If you thought things had changed, friend you'd better think again...
So, yesterday's march, the Youth Fight for Jobs march/Youth March for Jobs, was a roaring success, if we're going on the basis that some of us were roaring, and it was a success because we didn't end up throwing computer monitors through bank windows whilst a wall of media kept the other protestors from joining in.
At times it was just like a school trip - the minibus, the frustrated one trying to keep us all together on the way to the march despite piss breaks and whatnot, the lunchbreak where we all lounged on the grass, the wandering around in a large group of people feeling a bit bewildered at precisely why we're walking on this particular route, and the inevitable naughty kids. Not to mention feeling that it might have been slightly pointless.
The route that we took was to start from London bridge (though our group picked it up in Stratford), then round Camberwell, Tower Hamlets, and some other parts of London that seemed to be mostly flats - some scruffy, poor-looking ones, but lots of deserted-looking posher ones, where we seemed to be chanting for the sake of it. Once we got to Canary Wharf, over the DLR, and down to Canning Town station, where we marched over a big bridge to the Excel Centre where the G20 summit is actually being held....well, it felt like we were all knackered and kinda just wanted to go and collapse by that point. If we'd just done it from Canary Wharf to the Excel Centre, it might have packed a bit more punch by the time we'd spent all afternoon in the sunshine.
Anyway, apparently our march got onto the C4 news, so who knows, I might be on the telly again!
It was certainly a long day, starting out from Cov train station at 7.30ish, and getting back at about 9pm. Watching the BBC2 G20 show afterwards was properly depressing as well, but maybe that's cos it's just Lord Mandelson, who doesn't seem to think about ANYTHING AT ALL outside of the economy. You try and mention people to him - actual, living, breathing, people, and he switches straight back to the economy. The economy is not people. People is not the economy.
That said, the rest of the G20 leaders seem to mostly be thinking about money at the moment, too. Who can tell if inventing another trillion dollars (or however much mythical money it is - certainly isn't anything any of us 'little people' will get our mitts on anytime soon) to get the economy working will be a force for good in the world? My guess is that since it involves money, and further attempts to rescue this mythical and infinitely corrupted capitalist system, no good will come of it.
I've been thinking a lot about the possible ways in which we can fix the world in a more socialist model - thinking about the demands that the Youth March for Jobs made - decent jobs for young people, an end to the so-called "slave-labour" that is the apprenticeship idea (though it is a modern equivalent - apprentices do not get anything near a living wage and unscrupulous employers ritually take advantage of the extra man power), no more tuition fees, no more top-up fees, emphasising the right to a decent education for all, and not just the rich...and of course, the inevitable anti-war message. I've been thinking about all this quite a lot, trying to think how I would change society if I could, and I'm not sure I know.
The crux of the matter always seems to be MONEY. Saying you want to do something, you want to buy something, you want to start a movement, a project, etc. The first question is ALWAYS 'where will you get the money?', never 'what do you want to do that for?' or 'how important is it?'. ALWAYS money.
Fact is, we've all grown too dependent on money. Why? It's essentially a made-up thing, that allowed people to trade, and was invented as a thing that you would swap for something else. But then money became...virtual, all this stocks and shares nonsense, and somehow it could grow and shrink according to, well, the wind, pretty much, and there's all these guys in pinstripe suits who make and ruin other people's lives according to what the money is doing. Consultants being paid £100k pa telling hospitals to take out every third lightbulb to save money. Regional accountants closing branches of shops and making people unemployed because the money's slowed down. Companies, hospitals, schools, etc, paying over the odds to hire contractors because the company accountants have told HR to keep the headcount down, and since temps Don't Count, and besides, they come under a different budget code, well, let's get some temps in at twice the price.
Case in point - I have heard that we have enough bricks stockpiled in this country to rebuild Nottingham. We also have high unemployment amongst builders, not to mention an accommodation crisis. Undoubtably there are people in our councils, in our dole queues, and in our offices, who can link the three together into a new, nationalised, building project? But the country is in this big imaginary debt which is meaning that no one's doing anything because there's no way to make them, because no one's going to go to work on this unless they're being paid a living wage. Which, in money terms, is quite a lot, actually.
So we pretty much just need to take money out of this equation, and start swapping other things instead, in an attempt to rebuild society so that everything that needs doing is done, and everyone that needs feeding is fed, and housed, and employed, or not, as the case may be. Start from the bottom up, and see what needs to be done, who can do what, and how, and what with. Find some other way of operating than with money, which can be stretched, and grown, and warped, and stolen, and accumulated. Then we can start to improve things.
But no, the world leaders are still on about saving the economy, as if they've never heard that old adage about not being able to eat money. According to them, Brazil is now worth more than Britain. Well, about time - it's a huge country with many resources. Our piddly little country is nowhere near as valuable, because it's a little island with not much going for it besides, er, money. There's no rule book about which countries SHOULD be at the top of the pile, because we're all on the same planet, so why can't we all just work together? Why does that have to be so difficult?
