Thursday 24 November 2011

A TALE OF THE CITY : NO TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT, YES TO THE REMEMBRANCER.

The OccupyLSX protest has now been given notice of intended eviction by the Corporation of London. In their response to this they have asked for the Corporation to respond to three requests, one of these is that they cease to be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. I must admit that this was a revelation, having taken some interest in how the City works and being aware that it was effectively a state within a state with arcane voting practices giving private corporations the right to ‘appoint‘ voters, but that they have managed to remove themselves entirely from this important piece of progressive legislation was astonishing. In a recent interview with a representative of OccupyLSX broadcast on Radio 5, at which the City representative failed to turn up, this subject was raised as one of their counter requests, yet was ignored by the interviewer as if the subject was off-limits.

Another small but significant example of the parallel universe that is the City is its library service. Until relatively recently all the libraries including that in the Barbican Arts Centre were only open to residents or those working in the City. So, unlike any other library in the entire country, a new, well stocked and useful resource in the middle of an public cultural centre was, for many years not open to the general public. I cannot possibly imagine that being the case in any other country. It is no longer closed to the majority of the citizens of London, yet it is only because of the ’good will’ of the Corporation, as they were able to limit access for many years. I once asked for Tribune, to which this article was submitted, to be kept, unsurprisingly it is not and that is still the case. I somehow doubt that the subscription cost is an issue.

Enter the extraordinarily named ‘ remembrancer ‘ an unelected representative of the City that sits in the House of Commons to look after the City of London’s interests, whatever they may be, how could one know as they do not have to give any information unless they chose to. The current City Remembrancer is on the left of the photo above, Paul Double. Thus the use they make of their huge funds such as the Bridges Trust and the Cash Fund is obscure to say the least. There are only a few thousand residents in the City and certainly they get a superior level of basic services, rubbish collections and meticulously painted bollards, of which there are a great many, but the amounts of money that flow into the their coffers from the corporations and banks that make up the bulk of their constituents/clients must far outstrip the cost of performing their basic Local Authority duties. They are quite probably the wealthiest borough in England yet it is only they that do not have to reply to requests for information on how that wealth is used. 

As George Monbiot said in a recent article : if you have ever dithered over the need for a written constitution … imagine the clauses that would be necessary to preserve the status of the Corporation : ‘the City of London will remain outside of the authority of parliament. Domestic and foreign banks will be able to vote as if they were human beings, and their votes outnumber those cast by real people. Its elected officials will be chosen from people deemed acceptable by a group of Medieval Guilds ‘… In the City of London’s own utterances it attempts to legitimise its exceptional status and obscure but real powers by continual reference to their historic origins. So the Office of the Remembrancer ‘is charged with maintaining and enhancing the City’s status and ensuring that its existing rights are safeguarded.’ ‘As long ago as 1685 an order was made for the remembrancer to “ continue to attend Parliament …and acquaint the Lord Mayor with the public affairs and other business conducted there, relating to the City.” So that’s all right then, an ‘order’ was made during the reign of Elizabeth I, over 400 years ago. By whom ? Does this justify maintaining these exclusive and unique self-serving ‘rights’ ? 

That this state within a state has continued to operate as if it were in another country in the very centre of the capital with extraordinary power, influence and financial muscle and which cloaks itself in obscurity, claims exclusive ’rights’ entirely without the consent of elected governments or the people it claims to serve, and refuses to allow any light to be shone into its dealings by remaining outside of the Freedom of Information Act is completely unacceptable and is long overdue to be comprehensively reformed. No amount of cod-Medieval ceremony and gestures to the ’underprivileged’ can hide the fact that this Corporation has become an impenetrable and incestuous self-serving and morally corrupt collusion between established elites and the financial corporations.

Friday 11 November 2011

VERILY I SAY TO YOU ...

Verily I say to you it is easier for a fat camel to pass through the arse of a rich man than it is for Bob Diamond to get to Heaven. And lo, a big hi to all good people at St. Paul’s and no to all you apologists and equality deniers for we will throw a mighty spanner in the works of this silly, sick system, by peaceful means, by the use of shuttlecocks and interesting books, by sitting down and drinking tea, by thinking, bypassing the fog of big media telling stories and porky pies on behalf of the elite, despite the Bullingdon boys and their bully boys, by not responding to the cynical commentary of professional political pundits, by not worshiping at the myth of the market, by open speaking, by co-operation before self-interest, by using cardboard boxes, by singing and praying, by laughing at this farcical system, letting in some light and drinking more tea, by engaging with anyone that will step out of their self-imposed roles, their statutory duties, by debate, by dancing, together, with Good Will, with Good Heart, with Jimi Hendrix and Edward Elgar jamming in Heaven, with Love. And remember what John Kennedy said : ‘ Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. ‘

Monday 7 November 2011

THE BBC : HOW INDEPENDENT IS IT ?

To what extent is the BBC a mouthpiece for the Government ? I never thought that this was the case, but recent programming and the partial coverage of the Occupy demonstrations here and almost non-existent coverage of those in the USA and the rest of Europe has given rise to serious doubts about its much vaunted ’ independence.’

