(no subject)
There were 20,000 people at the protest against the government cuts yesterday. Public sector workers came all the way from Orkney and the Western Isles to march against a 20% cut in government spending, and almost half a million redundancies at a time when benefits and services for people on the poverty line are also being cut, on the logic that people must be forced into work even when there are no jobs to be had. As long as the government defies logic, economic theorists, and the electorate - who for the most part didn't want this, with the majority having voted for parties who proposed a different approach, but either lost or traded in principles for power at the first opportunity - then I'll be standing up to them, and it's reassuring to see that there are so many other people willing to stand up too. We need to have some resistance, because frightening people into compliance is a key part of forcing through these reforms. They need a workforce who are desperate to protect themselves individually, who won't speak out, and will compete with each other to do more work for less pay just to stay in some kind of employment, and, crucially, blame the poor instead of the rich for their predicament. No matter how often they call it "progressive" it never will be, because we're finally getting back to Thatcher's Victorian Values.