Them & Us

Sky pools

Sky pool, photo Ballymore (Click to enlarge)

Super-rich bosses can now literally swim in the sky.

The ultra-luxury Nine Elms development in Battersea, south London, will boast a glass-bottomed pool suspended ten storeys up. With apartments costing up to Ł5.5 million, investors need not worry about sharing it with us plebs.

No more than an eighth of the thousands of new homes in 'Dubai-on-Thames' will be 'affordable'.

The Socialist hopes Battersea's aquatic capitalists at least remember their trunks.

Shut pools

Pool closed, photo by mrak75 (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)

Meanwhile, councils up and down the country are closing or downsizing public swimming pools. The Socialist Party is active in campaigns to save them.

Since 2008, grassroots participation in swimming has fallen by 300,000 people. The Amateur Swimming Association says over half of 7 to 11-year-olds can't even doggy paddle 25 metres. One in five British adults can't swim, and in 2012 there was a 35% rise in kids drowning.

Peer pressure

Infographic: peers' pay versus cleaners' pay, September 2015 (Click to enlarge)

"Arise, Lord Moat!" Disgraced ex-MP Douglas Hogg, the Tory expenses fiddler who charged us Ł2,000 to clean his moat, has won a peerage.

Top Tory donors and filthy-rich fat-cats fill the list of new members of the House of Lords. Appointed for life, members of parliament's upper house are eligible for Ł300 a day - Ł1,500 week - just for turning up. Part-time housekeepers in the Lords can expect Ł163.87 a week - for 17.5 hours of scrubbing and polishing.

Two-chamber parliament is a relic of a time when feudal landlords wanted to keep both uppity capitalists and ordinary people in check. The Socialist Party says: abolish the House of Lords.

Bring in proportional representation and the right to recall MPs - and fight for socialism.

Them and us fishes, image Suzanne Beishon (Click to enlarge)

Ł500 million

Amount Tories have found to upgrade UK's Trident weapons of mass destruction, 31 August 2015.

Ł117 million

Amount Tories couldn't find to save Remploy factories, which employed disabled workers making medical equipment, cars, books and more, 2013.

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Finance appeal

The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.

Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.

We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to click here to donate to our Fighting Fund.