Pilger: 'How We Are Gentrified, Impoverished And Silenced' -- worth a read

[Paul Mobbs]

Sad innit? If you want to address these issues right now, I suggest you
get on the train to Balcombe PDQ!

P.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-We-Are-Gentrified-Imp-by-John-Pilger-130725-46.html

How We Are Gentrified, Impoverished And Silenced -- 
And What To Do About It

John Pilger, OpEdNews, 25th July 2013


Momentous change almost always begins with the courage of people taking
back their own lives against the odds.

I have known my postman for more than 20 years. Conscientious and
goodhumored, he is the embodiment of public service at its best. The
other day, I asked him, "Why are you standing in front of each door like
a soldier on parade?"
 
"New system," he replied. "I am no longer required simply to post the
letters through the door. I have to approach every door in a certain way
and put the letters through in a certain way."
 
"Why?"
 
"Ask him."
 
Across the street was a solemn young man, clipboard in hand, whose job
was to stalk postmen and see they abided by the new rules, no doubt in
preparation for privatization. I told the stalker my postman was
admirable. His face remained flat, except for a momentary flicker of
confusion.
 
In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley describes a new class
conditioned to a normality that is not normal "because they are so well
adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been
silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or
suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does."
 
Surveillance is normal in the Age of Regression -- as Edward Snowden
revealed. Ubiquitous cameras are normal. Subverted freedoms are normal.
Effective public dissent is now controlled by the police, whose
intimidation is normal.
 
The traducing of noble terms such as "democracy," "reform," "welfare"
and "public service" is normal. Prime ministers lying openly about
lobbyists and war aims is normal. The export of 4bn worth of British
arms, including crowd control ammunition, to the medieval state of Saudi
Arabia, where apostasy is a capital crime, is normal.
 
The wilful destruction of efficient, popular public institutions such as
the Royal Mail is normal. A postman is no longer a postman, going about
his decent work; he is an automation to be watched, a box to be ticked.
Aldous Huxley described this regression as insane and our "perfect
adjustment to that abnormal society" a sign of the madness.
 
Are we "perfectly adjusted" to all of this? No, not yet. People defend
hospitals from closure, UK Uncut forces bank branches to close, and six
brave women climb the highest building in western Europe to show the
havoc caused by the oil companies in the Arctic. There, the list begins
to peter out.
 
At this year's Manchester International Festival, Percy Bysshe Shelley's
epic Masque of Anarchy -- all 91 verses written in rage at the massacre
of Lancashire people protesting against poverty in 1819 -- was an
acclaimed piece of theatre, and utterly divorced from the world outside.
In January, the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission had disclosed that
600,000 Mancunians were living in "extreme poverty" and that 1.6
million, or nearly half the population of the city, were at risk of
"sliding into deeper poverty."
 
Poverty has been gentrified. The Park Hill Estate in Sheffield was once
an edifice of public housing -- but unloved by many for its Le Corbusier
brutalism, poor maintenance and lack of facilities. With its English
Heritage Grade II listing, it has been renovated and privatised.
Two-thirds of the refurbished flats, reborn as modern apartments, are
selling to "professionals" such as designers, architects and a social
historian. At the sales office you can buy designer mugs and cushions.
This facade offers not a hint that, ravaged by the government's
"austerity" cuts, Sheffield has a social housing waiting list of 60,000.
 
Park Hill is a symbol of the two-thirds society that is Britain today.
The gentrified third do well, some of them extremely well, a third
struggle to get by on credit and the rest slide into poverty.
 
Although the majority of the British people are working class -- whether
or not they see themselves that way -- a gentrified minority dominates
parliament, senior management and the media. David Cameron, Nick Clegg
and Ed Miliband are their authentic representatives. They fix the limits
of political life and debate, aided by gentrified journalism and the
"identity" industry. The greatest ever transfer of wealth upwards is a
given. Social justice has been replaced by meaningless "fairness."
 
While promoting this normality, the BBC rewards a senior functionary
with a pay-off of almost 1m. Although it regards itself as the media
equivalent of the Church of England, the corporation now has ethics
comparable with those of the "security" companies G4S and Serco, which
have "overcharged" on public services by tens of millions of pounds. In
other countries, this is called corruption.
 
Like the fire sale of the power utilities, water and the railways, the
sale of Royal Mail is to be achieved with bribery and the collaboration
of the union leadership, regardless of vocal outrage. At the start of
his 1983 documentary series Questions of Leadership, Ken Loach shows
trade union firebrands exhorting the masses. The same men are then
shown, older and florid, adorned in the ermine of the House of Lords. In
the recent Queen's Birthday Honors, the former general secretary of the
TUC Brendan Barber received his knighthood.
 
How long can the British watch the uprisings across the world and do
little apart from mourn the long-dead Labour Party? The Edward Snowden
revelations show the infrastructure of a police state emerging in
Europe, especially Britain. Yet people are more aware than ever before;
and governments fear popular resistance -- which is why truth-tellers
are isolated, smeared and pursued.
 
Momentous change almost always begins with the courage of people taking
back their own lives against the odds. There is no other way now. Direct
action. Civil disobedience. Unerring. Read Shelley: "Ye are many -- they
are few." And do it.


John Pilger's new film, "Utopia," will be previewed at the National Film
Theatre, London, in the autumn 


-- 

"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government,
nor are we for this party nor against the other but we are
for justice and mercy and truth and peace and true freedom,
that these may be exalted in our nation, and that goodness,
righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity with
God, and with one another, that these things may abound."
(Edward Burrough, 1659 - from 'Quaker Faith and Practice')

Paul Mobbs, Mobbs' Environmental Investigations
3 Grosvenor Road, Banbury OX16 5HN, England
tel./fax (+44/0)1295 261864
email - mobbsey at gn.apc.org
website - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/index.shtml
public key - http://www.fraw.org.uk/mei/mobbsey_public_key-2013.asc

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