It is always a bad sign when something starts indulging in self-mythology. Not long ago a fictional drama was screened set in the BBC. I have never ever seen a programme set in the BBC before. It was placed in the 1950’s, conveniently ’historic’ rather than contemporary, (in fact the number of programmes that are set in an ill defined past are plentiful, much easier than dealing with the messy present), with an invented current affairs programme called ‘The Hour’ as its subject. The so-called Suez Crisis was happening and between the inevitable off screen inter-collegial bonking, this was one of the focal points of the whole series. And what was central in emphasis was that despite the frequent meetings with representatives of the Government off screen the programme makers were feisty and not prepared to toe the line in all cases. I am not old enough to remember what the actual BBC coverage was like, but there was certainly no programme that I know of that provided critical political debate and stood out against Government policy in the 1950’s.
So it was both fiction yet gave the strong impression that the BBC had editorial independence and was staffed by highly motivated and principled people who did not operate as purely neutral observers, which is still the apparent line.

Now look at what this ‘neutral’ channel has broadcast in recent weeks : an hour long documentary almost wholly about two alleged benefit cheats. In the style of the Daily Mail they highlighted one person with a boat and a house in France, neither of which, by the way, necessarily means that you are not eligible for benefits if unable to work, and another who was running a pub and had a big car. Both may well have been fiddling the system. But the fact that they were being filmed by the BBC, who even sent someone to France to view the house and boat, quite unnecessarily as the person freely admitted to owning them and provided a handy video, and were being tracked by both officers from the local authority and a benefits fraud team means they were certainly not going to get away with it for much longer and moreover the whole premise of the programme was to imply that these two clearly exceptional cases were commonplace. The unstated but clear inference was that living on benefits was a route to an easy life and enabled people to prosper at the tax payer’s expense. This is a downright lie and the programme amounted to nothing more than government propaganda to demonise and further denigrate those that rely on benefits by concentrating entirely on two atypical examples. In the course of the hour long programme it was never stated what the actual weekly benefit is for a typical claimant, its £65 a week, nor how many millions legitimately manage to survive on this paltry sum.

For some reason best known to the programme makers they interspersed the headline grabbing ’man with yacht claiming benefits’ with some footage of people who were not disabled parking in disabled parking bays. What this was intended to prove was unclear. There was also an illegal immigrant featured.

Wednesday 2 November 2011

OCCUPY TRAFALGAR SQUARE ( Coming soon )



The painting above is of a demonstration in 1971 by Lisa Kreitmeir. The wall to the north, which effectively enclosed the area, is now no more, and there are steps down into the square. Thank Ken Livingston for that. Just noticed, where are the lions ?




OCCUPY LSX : CRAPITALISM CHALLENGED


First post since the OccupyLSX action, just been too involved with keeping track of what has been happening and making a couple of short videos inspired by events to put together a piece.


Anyway, what to say, a great deal has happened in a short time. First, I listened to the Bishop of London talk to the assembled protesters today, and it is good that a dialogue is continuing. However, what he said regarding the camp becoming a ‘distraction’ from the issues that have been raised, thus justifying their removal is disingenuous at best. On the contrary it is this peaceful presence on this ground halfway between the symbol of Mammon, the Stock Exchange, barred and guarded, and the symbol of God, the Christian St Paul’s Cathedral, which under a feeble excuse then shamefully shut its doors, that has created and focused attention on the issues and managed to create a real forum, a place where debate can take place outside of the narrow and self-interested parliamentary system. The issues ? Do they really need repeating ?


The necessity to radically reform the economic system and give voice to the disregarded, marginalised, discontented and increasingly large numbers of citizens that are simply no longer are willing to accept the hollow mantras of the anonymous ‘market’ dictating the terms of all debate and the implied impotence of politicians and our self-appointed religious elite.


A spotlight on the collusive even if unspoken nature of the financial machinations of the City, the puppet-like responses of our notionally free willed political representatives who, almost to a man and woman, put Party and power before principle and, the admittedly far less tainted but nevertheless somewhat vague and distant established Church has been illuminated by the good willed and simple action of occupying this space peacefully and with due consideration of the effects on others. There is absolutely no way the Anglican Church would be openly taking part in this debate outside of its Cathedral in the heart of the City nor would have stated so clearly that it had sympathy with these issues if this had not happened.


That these concerns are deeply connected to the essence of Christian values has been obscured and the connection that is being revealed is of profound importance. Whether one is a believer in Christianity or any other religion the fact is that the origins of most progressive social change in this country have come from applying a positive Christian perspective to the negative social consequences of the rise of capitalism. This predates Socialism and Communism. The established church in this country has been in a relatively weak position since it was incorporated into the state and has for far too long acted as if it operated as a mere adjunct to the dominant economic system, very much enmeshed into it and scarcely offering any critique despite the fact that as is becoming acutely clear it is failing both as an economic system and conflicting markedly with Christian principles.




