Tag Archives: economics

Avanti o Popolo, Alla Riscossa.

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Jack’s Wednesday guest post reverts to tradition and appears on Thursday –

OK – I’m going to dive in!

As an ex-teacher I’ve obviously been following the battle waged by my WV colleagues and it reminded me very much of the situation in Scotland at the height of Maggie Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister.

The Scottish teachers were the only group to actually win a strike against her and it was partly through the same solidarity that the brave and solidly united teachers of WV have shown.

But something else I’ve begun to see – that’s the young folk all over this country who are emerging and aren’t intimidated. Right now it’s about gun control but that’s sure to lead to other things. I wonder if there’s just the possibility that we might see a revival of the movements of the 60s and 70s that would bring about some change?

It’s so tiring and frustrating to be continuing all the time to fight back and it mostly means going out there either on the street or into hostile territory. Many people have paid a terrible price for doing that and many more likely will!

But here’s the really scary thing. In the US and the UK there’s effectively a two party system and that makes it so easy for the vested interests and the big corporations to simply pay them both off. That seems to be exactly what’s happening. Of course the argument is always to get elected on a party ticket and then change things from within. All I can say is that there are hardly any examples of full-time professional politicians that I see who haven’t been bought – either with brown envelopes or ermine cloaks – or both.

Things appear to work better in those European countries that use voting systems that promote multi-party coalitions but I don’t see any likelihood of the folk benefiting from the existing system ever agreeing to that.

So, for now, there doesn’t seem to be much alternative than to be inspired by the WV teachers and the young folk around the country! Of course you can also visit your local bookstore and find lots of great books about community activism – such as Randy Shaw’s excellent ‘The Activist’s Handbook’!

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We don’t Need no Thought Control

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Jack manages to get his Wednesday guest post up here on a Wednesday –

There’s a meme going around Facebook just now about the trade-off between corporate life and a happy life that starts with a quote from the Dalai Lama about suits and ties and it got me thinking –

I started my working life as, first an apprentice house and sign painter and decorative painter, and then wound up running my own business doing that. So fairly laid back and relaxed although always at the demands of clients and customers. Eventually I graduated to teaching these skills in the local community college.

That was when my suit and tie days began and so it continued until I retired in 2002. Even after that as a training and education consultant I continued for a number of years to work ‘business hours’ and still in a suit and tie.

It’s very tempting, of course, to buy into the notion of a regular day job existence ‘stealing’ your independence and freedom but I don’t really agree with that I’m afraid. All the time I was attending to customers’ needs and running a college department I had an escape hatch into the world of traditional folk music. So there was a parallel world that I could inhabit whenever I wanted to.

What this meant was that when I finally did retire I had a number of different pensions that kicked in as well as a substantial ‘lump sum’, and I still had the parallel world. That really did give me independence and freedom and I think that’s a perfectly good trade-off. Mind you, I was brought up in the cradle of ‘the protestant work ethic’ so maybe I’m programed in that direction.

It’s possible, I’m sure, to live a satisfying life without the need for a 9 to 5 job that involves a suit and tie and it may be that the US is a country where that is more practicable. I have no doubt there are particular corporate world jobs that provide little satisfaction and are even grindingly boring. So maybe I was just lucky. I certainly always used to describe myself to my favorite college boss as a ‘lucky painter’, although she eventually got tired of me saying that!

All I can say in conclusion is that I have no problem whatsoever with my particular trade-off. But I rarely wear a suit and tie these days – –