(The name of the school and the teachers have been changed to protect the proles.)

Being in SSY and still being at school can be frustrating, particularly when I live an hour on the train away from Glasgow – the central nervous system, if you will, of SSY activity. My fellow pupils are mostly apathetic towards politics. In December, when I tried to round up enthusiasm for the student walk-outs planned up and down the country, my pleas were met with a vast array of counter-arguments – “walking out won’t make a difference”; “we’ll get in trouble”; “I’m not going to uni so the fees won’t affect me”; “if I miss school I won’t get my EMA anyway, so what’s the point?”. When the day came, only one other girl and I walked out, which, suffice to say, did not create the huge impact I had hoped.

After spending a weekend in Glasgow with similar-minded radicals and activists, returning to school on Monday can be absolute hell on earth. Some people are so ignorant or spoon-fed with their beliefs there that it becomes an extreme test of emotional strength to sit through six periods without having the urge to harm someone.

our school assemblies are just like this

However, I’m hoping this apathy will subside over the course of the coming school year, thanks in large part to the new addition to staff. Tsar Ebby arrived a few months ago, taking over the role as head teacher from the previous Tsar Ralph. To say he was a teddy bear in comparison is an understatement; although a valued member of staff, his authority was severely lacking. People basically ran riot under his watch. If it were not for his tyrannical deputy head, Winter Palace Academy would have become an anarchic hotspot.

Only two terms after the previous management disbanded, though, and we’re practically begging for their return. Tsar Ebby has swiftly made herself known as a firm dictator figure, who has been overheard several times saying that students’ opinions don’t matter.

I knew we weren’t going to get on from the minute I laid eyes on her. There was something in her sinister grin that told me we were not going to bond. In one of her first assemblies she delivered an impassioned speech about how British soldiers are ‘protecting our freedom’ and ‘defending our country’ in Afghanistan. From that moment my worst fears were confirmed; she was an evil bastard.

As you may or may not realise, it is almost time for those of us at secondary school to move into the next year group. I myself will be, after my exams, a 6^th year pupil at Winter Palace Academy. Some of my peers in my year therefore took the opportunity to apply for the coveted roles of Head Boy and Head Girl. This is a time-honoured tradition and the role is highly sought after. Following an extensive selection process, three male and three female candidates were chosen as the finalists.

You might be wondering why this is relevant, but Tsar Ebby’s  most recent outrage came in the form of her plans for said candidates at the annual Easter ceremony. Always an entertaining affair, I was prepared to sit through some semi-interesting speeches, some motivational dancing (this year the school’s dance troupe were asked to choreograph a routine to the theme of resurrection!) and to purposefully avoid praying when the time came for ‘reflection’. As a vehement atheist, the Easter sermons at school aren’t my favourite activity, but they are usually tolerable. Not this time, though…

Imagine my horror when, one lunch time last week, the candidates returned from a chat with the delightful Tsar Ebby, annoyed and outraged about what they had just been told. She had asked that the candidates read Bible passages at the Easter ceremony, implying that they would not be in with a chance of winning the election should they refuse. Yes, don’t double-take, you read that correctly. Where do you even begin challenging bullshit like that?

Well, first of all, there’s the fact that my academy is a non-denominational school. We are not a Christian school, and therefore the Christian views of any member of the school should not be forced upon the rest of the student body; least of all from the head teacher, who is supposed to assert her authority in a responsible manner. I wonder if she gave any consideration to the Muslim girl in my year that stood as a Head Girl candidate. She never made it to the final three, but if she had, would she have received the same irrational proposition, all to win brownie points? Would she have expected her to denounce her faith in the name of brown-nosing?

One of Tsar Ebby’s ‘campaigns’, if you will, is to promote Winter Palace Academy as a rights-respecting school. By doing what she did, though, it’s clear she could give less of a fuck about our rights. What about our rights to worship whichever religion we choose, or to abstain from worshipping any? To abuse her position of power over pupils she knows depend on her support is disgusting. How co-incidental that there were six passages to be read, and there just happened to be six candidates in the running!

okay, so maybe I took the allegory with the Bolshevik revolution a bit too far..