It scarcely matters what one calls this dominant system, Capitalism, Corporatism, Crapitalism comes to mind, it is simply no longer remotely justified. That the Bank of England, effectively an arm of the Treasury, thus supposed to serve the people, can, at the press of a switch, create many millions of pounds and then give this money to banks, which the government also effectively controls, or could if it had the will, and then the Governor of this same agency says with no apparent sense of irony that this may not make any difference to the situation in the real world because they, these same banks that have just been gifted more millions, might choose not to lend it but rather use it for their own purposes i.e. speculative trading which they decide they can make more money from is both absurd and, in current circumstances, downright wicked.


Speculative trading with other people’s money, or money you have been gifted by government, is of no use to the 99% of people not in the employ of that financial operation. It could be stopped tomorrow if there was the will to do it. That money could be then directed to those activities and individuals that need it. It could even be lent without interest. These things are not impossible, usury was seen as an evil in Biblical times, it still is by the Koran, as I understand it. Yet interest rates seem to form the bedrock of all financial planning. I tried to find out how they are set and read the almost unbelievable facts about LIBOR, the London Inter Bank Overnight Rate, which is set by half a dozen guys who are paid to sit in an office in Canary Wharf and make them up on a daily basis. Of course no doubt they do some complicated fiddling with numbers but, at the end of this they simply take a view and set a rate for the next day. That’s it. On the basis of this millions are gambled over the international banking system over the next twenty four hours, then the whole process repeats. This is exactly like horse racing odds. A bookie at some point prior to a race has to make up some odds, it can be based on form, or anything he likes, the weather, but they are essentially a figment of his imagination, they have no reality until he writes them up on his board, then punters may place bets, and he adjust the odds accordingly. When the race is over it starts all over again, but if the bookmaker gets it wrong he goes bust. In the case of our banks that is what happened but they have been given shed-loads of money to start again, and to do exactly the same. But this is not a horse race, and at least that provides entertainment, what the hell does speculative financial trading provide ? Other than grotesque amounts of money for those that bet successfully ? Does any of the money that, say, Goldman Sachs make go anywhere other than into the partner’s accounts ? They may buy a mansion or two, obviously provide business to top dollar hotels and so on, but other than that ? The BBC with its deeply nauseating ’ Dragons Den ’ perpetuates the myth that there are all these wealthy ’entrepreneurs’ out there just waiting to give anyone with a clever idea some of their pile. Its facile, a complete travesty of what the BBC once stood for, it could be made by Conservative Central Office, or the Corporation of London conforming so closely to their dim ideas of the only way the world can work : some people get absurdly over-rewarded, they then might re-invest, for the sole reason of making more money, if you are prepared to ask them very nicely.



Have I gone off the subject ? Well maybe, but it permeates everywhere, this culture of justified greed, institutional connivance and the collusion of interests. I do try very hard to avoid conspiracy theories and this is not an attempt at one. Yet when the New Scientist publishes a thoroughly researched paper showing the close interrelatedness of the top few hundred multinational companies, the Economist concedes that it is essentially true that 1% have more than the remaining 99% it is scarcely a radical position to state that there is clearly something going on which is in need of exposure and re-evaluation.


These on-going protests are both necessary and justified and I sincerely hope bring about some serious changes, if they do not I fear the next wave will be less far less patient. There have been some signs of dialogue, yet disturbingly no senior politician from the UK government has made anything but dismissive comments about the legitimacy of protest. Only one MP that I am aware of have offered support, Caroline Lucas. Some senior clergy of the C of E are ‘listening’ others have resigned because of their withdrawal of unconditional support. The City is predictably silent other than to make it clear they will be taking legal action. Not very encouraging.

Sunday 23 October 2011

THE BEGINNING IS NIGH

Yes indeedy.



GO TO :
https://london.indymedia.org/
FOR THE DEVELOPMENTS AT OCCUPYLXS/ST PAULs/FINSBURY SQUARE

Monday 17 October 2011

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL : LONDON 15/10/11




CLICK ON THE TITLE ABOVE FOR LINK TO YOU TUBE.


A SHORT VIDEO TRIBUTE TO ALL WHO TOOK PART IN THIS WEEKEND'S OCCUPATION IN THE CITY. SPECIAL THANKS TO THE CLERGY OF ST. PAUL'S WHO OFFERED THE OLD RIGHT TO SANCTUARY AND TO THIS BLOKE WHO WAS SEEN SAT ON THE STEPS.



AS JIMI HENDRIX SAID JUST BEFORE LAUNCHING INTO HIS SET AT THE WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL IN 1969 ' PEACE , LOVE AND HAPPINESS, YEAH, HAPPINESS.'

Sunday 16 October 2011

KEY MESSAGES : OCCUPYLONDON : ST PAULS CATHEDRAL

HELLO WORLD FROM OCCUPYLONDON : ST PAULS CATHEDRAL

JERUSALEM : William Blake

Saturday 15 October 2011

THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY



'Tis to let the Ghost of Gold
Take from Toil a thousandfold
More than e'er its substance could
In the tyrannies of old.

'Paper coin - that forgery
Of the title-deeds, which ye
Hold to something of the worth
Of the inheritance of Earth.

'Tis to be a slave in soul
And to hold no strong control
Over your own wills, but be
All that others make of ye.

. . . . . . .

