Work hard boy and you’ll find …

Having seriously shot myself in the foot by using Leonard Cohen to introduce a previous post, I thought I’d play it safe and use a Cat Stevens song. ‘But I might die tonight’, was released on Tea for the Tillerman (1970) in an era dominated by Keynesian economics, when one could still expect to “find a job, settle down”, and retire with a pension at the end of it.

Four decades later and it seems jobs just aren’t what they once were.

The plan for us, as they cut and cut and created growing unemployment, was to push us into unpaid jobs, which, when you think about it could only mean destroying even more jobs. But then someone chanced upon a advert, for a nightshift worker at Tescos:

One of several adverts unearthed

It was at this point that twitter began to start bombarding the corporations involved in the scheme with tweets demanding they withdrew. Come the weekend, a Tesco opposite the Houses of Parliament was shut down. By now, most of the High Street stores involved have left or suspended their involvement in the work scheme, and a flagship Tory policy lies in tatters.

The sheer hypocrisy of these OxBridge educated fools was shown up. Grayling who seems to have had PR lessons from the IDF launched into a tirade about ‘jobs snobs’, and on radio 5 called the tweeps ‘left-wing extremists’.

Nick Clegg leapt in the defend the pauperisation of voters with rather amusing results:

Sabotage at the BBC?

By yesterday Tesco was promising future ‘trainees’ about £175 a week, and a job at the end of it, if it all went well. Thats more like it and it showed the JobsNobs up for the idiots they truly are.

Had the workers had bail-outs like the ones the banks received, we might have jobs to push people on benefits into, but the fact remains that there many more people without jobs, than there are vacancies, and until the JobsNobs create more jobs, they can expect much more resistance along the way.

Meanwhile, even amongst the 1% who benefited greatly from involuntary tax-payer bail-outs , its not all milk and honey. Heads are rolling all over the place, and profits are low.

Heres some of the reported job losses and profits warnings amongst the 1% for this month:

The start of February saw the 61year old group executive director for wholesale at Lloyds Banking Group announce his retirement, which will take place within the month.

In Romania, 28 days of countrywide protests,in temperatures of -20°C protests against IMF demanded health-care reforms resulted in the resignation of the Prime Minister Emil Boc and his cabinet on Feb 6th. A new government has since been formed by former secret service spy Razvan Ungureanu. He intends to carry on with most of the austerity measures.

Feb 7th Bloomberg ran an article claiming that both Switzerland’s largest bank UBS AG and Germany’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank AG had seen their profits for the 4th quarter plummet by 76%.

On February 8th, an Italian paper, l’Unità, ran a story claiming that 4 priests faced money launderingcharges in “yet another financial scandal [which] threatened to engulf the Vatican”.

February 10th saw the resignation of the MD and CEO of the Indian Tamilnad Mercantile Bank , A K Jagannathan resign for ‘personal reasons’ , following hot on the heels of the Dhanlaxmi Bank’ of India’s CEO. The value of the banks shares had fallen dramtically. However Dhanlaxmi denied that Amitabh Chaturvedi had been asked to resign.

February 13th and the head of Kuwait’s central bank steps down after 25 years. The Al Qabas paper claimed he had objected to “Kuwait’s rising public spending, including substantial wage increases for oil workers and others. He was also linked “to a corruption scandal that alleged officials received government payoffs”.

Valentines day saw the President of Nicaragua’s Central Bank, Antenor Rosales “quit amid differences with President Daniel Ortega”. On the same day, Malcolm Hayday, CEO and one of the founders of the UK’s Charity Bank announced his decision to step down.

The following day, the World Bank President Robert Zoellick announces he is going to go amid “much speculation”. Andrej Plos, the chief executive officer of Slovenia’s second largest bank, Nova Kreditna Banka Maribor, who assumed the role in January announced his resignation without giving a reason. Royal Bank of Scotland’s Australian country head Stephen Williams chose the same day to announce his departure.

February 16th and Ghana sees Ken Ofori-Atta step down as the Executive Chair of the Databank Group for health reasons.

On February 17th, German President Christian Wulff resigned, after failing to gag the press who were pursuing corruption allegations including a dodgy home loan, free villa holidays and upgraded flights. The Swiss national bank loses another key player after its council president, Hansueli Raggenbass steps down.

February 22nd and Kevin Rudd resigns as Australian Foreign Minister, citing attacks on him by Labor ministers and “faceless men”

And, hopefully soon to join him is the Swedish Foreign Minister:

WIKILEAKS aims to release documents revealing that Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is a US spy https://t.co/sqkS7DP9
@freethepeeps

It seems clear to me that the 1% has no strategy worth pursuing, and that inevitably they will face growing dissent as they try desperately to spin us into servitude. If we’re “all in this together” then we all need to work together to find a way forward.

Meanwhile Cat Stevens is now Yusuf Islam, and his tune has changed somewhat:

When you gonna leave/ My People? Give them room to breath/ My People? Stop oppressing My People?

Disclaimer

Other posts by Roy Bard Posted on February 23, 2012. Filed under Britain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.