“The UK government is waging a punitive war on working people, from cradle to grave, in the name of ‘austerity’. This war includes attacks on child care, education, wages and pensions; cutting public services, privatising them and slashing welfare/social security safety net to shreds. Workers’ rights and conditions, including health and safety, are at the forefront of austerity cuts.”
Eureka! 24-chapters, each from an individual author or authors – on the on the vicious & harmful destruction of “austerity”, one of the most poisonous applications of misrule in the Devil’s arsenal.
“This book is about the devastatingly violent consequences of government policy conducted in the name of ‘austerity’. It is about the toll of death and illness and injury that so-called austerity policies have caused. It is about life-shattering violence caused by decisions that are made in parliamentary chambers and government offices. This book is about the violence of politics.”
“It is institutional violence. This is a form of violence that can be understood as a means of force that is not simply acted upon, but organised and administrated through legitimate means.
‘Institutional violence’ therefore describes the ordinary violence that make up the lived experience of austerity; the lived experience of feeling humiliated, anxious and vilified.”
Britain’s Cancervative coalition government of 2010, headed by toff & Rupert Murdoch’s fuck-sock – David Scameron – & his wingman, fellow Bullingdon Club member – George Osborne – orchestrated one of the most assaulting, mutilating & ruinous prescriptions of “austerity” measures on the nation the world has ever seen. It has wrecked, ravaged & raped the country into its current state of plight & woe, & continues under the latest Rupert Murdoch suppository supplicant – Kier Starmer – with an even greater detractor & pernicious adversary at the controls – Palantir & Peter Thiel.
“On first announcing his ‘emergency budget’ in 2010, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne [also a former Bullingdon Club member alongside Boris Johnson & David Cameron], preached that although the austerity economic policies are tough, ‘they are fair’ and that ‘everyone will share in the rewards when we succeed’.”
“Since 2010, the number of children defined as living in absolute poverty has risen by half a million. It is projected that child poverty will worsen significantly over the coming years. The impoverishment of children as a direct result of austerity is accounted for by a combination of cuts to welfare benefits, the driving down of wages and poor housing provision. Poverty and deprivation affecting families with children further increases the likelihood of child mortality and premature death.”
This is a fantastic book & collection of research, absolutely relevant & to-date on the subject of this extremist, deeply deleterious & damaging malpractice of “austerity” & the absolute & chronic havoc, pain, death, harm, grief, misery & despair that it reaps.
Aside from the truly devastating impacts & effects, the shocking & cavalier malevolence & malicious intent behind this malpractice & abuse of power & office can only demand it be viewed explicitly as highly criminal conduct, tantamount to the gravest criminal categorization & prosecution available.
“Instead of providing a wake-up-call to the government about the perils of deregulating and allowing a powerful sector of business to effectively self-regulate, the financial crisis of 2007/08 has had the opposite effect. If anything, the austerity-driven cuts that followed the crash have been used by the UK government to undermine regulators and impose unprecedented budget cuts.”
“Allowing a pregnant woman to go without food in a cold, unheated home is to compromise her baby’s life chances. The World Health Organization defines ‘child maltreatment’ as an action that in the context of a relationship of power results in ‘actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity’. If an individual takes such actions then they may be liable to prosecution. Yet if the political system results in such actions, it is seen as an inevitable, if unfortunate, by-product of economic necessity. This is not covert violence but overt violence.
“The fiscal policies implemented in the period following the 2007/08 crash have served as a pincer movement: drawing back even more of the social wage entitlements of the working class while at the same time ring fencing the elite wealth that remains intact at the top of the social structure. Nothing could be clearer: we certainly are not all in this together; we have all experienced austerity very differently.”
courtesy of the book’s extensive twenty-four chapters, a densely varied scope of catastrophe is examined. There is however, two extremely crucial & grave afflictions that unfortunately do not receive their own feature in the appendix, the first being the directly resulting youth violence that has marred Britain as a result. The spate & epidemic of knife violence, stabbings, & “bladed article” related attacks & maimings that soared after the Conservatives decimation of youth services & living standards became infamous even in international news. It was so acute, that a pronounced “knife culture” evolved & settled in the austerity conduced wounding, a dire fallout that had been predicted & strenuously warned against by scores of organisations & advisors, whom the Tory government chose to consistently ignore. Wedded to this new & potent youth violence was the emerging “county lines” phenomenon, as an additional symptom of advanced drug selling & national drug trafficking rapidly expanded & blossomed in the wake of the brutal “cuts”. None of this compelled the Cancervative’s to reverse course. Astonishing – & frankly inhumane & unthinkable – actions (better yet “crimes”) were deliberately taken during this abysmal plummeting that were explicitly to the detriment & downfall, including the entire liquidation of the governments Child Poverty Unit, & even more incorrigibly, the premeditated & fabricated extermination of the noble charity Kids Company, one of the last organisations dealing with “troubled” youth & stemming some of the most adverse effects of the austerity ramifications.
here you can see, indisputably & irrevocably, that you are dealing with utter fiends, operating under a clear & present malignancy. They all need to answer for these crimes.
