Wanted: Free Labour for Tesco

Edit: It would appear that the "permanent" part was some sort of error on Tesco's or the JobCentre's part. They aren't forcing us into permanent posts yet. The whole thing is still bullshit though.


Edit 2: Tesco have pulled out and started their own scheme.Tesco still suck, but at least they're paying their work experience bods. And pissing off the Torygraph to boot (it "undermine[s] the Coalitions own efforts", apparently).
 
Tesco, and anyone complicit in this, should go fuck themselves. There are several more articulate ways that I could have phrased that sentence, but none of them would have quite had the impact appropriate for a response to a call for someone to work in a permanent post 6 week stint for their Job Seekers' Allowance (back up link in case the actual advert has since been removed, (credit to @latentexistence for the screenshot)) The title of this post was only mildly hyperbolic, if that.


Did I mention that the post was permanent? (it turns out it isn't, it was just a mistake)

Of course, this is only a particularly egregious development (although probably not a unique one) in the ongoing attacks on what Tory rhetoric calls a "something for nothing culture" on the part of people. meanwhile, they're sweeping the fact that "something for nothing" probably applies more to companies under the metaphorical rug.

For instance, from May to November 2011, 24,010 people were forced into unpaid placements for a month. On pain of losing benefits for 1/4 of a year. Because, y'know, it's not like the placements at, say, "high-street chains" would have been suitable for anything other than government-subsidised unpaid labour or anything like that. (charity work is also an option (still a rather dodgy one considering it's forced), but charities aren't the ones getting the contracts).

In addition to this, there are cases such as the one of Cait Rielley, who ended up on a two week placement at Poundland stacking shelves (for 'training'). Of course, Poundland could have really needed the help, for example their Christmas sales went up by 25% last year. You can't expect them to actually pay their workers, can you? Anyway, why's she moaning when some people have placements of six months. That was sarcasm in case you haven't guessed.

It might be worth making a note of the 'logic' behind forcing people to work for well below minimum wage. The idea is that paying companies to take on free labour will get the people forced to work into the habit of working again, as "a sanction" for 'sabotaging' attempts to get them jobs (warning: Mail link, and it's one of their really dodgy ones as well). Sometime down the line, this will magically get them an actual paid job (of which there are, of course, no shortages). 

Actually, the point the 'Coalition source' made to the Mail about workfare being a "sanction" ("But is it meant as a sanction? Yes – and we are convinced it will have an effect") may well be hitting straight to the point about why the Government is doing this. The idea of people getting jobs at the ends of it is secondary to a vindictive rage at those who have the misfortune to be unable to find a job (when there are 6 people looking for every vacancy, it's not exactly fair to ay that unemployment's down to being 'workshy'). There's this twisted logic that trying hard enough will cause a job to materialise.

The really ironic thing being that, if anyone's sabotaging people's attempts to find work, it's the Government giving companies free workers. Why the hell would a company hire someone (even for under a living wage), when they can get someone to work for them for free? I'm not some sort of economics expert (my knowledge runs to Freakonomics and intuition for the most part), but I don't think you have to be one to realise that - if workfare was ever really intended to get people into work without a great deal of doublethink being applied - something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong. Unless there's some fancy counter-intuitive economics thing I don't know about (which I'll concede as being a possibility).

Of course, to answer my rhetorical question, public outcry could force companies to at least vastly reduce their 'employment' of people on workfare (it worked on Sainsbury's and Waterstones), and there's a day of action on the 3rd of March. Because, seriously, this whole thing is bullshit.

See also:
Boycott Workfare
A Latent Existence: Who benefits from the Work Programme
A Latent Existence: Government work placement schemes little more than slave labour
Edingburgh Eye: The ideology of workfare

Old Post: F**k The Coalition

The following was posted originally on my old LiveJournal here on the 22nd of November 2010, it has been edited for spelling, grammar, and spacing, but the original hasn't, I've also tried to clarify a few points in square brackets. I'm also reposting this here because, if I can remember my password, I'm probably going to only use my LJ for fangirling over mainstream rock/emo bands. And I really doubt you're interested in my thoughts on Hayley Williams's latest hair colour (not that I've ever posted about that, it's just nice to have the option to).

