“Glasgow Life” Still closing down working class facilities and culture while spending millions on tourist attractions. Turning the city into a generic shopping centre like all others and ignoring the cities uniqueness.
The People’s Palace at GalGael – Govan’s Critical Connections.
Burrell’s vanity project he got us to pay for.
Forgotten Communities to Cultural Tourism
The Burrell Effect – Transferring pubic to private
Mr Chesty Burns The Fried Bread
The 1970s Neoliberal’s unleashed growth, promised a reduction in the gap between rich and poor. The little boats would rise in the tide with the bigger boats. (Thatcher) It would widen democracy, destroy violent and vicious nationalism–a new renaissance. We are now in the most negative nationalist period since the 1930s with all the danger that goes with it. Our shores are littered with pollution and the wreckage of little boats that did not rise in the tide with the big boats but were destroyed in the wake of the ever rising tide of neoliberalism. (Analysis news) Continue reading
A strategy of ethical procurement could help us out of these dilemmas and many more.
“The first man who enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows, ‘Beware of listening to this impostor, you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
280,000 people in Scotland living in the private rented sector live in poverty. (in a so called welfare state) And how many are children and how many are malnourished, living in fear of the next exploitative bill, how many will be physiologically impacted; become a statistic of the criminal justice system, turn to mood altering drugs and alcohol, be isolated from their families and the wider society. Shelter is a primal need for survival, like air, like water. That is why housing is a basic human right and we fail as human beings unless we recognise this. And we fail as citizens by not demanding it. Money may insulate us from poverty but it can not protect us from the conflicts of our own humanity, nor the threat of changing circumstances that may affect anyone in any given time in a precarious world.
Rent is the most insidious weapon in the neoliberal project, it seeps into and controls everything, it sanitises our communities to the zero sum game of afford, it isolates people, creates fear of the future, destroys creativity and innovation and ultimately violates and criminalises the poor.
280,000 people living in poverty. Is that the legacy we want to leave our kids, our grand kids? Or do we need to listen to something different?
Living Rent
Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ union, fighting for decent and affordable housing for all.
From LA to Glasgow (Event)
A book launch for City of Segregation
100 Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles
“We must fight these racist ideologies for a different vision of housing, and justice at the soul of our cities.”
If ever there was a figure dedicated to changing the world it is Michael Albert. And other folk on the left doing the same thing would need to wonder what they are doing if they have never heard of him. My own political development has been greatly influenced by Albert’s work. Along with people like Chomsky, Michael Albert has been a go-to when inspiration is low and are great connectors to others doing important and inspirational work. Albert lives for the movement and proves it not just by words but continually doing things. By trying things by developing ideas and if they don’t work trying something else.
His honesty through these endeavours, their effectiveness, trials, errors, successes, failures is the most important part of his contribution to the movement for change. You can almost think you know him because so much of what he speaks about resonates through the experiences that those engaged in grass roots struggle come up against constantly. He does not shy away from failure but uses it to drive coherent points that will strengthen the next part of the struggle. Continue reading
Opening Up Francis McKee
In November 2003, Wired magazine published an article on the rise of the open source movement, claiming that. “We are at a convergent moment, when a philosophy, a strategy, and a technology have aligned to unleash great innovation.”
Open source ideology has now moved beyond the coding and programming to inform the broader fields of information and content distribution. At this level it acquired the power to fundamentally change the way in which society is organised.