Every little helps Tesco say Every little labour without pay
Helps Tesco profits grow
when the wages are Zero
Every little bit of free labour
Means they can get bigger and BIGGER Every little bit means they get richer
whils't the poorest people just get poorer
Every little bit helps Tesco grow
Until they're everywhere you go
Tesco extra and Tesco metro
Tesco gaming and Tesco Petrol
Tesco optician and Tesco phone
Tesco bank and Tesco at home
Tesco direct and Tesco online
Tesco clothing and Tesco wine
Tesco finance and Tesco optician
Tesco sports and Tesco television Tesco can even create a place for you to defecate in harmony and contemplation If you sign up for Tesco finest Bathroom design consultation
I step out to the left and every little corner shop's gone
And in its place another Tesco Metro Tesco.con I step out to the right and the post office is no longer there
But Tesco is - offering cheap mobile phones and half price beer
Tesco value range - value for who
Certainly not for me or you
Value for Tesco means engaging in slave labour
They're snatching your friend and they're snatching your neighbour
Work for free and they won't promise you a job
The name of their game is to make a few bob They're open all night
And they're doing all right
Making billions of pounds of profit each year
Thanks to their friends in government and to workfare One thousand four hundred people worked without pay
Whilst only three hundred got to stay
This is enslavement of the unemployed
But they can't understand why we're annoyed
Every little Teco Work Fare
Should be replaced with work that's fair
With a living wage for every employee
Not a scheme of exploitation and slavery Every little help that Tesco helps itself to for free
Is a crime against freedom and humanity Every little Tesco metro
needs to go
until people not profit are put first
As the Tesco bubble's about to burst
Zita Holbourne is a performance poet, spoken word artist, visual artist and a Community & Trade Union Activist
As unemployment continues to blight the lives of millions, Britains biggest private sector employer is taking on staff for free.Tesco's claim that 1,400 people have worked their in past 4 months without pay. Only 300 got a job. This is outrageous, but this kind of thing happens it seems under tory led governments. In reality, workfare is part of the governments welfare to work 'experience' programme in which they force the unfortunate who happen to be claiming JSA to work to work full-time stacking shelves at profiteering superstores. They do however get a bus fare thrown in. No wage, doing the same work as someone else who gets paid. It's the start of a dangerous slippery slope. NAWRA ( National Association of Welfare Rights Advisors)http://www.nawra.org.uk/ says" This proposal
is very worrying. They are completely inadequate legal and medical safeguards - bearing in mind that these are people witl long-term health problems and disabilitis, often serious ones. Compulsary, unpaid work may worsen some people's health, with the consequences of the DWP's savings being passed on to the NHS at greater cost. If jobs are there to be done, people should get the rate for the job, instead of being part of a growing, publicly funded, unpaid workforce which, apart from being immoral, actually destroys paid jobs."
As Owen Jones on Question Time last night brilliantly stated this is not on. Tesco's however are not the only ones, engaged in this dubious practice, there are a lot of other high street stores that have actively got involved -Asda, Holland & Barrett, Primark, H.M.V, TK Maxx and Top Shop and others. If the uproar and contoversy surrounding this continues, many will withdraw from it.
This is the predatory economy David Cameron is creating where the poor become throw away fodder for the richest in their greedy pursuit of more.
This is wrong and if you agree with me there is a government e-petition that you can sign here which is gaining much momentum as I write.
Oh and another thing:-
Britain 1834 Poor Law
1. No able bodied person to recieve money or other help from the Poor Law authorities except in a workhouse.
2. Conditions in workhouses were to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to recieve help.
Britain in the near futre
1. No able-bodied person to recieve money or other help from the authorities except in slave/voluntary labor
2. Conditions in voluntary/slave labour to be made very harsh to discourage people from wanting to recieve help.
Welcome to Tory Britain, slipping back in time.
Article 4, human rights:-
coerced or forced labour is a crime against a persons human rights.
A short and impressive film drawing on Naoni Klein's book 'The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron, director of 'Children of Men'.
Capitalism, it sure does not look as if it's working to me.
Mamos is the pen name of a revolutionary, christian, activist, teacher , poet, living in the middle of the spiritual desert that is the U.S . His words offer us a powerful, resonant, fierce immediacy. His poetry for me connects, and he seems to use words like bullets or as seeds for change. Political poetry has a long standing tradition in America and world history. Poetry used as paths of liberation, and as messages of hope. Daily we hear tales of economic misery, of economic injustice, but voicesof opposition are getting louder. I guess we live in an age where there is no time for complacency. Voices like Mamos's provide us with visions of our anger and frustration, and our demand for real change.
We won't be revolutionairies,
we'll be the revolution.
We are the fault lines
the divine sign
and when it comes time
we'll be feelin fine
'Cause we'll take your profits
break them
the things we need
we'll make them
we'll put you in the cemetery
if you try to take them.
Because change
is somewhere between destruction and creation.
It's the pent up creativity after centuries of alienation.