'And these words shall then become
Like Oppression's thundered doom
Ringing through each heart and brain,
Heard again - again - again -

'Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number -
Shake to your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you -
Ye are many - they are few.'

P B Shelly - The Masque of Anarchy
( part )

OCCUPY THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE



The Corporation of London have got an injunction from the High Court to prevent anyone from accessing Paternoster Square, the inappropriately named location of the Stock Exchange.
As this was the intended place for the protest action to gather and is a public space this is setting up a possible conflict between this legitimate and peaceful gathering and what are apparently privately contracted security guards presumably paid for by the Corporation of London. This strikes me as provocative and unjustified.

CLICK ON : OCCUPY THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE
TITLE LINE FOR LINK TO LIVE COVERAGE


Thursday 6 October 2011

CLARKSON : A GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN ?


The replaying of and poring over the events of 11 September 2001 continues relentlessly. Interviews with the then children who were sitting in a classroom with President Bush when he was told of the second tower being hit for example, on BBC Radio 4. What possible light can that throw on the matter ?

It might be worth looking at just how this event ‘that changed the world’ as we are continually told, (in what way precisely is not so often explained) and other terrorist attacks in the last ten years compare with the more prosaic everyday calamities such as car crashes.


The bare facts are that in this country over the last ten years there have been 56 deaths as a result of terrorist attacks. These were in London in 2005.

Since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York there have been no fatalities in the USA in the last ten years as a result of terrorist attacks. Fact.


Compare this with recent figures for deaths caused by hit and run drivers in London over the last 12 months with 15 killed and many injured. That is just the figure for hit and run drivers in one year. I do not know the precise figure for London ( for some reason it was not published in the piece in the Evening Standard where the hit and run statistics were given ) but the annual total number of fatalities in the UK caused by traffic accidents is around 2000 each year. It is usually noted that this figure is on a downward trend, but that means it has been consistently higher over the preceding ten years. Even if it were possible to reduce this to a figure of 1800 random violent deaths on the streets each year if they were caused by any events other than car crashes this carnage would be met with a hysterical reaction and calls for be strong actions to be taken. I know it is not just a matter of figures but the attack on the Twin Towers, by far the biggest single terrorist attack claiming in the order of 3000 lives, is equalled in number every one and a half years on the roads in Britain. Heaven knows how much higher the figures are in the USA. I seem to recall that on average someone is killed on the roads in the USA every three minutes.


As opposed to one big spectacular event the so-called ‘accident’ when a car or lorry kills someone is rarely reported as news, quickly cleared away, barely recorded and almost invisible, unless you happen to be on the scene or personally involved. I heard some comic fool complaining, in an attempt to be funny, that they now stop traffic on the motorway for too many minor mishaps whereas it should only be closed after major pile ups involving death and destruction. There is a whole other language and attitude to car crashes which seems to accept it as par for the course and just a fact of life : it is in point of fact random killing by stupid actions that endanger the lives of others, much like terrorism.


The national broadcaster the BBC using my licence fee makes a large budget programme (Top Gear) exclusively devoted to the promotion of what is, in the end, simply another consumer product, not particularly durable, which are manufactured for commercial profit : cars. For this one, potentially lethal product, all the ideas of the BBC not being a commercial channel promoting any particular product are suspended. There is a continual emphasis upon speed for its own sake, the idea that you could ever kill someone, or in fact yourself, (not that I would be upset if the chief presenter did top himself in one of the absurd expensive cars that he promotes), is never touched upon.


Back to Ground Zero. Exactly what is the point to endlessly repeating these images of chaos and destruction that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Centre ten years ago ? It is like doing an advert for terrorists everywhere : if you get it right you will get endless free advertising on national media for ever. What is to be gained or progressed by interview after interview, replay after replay, of every bit of recording, no matter how bad, how shaky, how meaningless, of everything that happened to be recorded on that day ? I could trip over going down a flight of steps and film it on a mobile phone and it would look very much the same as much of the sort of material that is often shown, and it would be about as enlightening. And it does not alter the fact : yes, in the case of the attack on the World Trade Centre, a very bad thing occurred, but it is an extremely rare event but which, by repeating the images over and over again is made to seem familiar rather than exceptional and occurred on one singular day in America ten years ago.


The most recent programme I have heard being promoted on BBC Radio, just before the news at one, to get maximum exposure, is about the day before the attack, that is the day before ‘the world changed’ in some indefinable way. Utterly ridiculous. After such an event it still all comes down to certain powerful people being seen to act and making certain decisions, for good or ill, and in this case, in my opinion, for ill. The world did not change. There was a terrorist threat before 9/11 and there is one still, but without being a statistician nor a ’Security Expert’, which seem to heavily outnumber active terrorists these days, it would appear that the chances of being mowed down by a speeding car or reversed over by an artic delivering to Tesco Metro are considerably more likely to be the cause of my or indeed your death than an act of terrorism. My next door neighbour, an alert and active lady of 80 died after just such an incident. The driver said there is no way to see anything to the rear of the vehicle he was driving. That is how the vast majority of articulated lorries still operate : with no way of the driver seeing what is directly behind : be afraid, be very afraid. Fitting cameras is too expensive, they say, the price of beans would inevitably go up.


