Riots in Spain

[raggatwin]

There appears to be a total backout in the british media about this The miners, the firemen etc. Can a Spanish pethead fill us in?

[le petit corbusier]

In Barcelona there were concentrations last night in front of the hq's of the partys in the national government and autonomical government, and even the house of our autonomical president, Artur Mas.

In Madrid the government workers are doing demonstrations and such. Even firemen were fighting against the anti riots police.

The syndicates are asking for new elections because what the government is doing is nothing like what was shown in their electoral programme. They are claiming the new measures (much higher taxes, less unemployment aid, etc...) are being forced by Brussels and that's democratic fraud, etc etc etc... One of those new measures is awesome, you lose your unemployment aid if you go abroad, under any circumstance...

And the miners did, I think, 400 km on foot on their way to Madrid, where they did a big demonstration. With the usual riots.

Now the police associations are starting to complain because of the new measures (no xmas pay, more taxes etc). The funny thing is, months ago they were asked to join those big demonstrations of the so called "15 M", but they really overreacted and injured a lot of people in many different demonstrations and concentrations. It doesn't look like they are going to be supported by the likes of firemen, or students...

To be fair, Spain is quite a hopeless place right now, packed with corruption. I don't think this country can be fixed...

[raggatwin]

cheers for this! total media blackout in the UK

The police need to remember they are workers too when they smash people's heads open with their clubs and fire off rubber bullet rounds.

Public and private sector workers unite, we will not pay for this crisis!

[le petit corbusier]

Yes. Yesterday, firemen, police, and all kinds of people met at a demonstration in Madrid and suffered the anti riots together. At least, some of them are changing their minds, but our government are not 100% idiots and haven't done anything against the workers in the army, which would be crucial if that really happened, I think. (we have a nice tradition of coup d'etats and dictators, you know)

I don't know, nobody understands how rising taxes on everything except, lets say, bread and crutches, can help us. And best of all, the government speaker didn't mention some of the hardest new measures in their public speach with the press. We've had to find out through international press...

And, aside from all that, myself being catalan, I find this situation really hard for some extra reasons. This conservative government seems to be doing the background work for a big offensive on those autonomies who have nationalist ambitions, like catalonia and the basque country. And even if the terrorists of ETA have stoped killing, slowly the pressure is rising, and a lot of everyday normal people are turning more radical in their ideals (both catalans and spaniards). Hard times. :/


Well, at least we have Elysium to look for!

[raggatwin]

People are tired of this bullshit capitalist top down system where money is always the first concern, where the rich dont pay their way and the poor pay too much.

[Drico One]

They're not, though. They still vote for right-wing parties. It's hilarious that some ordinary people in Spain are surprised that the new government is "breaking its promises". What did they expect when they elected the right if not an assault on the poor and working class?

I heard an English relative of mine recently lamenting the cutbacks in Britain. He was promptly told: "what did you expect when you voted Tory?" People in Ireland decry the recession and lambast the Fianna Fail government whose policies caused it. Yet, who elected them? And what were they doing but giving the people the policies they voted for. Yet, it's always somebody else's fault. The same people talk of democratic deficits whilst taking absolutely no responsibility for their own ballot-box choices. We live in representative democracies. We get what we, as a collective, deserve.

There can be no solidarity when most people are living their individualistic lifestyles oblivious to the idea of society. Thatcher knew what she was tapping into when she declared that "there is no such thing as society". I've spent my life voting for parties that, almost invariably, lose. I've spent my life voting against my short- and medium-term economic self-interest in the hope that a little more tax from the likes of me and my economic betters will provide a civil society for all with decent social services. But people like me are mugs - though not big enough mugs to be duped into showing "solidarity" with people who voted for their own wallet when times were good and now want people like me to bail them out because they've fallen victim to the savagery of the market they so eulogised.

Drico.

[Flaffer]

Public and private sector workers unite, we will not pay for this crisis!

the public sector will never unite with the majority of the private sector, they are too insulated from reality. The public sector unions want protectionism and lack of responsibility as much as the bankers. We will only ever have a fair system when the incompetent and corrupt are subject to disciplinary procedures with the threat of real punishment for incompetence. A good hard working teacher should be paid more than a slacker, an incompetent corrupt banker should be sacked with no bonus as should an inept NHS worker. The people who are suffering are the workers who knuckle down and strive hard and do no wrong. Is a banker who manipulates interest rates worse than a council worker who goes on the sick knowing they won't get sacked, the principle is the same although the rewards are different

[Flaffer]

People are tired of this bullshit capitalist top down system where money is always the first concern, where the rich dont pay their way and the poor pay too much.

Hi Tony, Hi Gordon, Hi Peter ..........(sponsored by Unison)

[Patrick Bateman]

the public sector will never unite with the majority of the private sector, they are too insulated from reality. The public sector unions want protectionism and lack of responsibility as much as the bankers. We will only ever have a fair system when the incompetent and corrupt are subject to disciplinary procedures with the threat of real punishment for incompetence. A good hard working teacher should be paid more than a slacker, an incompetent corrupt banker should be sacked with no bonus as should an inept NHS worker. The people who are suffering are the workers who knuckle down and strive hard and do no wrong. Is a banker who manipulates interest rates worse than a council worker who goes on the sick knowing they won't get sacked, the principle is the same although the rewards are different

Precisely. The public sector is full of clowns with non-jobs picking up fat salaries and benefits. New Labour abandoned the genuine working class for Diversity Co-ordinators working four-day weeks. It's salient if you ever look at public sector job applications; many of them don't even ask for qualifications! All part of New Labour's social engineering programme: immigrants, Unison workers, and families on benefits (often above the median wage) were all indebted to the scum. Orwell was on the money about the duplicity of the bourgeois left.

[le petit corbusier]

That's what's happening in the public sector here. Lots middle-high ranged workers (social, health, prisions...) were fired, and in their place now there's lots of incompetent people who has no interest in society or experience, just obey the chief of the party, and keeping the chair warm.

But what have to say about all this the other spaniards in this forum?

[retrofuturist]

Greetings,

I think Drico was spot on, above.

As for Spain specifically, I'm not close enough to it to comment, but I find the value systems of all modern capitalist societies to be quite disturbing.

(Insert the "Actually" album cover yawn...)

So, I'm opting out - I'm going to ordain as a Buddhist monk.

Retro.

[Nickname]

Miners are ASTURIANS. Gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

[Deschanel]

Great points, Drico. Ultimately we do get what "we" deserve. I personally think that the Republican party here is a bunch of criminals actively dismantling democracy and wrecking the middle and working classes, with a smile, denying that that is exactly what they are doing. While the corporate media covers for them and pretends they aren't vicious, crazed, war-mongering greedy sociopaths. (To be fair, Democrats rake in tons of corporate donor money too, and Clinton was probably the most successful secret Republican president ever, the shit he pulled. My god, the more I think of him and his official policies and actions..) And I'm at the end of my rope caring anymore that impoverished, toothless, uninsured shit-heads in say, Alabama, continually vote for more of the same. We don't need another Civil War here, but a civil divorce, letting red states secede, might actually be a very good thing. We're not United, and we never really were. Go your own way, fvckkos.

[Danny C]

I don't know what the Spanish are complaining about. It's sunny all the time and you can get a bottle of exceedingly drinkable wine for less than £1.50.

[le petit corbusier]

I don't know what the Spanish are complaining about. It's sunny all the time and you can get a bottle of exceedingly drinkable wine for less than £1.50.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80 ... ial_crisis

http://business.inquirer.net/71033/midd ... ins-crisis