It's the bread riot 'cause we need to eat
It's the love dance we start in the street
'cause we can't wait to find a place to meet
ad besides,
we just abolished the whole concept of temptation.
So why are you still here bragging about your nation?
Fuck your orders and your bombs and all your plantations
We are the global upheaval
Nat Turner's sequel
Marx's equal
and heaven's prequel.
And yeah, we're stormin' it-
fuck what's realistic, we're steadily ignoring it
'cause what's on our plate
is way more drastic than 1968
and even back then our graffiti was explorin it
"Demand the Impossible"
not the same old boring shit
Because communism
is somewhere between "where the people are at"
and utopia
between the crowd's spontaneous upsurge
and heaven's door opening
between democratic workers' councils
and the end of work as we've known it
We won't be communists
we will be communism
just like when we wer workers
we breathed capitalism,
ate, drank, and pissed everyone of its divisions
and each day reproduced that horrible condition
when shit pops off we'll be breathing liberation
drinking freedom
and eating emancipation
reproducing prophets
who speak in conversation
not so much laboring
as being our creation
not so much working for it
more like generation
of everything between us
that concieves revelation
Palestinians in the East Jerusalem town of Silwan are living in fear of imminent eviction. Last week Israeli authorities posted demolition orders on several houses in Silwan's al- Bustan neighbourhood, which they plan to develop into a theme park. With 1,000 people set to lose their homes, this would be the largest single mass demolition since 1967. Three days before the orders were issued, Israel shut down a local football club and a kindergarten.
Please take urgent action to help the Palestinians of Silwan save their homes
Silwan lies just outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City. Since the early 1990s the town has been targeted for Israeli settlement, largely coordinated by a charity called Elad (the city of David Foundation). For the al- Bustan neighbourhood Elad's plans are to build the "King's Gardens", a theme park for tourists to walk in the footsteps of the biblical King Soloman. But this means sending in bulldozers to knock down the homes of families who have lived there for generations.
Even the British government has criticised the plans. On 30 December, minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said, " I condemn the decision by the Jerusalem Local Planning and Building Committee to build additional structures in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan... This is another provocative and deeply counter-productive step, the latest in a series by the Israeli authoritis." Yet Burt and the British government have done nothing to back up the comment, and continuesto offer Israel preferential treatment. This sends a message to the Israeli government that it can ignore the criticisms.
Please ask your MP to demand that the government takes concrete action to stop the bulldozers.
At present many children from Silwan take their toys to school every day, not wanting toleave behind in case their homes are knocked down. Your action will help end this climate of fear
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the battle of Jarama in the Spanish Civil War, seven months following the army revolt led by Franco on July 18th 1936. Almost immediately foreign volunteers enlisted in left wing militias to defend the Spanish Republic.
On February 7th the fascists unleashed an offensive on the Jarama Valley, the river was strategically important, and their the aim was of cutting communications between Valencia and Madrid, and hence the Republican Forces.
Jarama was the first battle that the British Batallion of International Brigadiers went into battle, with as many as 500 British volunteers fighting.
Jarama marked the beginning of a bruising and often dispirited campaign. By the end of the first day of battle, the British batallion found itself with less than half the number they had set out with, the next few days were a bloody brutal ordeal.On February 12th the British, deployed in the hills on the east bank of the river Jarama, in a place that became known as 'Suicide Valley", the fascists were able to virtually surround the British Batallion but even though they were outnumbered, they still managed to keep the fascists at bay, but suffered heavy losses.
On February the 18th the brigadiers lauched a counter attack, but this was stopped by the fascists. Despite the poor conditons, the brigadiers managed to stand firm , which resulted in a stalemate situation that would carry on untill the end of the war. Of the 500 brave men only 140 survived, the memory of this battle haunting them for many years later. But the vital road that Franco needed to have cut remained open. I remember those who throughout this conflict their faith and ideals remained intact,with their bravery, sacrifice and committment to their noble cause. Comrades that stood together and fought for good against the evils of fascism.
No pasaran.
The battle of Jarama 1937
A poem by the young International Brigades volunteer John Lepper charts the day's fighting in the Jarama valley .With music by John Webster with Brindaband featuring flamenco guitarist Steve Homes.Followed by two more reflections on this battle.
Battle of Jarama - John Lepper.
The sun warmed the valley
But no birds sang
The sky was rent with shrapnel
And metallic clang
Death stalked the olive trees
Picking his men
His leaden finger beckoned
Again and again
Dust rose from the roadside
A stifling cloud
Ambulances tore past
Klaxoning loud
Men torn by shell-shards lay
Still on the ground
The living sought shelter
Not to be found
Holding their hot rifles
Flushed with the fight
Sweat-streaked survivors
Willed for the night
With the coming of darkness
Deep in the wood
A fox howled to heaven
Smelling the blood.
Jarama Front - T.A.R Hyndman
I tried not to see,
But heard his voice.
How brown the earth
And green the trees.
One tree was his he could not move.
Wounded all over,
He lay there moaning.