Whether David Cameron should send an SAS Team to capture Jeremy Clarkson dead or alive is a moot point. I think, on balance, yes. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Tuesday 16 August 2011

THE RIOT ACT.


So it finally happened, if one looks back over these entries from as far back as a year and a half, it was being strongly suggested that there could be riots. Now there have been, and for commentators and politicians to pretend that this is not connected to the political decisions of this government nor the prevailing utterly discredited economic policies is simply stupid and insulting to ones intelligence. I have consistently said that this would almost certainly be the result of the policies being implemented with no regard for their effect on the most marginalised and poorest in society ( see articles published in Tribune : 7/08/09 - 23/10/09 ). I have heard merchant bankers boasting in bars that ‘ the English don’t riot.’ ( See ‘ The Chimera of the City ‘ 12 May 2010 ) They obviously have short memories as well as a inflated sense of their own worth, an inoperative moral compass and breathtaking arrogance.

Today, the first uttering by a corpulent Tory backbencher after the Prime Minister’s completely predictable statement praising the police and admonishing the rioters was, incredibly enough, to suggest that the actions taken against anti-Vietnam War demonstrators in Washington when the then American government sent in the Army to forcibly round up thousands and hold them in a football stadium were an admirable example of how to deal with the current unrest struck a particularly bad note. Even if this remark by this pompous ass was meant as a joke, and thus one both ill-judged and deeply unfunny, it just shows how far removed some members of this government are from reality. The Prime Minister smiled dimly.

What remains surprising is that the areas with the greatest concentration of wealth in the capital have, so far, remained unscathed. It is remarkable how it is in similar places that riots have flared up as in the early to mid-eighties, that period so often dutifully presented as a sort of boom time with the obligatory pictures of ’yuppies’ quaffing champagne. I lived through that period in London and can categorically state that it certainly was not so for the majority of people, quite the opposite.

Until a few years at the tail end when a few people made inordinate amounts of money largely out of the sell offs of our industries and speculative property investment, the period was marked by public squalor, private greed and increasing social tension. News International and Mr. Murdoch were invited into No. 10 by Mrs. Thatcher, explicitly to break print union power and American ‘advisors’ brought in to oversee the break up of the mining industry, again an attack on unions and working class communities. In a clear parallel with the current situation there was growing social inequality and a Tory government who imposed their ideological certainties of letting the free market rip and the devil-take-the-hindmost with no regard to the social disintegration that inevitably resulted.

Everything was suddenly required to work as a business, even when its original purpose and structure had been to have other goals than only to make a profit. Thus Building Societies became banks with shareholders, public services and utilities were privatised, all activities and organisations that had a broader social good as part of their aim were made to appear out of date and unnecessary. It simply shows how little has actually changed both in the Conservative party’s lack of understanding of society and its being willing to sacrifice social order and scapegoat those that give vent to their frustration to maintain their wicked and discredited so-called philosophy of a market led ‘recovery’ which is not happening. They then say the society is sick : so what caused the illness ?

There is no recovery and even if there were the measures being taken will benefit the rich first and the poor last. Good God, Boris Johnson has as recently as a few weeks ago been suggesting tax cuts for the most wealthy to ‘stimulate’ recovery. You really could not make it up. If you wanted to inflame an already volatile underclass this is precisely what a person in a position of power might say. That begs the worrying question did these Etonian cronies that are running the show actually want this to happen to then excuse taking further coercive steps and imposing more controls on our increasingly divided societies’ disenfranchised and dispossessed ? Who instructed the police to stand back and observe ? They used more aggressive tactics against the peaceful G20 protesters than against the rioters. Very strange.

The fact that both the Prime Minister and the Mayor of London were both on holiday at the same time was an extraordinary situation and that Parliament is shut down for two months of the year seems increasingly untenable in the 21st Century. Neither of these things would have prevented the riots but is Boris Johnson going to brush this off with a perky quip ? A load of codswallop dreamed up by the Labour Party ? That was his aside on the phone hacking non-investigation a mere few months ago. Maybe he will now wake up to realise that being Mayor of London is a serious job and cannot be a part-time hobby and a jolly good excuse to give cheap advertising to your chums at Barclays.

I am astonished by the lack of understanding of the inevitability of these riots, and the complete failure of the mass media to begin to grasp what is happening. The continual emphasis on ‘criminality’ and violence, the reduction of these issues to a series of repeated images, like highlights from a football match, the contraction to and singling out of a random mugging, which could have happened any night of the week and would have gone unreported, the slightly ridiculous middle-class broom wielding clean-up brigade, (coincidentally appearing while Johnson was visiting Clapham Junction, in Conservative controlled Wandsworth ) which though they do no harm cannot resolve anything by sweeping up some broken glass.

