Good comment in the Daily Mail today

Yes, i know it's a cunt's paper but in response to the rioting in Greece someone put this diamond on the slagheap that is the comments underneath:

I must be an anachist because I would stop working in a heartbeat if I could! However, I understand that I have to pay for the things I need & that the state does not have a responsibility to pick up the tab for it. One of the problems of the modern, global, capitalist world is that it unfairly distributes wealth with the very few near the top controling the vast majority of the money....& it is a global problem. When the distribution is so unfair, it will create this undercurrent of unrest from those who are getting a raw deal. In the last 10 years, the world of work has become such a drudge with ever decreasing pay, bad job security & less stimulating work. I used to love my work but now I am a clock watcher....I feel my previously good working ethic draining away, erroded by all of the above problems. Greece is just an example of the world whch is slowly getting worse for ordinary people while the elites enjoy ever increasingly obscene wealth & privilige....A fate Britain faces!!!

In consideration of revolution, Tony, you always have to consider what Flaubert said:

"Inside every revolutionary is a policeman"

No-one overthrows to cause chaos; they overthrow to put it straight and introduce order. And you can't take the poorly paid on reasonable (not "good") conditions who stay where they are for the reasonable conditions and say that (i) we're going to reduce your pay and (ii) fuck your conditions too.

You can't have 5% of the world's population owning 95% of the wealth.
Has to end in tears and will.

It isn't hard to keep people at least content, though, Tony. You have to work hard at making someone unhappy.

It seems everyone is putting the yards in at the minute.

I'd say 90% of the people I know, including family, are sick to death of the unfairness of the system right now.
That figure would have been half that 10 years ago.
It's all coming to a head very soon imo.

Bert wrote:In consideration of revolution, Tony, you always have to consider what Flaubert said:

"Inside every revolutionary is a policeman"

No-one overthrows to cause chaos; they overthrow to put it straight and introduce order. And you can't take the poorly paid on reasonable (not "good") conditions who stay where they are for the reasonable conditions and say that (i) we're going to reduce your pay and (ii) fuck your conditions too.

before we had mass popular culture, most of the population didnt really know how well the other half live, now we cant escape it, through magazines ,tv etc so people do feel resentful.

To a certain degree they didn't live like that, though, MG. Nobby will probably remember the Eastham business and the maximum wage for footballers***. Ray Clemence retired twenty or so years later on £3,000 a week after the most successful career any keeper had ever had. His son's first contract for Spurs at 18, a little over ten years later, was worth £3,000 per week. It hasn't stopped.

People used to not begrudge the higher wages of footballers because it was a short career. Now the career is longer and the pay is unjustifiably higher. The Premier League alone has forced more than half the have-not clubs into administration when it was as rare as rooster's eggs to see a club fold in the latter half of the 20th century.

Translate that across the world of business and you can see why there is resentment. It isn't a long-term phenomenon suddenly gone public. It's latterday greed.


***£20 a week in season, you had no freedom of movement as the club retained your registration - you needed a second job

A premier footballers wage is obscene BUT he's primarily working class and he is skilled.Compare him to the chinless wonders who's only source of wealth was their ancestors exploitation of blacks, peasants and the workers in the burgeoning factories.

That's just it, MG. In 1960, he was working class. He isn't any more. It's not our game any more. You don't get the bus to the game with the players any more, they drive in from a fortress in Cheshire. Rio Ferdinand goes to Prestatyn for his holidays, he's slumming it. Forty years ago, he'd have been a flash fucker for hiring out a caravan that wasn't owned by a family member. They drank in your local. Solomon Kalou's birthday party was in the VIP area of a nightclub which was double booked. He got precedence. The other party included the third in line to the throne.

He is also not skilled. Carpentry is a skill. Plumbing is a skill. Kicking a bag is not a skill.

People will one day get wise to the pretence.

Bert wrote:That's just it, MG. In 1960, he was working class. He isn't any more. It's not our game any more. You don't get the bus to the game with the players any more, they drive in from a fortress in Cheshire. Rio Ferdinand goes to Prestatyn for his holidays, he's slumming it. Forty years ago, he'd have been a flash fucker for hiring out a caravan that wasn't owned by a family member. They drank in your local. Solomon Kalou's birthday party was in the VIP area of a nightclub which was double booked. He got precedence. The other party included the third in line to the throne.

He is also not skilled. Carpentry is a skill. Plumbing is a skill. Kicking a bag is not a skill.

People will one day get wise to the pretence.

they are born working class, they have middle class asspirations, do you blame them?
of course its a skill, though its more a talent I suppose, relatively few people are able to play at that lever.

No-one plays any more to get away from the pit, the docks or the biscuit factory, MG. They aren't brought up into what would now be considered austerity but as recently as say, the seventies, was the norm.