I hardly knew:
I tore his coat
it was easy -
Shrapnel had helped.
But he was dying
And the blanket sagged.
'God bless you, comrades,
He will thank you.'
That was all.
No slogan,
No clenched fist
Except in pain.
Jarama Valley - Woody Guthrie
Jarama - A.M. Elliot
Unrisen dawns had dazzled in your eyes,
Your hearts were hungry for the not yet born.
In agony of thwarted love and wasted life,
Through all long misery, from countries torn
With savage hands, you did not shrink or bend,
But marched on straighter, prouder to the end.
Not blindly, fighting in another's war
Lured by cheap promises and dugged with drums,
Striking down brothers in the name of lies,
Slaves of the blackest with all senses numbed-
But clear-eyed, bravely, counting all the cost,
Knowing what might be won, what might be lost.
The rifles you will never hold again
In other hands will speak against the night.
Brothers have filled your places in the ranks
Who will remember how you died for right
The day you took those rifles up, defied
The power of ages, and victorious died.
Comrades, sleep now. For all you loved shall be.
You did not seek for death, but finding it-
And such a death - better than shameful life,
Rest now content. A flame of hope is lit.
The flag of freedom floats again unfurled
And all you loved lives richer in the world.
Civil War Veteran in his own words.
Poems reprinted from The Penguin Book of Spanish Civil War Verse 1980.
That genius Uncle Bill would have been celebrating his birthday today if he was still around. Then again his benevolent spirit still resonates here at teifidancer. Still remembered, this invisible man whose echoes still penetrates todays present. A true subversive always travels in disguise, the masks that are weaved are what shape us. Adventuror's beyond control.Soft voices in rhthm still gently explode.
Listen all you boards, syndicates, governments of the world. Pay it all, pay it all back. Those crimson shadows, raising pen to a point, tales of twists , rubs it all out, we sit and wait for silence.
Nothing lasts forever, only the usual manoeuvres, in the distance the motionless brake,the dark air carries the cry, moves through memory and saunters by, forbidden words that gather sorcery,and yes no borders are necessary, fragments follow crooked constellations, wayward cosmic currents. best to observe, shut out the order, there are no accidents, nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. Smash the control images, smash the control machine.
Willliam S . Burroughs - Is everybody in?
William S.Burroughs - Twilights last gleaming
Williams S. Burroughs - Pantopen Rose
William S. Burroughs - words of advice for young people.
Today marks Holocaust Memorial Day, on the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz Birkenau, where 1.6 million men, women children were killed in the holocaust.
The day aims to remind people of the crimes, racism and loss of life during this holocaust and prevent it ever being forgotten.
Alongside the six million Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, hundreds of thousands of others were targeted by Hitler's regime - including trade unionists, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transpeople, (LGBT) gypsies, disabled people and the mentally ill, and others attacked for their race or simply being different.
It is important that we do not forget, but if we look at history this is not the only time that genocide has occurred, and history repeats. Humanity continues to turn against itself.
Yesterday for instance was Australia day or for many others Invasion Day, when people remembered the terrible wrongs and crimes against the aboriginal people, then there is Colombus Day on the 8th of October, you see the list is endless.
Somehow human beings around the world are capable of so much hate, we should work together to prevent this. Remember those who have resisted, shown bravery and courage. We should remember them all.
There is still so much to learn, we should stand united against genocide wherever it occurs.
Some other places and people that the world sometimes forgets.
Siebrenica,
Karabakh,
Bosnia,
Liberia,
Sudan,
Holodonor,
Armenia, the ethnic cleansing of indigeneous Palestinians,
The Indigeneous Peoples of America,
Checknya,
Congo,
India
and the genocide of slavery
and on and on and on.
We are all human, and we should never forget, where hate and division is fostered we should
strive for equality , peace and justice for the whole of mankind.
First They Came - Pastor Martin Niemoller
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the Trade Unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade Unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left To speak out for me.
Today St Dwynwen's day Welsh Patron Saint of Lovers. Dream of hope, dream of happiness the feel of protection, listen to old choruses sparks of history, people who circumnavigated with inspired attitude.
Souls - direct manifestations keep touching, turning, over and over ferociously spinning. The scanner verifies words to steal calm amidst the storms, comprehension becomes jumbled follow shootings stars, the phases of the moon.
Flashes inspire, lists become endless every man and woman a star. In world of wonder, ergot blossoms, the image has not yet cracked, unconscious rambling everyday we ressurrect. Fingerprints glowing hearts beat in synchronisation.
The land of my mothers the green, green grass of home. A saints day parade of names old relics shape us our heritage forever to be hummed. In difficult times, lose ourselves in imaginations wander waiting to be fed let ancient currents hum as day ripples with orgasmic sweet cocktails.
Write it all down sometimes we get what we need caught and taken in the breeze Temperature is rising head full of elevated thought flickers tonight will touch palms will not starve senses will tremble the firebox rekindled tomorrow smoulders with today'safterglow. In dreams and love, there are no impossibilities.