Despite this obvious blackmail and despite their personal objections to it, the candidates all agreed to do it. But wouldn’t most people? In the same situation, how many people would have chosen to refuse her offer and risk losing the title they’ve dreamed about since the start of their secondary career, rather than accepting it, despite their personal opinion, knowing it would keep them in her good books? I expected some of the candidates to show some conviction to their objections, a quality I would definitely admire in our Head Boy and Head Girl. Although I was disappointed when they all complied with her wishes (despite their expressions of outrage in front of us), I can’t say I expected them to defy her. I just hope that in the coming year, whoever is elected will be more strong-willed in future.

Understandably, some comrades and I were suitably furious at this abuse of power, and set about planning how to effectively protest Tsar Ebby’s lunacy.  Talk of printing and distributing leaflets and contacting the press circulated, but on Wednesday the 20th, the eve of said sermon, our frustrations peaked and we decided the only obvious solution was to walk the fuck out!

A facebook event was hastily set up, hundreds were invited and the message was spread. I was surprised at how many pupils got on board with it, if I’m honest. As I said, our school is majorly apathetic to political and social issues, so to see so many of my student peers get involved so quickly was genuinely heart-lifting. Messages of solidarity were left from former pupils and from activists across Scotland. Even Limmy got behind us on Twitter!

The next morning, the event page had a solid 50 attendees. Not a huge amount, especially as some were not even Winter Palace Academy pupils (but well-wishers offering moral support), but still more than enough to create a good visual impact.

At school that day people were full of questions. We did our best to reassure them about their rights, and a nervy anticipation set in. Rumours spread that Tsar Ebby had seen the event page, something I’d realised would probably happen and was not too concerned about. Quite predictably, by third period I was whisked out of Maths by my guidance teacher, who as a militant atheist, stressed he was on my side, but also insisted the situation must be resolved. So basically, Tsar Ebby shat herself and was desperate to talk us out of it – a success in itself!

Another organiser and I agreed to speak with her. We were prepared for her justifications, the most patronising of which was her reassurance that that very morning she had gathered the candidates and reminded them she had given them the choice. How generous of her, though strange that she had to do it in the first place, and only thought to remind them of how they had a choice after she was caught red-handed.  Her original request was that we take down the event page, but our stiff resolve indicated that we would not be so easily convinced. After a good half hour where Tsar Ebby avoided the real problem and brought up irrelevant issues, our demands were met in return for the promise that the walkout would not go ahead.

No pupils were to read at the sermon. In future, opportunities to partake in religious events would be strictly voluntary and not forced upon anyone, particularly those who simply feel obliged to. Tsar Ebby also agreed to a series of serious consultations over next year. These will address how our school can promote multiple faiths and not just Christianity, and how, on a wider level, management can start prioritising the right issues and not fickle ones.

I was and am extremely proud of everyone who was involved in the planning of the walkout, and how quickly the momentum built. This is the first time anything on such a scale has ever happened in my time at Winter Palaca Academy, and it is my hope that over the course of my sixth year I can continue to mobilise and radicalise the senior student body. It’s an exciting prospect to realise that, actually, some people are politically conscious, and have simply never had a medium with which to express it before. I’m taking it as my responsibility over the next year to inform my student peers about exactly how they can get involved, hopefully encouraging others to join the struggle against political and social injustice. It’d be nice to get some Advanced Highers while I’m at it too!

These are the bastards that are doing it to us

Yesterday the Tories and the Lib Dems announced their plan to cut pretty much everything decent in Britain, transforming our society into a bleak vision of a grey hell hole conjured up by the imagination of Charles Dickens affected by low serotonin. With £81 billion coming out of stuff you rely on, cuts no longer seems like the right scale of wound to talk about what’s happening here. The government’s spending plans which they revealed yesterday won’t just leave public services cut, they’ll look more like a crater. A gigantic fucking open cast mine.

Over the next couple of days we’re going to try and bring you a few different articles looking at the way the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review will specifically make things crap for youth. But in the meantime, let’s recap about exactly what’s going on here.

