It makes me grit my teeth every time I see one of the variations of these groups on facebook about “When i was your age, I was <insert something about Pokemon here> not <insert something about getting pregnant here>

First and foremost, as pointed out by Sarah, if you’re at the age where you had Pokemon in your childhood, you’re not fucking old enough to preach anything to anyone about “When I was your age”. “When I was your age is reserved for when you’re an actual established adult. (which is debatable if you’re over 18 and still joining facebook fan pages dedicated to laying hate on an opressed group)

I don't remember him being branded a 'slut'. I DO remember the girl being SLAUGHTERED by the media, while the wee guy was branded a 'victim' and pitied.

Where’s all the hate-filled groups about teenage dads? It takes two to fucking tango, and do you not think it’s enough punishment to have to squeeze a screaming brat out of your fanny and then take care of it for 16 years without your pretentious bastard scrutiny and mockery? Most girls who end up pregnant as teenagers end up with the entire burden as the guy goes off to live his life. I think losing your opportunities, hopes, dreams and freedom is a big enough punishment from the patriarchal had of society without a generation of deely-bopper snooty CHILDREN trying to look down on them.

It’s a total ploy to make non-pregnant FAILED teenagers feel better about themselves.

Working Class has a high concentration of teenage pregnancies because shitty state schools do NOT offer adequate sex education (And for Catholic Schools, none at all). Young girls AND BOYS aren’t taught responsibility and the repercussions of having unprotected sex. This is not their fault. The only people who would see teenage pregnancy as the mother’s fault would be those so uneducated themselves, that they fail to see what wrong has been done to the young woman.

Young women in working class areas are vulnerable and in a bad position to begin with. This is due to the Capitalist way of Britain (And most of the world). You have insanely rich people, who have access to the right kind of education and amenities (and yes, I’m saying birth control is an AMENITY) to avoid that kind of situation, and SHOULD a well off woman get pregnant, she will NOT have to struggle along for the next 16-18 years. She’ll be well looked after and have all the supplies she needs.

“

A GRAPH TO PROVE MY POINT! Click to Enlarge

People WILL get pregnant during their teenage years. It’s a fact. It’s always been happening. It’s not some new epidemic, it only seems that way to teenagers now because it’s around them and they were too young to notice before. Plus, remember when you were wee, and teenagers of like 14 were basically big adults to you? Well, yes, if they got pregnant, in your tiny mind, it was okay back then.

Now, you see everything in a different light, and it’s all “She’s such a <insert misogynistic term here> cause she’s pregnant,”. Well, it could have easily happened to anyone. People forget birth control it sometimes fails or any other kind of unfortunate circumstance. What I’m saying is, shut your fucking mouth until you know the reasons behind teenage pregnancy.

People use misogyny as the nice, acceptable fascism to scapegoat on people. Racism is less acceptable now and they’re young people themselves. Women are the only way out. they’re getting all our housing cause they’ve got kids, they use all the benefits.

Naw mate. Go up the town and have a wee look at the bank buildings. RBS? Lloyds TSB? Aye, THAT’S where all your fucking (not well earnt cause you’ve never been taxed in your fucking life) tax money went. Fucking benefits, don’t kid yourself. If benefits were that high, we wouldn’t be in this position, but you wouldn’t really know because all you listen to is The fucking Daily Mail and old people going on about shit they don’t know anything about.

Do yer fucking research mate.

Get it up yeese. (Excuse the pun.)

Picture by LydiaTeapot.

Earlier today over 200 staff and students at Glasgow University rallied against the ongoing ‘restructuring’ process and the cuts which, despite initial denials from management, are eventually beginning to come to light. Called by the UCU, the main lecturer’s union on campus, the demo also had a strong turnout from both Unite and Unison, who represent maintenance and admin staff respectively.

The demo came on the same day it was unveiled in the national press that an entire research unit at the university, the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), a pioneering group which regularly features on programmes like Time Team, is being closed down by senior management who claim it does not generate enough income. This is despite the fact it made £200,000 over the past financial year and is entirely self-funding! GUARD staff this afternoon told Leftfield of their shock and anger at the decision, but assured us that they wouldn’t be going down without a fight (apparently they’ve got whole cupboards stacked full of medieval weaponry and cannons, just sayin’…).