First, there were widely different actions taking place. The reporting concentrated heavily on some smaller shops that were attacked and this was certainly reprehensible and easy to condemn. However, the attack on a massive Sony warehouse was clearly a different matter. This was targeted as were other multinational corporations and banks for reasons other than looting. Looting happens in the aftermath of the attacks, as in a war after attacks on specific targets. It was almost entirely attacks on property not on people. The violence was violence against property and those tasked with protecting that property, the police, with one tragic exception. It appears that the police took a less than enthusiastically aggressive attitude when confronted with what were indeed aggressive and unorganised crowds than they did when dealing with predominantly peaceful and organised demonstrators in recent protests. Obviously it was extremely difficult to restore order but the fact remains that very few people were attacked and that this was at root an inarticulate but nonetheless vehement outburst of rage against a social and political system that is manifestly failing. To suggest otherwise is simply denying this reality. It is the corrupt free market capitalist system and the so-called politics that sustain it that has been shown to be so utterly inadequate, unfair and is ultimately socially destructive, empty and unreal to many. It is these violent and chaotic reactions that have been forced from part of an often supine and apolitical population that are real and have meaning, despite all official attempts to deny this. Everything is being viewed through a prism of two competing political parties, or rather brands, that both want to maximise their market share of the vote. This distorts open debate and obscures social realities.

The drivel that has been broadcast by the mainstream politicians and commentators in the wake is incredible. Except for a handful of community workers and a few others close to the people who took part there has been almost no coherent commentary. Only in England could this be discussed in the way it has been, under an assumption that there was no political dimension and that it is all down to individual responsibility. The point to grasp all you well paid political commentators and members of ’think tanks’ is that this was people coming together because of a barely articulate but absolute necessity to express anger, frustration and impotence. Of course if you lead a life that has never even brought these things close you will not comprehend it, and the lack of imagination in the political classes in this country is staggering. I am certainly not enthusiastic for more violent disorder, and it is not to be praised, but having predicted exactly these sort of actions and having seen the peaceful protests by such as UK Uncut largely ignored (for example in Croydon the weekend before the riots ) and having to hear the endless, meaningless litanies of what is happening on the God damn stock market and the blank refusal of this government or indeed the opposition party to move from their position of maintaining the current nexus whereby the banks and financial institutions ( this over-dignifies them ) are calling the terms and everyone living in the real world has to deal with the consequences, there will be more of the same to come.


And so as the BBC and ITV set up their little tents on the lawn opposite the Houses of Parliament in the rain, no longer cluttered up with the peace protester Mr. Brian Haw after he died, and everyone in the chamber jumps up on their hind legs to condemn more and understand less than next person for fear of being seen to be ‘soft’ and the newer residents that pay hundreds of thousands to live in ‘vibrant inner-city London’ stick little post-it notes on the boarded up broken windows saying ‘ I (heart symbol) Clapham ’ when they are actually in Battersea, the fact that all is not well in this city and in this country must surely sink in, and some changes had better happen soon or there is little doubt that more of the same will be coming soon to a street near you.




Sunday 31 July 2011

John Betjeman : No Teddy Bear.


I have just been reading John Betjeman's poems again. I have always quietly liked them since first being introduced to them. The lines 'Up the ash tree climbs the ivy, Up the ivy climbs the sun' that open ' Upper Lambourne ' still resonate in my mind as does a line about ' squelching bladderwrack' which I cannot find in my copy of the collected poems. Its a seaweed, by the way, he is walking on the shore somewhere in England.

His image as the square somewhat lacking in angst tweedy fuddy duddy is not born out by his very subtle and deceptively simple poetry. TS Eliot said contemporary poetry must be ' difficult.' Its funny, they were pretty much contemporary yet Eliot seems the more modern and ' challenging.' Yet one does not have to go far into Betjeman's poems to find some remarkably unsettling and almost chillingly bleak visions, all the more so for being couched in the everyday and managing to completely avoid pomposity or the making of the big statement.

Read 'NW5 & N6' , suicide, mortality and religious doubt, fear, all occur with grim yet almost casual insistence in this and other poems. Additionally there are the vehement and unadulterated cries against the horrors of the increasing intrusion and de-civilising effect of technology, cars in particular. This, the last verse from ' Inexpensive Progress ' :

When all our roads are lighted
By concrete monsters sited
Like gallows overhead,
Bathed in the yellow vomit
Each monster belches from it,
We'll know that we are dead.

Not obviously John Betjeman, more like John Lydon.

He is also excellent in dropping pieces of conversation, not highbrow stuff, into the poems and with a much more convincing touch than Eliot, who did the same, but far more self-consciously and with ' deeper meaning' so they say...

I wonder who did it first ? It is usually assumed that Eliot was the avant-garde but I wonder ? He was also American and often his apparently English imagery and persona does not quite ring true. He was also a banker and published his own work as the editor at Faber & Faber.

Here are the last lines from ' NW5 & N6 ' :

" World without end " What fearsome words to pray.
" World without end." It was not what she'ld do
That frightened me so much as did her fear
And guilt at endlessness. I caught them too,
Hating to think of sphere succeeding sphere
Into eternity and god's dread will.
I caught her terror then. I have it still.

Friday 29 July 2011

The Triumph of Presentation.


As the layers upon layers of falsity, agreed upon lies, incestuous relationships and corrupt practices in the media - political nexus are revealed one glaring fact emerges : all this is a fabricated false world that has been constructed over many years and which has little connection to reality nor does it give any coherent vision of how our debased and distorted society could or should work. It has obscured and twisted real political debate.

