The Experience of Unemployment

My Facebook friend, John Osman, has kindly asked me to comment on my twenty-two years of unemployment: which started in 1994 when I came back from Canada and was ended when I was retired in 2016.

For the last few years, even the Job Centre admitted that there never would be paid work for me and decided to switch me from JSA to Pension Credit.

And, no, I was never deemed or assessed for Disability Benefit income.

Now, back in 1994 I assumed that, as everyone said, 'Something would turn up'.

It didn't.

And, as we know, 'Unemployment us a price worth paying.'

It is, therefore, *deliberately created, monitored and managed*.

So that the cost is borne by Worked Class people: not, as a result of Revolution, by our Oppressors and Exploiters, The Middle Class and The Capitalist Usurers respectively.

Indeed, it is astonishing that, a) the Experience of Unemployment, which is part of The Experience of Virtually *Every* Family, is so little discussed or researched in Academic Circles (how many Professors of Unemployment Studies are there world-wide: none have I found) and b) that the shame associated with unemployment is an automatic killer aspect for those who are *made* and *kept* unemployed.

So, despite my efforts to, for example, return to teaching Chemistry in schools, nothing did ever 'turn up'.

Yes, in those twenty-two years I had all sorts of short-term, often Part-time and Seasonal jobs: in a Print Factory, in an office, trying to sell newspaper subscriptions by phone, etc, etc: the most awful being, probably, in a bottle, etc return deposit depôt in British Columbia, where the returns to be sorted included addicts' needles and used nappies. Ughh!

At first, I imagined that I was 'Between jobs': not 'unemployed'.

Partly that was because The Job Centre (or as a friend-then named it, 'The Joke Centre': a cruel jibe about a cruel inhuman place, whose degraded, degrading task is, not to find applicants jobs, but, rather, to smash them into beggary, prostitutions and worse) wouldn't register me for any Unemployment Benefits since I had some savings from my years of paid work, including a Pension that I cashed in.

So, the odds and ends of paid work came and went (mostly the latter) and I returned, as was Margaret Hilda's plan, 'To the gutter' where we, The Worked Class and the Untermench Class belonged.

Literally: at the Print Factory, which was supposed to be a High-Security Print Works, where Examination Papers etc were printed (and it wasn't: the back shipping door and gate were always open) we were not allowed to stay inside at Lunchtime. So we were corralled out, past a notice-board, where someone famously put up a samisdat copy if the Company's Accounts showing that The Company made essentially no profits (because of the Interest that it 'had' to pay to its Owners of many Centuries' standing: sound familiar? National Debt etc . . .).

So, once outside, the others disbursed and I remained: sitting on the car-park kerb, to eat my sandwiches.

Just where the Managing Director parked his car: a choice spot.

So, as time, place and savings dribbled on, I realised that, yes, I was unemployed and, as such, despite these odds and ends of paid work, it was an insult to those more deeply suffering than me from the shame of unemployment that I would accept the term if self& description as 'Unemployed'.

Ashamed as I was of it.

Now, during those years, I looked for books that might describe and, even, explain the Causes Of, and Experience Of, Unemployment.

I've, realistically only found three.

Of those, one was self-published, one a discard from the Public Library in Eugene Oregon in the US  (thank-you www.bookfinder.com !) while the one photographed was in the stacks at our local, West Sussex Public Library (thank-you to our Littlehampton Free Public Library staff!): in which is the surprising discovery that the term 'unemploynent' was only coined in the late Nineteenth Century.

Prior to that, the term was, apparently, 'Distress from Want Of Employment'.

I bet that Worked-class people had less genteel terms.

But another *excellent* book, 'The Common People' by JFC Harrison, also photographed, doesn't say what

Income Classes: Who Gets How Much Income, and From Which Sources?

 Our friend, John Osman has propelled me along the question as to, 'Who are 'The Working Class'?

Readers might recall that, expanding beyond the 'We are the 99%' diversion, I prefer a 2%:10%:88% division:

  - The 2% being The Capitalists (who collect/take/steal Rent, Interest and Profits-as-Dividends on Shareholding)

  - The 10% as the capitalists' 'Praetorian Guard' (who are permitted by the 2% to Tax us, the 88%, in order to take/receive/steal higher-than-fair Paid-work Incomes and Perks and, ditto, Pensions.

  - And us, The Worked 88%.

I've tried to visually show this division and to separate out the Incomes by proportion according to whether those incomes come from the 'ownership' of capital (ie of the Economic Resources of Land, Money and Shares), and from Paid-work Incomes and also Income from 'The Common Purse' (ie the proceeds of Taxation).

The first of the photographs shown is the final attempt for today, the other two being preliminaries.

I hope they help.

Three ps's:

1) As a working defiition, I consider that 'The Middle Classes', who form The Praetorian Guard, derive at least some part of their income from the 'ownership' of Capital Resources,

2) The 88% are usefully divided into those who have paid work and those that do not: the latter comprising those who are unemployed through either being pensioners, those unable to work through disability and those who are unemployed through there being a lack of paid-work positions. The trolls will add 'and those who choose not to work': a class(ification) that, apart from its applucation to the Capitalists, I *entirely reject* as poor bashing: which I *will not tolerate*: poverty is deliberately created by and for those who are supporters of capitalism

3) I found it helpful to subdivide each of these Income Classes yet further into thirds, as shown.