"The phrase which makes the title of this post has turned into a catchphrase of sorts on twitter (alongside "Hooray #not"), seeing as I've had good call to say it at least 4 times today (well, yesterday as of alone. Admittedly it was over 3 things which I used it, but I think I need to explain WHY I need to say this in more detail. Or just write it repeatedly going by the rather disorganized nature of my thought process and the fact that, to be frank, I am PISSED right now. 

There were various things which made me angry, although most of my anger is still directed at tuition fees rising (I'm a twin and there's no way my parents can afford £18,000 a year [am now aware that this might not work that way, still irritated at the fees rise], plus living costs, so I'd need to work; which, in this day and age, is easier said than done, and I'm not the most emotionally competent of people (I may or may not have mentioned this before, but according to an internet test my EIQ is probably in the 50's [for self-actualization, the site claimed its tests had been scientifically tested, and it was presumably set so that 100 was the average], so yeah)) and, in my opinion, more importantly are the revelations in this article in the Guardian/Observer concerning the response to the Millibank protests (which, incidentally, I mostly agree with, but that guy who threw the fire extinguisher off the roof was a plonker, like Paul O'Grady said, he should have used it to smash a few more windows/doors [this was a joke, this was also, I think, before Edward Woolard handed himself in, I definitely don’t agree with his sentence]).

Apparently the police are planning on working with defence firms to 'militarise' their response to stuff like this, disregarding the fact that they're privatising yet another thing, there is something mildly disturbing about this, especially when you realise what they're working with the defence firms for: "armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment". Basically they want to be better able to observe us/keep an eye on us and at the rate we're going it'll probably turn out that George Orwell was only off by 30 years in 1984 in my opinion. Then again, I may be being alarmist, and he was behind with the technology too, seeing as I don't think that the Party in 1984 had 'unmanned spy drones' to get intelligence on demonstrations, which is what the Tories are planning on using (I seriously wish I was exaggerating here).

They're also planning to counter "threats of civil disobedience from 'political extremists'", which is a rather vague term (for starters define 'civil disobedience', I have a horrible feeling that the Government's definition is one that dictates that anything less tame than the protests by the 'peaceful majority' of students counts, not to mention the definition of 'Political Extremists', which I have a hunch to be more Socialist Worker's Party than EDL , if only due to the former, in my opinion, having far more sympathetic aims and being left-wing [yeah, not sue where I stand on the SWP now, and I’m not even sure that my statement concerning the EDL is accurate]), and "monitoring “extreme leftwing activity”", which is another vague term, does it mean the activity of people who are extreme leftists (like the non-media definition of anarchist, according to my interpretation of the term [not sure what I mean here, probably the same definition by which I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist or Libertarian Socialist]) or extremist activity from leftists (like the media definition of anarchist [people who smash things up/actually do anything outside of march from A to B]), not to mention that it's only focused on left-wing activity, which actually does make sense as the right-wingers are probably pretty chuffed with the Coalition government,. And we're supposed to think that the Tories aren't being ideological, yeah [though they’re actually being more factional and authoritarian here, the stuff they’re pulling off is ideological though].

Honestly, I'm 14, so I can't vote, but if I was 18 I probably would have voted Tory in the election (admittedly they always get in where I live, but this is still an incredibly embarrassing fact), or probably Lib Dem, so yes, I would have voted in the coalition. But it is worth bearing in mind that all I've experienced is Nu Labour and the press was largely supportive of them [the Tories, not Nu Labour, also I think I still thought of the Grauniad as a paper for ‘posh’ people (ironic for someone who used to read the Mail, I know)], and back then I believed pretty much every opinion voiced there (including <shudder> the Daily Mail). This was because, if I'm being honest, all of those changes were happening to 'Benefit Scrounging Scum' who were, to me at the time, pretty much that [scrounging scum].

I can't even relate to the person I was a few months ago politically apart from the disagreeing with banker's bonuses. Really, I wish I was kidding. So basically seeing this stuff going on (especially since I think the Tories criticised Labour for using too much surveillance) made me feel betrayed. And it isn't just this, I've now realised that the stereotyped portrayal of people on benefits as 'Benefit Scrounging Scum' is just plain wrong, and for the life of me I can't help but wonder why the state lets these lies continue for any reason other than this stereotype suiting their ideological aims, of course they probably don't care. Heck, I can't even get my head round the logic behind some of the coalition's policies (like the whole 'forcing long-term unemployed to work below minimum wage in the private sector' to make less people claim JSA thing), so yeah: F**K The Coalition.

