2 thoughts on “Balls to Tory party conference….”

1. The sooner the Tories are removed from power, the better for everyone.
   Everyone that is except a comfortable elite who think that society should be run for their benefit. Its very different at the other end of the scale.
   I’ve just had the uncomfortable experience of watching a young Polish man being interviewed for a job in McDonalds.
   The manager, dressed I thought rather appropriately in black, carrying a black folder of forms and papers. They both took at a seat at the next table.
   Question 1. Are you flexible ? ( This was not an anatomical question, but referred to the fact that they wanted him to do 45 hours a week, including weekends and evenings when required). He agreed to all of this.
   Question 2. ( The manager read something on his list, then assumed a serious face, and looked directly at the young man),
   ‘’What do you understand by the term ‘Respect’ ?’’
   The Polish guy looked a bit perturbed at first, but then said, ‘’Is English word. It means I treat people well even if I do not like them.’’
   Perhaps not the best answer, as it suggested someone who could be difficult.
   Question 3. ‘’Why should you have respect for your Manager ?’’
   The Polish guy thought for a moment as if this was a difficult question, but then had a sudden inspiration,‘’Because they help me do my job.’’
   Obviously he had decided to switch over to straightforward flattery.
   My friend and I left at this point, but the Polish guy still had some way to go, by the look of the paperwork on the table.
   All this for a minimum wage job, working 45 hours a week, evenings and weekends.

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2. I had hoped to be able to attend today’s demonstration in Manchester via coach travel from London. But the more details I got of the travel time between my home and the coach pick up point and the 4 hours travel time each way with one on-board coach toilet and just one convenience stop each way, the less attractive the ‘free’ coach ticket felt.

   I recalled my history of the ‘hangover’ from one-day coach journeys in recent years and thus realised that even while excessive surveillance of benefit claimants operates as a disincentive to benefit claimants ‘speaking out’ train travel and an overnight stay would be more in order for my real involvement.

   Yet it is great that people are speaking out in their multitudes to counter the bollocks issued by the current successor to Peter Lilley and his ‘little list’.

   I have already placed a ‘then and now’ personal experiential comment on a relevant London Green Left blog piece, [Bob Ponsford’s] Experience of Welfare.

   Yet in honour of the representation of peopl of African-Caribbean attending Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meetings, I point here to David Cameron’s prison building in Jamaica instead of reparation for slavery injustice. Runnymede Trust informs us:

   “Minority
   ethnic people remain over-surveilled and under-
   protected within all stages of our criminal justice
   system. In England and Wales, black people are
   stopped and searched at seven times the rate of
   white people, and Asian people at twice the rate;
   30 per cent of all Black men living in Britain are on
   the DNA database, whereas 10 per cent of White
   men are; and though accounting for 2.2 per cent
   of the British population,… Black people make up 15
   per cent of the prison population – beating even
   the United States in terms of disproportionality
   (EHRC, 2010a: 172)” Source: Criminal Justice vs Racial Justice

   But of course, how people are treated at the jobcentre adds new dimensions to surveillance of disadvantaged people.

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