Chilean miners rescue: hope and solidarity

As the global media watches intently as 33 brave miners in Chile are rescued from the collapsed that they have been trapped in since August let’s hope that anti-trade union Chilean president, Sebastián Piñera, whose political roots go back to the Pinochet days, massively improves the health and safety of these mines.

The mine at San Jose is owned by San Esteban, a medium-sized mining company which is now being sued by families of some of the miners trapped underground, who claim the company failed to make safety improvements despite three deaths at its mines over six years, and dozens of accidents.

They are also suing Sernageomin, the state regulator of mines, for allowing the company to reopen in 2008 following its closure a year earlier over a death.

“There is undoubtedly a link between the price of metal and the number of people operating in the business, particularly in the small and medium-sized mines,” said Miguel Angel Duran, president of Chile’s Mining Council, which represents 16 of the biggest mining companies operating in Chile. 

In 2007 and 2008, at the height of the boom in copper prices, there were more deaths in Chilean mines than in any other years during the decade. In 2007, when the copper price averaged a record $3.24 per lb, 40 miners died in accidents. In 2008, when copper was at $2.88 per lb, the death toll hit 43. The average for the decade was 34. In contrast, the safest year in the history of Chilean mining was 1999, when the average copper price fell to just 72 cents, its lowest level in over 10 years, a consequence of the Asian crisis.

 

Furthermore

In the first eight months of this year, 31 Chilean miners died in accidents by cave-ins, electrocution, explosions, asphyxiation & falls from heights.

Deaths are undercounted because there are few investigators. Deaths from occupational illnesses are ignored. According to ICEM, there are no reliable global statistics on mining fatalities but it is estimated that 12,000 miners are killed on the job every year.

And what brings this human disaster story back from the brink of tragedy is the men stuck in the mine, their sheer courage and solidarity with each other. The focus, for a change, is not concentrated nor obsessed with celeb-ville instead ordinary working class men and their families/friends, they are at the central of this story while the president of Chile stands in the background, waiting and hoping opportunistically that his election strategy for votes improves (and whose popularity has increased since this mining catastrophe). But it is these ordinary people, their lives and solidarity which is integral to the story.

Though I believe ICEM’s slogan is also an important one, one which should be central to this story and countless other stories of anonymous miners who are wounded, suffer long-term illnesses or die and that is “The stronger the union, the safer the mine.”

And all this on Thatcher’s birthday……

The reality of welfare benefits

This latest briefing from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published (H/T Lib Con) gives a very good summary of working age benefits, who gets them, how much they get, and  the problems that exist for people trying to claim these benefits.

There is an entrenched vilification, ignorance and stigmatisation of benefit claimants, so many lies peddled and myths made the result being the poor become scapegoat for this economic crisis created by the banking sector. Oh what a tangled web of lies is weaved! Language that fans the flames of hate, the constant shrill of “benefit scroungers” headlines, along with other rubbish spouted by politicians, aided and abetted by a right-wing populist media who seem delighted in dredging up any story that screams “fraud”…..

Examples of total ignorance, Ed Miliband thinks Incapacity Benefit still exists while Andrew Marr (ignoramus of the blog world as well!) thinks people still receive Invalidity Benefit! If you want to attack people at least get the facts correct!!

Frankly, I would really encourage every politician and media pundit to read this briefing.

Another picture

Seaford

I went to Seaford today. Lovely sunny weather bit windy. Walked along the chalky cliffs, though tried not to wander too close to the edge of the cliff as the wind got quite strong and didn’t want to fall off! Good day, good walk and my feet ache, feel like I have climbed every mountain…..

World Mental Health Day: what’s the point?

It’s World Mental Health Day. But what is there to celebrate? Raising awareness…don’t make me laugh! With the smash and grab raging on welfare benefits by the ConDems along with upping the ante on stigmatisation and vilification of benefit claimants (let’s not forget NL’s hideous involvement) with a backdrop of unenlightened attitudes towards mental distress. Again, what is there to celebrate…? Promoting what exactly?

