This is a long article (excerpts from a book apparently) but it’s interesting.
Basically the author, a man with Jewish heritage, makes a fake persona and joins far-right groups. He’s assisted by the group Hope Not Hate.
What do you think of the far-right? One of the interesting points that is made in the article a few times is that some far-right adherents, met by the author, seem to want friendship more than anything else. At least that’s the author’s view.
Any guesses as to what effect pulling loads of people’s PIP is going to have on this situation?
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I don’t think that’s the only answer (as in restoring PIP). At least in the UK, we’ve been horrible for over 50 years at creating meaningful and lasting communities where people can afford to live and work. In my opinion, we should create the conditions to make it easier for as many people as possible to be working and contributing to community life. Get some pride back by seeing small improvements in your life or local areas instead of seeing a slow lazy slide into decline and exorbitant prices and shit infrastructure. Business rent is absolutely mental in most places for example. Imagine not paying all that amount in business rent and taxes and instead hiring more staff that get paid a decent wage and offering a decent snack or sandwich with every drink you sold - oh and it would also cost a few quid instead of close to a tenner for a drink and pack of crisps. These things happen right now in Europe so it isn’t beyond the UK to do something similar. Nobody can afford to make being a waiter a career choice in the UK but it is quite common on the continent. Why is that? Get more people working and feeling a sense of pride in their life instead of struggling month to month. Obviously being a a waiter and the restaurant industry is just one example.
The reason your pint and a packet of crisps costs what it does is huge multinationals buying all the breweries out, buying all the pubs out, buying all the land the pubs are standing on.
Those huge companies then squeeze every last drop of profit out of everything, leaving very little product, at a very high price.
Exactly the same thing is what’s wrong with every single government service, from the very tippy top, to absolute rock bottom, it is all run by private entities whose sole purpose is to extract maximum profit above all else.
Prisons, railways, schools, GPs and dental surgeries, hospitals, power infrastructure, public transport, road construction and maintenance, everything is subject to the same problem; private enterprise leeching money and resources away from it’s intended purposes towards those that have more than they can spend in a million lifetimes back to back.
All the major political parties in the UK for the last 40 years have done the same thing, sold off what was yours to private companies so they can profit off you coming and going.
Until we the people of this poxy island remind the politicians who they work for, you will continue to be bent over a barrel and buggered for all you’re worth.
Edit: Worth pointing out here that the entire benefits system in run by private companies leeching billions of pounds a year out of the benefit budget for themselves. The real benefits scroungers are capita, g4s, serco, et al.
Give it it’s clearest name: corruption. Permeating every aspect of life here. So normalised that it’s pretty invisible to 51% of country.
How does it work on the continent, for example? Multinationals don’t exist? Or do the governments over there restrict what they can and can’t do such that you can have multiple neighbourhoods with good quality cheap food and drink and great service year round.
