A Happy and Peaceful New Year

And what better way to start than with a selection of quotes from Nelson Mandela....
On Poverty: "Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.

Lessons of historic Skye PFI victory

The 2004 victory against the Skye Bridge tolls was “a genuine victory and if we are to profit from it we need to learn the lessons. The fight was part of our historic movement", writes Malcolm Burns in the Morning Star. But the unjust PFI system still saw a £20m PFI bridge cost the public up to four times that including polls, subsidies and buy out. Burns reviews the story as told in ‘An Drochaid’ (The Bridge Rising) on BBC Alba at 8.05pm tomorrow or on iplayer until Saturday. http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/12775

The ‘Second Job’ Propaganda Trick

In a contribution to the Tory Plebgate fightback, the Mail on Sunday is runnng an article on the 'scandal of 23,000 police who have two jobs.' In doing so the newspaper is recycling its despicable attacks on firefighters during the 2002 national FBU pay dispute and more recently in the 2010 London FBU shifts dispute. The real scandal of course is that so many public service workers are being forced to take part time second jobs (and third jobs in some cases) to make ends meet in an era of protracted public sector pay freeze, pay/tax credit cuts and an ever rising cost of living:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2254716/Scandal-23-000-police-jobs-Officers-face-new-curbs-moonlighting-figure-soars-nearly-20-year.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Con Dem cuts bias widens North South divide

A letter in today's Observer by Labour leaders of Northern English councils about the 'unfairness of the government's cuts' is a belated but welcome protest about the shameless bias in favour of Conservative voting areas in local government grant reductions since 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/dec/29/cuts-councils-newcastle-liverpool-sheffield

For Salvadore Allende And Pablo Neruda by Alan Britt

I crawled from a lily pad
ripped by the claw of a caiman
gliding Zen-like down the muddy Amazon.

Low Pay endemic in Britain

45% of the workforce in Britain takes home two-thirds or less of the national median hourly wage and are therefore officially classed as low-earners according to a European Commission report published last week. Low pay in Britain is 27% above the EU average:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/127487

Everything Changes by Bertolt Brecht

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

Roadmap to Apartheid

Last week the African National Congress voted to support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, declaring it was "unapologetic in its view that the Palestinians are the victims and the oppressed in the conflict with Israel." Democracy Now previews a new documentary film "Roadmap to Apartheid" - about the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/12/21/as_the_anc_votes_to_support

2012 - beginning of the end for the NHS?

In 2010, when the then, Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley published his cynical government White Paper, titled ‘Liberating the NHS’, he set out the coalition government’s plans to systematically destroy the NHS in England. Initially it was the trade unions who recognised the reality behind Lansley’s sophistry. Meetings and rallies were organised to explain the government’s real agenda for health. This was a blueprint for privatisation, and the removal of health provision from the responsibility of government. The unions were castigated by the coalition as doom-mongers and dinosaurs who opposed change. Now that Lansley’s vision has been enacted through the Health and Social Care Act, it is little consolation to say “we told you so”:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/alex-nunns/year-of-cataclysm-for-nhs

Must we destroy or create? You, what do you think? by Andrea Raos

Must we destroy or create? You, what do you think?
this very monticule of sand, the accumulation of a few days
and a little wind, our eyes have seen it, is it now
a human creature, does it come from the chance play of my intention
or from some more vast
play of chance? You only have to look at a leaf for it to be transformed
into a leaf: you press your face against the moss
nothing happens. This sand once fixed
we call sand while without mentioning its name the ant-lion
did what it had to do, what it does constantly and what it will cease doing
one day. Thus, as I see
debris of ineternity this ancient rock
swallows me up and hates me. Destroy, create . . . hatred
was not made for man, it is I.
http://www.poetryinternationalweb.net/pi/site/poet/item/3540/24/Andrea-Raos