What about the Pensioners?
No tell! | 29.11.2003 10:22 | Liverpool
Firstly if you are a middle class trendy lefty (with an eye for the Queens language) and you are bothering to read this. Ignore the spelling mistakes, bad punctuation and grammar. To hell with the Queens language! That’s what I say.
Are local issues an anathema to the middle class left wing in Liverpool?
Is there such a thing as a middle class left-winger?
Do the middle class left have a different cultural perspective than the working class left?
Do middle class left-wingers have their heads buried in international issues?
Have the working class been brainwashed into thinking that the middle classes don’t even exist?
Is there a middle class resurgence in the UK?
Are the above questions a taboo or a reality?
Lets take a look at what is happening in Liverpool and for that matter in all the cities throughout the UK. The biggest issue is the plight of poor working class pensioners, who coexist on the £70 per week state pension, which is topped up by £32 social security, bringing the total weekly pension to £102 per week. How the bloody hell can anyone live on that? Yet hundreds of thousands of British pensioners are expected to live on this pittance.
Then we have the situation pertaining to the closure of care homes, especially council care homes. Liverpool and Merseyside has seen most of its car homes closed and the ones that are still there can not look after their elderly residents properly because they are being run on a shoe string as central and local government cuts funding to a minimum.
All in all, if like me you are nearly fifty or over, and like many working class people who have not bothered to put away for a pension because they never seem to earn enough to do so, there is nothing down for you. Us poor unfortunates will have to live on the dreadful state pension, made up by social security benefits. What a future we face!
It’s about time the left wing organised the pensioners and demanded a better future for them. If the middle class left wing, who are mostly all well healed with great pensions and their nice houses in the suburbs, wont help working class pensioners (because they have their heads buried in international issues) then us working class folk need to get together and fight for a better deal from this despotic government that is slowly eroding our civil liberties.
What are Age Concern and all these other central and local government funded agencies, which claim to be helping pensioners, doing to address the problems facing poor working class pensioners? Absolutely nothing! Most of the administrative guys who work for these agencies are middle class trendy leftists, who after witnessing the miseries of poor working class pensioners, retreat back to their nice little houses in the suburbs.
The working class middle-aged need to push these useless well-healed middle class hedonists to one side, organise themselves and their working class pensioner comrades, to fight for a better deal.
Is there such a thing as a middle class left-winger?
Do the middle class left have a different cultural perspective than the working class left?
Do middle class left-wingers have their heads buried in international issues?
Have the working class been brainwashed into thinking that the middle classes don’t even exist?
Is there a middle class resurgence in the UK?
Are the above questions a taboo or a reality?
Lets take a look at what is happening in Liverpool and for that matter in all the cities throughout the UK. The biggest issue is the plight of poor working class pensioners, who coexist on the £70 per week state pension, which is topped up by £32 social security, bringing the total weekly pension to £102 per week. How the bloody hell can anyone live on that? Yet hundreds of thousands of British pensioners are expected to live on this pittance.
Then we have the situation pertaining to the closure of care homes, especially council care homes. Liverpool and Merseyside has seen most of its car homes closed and the ones that are still there can not look after their elderly residents properly because they are being run on a shoe string as central and local government cuts funding to a minimum.
All in all, if like me you are nearly fifty or over, and like many working class people who have not bothered to put away for a pension because they never seem to earn enough to do so, there is nothing down for you. Us poor unfortunates will have to live on the dreadful state pension, made up by social security benefits. What a future we face!
It’s about time the left wing organised the pensioners and demanded a better future for them. If the middle class left wing, who are mostly all well healed with great pensions and their nice houses in the suburbs, wont help working class pensioners (because they have their heads buried in international issues) then us working class folk need to get together and fight for a better deal from this despotic government that is slowly eroding our civil liberties.
What are Age Concern and all these other central and local government funded agencies, which claim to be helping pensioners, doing to address the problems facing poor working class pensioners? Absolutely nothing! Most of the administrative guys who work for these agencies are middle class trendy leftists, who after witnessing the miseries of poor working class pensioners, retreat back to their nice little houses in the suburbs.
The working class middle-aged need to push these useless well-healed middle class hedonists to one side, organise themselves and their working class pensioner comrades, to fight for a better deal.
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I have to agree
29.11.2003 11:59
btw, before some smart -alec says it is not either/or, there is basically no action on poverty. housing etc, but plenty on the war, environment, etc...
info-man
Working Arse
29.11.2003 12:58
If you think that there aren't actions taking place relating to economic and social justice then you aren't paying attention.