Translated this means bullying people into the job market based on supposedly “objective medical assessment” (changes to DLA) when really it is based on ideology, it means forcing vulnerable claimants onto Workfare by some contracted-out private sector company, it means further alienation and isolation. Mental distress hits around one in four adults. That’s a helluva number of people yet it’s still stigmatised and hidden. Marginalised and vilified (apparently we are “bad, mad and dangerous to know”). During the past two years, recession and unemployment has caused.

• 1 in 10 had visited their GP for support
• 7% had started a course of medical treatment for depression
• 5% had seen a counsellor
• Half said staff morale was low
• 28% were working longer hours
• A third said staff were having to compete against each other.

And with further vicious attacks planned on the public sector there will be more distress, misery and suffering.

Expect more pain courtesy of the Con/Dems by way of massive searing public sector cuts. This means changes in working practices and conditions, modernisation, restructuring, liberalisation, contracting-out, outsourcing and what other words used as a code for privatisation will have a massive emotional and psychological negative impact on people, which will affect their health as we have seen. Recession means depression, with a swirling mix of  a potent cocktail of anxiety, fear, alienation, pressure, stress and atomisation. No wonder people are reaching for the meds. We live in a debt-ridden insecure world where the ideology defines human beings in terms of material consumption. A dog-eat-dog society that devalues and demeans human beings. The global working class suffer the consequences of neoliberal ideology, people driven to the edge some pushed over the edge. A society based fundamentally on exploitation (even more alienating in some job sectors with the implementation of the LEAN mean production scheme) with increased stress, anxiety, distress and misery coupled with the impact of the recession.

I have cracked up in two jobs, one because I was given no support (funny enough it was a job as a mental health user involvement worker… irony of ironies) and the other was due to feeling undermined and undervalued all the time, I didn’t capitulate to the stiff upper lip bullying voluntary sector kinda macho environment. And coupled with the fact that due to my dalliances with mental distress I have been hauled in front of occupational health departs who have interrogated me about my mental health (Ooo yes, really improved …not… when questioned about personal issues that I don’t particularly want to ‘share’ with a prospective employer). Plus I am sure prospective employers have made up their objective minds about me when they discover my mental health history. It beggars belief. Not one of these employers’ implemented any kind of mental health awareness and support in changing the office dynamics. It was all my fault…apparently…’cos I had a propensity to mental distress nowt about how the environment impacted on me and others. It was all seen in a vacuum. Even the TU rep said to me at the time that he was shocked at their response and that if I was ‘expecting mea culpa..’ then I will be wasting my time.. He was correct. I left. The shit is still happening there though they won’t admit to it as everyone else has the problem.

My own experience of mental distress did heighten my awareness and consciousness about the world (I was already political) but it gave a different complexion on life, a sensitivity to the human responses to the ebb and flow of life. It did galvanise me in political activity in campaigning around the rights of mental health users For me, it gets tedious and irritating the number of times I am hauled in front of some occupational health department and interrogated about my mental health past. It is not about the extra support or help they can give me, it is finding out whether I am ‘fit’ and a good bet for the labour market. And with all this stacked against you loneliness and isolation play a major part as well.

Psychiatry rarely treats people as human beings instead we are reduced to specific criterion, behaviour,  eventual diagnoses and labels. And as psychologist Lucy Johnstone argues psychiatric diagnoses are social judgement lacking scientific objectivity. The psychiatric system is fraught with power relationships and is ingrained with institutional racism, sexism and homophobia. The system reflects the oppression that exists within this society. Mental distress is on the increase due to the fragile and precariousness of life that includes debt, misery, job insecurity, pressures, oppression, poverty and so on yet psychiatry sees this increase in a social vacuum.