The objective of The Co-operative Movement

*IF* a new socialist Party is needed, I suggest that the rôle of the Trades Unions is key.

Ps, that True Labour Movement has to be *genuinely* democratic:

     With the replacement of capitalism as its objective,

     And the replacement being National and Local Co-operative Commonwealths,

     And a Global Co-operative Commonweal its outcome.

All operating according to the Co-operative Values and Principles:

     As in The Statement on The Co-operative Identity, as freshed periidically by The International Co-operative Alliance.

That's what the living plan for Co-operative Socialism is designed to do.

See the papers' section at www.interestfreemoney.org

I hope that this helps.

The Present Threat

 I understand that the new General Secretary of The Labour Party is encouraging all present Labour Party members to join The Co-operative Party.

As a now-expelled Labour Party member and, although under-threat of expulsion, but still a Co-operative Party member, I encourage all true Co-operative Socialists to join The Co-operative Party.

That said, a darker possibility should be considered.

There might be a conspiracy afoot to insinuate the new, pro-Israeli New Labour membership of The Labour Party into The Co-operative Party, and, so, form a new cadre of Zionists and, thus, pro-Capitalists, into The Co-operative Party.

All of which would be at variance to the Co-operative Movement's objective.

Which is, like the true objective of The Labour Party,  'the establishment of a Co-operative Commonwealth' (as per Clement Attlee and The Labour Party prior to WWII).

However, since both Parties have adopted the pro-Zionist, fake definition of Anti-Semitism conspired by the equally-fake 'International Holocaust (singular) Remembrance Alliance (of who, for what purpose, funded by who?)' it is the sad case that both Parties are now Zionist/Capitalist Parties.

Both Parties, then, in that sad circumstance, are heading into the dustbin of history: along with all the other #fakesocialist entities, such as every (bitter) flavour of Marxism and Social-not Democracy-not that one might spit out.

As poison.

The Solution:

Local, *autonomous* 'Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative Socialist Policy Alternatives and Political Education Groups'.

Which won't happen, because the Zionist/Capitalist/Marxist/MI5 Machine will infiltrate each one.

That, then, of course, will be the death knell of world-wide peace (which circumstance *requires* the replacement of Capitalism and the concurrent replacement of The Zionist State of Israel: and the reversion, in that geographic area, to a secular Palestine, upon the 1917 boundaries, as a Co-operative Commonwealth).

Events will tell . . .

masks

At last, I think that I've understood.

The masks thing.

They are Conservative Party - and Conservative Movement - Propaganda.

The mask is a symbol.

Of fear.

Another Expulsion in Prospect

Another expulsion in prospect.  Friends will know that I and twenty four others were expelled from The Labour Party on 10 February of this year.  I informed The Co-operative Party of this fact immediately thereafter.  The Co-operative Party sub-committee charged with review has recommended that I also be expelled from The Co-operative Party: again in a #fakechargeofantisemitism.  Ie using the #fakedefinitionofantisemitism concocted by the #fakedefenders, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.  Whose #fakedefinitionofantisemitism insists that any criticism of Zionism and its #eviloffspring, #TheFascistNaziApartheitStateOfIsrael constitutes Anti-Semitism.  Which, of course, is fallacious: #TheFascustNaziApartheitStateOfIsrael is a *Political* entity, with no basis in, as I understand it, all Jewish Theology.  I have been offered, and have accepted, an appeal hearing in respect of this proposed expulsion from The Co-operative Party (which is more than the new rules that The Labour Party 'adopted' at its 2019 Annual Conference in Brighton: where I was present, but only helping to man the joint stall of Labour Action for Peace and Uniting for Peace and Justice).  I asked for paper copies of the relevant communications from The Co-operative Party and a face-to-face Appeal.  The latter had been denied, I have yet to receive the former (unsurprisingly given the present conditions under which our Co-operative Party workers are operating).  I well expect that the Zionist networks, including our friends Simon Hill and John Osman will immediately respond. Perhaps they will tell us if they were already aware of this matter.  Sad times.  But hopeful!  In and for true co-operation,  John Courtneidge Dr 😊

The Elephant in The Room

The elephant in the room

Our friend, Martyn Lowe  wrote:

  'Actuallly there is a need to cut down birth rates from an ecological perspective.     Taking a vacine is part of being socialy responsible,  which in turn makes for  a good anarchist way of life, '

I reply:

   No!

The problem is *not* overpopulation, it's overproduction of pollution by over-consumption of energy and raw materials.

The evidence for that are Figures 1.1 and 1.2 in 'The Spirit Level', where the zone of 'Enough' is shown: the zone of Contraction and Convergence that Aubrey Meyer spoke of and which our Friend Gianne Boughton has entitled her book.

And which will be achieved once #truesocialism, true Co-operative Socialism, replacss capitalism.

Review: 'The Makers if English History' Norman Stone, General Editor

The biographies that the author chose are of people that have made our lives a misery and, even then, omit (as us usual) key matters.

The usual red flag for me is the biography of Henry VIII: the usual catalogue of his marriage events.

As always, historians such as this exclude the key event of his life: his legalisation of Usury in 1545: the first time that Usury in England was legally-allowed and which, in my preferred-definition of the term, that Capitalism was made legal.

With all the consequential catastrophes that have ensued.

In short: this is a politically-motivated hagiography of the worst sort.

I'm glad to have bought it, in order to be able to say so.