A sick society
Dr. Ian Burns is Glasgow’s public health director. He has recently been commenting on the relationship between health and poverty in Glasgow. What he has to say applies to all cities:
“If we are going to do something about Glasgow's ill-health you have to confront the poverty. The Government have acknowledged there is a link between ill-health and poverty but they have always said we don't know if the one is caused by the other, ” he said."We are saying it is, the link is empowerment. If you are unemployed, have no educational background, and don't know where your children‘s next meat is coming from, you have the sense of the system doing things to you" (The Herald, 21 December).
The sad truth is that medical care is a commodity. If you can afford it you can get the most modern treatment immediately, but if you are poor you can join the waiting list to get treatment from underfunded overworked NHS staff.
Hard core
The term “hard-core” is popular with the press. We have read of “hard-core pornography” and “hard-core criminality”. Now the Government have found “hard-core rough sleepers”:
“In a statement. Environment Minister Robert Jones said the Government's winter shelter programme, with up to 350 places in Central London, made it unnecessary for anyone . . . to have to sleep on the streets this winter'. ”"It is clear, ” the Minister added, "that street level agencies are finding themselves trying to help a hard core of rough sleepers ” (Observer, 18 December)
However, Homeless Network, an umbrella group of 30 charities, report that 288 people were sleeping rough in late November, a seven percent increase compared with May and estimate that during the past year 3,000 spent part or all of their time sleeping in the streets in the survey area alone.
Government ministers climbing out of their chauffeur-driven cars for a night out at the Covent Garden Opera may console themselves that the street-sleepers strewn around are “hard-core rough sleepers”, but socialists know that not only has capitalism a hard-core but that it is an extremely bitter fruit for the poor, disabled and homeless.
What a wally!
The shallowness and double standards of politicians were epitomised by John Major’s insistence that schools should conduct daily “acts of worship” on a broadly Christian basis.
"Mr. Major said daily worship for all pupils allowed them to explore their own beliefs and helped build community spirit and shared values, and reinforced positive attitudes" (BBC2 Ceefax, 17 December).
What that bit about acts of worship (ugh) allowing pupils to “explore their own beliefs” really amounts to is the attempted indoctrination of young minds, or what was called “brainwashing” when Nazis and the so-called communists did it.
And just how do these acts of worship build “community spirit and shared values” in, say, Northern Ireland? Mind you. Major will hear plenty of “positive attitudes” being reinforced by the hangers, floggers, xenophobes and other Christian worshippers at Tory conferences.
Whether Major thought up such rubbish by himself or merely parroted what some Tory hack told him, doesn’t matter, because he is damned either way.
A sorry sight
On BBC News (22 December) an entire workforce marched arm-in-arm through Liverpool streets singing “Here We Go”. So full of patriotic fervour were they that they waved and even wore the Union Jack. This was obviously a big celebration.
And what was it all about? Only that Bryant and.May, Britain’s last match factory, had closed down and this was the workers' way of marking the occasion.
Perhaps these workers will reflect on what good their patriotism did them when they signed-on the following day.
The sporting life
According to the dictionary definition, sport is “pleasant pastime; amusement, diversion”. So what are we to make of newspaper headlines that scream “Doping Ban”, “Bribery allegations”, and “Football Manager Took Bungs”?
Just as the financial pages are concerned with Insider Dealing, Dirty Tricks Takeover Bids and all the other skulduggery' of the City, so athletics, cricket and football reporters are as much concerned with cheating, doping and bribery as with reporting sporting events.
The truth is that capitalism is a social system based on profit, greed and deceit. Sport inside capitalism is big business, so it is no wonder that it reflects the chicanery of the system.
In a socialist society human beings would be able to enjoy sport as a “pleasant pastime”; amusement; diversion". That is impossible inside the present production-for-profit system.
Canadian capers
Some Canadian students have invited Tommy Sheridan of Scottish Militant Labour to Canada to speak about socialism.
At the Euro-elections last June Sheridan’s manifesto, besides being full of pictures of himself and claims that he is “the people's champion”, “hammer of the Tories”, etc., carried an article entitled “What Is Socialism?”.
According to this, production will still be for sale on the market and money, banks and finance will remain. What it all added up to is capitalism’s buying and selling system along with the usual idealist’s illusion that it can be “planned and run for the benefit of everybody”.
If those Canadian students want to know about socialism then Sheridan is the last one to tell them.
1 comment:
That's the February 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard done and dusted.
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