I believe in asylums, but my interpretation is different to, say, Marjorie Wallace’s (Saneline) understanding of the term or other more bourgeois interpretation. I believe there should be safe places people can go to which isn’t based on social control but based on the needs of the mh user who is able to define his/her needs on their own terms and a equal relationship between staff and user not this imbalance of power that exists between staff and user. That leads to mistrust. RD Laing was right when he said psychiatrists observe as opposed to listen.

The society I want to see is one  that treats people with respect and understanding as opposed to vilification, social control and stigmatisation. And to go beyond a bio-medical understanding of mental distress (I don’t totally rule out medication because I do think there is a dialectical relationship between the social and the biological). There is a hell of a number of people out there who will experience mental distress but it is still hidden. It is not something people feel able to be vocal about. And a system, contradictorily, that desperately tries to “normalise” vulnerable people yet only too happy to turn a blind eye to what the powerful in society get away with.

Yes, it’s establishment-friendly World Mental Health Day where globally we stop and see the impact of mental distress, a day where we put the spotlight on this social phenomenon. But we need more than this so-called significant day that challenges and radically re-defines mental health with users of the system at the forefront of change.

See as well this article from Black Mental Health UK.

Being savaged by a dead sheep….

Hold the front page……

Hark! Tis true… Alan Johnson launched a ferocious onslaught on the government’s plans for deep and immediate spending cuts, warning they would “fundamentally alter our community” and inflict greater and more lasting damage on public services than Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, you can just imagine it, CamClegg spluttering into their cornflakes reading Johnson’s missive quaking in their slippers. Indeed I have a furtive imagination, in reality the ConDems will be spluttering into their cornflakes the guffaws will be heard for miles as being attacked by Johnson will be like being savaged by a dead sheep. That right-wing authoritarian Blairite will make no in-roads or dents in the slash and burn proposals.

Old NL will not oppose every cut. This would be OK if an end to warmongering and nuclear weapons were to be on the table. Otherwise how you are going to secure someone’s vote after you have agreed with the Tories that the person’s job can by trashed and that they can have a nice long time being patronised by a welfare to work company to remind them in time for the next election…and the right wing lecture the Left on electoral strategy!

What Gideon George has put on the table is the definition of fairness. The Left needs to take up this ideological gauntlet: we can win this one if the notion of fairness on offer is that ordinary people should accept immiseration so that the rich can walk off with even more money. We need fair taxes that instruct the rich and powerful that it is not alright for them to indulge in daylight robbery and having others pay for the mess left behind. We need to get rid of tax havens that have no social justification at all. We need to have economic governance where people know that they have the jobs, education, welfare, housing, healthcare and economic security. Yes this means working hard but why should you work hard to you drop to get nothing but a kick in the teeth at the end? Millions of public sector workers work hard to make sure that there is healthcare, education, that the garbage is taken away and so on. If this is not making the rich richer so what?

It is of course important to point out the social and individual damage that the cuts will do and that the evidence from Ireland is that the cuts will not succeed in dealing with the financial mess left behind by the boom and bust of unregulated turbo-capitalism.

There needs to be a different account of what has happened and what needs to be done. And Johnson certainly aint the man to do it!

Brussels …. here I come

Nice pic across the Thames

Well, I am off to Brussels later this week for the EWL shindig as my pic got short-listed in the final 20. I am excited but I feel unbelievably stressed and anxious. Ok, sounds daft, I know, especially as it’s a wonderful opportunity and sure, I really value and appreciate that… but for nearly 6 months now my feelings and emotions have been way off-beam, riddled with a numbness. And yes, it’s Brussels and being short-listed in a competition is thrilling and fantastic, not trying to underestimate things but I could do without the anxiety, stress and strange experiences I have encountered such as feeling I am lost in some fug of a fog, exposed and vulnerable.

I suppose I could just drown my sorrows in beer and chocolate while in the epicentre of international bourgeois politics. But I hate beer, what’s the other alcoholic beverages like I wonder…..

