Being homeless is devastating, whether a person is sofa-surfing, living in a hostel or sleeping on the street.

But it’s not just a matter of insecurity and misery. Last year 1611 homeless people died in the UK, a record high. Most deaths are linked to suicide or drugs, but some die after being assaulted. Roughly one in ten of those deaths were people who were rough sleeping, and rough sleeper numbers rose by 20% in the year to over 4600.

The Homelessness Minister claimed that the government was ‘accelerating efforts to tackle the root causes of homelessness’. But the root cause is the profit motive, and no capitalist government will tackle that.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

All Socialists Now?

Adding insult to injury by not only increasing power costs as we are now in the seasons where heating becomes more necessary but British capitalism can’t even guarantee to keep the gas fires lit. Don’t blame it on those pesky Russians, Blame it firmly on a social system where energy providers cares not for its customers but only for profits.

‘Britain faces a drop in domestic gas production this winter, making it increasingly reliant on imports to keep homes warm and power plants running, the Financial Times reported citing the country’s national gas grid operator.  

National Gas UK forecasts that the UK will receive 6% less gas from its domestic offshore fields this winter than last. This will be offset by a 7% increase in imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Norway will remain the UK’s primary supplier, meeting about 36% of its winter needs, while domestic production will account for only 33%. The third key source will be the global LNG market, which is expected to supply 24% of Britain’s gas.  

“Our margins for winter 2025/2026 are tighter than we have seen in the last four years,” the FT cited the company’s annual winter outlook as saying. “This is largely due to the well-documented continued decline in supplies from the UK Continental Shelf.”

According to official government statistics, British gas production plummeted 10% between 2023 and 2024, hitting its lowest level since 1973. National Gas UK identified LNG as the “key source to meet rising winter demand.”  

Britain’s growing reliance on LNG is forcing a major re-engineering of its national gas grid, according to John Butterworth, head of National Gas UK. He explained that the system, originally built for Scottish North Sea gas, is now struggling to adapt to supplies landing at terminals in Wales and southern England. Butterworth added that domestic gas production is forecast to fall a further 6% in 2025, deepening the country’s dependence on imports.   

The vulnerability of Britain’s gas supply was highlighted this past January by a Daily Telegraph report that natural gas stocks had fallen to a “concerning” low amid a sustained cold snap. The report noted that storage facilities were only half full, holding 26% less gas than a year earlier. The supply crunch underscored a systemic reliance on gas, which fuels about 40% of the UK’s electricity and heats 28 million households – a vulnerability exacerbated by the UK’s ban on Russian LNG imports, which took effect in January 2023.’

OPTIMISTIC AND PESSIMISTIC FATALISM 

The American writer, Philip K. Dick wrote, in 1956, a sci-fi story whereby by accessing inside the heads of people crimes that have not yet been committed by them can be predicted. Precrime. The story was The Minority Report. A film of the book was made in 2002.

Capitalist states are no doubt working on the means to implement this for the purpose of identifying dissidents and ‘troublemaker’ States have historically used all types of means to distinguish such individuals and to negate them, or in modern parlance, ‘cancel’ them either through locking them up or through more drastic means.

The USA is continuing this trend of determining those who do not share the ruling class’s values.

A memorandum issued by Trump,,’NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7 SUBJECT:  Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized  Political Violence,’ seeks to threaten all those who do not adhere to a blind unswerving acceptance of what the State specifies.

The memorandum can be found on the White House website.

So how do you identify a ‘domestic terrorist’ according to DJT?

‘Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.’

Look up ‘McCarthyism’ on Wiki and we get:

‘President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9835 of March 21, 1947, required that all federal civil-service employees be screened for “loyalty”. The order said that one basis for determining disloyalty would be a finding of “membership in, affiliation with or sympathetic association” with any organization determined by the attorney general to be “totalitarian, fascist, communist or subversive” or advocating or approving the forceful denial of constitutional rights to other persons or seeking “to alter the form of Government of the United States by unconstitutional means”’

Prior to that particular states in western and eastern Europe were cracking down on those who showed ‘disloyalty’ by forcing them into camps or gulags.

Across the world, particularly those that term themselves liberal democracies, repression and suppression of free speech and dissent is under mire and more attack.

How long before Trump’s memorandum is turned into into a play-book used by more and more states for the introduction of more and more 1984 measures?

The Socialist Party of Great Britain will remain resolutely anti -capitalism and will continue to work to hasten the demise of the exploitative system which has set its face to perpetual war.

Make Capitalism History.

 Nationalism and Capitalism

ARE WE BEING SPIED ON? (Zoom)