The Customer Experience Part Three

I was sitting in the Job Centre waiting to sign on, next to me sat a small group of men, they all knew each other and I think from listening to them they had worked together and now they were unemployed together.  One of them began to talk about how hard it was to find money for food, he had two children and a wife - he didn't know how to put food on the table.  Instead of changing the subject and talking about sport or the Olympics each of them agreed and began to talk openly and loudly about their struggles to "make ends meet". I was really surprised to hear the conversation, these weren't women chatting about where to get the best deal or pensioners having a little moan;  these men must have been in their forties, they were politically aware and angry as they discussed various scandals and the huge disparity between rich and poor they got even angrier.  The anger wasn't the kind where furniture was going to be kicked over and the police called, this was bone deep fury at the way the country is heading and how they had to stand up for what was right.  I didn't get to hear the rest of the conversation as I was called to sign my piece of paper with an advisor.

Walking away from the Job Centre I thought about what I had just heard, the same things are being said all across Europe, all across Africa, the Middle East, across the world and I compared their words with the speech I heard Melvin King, the Governor of the Bank of England give a few days ago announcing another down grading of our prospects - he tried to blame the Eurozone for the UK's poor export figures (this is the newest magic mushroom George Osborne has been cultivating - that great export figures are going to pull the UK out of the Depression) but that is not true, the UK exported more to Europe than the rest of the world.  Exports to the rest of the world fell by 9.6% whereas exports to the Eurozone fell by 7.6%. These aren't great figures and our economy has flatlined with zero growth which according to Melvin who looked like a deer caught in the headlights, could go on for years and then there is the matter of the largest deficit for 15 years.  Sorry to use so many figures, I find my own mind goes walkies when I start writing about it but that is what Melvin and all the feral rich want that it gets too much for us ordinary people to think about so we give up, well, we can't give up.  To put it in real terms just a few weeks ago 806 people applied for one job in my town, that's our reality.  The policy of removing real jobs from our society, making more and more people unemployed and thinking that somehow the private sector would produce new jobs to replace all the ones destroyed is lunacy.  In Buddhism there is a wonderful phrase about a person who is deluded by greed, anger and ignorance and they are like someone in a burning house which is coming down around their ears but they think they are at a fabulour celebrity party which will never end.  I think we are standing in the burning building but we can put the fire out.

I have written about growing our own vegetables and fruit, all the different ways you can do that on allotments, in back gardens, on top of blocks of flats and in window boxes, I wrote an earlier blog called "ABC" to try and make suggestions to augment our diets and keep down the cost of what we spend on food.  With food prices set to soar we have to act for ourselves.  Why do I say food is going to be more expensive?  The terrible weather conditions being experienced all over the world mean crops have been destroyed especially wheat (Australia's huge flood devastated its wheat crops, America has a terrible drought right across the fertile heart land hitting the wheat and corn harvests, Filopino floods, floods in China) you could say well, I don't eat much bread and I never eat Nan or Pitta bread so this doesn't affect me but it does - cake, scones, Yorkshire pudding, Toad in the Hole and Eccles cakes and finally add in the toxic component of food price speculation.  You get food riots, the riots last year across the country which were sparked by a murder were partly food riots (but we don't talk about that) instability, governments will fall and have already fallen in Haiti Egypt, Tunisia and other countries involved in the "Arab Spring" to name but a few and I haven't mentioned Africa.

What can we do, grow our own food, as much as possible, even one crop of tomatoes is one less to pay for and petition our government and the Labour Party to use the United Nations to outlaw food price speculation, let those huge cartels and multi nationals gamble with other commodities not food.

Finally, stop blaming other countries for George Osborne's ideology which is bringing us to the point of collapse.  We must lobby our elected members to force them to enact tax reform, change the policy which gives tax cuts to the feral rich, penalises the poorest, least able in our society and make them see they are living in a burning building and they are throwing petrol on the flames.