The decision clearly indicates where the priorities of senior management and Principal Anton Muscatelli lie – in the further marketisation  of education, where any department ‘not generating enough income’ can be discarded and thrown to the scrap heap, and raises serious questions of where the axe will fall next – if a self-funding department at the forefront of archaeology in the UK can be sacrificed, can anything be considered safe?

Over 100 jobs are now at risk at the university. The UCU have identified 83 across four departments which they believe are at threat, plus the 30 staff employed at GUARD. On top of this, across departments staff are not being replaced when leaving – a sly strategy of ‘natural wastage’ that avoids any confrontation. Last year, the University Health Service was subject to serious downgrading, with the closure of the main medical facility for student accommodation. Earlier this year, the post-graduate student union – the only one of its kind in Scotland – went bankrupt. What this amounts to is a serious attack on education and student services, but from a management cynical and skilled enough to stagger out the cuts – chances are, the major announcements will come at the very end of term, if not during the summer holidays itself.

The student-run Anti-Cuts Action Network was established at the uni last year as a pre-emptive move against the cuts. Management have consistently played a difficult game with us, making false promises and refusing to even reveal the existence of the restructuring process in itself until February of this year. Similarly, the student union bureaucracy have acted shamefully – no official student representation showed up in support of today’s demonstration. This comes despite past assurances from the SRC that they will ‘oppose academic cuts’.
Today’s ACAN speaker received an excellent reception, arguing that if any cuts are necessary at Glasgow Uni, it should be the salaries of senior management. Muscatelli is paid £248,000 and received a pay rise of 8% this year. Meanwhile, staff are being offered below-inflationary increases of 0.5%, effectively mounting to a pay cut, exposing the rank hypocrisy of those pushing through these swathing job cuts.

The UCU have called for an immediate halt to the restructuring process and for a fuller consultation to take place.Unfortunately, any opposition to the plans was needed months ago – when the unions were offering ‘cautious welcomes’ to the plans and refusing to engage with those who predicted the inevitable cuts and job losses that would soon follow. Nevertheless, there is still scope for action to be taken – the uni has warned that compulsory redundancies may be necessary, saying that ‘nothing can be ruled out at this stage’.

The restructuring, which will see the number of faculties cut from 9 down to 4 and departments slashed from 45 to around 20, will be complete by August of this year. It looks likely that the major cuts will not be announced until the break-up for the summer, creating obvious difficulties for resistance from a students.
As struggles like the one at Sussex, which has seen a huge militant anti-cuts campaign of student occupations and resistance alongside UCU strike action (in the face of police brutality and unjustified expulsions), the campaign will require mass participation and solidarity between staff and students. Today was just the beginning!

Despite choosing the slightly more family friendly title of “Why must our children pay? Invest in their education” SSY members, particularly those still in high schools support the EIS teaching union’s campaign against cuts. Whilst many other unions have either decided to accommodate to cuts, or fight them solely through industrial action the EIS are opening another front and trying to win over public support. The logic of their argument is clear – cuts in education are due to a financial crisis not of teachers or students making, and will result in poorer education for a generation of young Scots.

These cuts are being made at the same time that almost a billion pounds, £900 million is being cut from university funding across the UK, with SSY members being involved in anti-cuts campaigns like ACAN at Glasgow University.

The EIS site outlines the cuts below,

Already cuts are taking place in local council education budgets.

* 2,500 fewer teachers in classrooms than 2 years ago
* Teacher support numbers reduced
* Books, paper and photocopying materials etc. reduced
* The decision to cut the number of students to train to become teachers.

In the future this will mean

* Teacher shortages
* Increased class sizes
* Impact on teaching and learning, including the new Curriculum for Excellence
* A cut in equipment (including computers) and materials in schools
* A reduction in specialist provision, e.g. classroom assistants, learning support and music instructors
* Fewer opportunities to access further and higher education

They are also being proposed is the same time that its been revealed that inequality has increased under the Labour government – David Cameron and his Eton pals might have a chance to escape public sector cuts for his kids, but ordinary working people will see less teachers and therefore less attention for their children. In both high schools and further education, there is an attack on funding which will attack jobs and young peoples right to a decent education.

