A councilor's call to vandalism
Although there have been calls for councilor Martin Eager to resign over his 'deface and glue' public property pronouncement (and rightly so as he has broken the council's code of conduct by calling for acts of vandalism to override the democratic process), perhaps he does not go far enough.
The simple reason the council wants to charge for evening car parking, is because it is starved of funds. The same reason it's not repairing the roads and closing libraries.
So where has all the money gone?
Today's Guardian newspaper tells us that 'the country's five richest families now own more wealth than the poorest 20% of the country' and that 'the wealth of 85 global millionaires is equivalent to that of half the world's population'.
This is a global situation.
While the elite billionaires fund the only thing that money can't yet buy them - clinical immortality (a luxury I doubt that the poorest 99% could ever afford, even if it existed) - the rest of us struggle to pay our energy bills, feed our families, pay the rent and put petrol in the car.
Ah! Is this vision too engulfing, you balk?
Well, as you try to reverse into that awkward little car park space, just remember the connections between that petrol in the tank, the supermarket you bought it from, the TV football that is supported by it, cash crops, famine and the environmental damage that helps put the profit into the pockets of the billionaires.
Ironically, the aforementioned councilor is part of the problem (if you at all see any of this as a problem) as it is the parish and county councils and MPs in government, their army of civil servants and their cohorts in the press who, as the establishment, protect this elite.
In the week that Tony Benn died, my cry goes out for more, not less, equality, and a fairer distribution of money through earnings. More money for the poor, the disabled and the working. At the same time let us properly tax the Corporations who are making off with all the precious dosh. Perhaps then, we could all afford to live in a world where there is free parking in the evening, or we could easily afford to pay for evening car parking without being grumpy about it or advocating civil disobedience.
Last edited by Ray X (2014-03-17 16:53:54)