In conclusion: The world leaders are going to have to do more than just trying to resurrect a deeply flawed idea if the world is truly to be changed for the better for all of us who live on this planet, not just the few rich ones.
At times it was just like a school trip - the minibus, the frustrated one trying to keep us all together on the way to the march despite piss breaks and whatnot, the lunchbreak where we all lounged on the grass, the wandering around in a large group of people feeling a bit bewildered at precisely why we're walking on this particular route, and the inevitable naughty kids. Not to mention feeling that it might have been slightly pointless.
The route that we took was to start from London bridge (though our group picked it up in Stratford), then round Camberwell, Tower Hamlets, and some other parts of London that seemed to be mostly flats - some scruffy, poor-looking ones, but lots of deserted-looking posher ones, where we seemed to be chanting for the sake of it. Once we got to Canary Wharf, over the DLR, and down to Canning Town station, where we marched over a big bridge to the Excel Centre where the G20 summit is actually being held....well, it felt like we were all knackered and kinda just wanted to go and collapse by that point. If we'd just done it from Canary Wharf to the Excel Centre, it might have packed a bit more punch by the time we'd spent all afternoon in the sunshine.
Anyway, apparently our march got onto the C4 news, so who knows, I might be on the telly again!
It was certainly a long day, starting out from Cov train station at 7.30ish, and getting back at about 9pm. Watching the BBC2 G20 show afterwards was properly depressing as well, but maybe that's cos it's just Lord Mandelson, who doesn't seem to think about ANYTHING AT ALL outside of the economy. You try and mention people to him - actual, living, breathing, people, and he switches straight back to the economy. The economy is not people. People is not the economy.
That said, the rest of the G20 leaders seem to mostly be thinking about money at the moment, too. Who can tell if inventing another trillion dollars (or however much mythical money it is - certainly isn't anything any of us 'little people' will get our mitts on anytime soon) to get the economy working will be a force for good in the world? My guess is that since it involves money, and further attempts to rescue this mythical and infinitely corrupted capitalist system, no good will come of it.
I've been thinking a lot about the possible ways in which we can fix the world in a more socialist model - thinking about the demands that the Youth March for Jobs made - decent jobs for young people, an end to the so-called "slave-labour" that is the apprenticeship idea (though it is a modern equivalent - apprentices do not get anything near a living wage and unscrupulous employers ritually take advantage of the extra man power), no more tuition fees, no more top-up fees, emphasising the right to a decent education for all, and not just the rich...and of course, the inevitable anti-war message. I've been thinking about all this quite a lot, trying to think how I would change society if I could, and I'm not sure I know.
The crux of the matter always seems to be MONEY. Saying you want to do something, you want to buy something, you want to start a movement, a project, etc. The first question is ALWAYS 'where will you get the money?', never 'what do you want to do that for?' or 'how important is it?'. ALWAYS money.
Fact is, we've all grown too dependent on money. Why? It's essentially a made-up thing, that allowed people to trade, and was invented as a thing that you would swap for something else. But then money became...virtual, all this stocks and shares nonsense, and somehow it could grow and shrink according to, well, the wind, pretty much, and there's all these guys in pinstripe suits who make and ruin other people's lives according to what the money is doing. Consultants being paid £100k pa telling hospitals to take out every third lightbulb to save money. Regional accountants closing branches of shops and making people unemployed because the money's slowed down. Companies, hospitals, schools, etc, paying over the odds to hire contractors because the company accountants have told HR to keep the headcount down, and since temps Don't Count, and besides, they come under a different budget code, well, let's get some temps in at twice the price.
Case in point - I have heard that we have enough bricks stockpiled in this country to rebuild Nottingham. We also have high unemployment amongst builders, not to mention an accommodation crisis. Undoubtably there are people in our councils, in our dole queues, and in our offices, who can link the three together into a new, nationalised, building project? But the country is in this big imaginary debt which is meaning that no one's doing anything because there's no way to make them, because no one's going to go to work on this unless they're being paid a living wage. Which, in money terms, is quite a lot, actually.
So we pretty much just need to take money out of this equation, and start swapping other things instead, in an attempt to rebuild society so that everything that needs doing is done, and everyone that needs feeding is fed, and housed, and employed, or not, as the case may be. Start from the bottom up, and see what needs to be done, who can do what, and how, and what with. Find some other way of operating than with money, which can be stretched, and grown, and warped, and stolen, and accumulated. Then we can start to improve things.
But no, the world leaders are still on about saving the economy, as if they've never heard that old adage about not being able to eat money. According to them, Brazil is now worth more than Britain. Well, about time - it's a huge country with many resources. Our piddly little country is nowhere near as valuable, because it's a little island with not much going for it besides, er, money. There's no rule book about which countries SHOULD be at the top of the pile, because we're all on the same planet, so why can't we all just work together? Why does that have to be so difficult?
In conclusion: The world leaders are going to have to do more than just trying to resurrect a deeply flawed idea if the world is truly to be changed for the better for all of us who live on this planet, not just the few rich ones.