dastardly Poles were all set to attack peace-loving Nazi Germany and that they had weapons of mass destruction concealed in Cracow and Gdansk which could be deployed within 45 minutes.

Yes, if good old Tony had been on the case then, we could nowadays watch Wellington bombers joining the Stukas strafing the women and kids in Warsaw on World at War on Yesterday – with a suitably solemn voice-over courtesy of Laurence Olivier. God, wouldn’t that make us just so proud of ourselves?

No, the bottom line is that we’re not the Good Guys helping the Underdog against the Bully any more. We’re something quite different now.

If you were wondering what happened to my uncle and grandfather in their wars, my uncle died in Normandy in 1944 after fighting in North Africa, Italy and Sicily. My grandfather survived four years in the trenches but was wounded and mustard-gassed in 1918. The mustard gas steadily and horribly eroded his lungs over the years and he eventually died in 1955 aged 56, so the War for Civilisation got him in the end.

I also had a relative on board HMS Hood when the Bismarck sank her in the Denmark Straits in May 1941. He was not one of the three survivors.

It’s interesting to think that if my three relations had survived wars and lived until now that their reward from a grateful country would be to have some pampered ex-public schoolboy Tories and Lib Dems cutting their fuel allowances by £100 this winter.

I’ll have my own two minutes silence for my relations and all the rest – the ones who came back and the ones who didn’t.

On Friday.

Join Aberdeen Against Austerity

Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Events, Featured, Information No Responses »

Jan 212011

By Aberdeen Against Austerity.

We need a change in direction, not a return to business as usual.

Since the election, the Tory-led coalition Government has launched the most serious assault on the lives of ordinary people that we have seen in the UK since the 1930s. These cuts will decimate jobs and services across the country and will devastate the lives of untold millions of people. We are not only being made to foot the bill of debts run up by reckless bankers, we are being made to fund their offensively lavish lifestyles.

You could be forgiven for thinking that the austerity agenda is unavoidable or even economically sound, as this is the mantra of much of the mainstream, corporate media. This is, however, simply not the case. The Government’s cuts are ideological and unnecessary, and it is becoming increasingly clear that, far from putting us back on the road to recovery, we are being hurled, blindly and arrogantly, towards disaster.

It is for these reasons that citizens from across the North East of Scotland came together on the 15th of December to found Aberdeen Against Austerity.

We continue to see the financial crisis as an opportunity to change the world. We will not accept our lives and communities being destroyed in order to return to a ‘business as usual’ under which wages stagnate while the cost of living increases, under which the gap between the rich and poor – both within and between countries – reaches ever greater proportions, and under which services which represent a lifeline to millions of people are handed over to faceless, profit-driven corporations.

This crash – the latest in a long line of such crises – should prove for the last time that no system that puts the whim and will of international finance before human need is sustainable. We have the ideas and the numbers; let’s create a better alternative.

Aberdeen Students Take Action Against Cuts

Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, News No Responses »

Nov 262010

With Thanks to Gordon Maloney.

Students at Aberdeen University today took part in a national day of action against cuts to the Further and Higher Education budget.

Demonstrations and actions were carried out by groups across the country and in Aberdeen a banner reading “Nae Tory cuts” was dropped from the roof of the Students’ Association building on University Road.

A spokesperson made the following statement before dropping the banner:

“There are some people who would say that our demands are selfish, but we are here today to challenge much more than just cuts to Universities. We are here today to challenge the idea that the entire public sector can be hung, drawn and quartered while the Coalition Government continue to give money to a failed banking system.

“We, and tens of thousands of other students and workers across the country, will not tolerate the savage cuts on the most vulnerable in society while it is business as usual for those at the top.”

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