I know I’ve posted the above film before, but I think it pretty well sums up the situation we’re in, and is worth watching again. The Tories fundamentally have a philosophy of a dog eat dog world, one where society does nothing to help people with problems, whether they’re poor, young, old or disabled. Because to do that would make us lazy, you see. Their idea is that everyone should have to fend for themselves, because if we do we’ll work hard, and we’ll be too scared to stand up to the people with money who are making us work.

They also know however, that their viewpoint is an extreme one, one that will always lose the argument if discussed honestly with the majority of people. Most people think it’s fair enough that we pay taxes so that if someone is too ill to work, or is homeless, or is old and needs help to get by, we do something to help them.

So to get what they want, they have to sneak it in by confusing us. The lie they’ve been pumping us all full of is that Britain must pay back it’s debts now, and so there’s no alternative to cuts. As anyone who has been paying any attention by now knows, that’s total bollocks. Something else we’ll bring you over the next few days is the ideas we could use to get more people in work, give everyone better quality of life and deal with the massive social and environmental problems affecting our society. But the Chancellor George Osborne doesn’t want to know about those. According to him “there is no Plan B.”

The simple fact of the matter is that the Tories ideas are the ideas of the rich. The rich don’t want to accept the fact that their wealth fundamentally comes about because they have robbed the rest of us. So their philosophy is that if you’re poor, it’s your own fault. They hold the poor in total contempt. Which is why yesterday they announced government plans that will hit the poorest in society absolutely the hardest. Here’s some of the ways:

-As we already reported a couple of days ago, about half a million public sector workers will join the dole queue.

The government's vision for the future of job seekers

-Welfare: £7 billion is being cut from the welfare budget. That’s on top of £11 billion already announced in the emergency budget back in the summer. It’s going to get really hard to access benefits, with more means testing. There’s about 1.8 million people who will lose a grand because of this. If you’re on incapacity benefit, after a year you’ll lose £50 a week. They’ll also crack down on what kinds of conditions mean you’re certified as unable to work, because if they say you can work then you’ll only get benefits for a maximum of a year. People with partners in work face losing their benefit, depriving them of their only independent income. This is taking money away from people who may be in actually hellish personal situations, by a bunch of heartless fuckwits.

The unemployed are going to be made to work for their benefits under the government’s new ‘Work Programme’. This means you can be forced to do a lot of the same stuff as people on community service, except you’ll have to more work than they’re legally allowed to! This, of course, will all be delivered by private companies who’ll be making a profit out of the welfare system and getting workers under virtual slave conditions.

If you’re on Jobseeker’s and Housing Benefit, after a year your housing benefit will be cut by 10%.

-Pensions: By 2020, the government want us all to be working an extra year before we retire. I’m going to do a separate post on why this is so spectacularly a shit idea, but for now let’s just restate the obvious: the more well off you are, the longer you live. The poor die younger, and are being forced to spend more of their finite lives working, instead of the retirement that society promised them.

Can I retire now please?

Public sector workers are also going to be made to contribute an extra £1.8 billion to their pensions, meaning they’ll have a shorter, poorer retirement and less money now. Nice one.

The government has also changed the way it’s going to measure the rate of inflation when working out how much to increase pensions year to year. No prizes for guessing they’re changing it to a method that means less money, put on a jumper if you’re cold etc.

-Housing: Instead of calculating housing benefit by the average level of local rents, it’s now going to be 30% of the average. In other words, a massive cut, which will make potentially millions of people homeless. As Shelter in Scotland put it:

“This is at a time when nearly half of claimants are already making up a shortfall of almost £100 a month to meet their rent. By ripping out this support from under their feet it will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness.”

They’re also going to build 270,000 less new homes for social housing, leaving literally millions of people on a waiting list desperate for somewhere to live. Housing is one of the areas where what they’re up to is most clear: they want people out of being provided for by the state, and into the private market at the mercy of landlords. To do this they’re going to end tenancies for life.

For single people under 25, the level of housing benefit was already really shite. Now they’re extending that shite level to 25-34 year olds as well, meaning the age it which you can be discriminated against for being young just went up 10 years!