The politics of ideas or convictions has been replaced with a politics of presentation, of image, of PR and marketing strategies taken from the world of advertising. Its apotheosis may have been the Blair led government, which seemed to make policy based on phone polls and what the Murdoch press would say rather than having anything that could be called an ideology, but it began during the Thatcher regime, and the defeat of the Michael Foot led Labour Party. It was then that advertising agencies became involved, the execrable Saatchis, who continue to have a huge influence over our cultural life to this day, and the American ideas of ‘ marketing ‘ a political party not based on a historic identity but rather on superficial scripted appearances on television by its leader, one Mrs. Thatcher.

The Labour leader, a great orator and a man of real political understanding and principle, was portrayed by a gullible and manipulated media as inarticulate and absurdly criticised for his choice of overcoat. Here was the beginning of actual political debate being sidelined by an obsession with presentation and personality which would grow to dominate and pervert politics for the next thirty years.

This is still very much the case even at present. All these professional so-called ’ analysts’ that are called upon to comment on political decisions, ex-journalists that are used to present the policies, ( a Mr. A Coulson ) all these people that have no known political convictions, are unelected and are largely operating in a parallel world peopled by their own kind and yet have become the thin controllers of the political debate. It was particularly tragic to see a rare instance on ‘Newsnight’ recently when there was a ‘representative’ selection of so-called ordinary people i.e. the electorate, British Citizens, given a chance to comment on the current situation and yet they could barely articulate a single cogent statement, so used to passively listening to ’ experts’ and commentators from the inside of the journalistic / spin doctor / PR led political world have they become. It is as if the serious part of political debate has been removed from politicians, with their willing acquiescence, as being too difficult for them to speak about and so delegated to a salaried gang of what have been clearly proven to be largely self-interested, amoral, and unelected and unaccountable media apparatchiks. On balance the old world so well satirised in ‘ Yes Minister ‘ where the chief Civil servants were actually running the show was far preferable, given the perhaps over - generous assumption that they had no political axe to grind.

The heinous excesses of the Murdoch press have finally been exposed and is proving to be their undoing. However the craven and supine acceptance of their power must not be forgotten. The simple fact that to watch England play cricket, rugby or football one has had to pay an exorbitant fee to a privately owned television company has been a shame on successive governments that continue to allow such a situation. The monopoly that News International have been allowed to maintain is a disgrace and an insult. Yet it is still broader than that, why when discussing any proposal by the government are the first people given time to air their views commentators from within the media nexus ? It has taken direct action and some civil disobedience to get a handful of other articulate voices on national television, mainly students who are traditionally completely ignored and more often maligned by the mainstream media.

The stables need a real clean, including the apologists and the explainers, those that have maintained this set-up because they could always claim to be to one side of it, while knowing it was dictating the terms. Simon Jenkins and all the public school educated members of the commentating classes that remain beyond criticism yet they now say they knew all along. So what did they do? Not a lot. They just took the money.

Piers Morgan, all these ' well educated' creeps that played along with the whole celebrity culture that puts a meaningless gloss over this increasingly divided and decimated country.

They still sit on the Newsnight programme pretending that its all so ‘over-egged’ and pontificating over what is and is not important. Is it just possible that you are no longer important ? You are part of the problem. Your views that were inflated and promoted by a press machine that is entirely discredited no longer have any special significance. Their failure to speak honestly or to criticise the direction of the mass media with its trivialising and celebrity obsessed stream of nonsense and its reduction of politics to a sort of PR exercise has been just as bad as the obvious illegality and prurience of the News of the World et al.

Let us hear less commentary and so-called analyses by self-appointed experts and tedious political commentators. The media talking to itself is not useful or interesting. The fact is that you are have all been a part and parcel of this revolting stew of self perpetuating nonsense and intrusion into people's private lives at the expense of dealing with real important issues. Its no good saying that is what people want, if that is all that is presented it takes on a life of its own, albeit a false life, a hideous fiction inflated by money and driven by envy.


Friday 15 July 2011

The Brown Envelope v Freedom of Information


In the on - going debate over the implications of the exposure of the deep seated corruption at News International a number of commentators from odious dirt-diggers used to paying to get their prurient and irrelevant stories for the tabloids to the noted journalist Andrew Gilligan who investigated the death of David Kelly over the Iraq dossier affair are piping up in defence of the practice of paying sources of information.

Its the brown envelope full of cash, no questions asked, out of sight, off the record way of doing things that clearly exists within parts of the journalist and police professions. This is yet a further example of how ingrained in this culture a corrupt, secret and essentially obscure way of operating has become. The issue of MP’s expenses was sighted in Gilligan’s blog of 8 July 20011 published in the Daily Telegraph, although curiously I cannot find it today. Even in this very rare instance where it could be said to be in the public good that the information was released it was still gained by a corrupt and probably illegal method as in the widely vilified phone hacking routinely used by News International.