I agree we need to be working on local issues more - actually I think there need to be more people working on issues full stop! Perhaps the reason you see big international issues being tackled is because they are BIG visiable issues which need addressing (and they are often issues that people can work on without actually having to change much about their own life).
Personally I am not going to work on pension issues if that means complaining about pensioners only getting 100 pounds per week. I get and live on 50 pounds per week. I'm not saying it's easy but there are more important things than having some spare cash for bingo and lottery (yeah yeah, poor joke I know).
I'm not personally worried about my pension because I doubt the state will pay up at all by the time I am ready to collect. I also doubt that the environmental issues will have solved themselves and moved aside so that I can concern myself getting a few extra pound each week.
Isn't this working class / middle class thing just more wank designed to devide us further? Haven't we got enough devision to worry about? What is this arbitary distinction between working class and middle class? Perhaps there was an easy deviding line in the past but what about now? Arn't we infact all the 'consumer class' in the industrialised west (north) while the real working classes are the labour pool of the resource rich 'developing' world (south)?
Watching the track suited label adorned masses in the shopping centers of essex, I feel little hope that the 'working classes' will see beyond their petty aspirations and join the struggle for a more just and sane world. Please tell me I'm wrong...
n
inter - national
30.11.2003 18:19
,
links for pensions campaigning
01.12.2003 12:45
National Pensioners Convention:
the NPC are also strongly supported by UNISON:
..and I promise neither organisation will care whether you're a 'middle-class tosser' or a 'track-suited moron'! ;-)
kurious
The REAL issue....
05.12.2003 14:28
with breaking down class systems and unjust racial and economic systems in the vague
and distant far-off countries of the world, but continue to studiously avoid the
crippling social issues and crippling social conditions in the UK, which means that
trendy lefties can assuage their guilt on one hand, and not challenge the unequal
resource distributions in England. And after all, all struggle is really about those
who have and those who have not. This is the same whether in Africa or India, or closer
to home in England and Ireland and so on. It is NOT good enough to fight for social justice for the rest of the world and have nice blinkers on when it comes to your own backyard, your own country and even the very street you live in. According to many sources, British pensioners have the lowest pensions in Western Europe and even America. What is going on here? Why is the 4th wealthiest country in the world treating large swathes of it's population as worthless and worthy only of contempt and a miserly standard of living?
The real issue isn't of class as such, it is one of unequal resource distribution. Simply put, if there was a basic minimum wage of about £7-8 per hour and a decent basic minimum pension for ALL British pensioners, the class struggle would be all but finished, in Britain at any rate. I get the feeling that many middle class talk a good revolution and are all for the workers and etc etc, as long as it doesn't challenge middle class salaries being high and working class salaries being as usual in Britain chronically low.
"We'll go on marches and demonstrations for ever comrades, just don't ask for us to fight for a fair minimum wage or a fair and decent pension; that might be just too much like real equality for our liking. Besides, these private school fees and 4-wheel drives are so expensive these days. More Chardonnay Julian?"
Timbo
Timbo o'the 'Pool
The REAL issue......
05.12.2003 16:45
with breaking down class systems and unjust racial and economic systems in the vague
and distant far-off countries of the world, but continue to studiously avoid the
crippling social issues and crippling social conditions in the UK, which means that
trendy lefties can assuage their guilt on one hand, and not challenge the unequal
resource distributions in England. And after all, all struggle is really about those
who have and those who have not. This is the same whether in Africa or India, or closer
to home in England and Ireland and so on. It is NOT good enough to fight for social justice for the rest of the world and have nice blinkers on when it comes to your own backyard, your own country and even the very street you live in. According to many sources, British pensioners have the lowest pensions in Western Europe and even America. What is going on here? Why is the 4th wealthiest country in the world treating large swathes of it's population as worthless and worthy only of contempt and a miserly standard of living?
The real issue isn't of class as such, it is one of unequal resource distribution. Simply put, if there was a basic minimum wage of about £7-8 per hour and a decent basic minimum pension for ALL British pensioners, the class struggle would be all but finished, in Britain at any rate. I get the feeling that many middle class talk a good revolution and are all for the workers and etc etc, as long as it doesn't challenge middle class salaries being high and working class salaries being as usual in Britain chronically low.
"We'll go on marches and demonstrations for ever comrades, just don't ask for us to fight for a fair minimum wage or a fair and decent pension; that might be just too much like real equality for our liking. Besides, these private school fees and 4-wheel drives are so expensive these days. More Chardonnay Julian?"
Timbo o'the 'Pool
Timbo