What a shower of a shadow cabinet

What a sheer masterstroke of utter banality and insipidness. Indeed Mister Ed’s choice for shadow cabinet is beyond a joke but for some a Blairite wet dream with Alan Johnson as Chancellor. Yes, former union bureaucrat who supported the destruction of Clause IV and more up-to-date, the politician who out bids the Tories on becoming the party for ‘law and order’… And that’s so hideous, a Labour Party more vicious attacking civil liberties and its social authoritarianism. But hey, Johnson knows nowt about economics but that hasn’t stopped Mister Ed giving the staunch backer of big bro’ one of the top jobs. I mean, for chrissake, I really do reckon Mister Ed the talking horse knows more about the economy and economics than Johnson and the other Mister Ed put together!

This new shadow cabinet is bunch of chinless wonders, who lack the nerve, verve and integrity to take on the ConDems massive slash and burn of the public sector. Can any of this lot be taken (majority backers of big bro’ Miliband btw) seriously? Bunch of insipid Blairites.. Oh, and let me single out Caroline Flint (who was Hazel Blears campaign manager when Blears was standing as Deputy Leader of the LP back in 2007), back in the mists of time said that if you want a council house find a job. She’s one self-serving apparatchik!

NL certainly aint dead and neither is the ugliness of Bliarism.

Oh dear Mister Ed, what are you trying to prove? That you can capitulate to your big brother’s supporters along with the right-wing populist press?

Anyone still have illusions in Mister Ed?

Ireland and its credit rating

Although the ConDems are ready enough to remind people that it was NL that got Britain the huge deficit they are rather more coy about it being an international problem with the bond markets. For instance the United States build up a huge deficit under the Tories co-thinkers on everything bar gun control the Republicans.

The rulers of France want to offer up the excellent health service that the French people have paid for with their hard-earned cash. Meanwhile in Ireland the government has been well ahead of the ConDems this side of the water with public sector workers and the services that they provide. So the Republic of Ireland should be winning the approval of the international “investment Community”…except it isn’t. The ratings agency Fitch has just downrated Ireland’s credit and the other main credit rating firms look set to do the same.

Now it could be said that these firms where a part of the problem in the first place. They missed spotting the nature of the biggest asset bubble in history along with all three of NL, the yellow Tories and the real Tories. Remember the deafening silence from the Tories in opposition about asset inflation up to three years ago? You guessed it they would have rode the property bubble just the same as Mr Brown. The difference being they would have given tax cuts to the rich instead of spending on public services ( I accept that a lot was wasted on outsourcing, PFI and target culture). That would probably have stoked up the bubble even more however enough of counter-factual history: actual history as ever is interesting enough. And the recent history in Ireland is confirms that nosediving the economy will not get anyone out of the mess that the bosses have got us into. For that is what this down-rating shows. It is dawning on our rulers that simply getting us lower orders to foot the bill will not work. If all the major economies of the world are cutting public spending then markets shrink. How will UK plc as it used to be referred to sell to a USA after the mid-terms there increases the power of the Republicans who are now reconverted to prudence in public finance as they tend to do whenever it is the Democrats doing the spending? How is Britain going to sell to the public sector workers of Dublin or Cork? Perhaps the Russians will like our Dodgy Dave financial products as much as their oligarchs like Range Rovers and Aston Martins and West End property?

Once you look at the international nature of the crisis around sovereign debt you see the pointlessness of cutting public spending to push large amounts of money back into the money markets where it will go to finance the next bubble. The best thing would be an international default on the debt. A principled refusal to pay more geld to the monster that caused the problem in the first place would be the first step in destroying the neo-liberal machine that has no other purpose than screwing the poor.

Stalking squirrels

I will write about Cameron’s speech later but have to say I am sick to death of these pathetic mantras (“We are in this together”). And now we have Cameron doing a Kitchener number with the latest being, “Your country needs you”…

“In society, people who are sick, who are vulnerable, the elderly … I want you to know that we will always look after you.

Yes, welcome to workfare!

More later.

Instead spent the afternoon stalking squirrels (makes a changes to herons). So here are some photographs.