The quotes are from the Guardian/Observer article I linked to at the start, with the emphasis mine."

Also, I really need to start saying the stuff I said would be my catchphrase more...

 

Little Brother

The United States Department of Justice has given twitter a subpoena asking for the details of 'customer or subscriber accounts for each account registered to or associated with WikiLeaks', from November 1 2009, or over a year ago. You can read the subpoena in more detail here. The reason: it [the information] is 'relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation'.

I'm unclear as to what precisely 'associated with WikiLeaks' means, but I'm under the impression that the subpoena applies to every single one of WikiLeaks's, as of me writing this, in the region of 635,000 followers (although, presumably, there are SpamBot followers).

Although I'm not an expert on US law I am under the impression that only the stealing of state secrets is actually illegal, making the criminal investigation either tangentially towards Julian Assange or towards Private Bradley Manning, who is believed to be the one who provided WikiLeaks with the material for the Iraq War Logs and Cables leaks, as well as the 2007 video taken on an Apache helicopter which showed (I think) civilians being shot dead by it. I doubt that the data would be material to the allegations against Julian Assange (which he may actually be guilty of, but he may also be innocent and it is the latter which would normally be assumed (most likely for the worse, but there is little doubt that who Julian Assange is is the main motivation for the efforts to charge him, not the crime itself (this being a sad reflection of our time))) due to them being unrelated with WikiLeaks except for the man these allegations are towards, nor would knowing these details be material in any investigation towards Private Bradley Manning (who is presently being held in solitary confinement) especially considering that he has spent most of the last year imprisoned.

In fact this is likely just another stage in the US Government's attacks on the organisation; making people afraid to support it, to quote @Nick4Glengate "They don't need to charge us with anything - they are relying on fear.". Of course there is one other advantage I can think of that the US government would have; the information on more people, people with whom they may not agree politically. Knowing that the US know who you are is actually terrifying, meaning that they get two advantages which enable them to better control us; knowledge of who we are an us being afraid of them. I believe that this can be classified as tyranny and almost certainly violates the US's own Constitution (though whether this is viewed as an issue by the government remains to be seen).

This brings me onto the second part of this post; yesterday, by some coincidence, I was reading a 'book' (well, a PDF version of a book) by Cory Doctorow called "Little Brother", I won't spoil the details of the plot here (although, if you want to read it, it's available free to download off the official website, I personally picked the fan-made PDF), but a blog is started in the book called 'Abuses of Authority' which details the 'Big Brother' actions of the Department of Homeland Security, and abuses of power. I'm thinking that we need something like the the one in 'Little Brother' to keep an eye on not only the 'Big Brother' circumstances which can arise in this country, like as detailed by Police State UK amongst others, but the ones in other countries, such as the US, all in one place; I'm of the belief that, if dots can be connected (to use a term similar to that used in the 'about' section of Police State UK) between the various attack on our civil liberties by the ruling class in the UK then those same links can be made with other countries, and if we are going to tackle the 'Big Brother' complex in which many countries have settled then it must be a more international co-ordinated effort which stops it, if we're being oppressed then it's our right to stand up to our oppressors, and we should stand up against all oppression, not just that which effects us.
Incidents like this abuse of power by the US DoJ are precisely why I think we need a collaborative effort to detail abuses of power wherever they happen, not just in places such as China (which would almost certainly be lambasted for pulling a similar move), but in ostensibly 'free' countries, such as the UK and the US, where civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of security.

We need to show our governments (as, to paraphrase the Constitution, Government comes from the consent of the people) that we won't stand for this sort of thing, regardless of whether it occurs in the place we live or overseas, whether it serves the interest of our countries or not; isolation between peoples of different nationalities serves only the interests of those in power, enabling them to get away with things they ordinarily wouldn't by stirring up fear of people in those countries and making us feel that, for our safety, our liberty, and the liberty of others has to be taken away. We need to collectively make a stand against and spread awareness of these abuses of power, otherwise they'll keep happening.