-EMA: In England, they’re abolishing the Educational Maintenance Allowance, money that gets paid to you by the government if you stay on in school after 16. The idea of this is to allow people from poorer backgrounds to be able to afford to stay on rather than have to leave and get a job. The government already want to make it harder for working class youth to go to uni by raising tuition fees, now they want to take that option away altogether from many by making it impossible for them to stay in school and get the qualifications they need to do so.

Although this isn’t happening in Scotland yet, don’t celebrate. The SNP government have announced they’re going to be reviewing EMA in December, to see if scrapping it would be a way of saving money. Edinburgh council (a renowned bunch of tossers from many reasons, such as trying to shut schools, not pay their own workers properly and ruin the Old Town) have already announced that they’re not sending out forms to apply in January because it might not exist by then.

Threats to EMA are an area where SSY needs to stand up and be counted. Check out the SaveEMA campaign.

-Train fares are going to be allowed to go up at 3% over inflation, meaning companies like First and Stagecoach are rubbing their hands, the rest of us will be walking more.

These are just a few of the ways that the cuts are going to make your life worse, we’ll be bringing you more details the more chance we’ve had to digest the enormous plate of shit stew that was served to us all yesterday. But it’s important to realise why this is all happening. As I pointed out already, the first part of the reason is that the Tories and the other Tories Lib Dems want to shrink the state and leave us fending for ourselves. The other part of the reason is that they don’t like the fact that there’s whole areas of life that no one is making a profit from. They’d like to take services like the NHS and hand them over to private companies, usually run by some of their own close chums, in order for them to make a lot of money.

The NHS is one of the places you can see this most clearly. The government claimed that NHS spending would be “ringfenced”, i.e. it can’t be touched. But like most of the things that come out of their disgusting mouths, it was a lie. In fact more and more NHS services are going to be contracted out to private companies, meaning they’ll be making a profit out of us, and the standard of service will fall, with dirtier, unhealthier hospitals and unhappier workers.

The multinational corporations in charge of healthcare in the US know that everyone in America who can afford it has health insurance. For their business to expand, they need to be allowed into the market for healthcare in Europe, but who will buy from them while the NHS is free? That’s why the Tories ultimate goal is to get rid of the NHS, piece by piece.

A lot of this stuff doesn’t affect Scotland directly yet, because it’s stuff that’s administered by the Scottish Parliament. But don’t worry, they haven’t forgotten about us! We just get to have cuts next year when the parly budget is set. When you add it all up Scotland is losing about 3 billion quid as a result of yesterday’s announcement. Both Labour and SNP, while saying this is rubbish, have no concrete plan to deal with it, and whichever one of them gets in to government here after the election next year is set to pass on the Tory cuts in the budget they set. Just one of the major ways we can fight back against the declaration of war made by the Tories and Lib Dems yesterday is to make sure there are socialist voices who will really stand up to the cuts in the Scottish Parliament next year.

But more immediately than that, if you’re not planning on going the national Scottish demo against cuts on Saturday, then drop whatever else you’re doing, go here to find out about a bus from your area, and get in to the streets to let the Tories and Lib Dems know they can’t get away with this shit.

Despite over 250,000 incidences of racism in schools being reported since 2002, the Manifesto Group have called their report on the issue “The Myth of Racist Kids”.

According to civil liberties organisation The Manifesto Group, young children are being branded racist before they even know what the term means – and playground spats are being turned into full-blown racial incidents.

Little kids might not know what the word ‘racist’ means, but they’re more than capable of having racist views. Try telling this woman that there’s no such thing as a racist kid.

Report author Adrian Hart said:

…such anti-racist policies can create divisions where none had existed…

So, not only is racism is a myth – but by being actively anti-racist, you are creating racism where previously there was none? WTF?!?!

In all of the news reports on this issue, The Manifesto Group are described as a civil liberties organisation. Seriously? Civil liberties for who? White people’s right to be racist? Fuck off!

Ignoring the issue of race does not solve racism – only active anti-racist politics can do that.

Racism is a very real issue for children across the world, and if you don’t believe me, look at the impact racism has already had on the lives of these children.