Missing secondly, & just as grievous, is the massive, massive increase in “conditionally coerced” sex work or “sex survival”. That will also include “child prostitution”. It is always the same, a first casualty & an inevitability that has been proven time & time again.
The mainstream media has done a particularly poor job at covering this colossal & specific “scandal” or symptom, presumably at the behest of entrenched interests with a grip on editors’ output, as it is considered a danger to such grotesquely harmful & virulent “fiscal” policies, or, economic extremism (austerity).
One staggering article that I think peels clearer now more than ever – & I suggest everyone of you reads & shares – depicts the abject poverty in “First World Nation” USA in 2016, headlined – US teens often forced to trade Sex work for food.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/12/teens-america-hunger-food-poverty
naturally, the $ump Administration has done nothing but deepen the circumstances & penury that mark such shameful & dire statistics & crisis.
an extremely miserly pittance has surfaced on rare occasion within British press, often with no follow up or continuity.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/22/universal-credit-hardship-linked-to-prostitution
the truth is, these increases in “availability” & exploitable “work face” are highly desirable to the ilk inflicting them. Cheap, plentiful, “economically disadvantaged” fodder for the taking. This is the “double degenerative”, a secondary mass negative effect from a government action or policy that is also advantageous & can be utilised, exploited or indulged in.
boys on “the Meat Rack”, girls on The Lolita Express etc etc. is it any “coincidence” that so many of Trumpstein/Maxwell’s victims were impoverished?
“poor pickings”.
The exact same wounding would bear on the Eastern Block/Russia after the dissolving of the Soviet Union & the subsequent looting, selling off, & extreme asset stripping & vulture capitalism (much of it under the advice of Western “economic advisors” & “structural reforms”).
Hordes of “Eastern European girls” for the likes of Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump/ the notorious Trump Models Management, Jean-Luc Brunell, Peter Listerman, The Maxwells’, & predators “with money”.
They love it.
Some of these “manifestations” were covered recently by the stellar Kyle Kulinsky of Secular Talk.
meanwhile, repulsive, ostentatious & sybaritic “wealth wank” – slathered in cronyist-turbo-corruption – is festering at Whore-A-Lago under the Faecal Führer, who is about to cut food stamps for 42-million Americans, as David Pakman recently detailed so adeptly –
prostitution, sex-trafficikng, sexual assault & rape, pornography & “coerced vice” will all expound under “austerity” measures, & the billionaire/bastard class will be happy for it & welcome it with engorged rods.
these are the only two subjects that are absent in detail from this brilliant book, not because of any intentional neglect, but perhaps as so much was still being documented at the date of publication (2017). Other powerful contributions come from chapters such as The Degradation and Humiliation of Young People (Emma Bond & Simon Hallsworth), Child Maltreatment and Child Mortality (Joanna Mack), & Austerity and the Production of Hate (Jon Burnett), which deals with another convenient double degenerative; fascism & prejudicial scapegoating as a result of planned poverty.
Another very precious chapter is Fracking and State Violence by Will Jackson, Helen Monk & Joanna Gilmore. It’s amazing, & this is yet another topic & history that received appallingly minimised/infrequent press coverage, as did the HS2 forest felling protests & subsequent state & private contractor suppression.
“With such an imperative placed upon debt recovery, public bodies and government departments, particularly the DWP and HMRC, are now among the worst offenders of ‘aggressive enforcement’ practices, wherein, ‘the legal violence of the state ultimately plays the same role as the freelance “debt enforcer’”.
“It’s going to come to the point where it’s going to effect residents, the local population, in many ways we are at that point now, public health and protection is being eroded.” – Council worker
“We’re at the point where there is no more flesh left, this is starting to get dangerous, a danger to the public.”
a damning, disturbing & devastating read, expertly gathered & essential for fully understanding this detestable, criminal & unacceptable abuse of state power & perverse neo-liberal-economic wrongdoing.
“What began as a neoliberal policy turn to ‘better regulation’ then became turbo-charged under conditions of austerity, where the state claims it cannot afford to enforce law, and where business must be left to generate recovery. The subsequent institutionalisation of the non-enforcement of laws sends a green light to business that is routine, systematic, widespread social violence is to be tolerated, allowing private business to externalise the costs of its activities on to workers, consumers, communities, the environment. It further diminishes the quality and longevity of the lives of those with the least choice about where they live, what they do for a living or where they buy their foodstuffs.”
Various authors (edited by David Whyte & Vickie Cooper), 2017, Pluto Press, 223-pages.