The SSP supports a “20’s plenty” campaign, for a maximum of 20 children to each teacher in class. Following this programme would have kept enough teachers employed to stop any of Labour’s previous cuts of Glasgow’s schools. The SSP was recently involved with the Save Our Schools campaign, which fought hard against these cuts.

Support the campaign against cuts in education, turn up to the rally,

THIS SATURDAY – MARCH THE 6TH

ASSEMBLE KELVINGROVE WAY, KELVINGROVE PARK 10.30AM

MARCH AT 11, RALLY AT 12 AT THE SECC

It’s been a pretty busy week. Here’s a wee update of what’s been happening with SSY and beyond…

EDUCATION: Glasgow Uni Tutors Fight for Fair Pay
Post Graduate  Teaching Assistants at Glasgow University could be set for strike action in their ongoing battle for fair pay and conditions. A series of meetings this week among tutors,who carry out the majority of undergraduate teaching at the university, have decided on a series of demands that will be put to university management. Key among them is that tutors are given adequate time to prepare for teaching – currently, they are given twenty minutes per hour of teaching time. University management are, however, now looking to cut this back so that the already miniscule preparation time will not be allocated for repeat classes, amounting to a serious cut in pay.  Other demands include a maximum class size for tutorials, and a guarantee on the number of essays they will be asked to mark per hour, both of which currently set by individual departments, some of which insist on tutors marking  4 x 2000 word essays… per hour.

SRC careerist bureaucrat wankers make a great job of SCABBING on the 2006 lecturer’s strike. We can be sure of lots more of the same this time!!

Glasgow Uni Left Soc. have offered their full support to the tutors in their fight, which comes as new principal Anton Muscatelli arrives at the uni, with plans to ‘restructure’ faculties into ’schools’ with departmental budgets said to be ‘under review’. This will, as is happening at Strathclyde Uni, inevitably mean cuts, which must be resisted wherever they hit. Supporting the PGTA fight for fair pay is an important first step in this battle; there’s much more support that needs to be built, however, before any action can take place – less than 5% of post grad tutors are unionised, for instance. There’s strong grounds for their battle though – the Glasgow tutors face some of the worst terms and conditions of any Scottish university and at current rates of pay often find themselves carrying out hours of unpaid work – which, averaged out, comes out at less than the minimum wage.

POSTAL WORKERS: Royal Mail posties are looking set for nationwide strike action after an overwhelming majority voted in favour of industrial action last week. This is an important struggle to save one of the last mass nationalised industries, and to resist creeping privatisation, cuts in service and redundancies. The SSP’s Richie Venton spoke to post workers in the CWU union about the coming action, which you can read here. See you down the picket lines…

ANTI-MILITARISM: Students from Strathclyde and Glasgow Uni Stop the War Coalition succeeded in shutting down the army recruitment centre on Queen St. on Friday. Despite intimidation from the police, who requested names and addresses, and threatened arrest, of nearly everyone at the demo, the 30 strong group persisted and blocked off the entrances to both ends of the building for around an hour. SSY also hit the streets of er, Buchanan Street on Saturday afternoon with petitions and leaflets calling for troops out of Afghanistan, and got a warm response from the public, sold MILLIONS of Voices and Leftfields, and brought the revolution that bit closer. Maybe.

LEFTFIELD: The time has come… for a new Leftfield fanzine! Yay. This means one thing though.. in fact, several things, like not getting any sleep for two weeks, but also.. WE NEED ARTICLES!! And photos. And pictures. And cartoons. And RECIPES. And like, other lefty fanziney things. Send submissions to scottishsocialistyouth@hotmail.co.uk during the next couple of weeks.. pleaaase! Hopefully we’ll have it done in time for the SSP’s upcoming march for jobs in Springburn,which now looks set to take place on Saturday 7 November . Get it in the diary folks!