He stated that in order to get the information about the expenses details it was necessary for the Daily Telegraph to pay an undisclosed sum to an individual, unnamed, and that this was justifiable because the expenses were proven to be being claimed illegally in some MP’s cases. What this completely fails to acknowledge is that there is now a Freedom of Information Act and it was using this that one Heather Brooke, with the support of The Guardian, had spent five years attempting to get this information and effectively made it an issue : why was it not released ? Paying someone a large wedge of cash should not be a ' necessary evil ' to get to the facts about how our elected representatives are operating.

Surely the fact that it was necessary for a newspaper with access to large sums of cash to gift someone a brown envelope full of same rather than this information being supplied to an inquiring party under the Freedom of Information Act is another strong reason to put an absolute stop to this culture of secrecy and subterfuge not a reason to maintain the status quo ?

It is surely now necessary to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act to make it unnecessary for the buying of information not use the fact that in this shameful case of the illegal MP’s expenses claims not being disclosed until a brown envelope had changed hands to justify this practice ? Its an old cliché but two wrongs do not make a right and corruption is corruption whether in politics or in journalism.

Timeline for Tuesday 19th July 2011




2 : 30 : Committee Meeting at the Houses of Parliament to hear testimony from the witch called Rebekah and two of her familiars, known as the Murdoch and the little Murdoch.

3 : 30 : End of hearing.

4 : 00 : The witch and her familiars are taken away to the Tower by river on a lighter pulling rubbish carrying vessels from the Waste Station in Wandsworth to Tilbury.

4 : 30 : Execution at the Tower.

4 : 45 : The three heads are fixed onto pikes at London Bridge.

4 : 50 : End of story.

Friday 8 July 2011

THE UNHOLY TRINITY


'How are you getting on?' said the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for it to speak with.
Alice waited till the eyes appeared, and then nodded. 'It's no use speaking to it,' she thought, 'till its ears have come, or at least one of them.' In another minute the whole head appeared, and then Alice put down her flamingo, and began an account of the game, feeling very glad she had someone to listen to her. The Cat seemed to think that there was enough of it now in sight, and no more of it appeared.
'I don't think they play at all fairly,' Alice began, in rather a complaining tone, 'and they all quarrel so dreadfully one can't hear oneself speak -- and they don't seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them -- and you've no idea how confusing it is all the things being alive; for instance, there's the arch I've got to go through next walking about at the other end of the ground -- and I should have croqueted the Queen's hedgehog just now, only it ran away when it saw mine coming!'

I am not nor ever have been a professional journalist. I do read the British papers, either in print or on line, where the BBC is first port of call. With the current revelations, which still have to fully play out, beginning to reveal the full extent of the incestuous relationship between the press, the government and the metropolitan police there are still apologists who claim that ‘we need a free press.’ One such tabloid yob hack whose name I don’t remember nor care to said this on Question Time last night. By ‘ free ‘ he presumably means free to listen to other people’s private messages, free to set up ridiculous staged entrapments that add nothing to our knowledge of what is actually going on amongst those of power and influence but simply deflect attention and appeal to the base instincts and prurience. Free to behave with gross indifference to human decency and purely selfish motives, to create stories where none exist and to stoke up loathing and hatred of people that have already been caught and punished for certain types of crime, usually sexual.

As I say, not having been in professional journalism I was surprised when someone who is showed me his newspaper actually had an office within the Houses of Parliament, as did most of the others. At that time he worked for the Sunday Mail. Sky News have their political journalists in an office in Millbank Tower, the same building that houses Conservative Central Office and which was attacked in the protests against cuts. All the main papers except one, the Guardian, are commercial shareholder companies which exist primarily to make profit. In that way they are no different from a private utility company or any other business. The lack of regulation of the financial and banking sector, systematically dismantled over the 18 years of Conservative government and left virtually unregulated by the Blair and Brown led Labour Party produced the near economic meltdown and bail out that has been well documented. The lack of commitment to intervene in the precious free market led to the re-nationalisation of the railway infrastructure only after people were regularly dying in a series of crashes caused directly by the withdrawal of adequate maintenance by the more loosely regulated ‘ Railtrack. ‘ The new Labour spin merchants could not even bring themselves to utter the word Nationalisation, which is what it was, and even as of today the train operators, with one which again had to be Nationalised because of its failure to provide an adequate service, Southern, are a rag bag of private companies receiving huge subsides and charging outrageous prices.

Back to the unregulated, or rather self-regulated press. This self-regulation is precisely the absurdity that was first used in relation to the deregulated financial services ‘ industry‘. This is what News International say they are doing, with the CEO of News International leading an investigation into practices while she herself was the Editor of the News of the World. And that is what the Metropolitan Police have said they have been doing : investigating themselves as to why they did not prosecute anyone other than one ‘rogue journalist ’ for the last ten years. Remember Nick Leeson, the ’ rogue trader ’ who brought about the collapse of Barings Bank ? Remember that bullshit ?

Nothing was done to improve regulation as the free market is sacrosanct.

What the politicians have been doing is bugger all. The opposition have been given an empty goal with the frankly incredible appointment of Coulson as Tory’s spin doctor and Ed Milliband finally having found a voice, although as recently as a week ago he and members of his crew were still waiting on the newspapers, or rather the Guardian, primarily, to make the running. He has now been arrested. I would like to see Murdoch in the dock.

Again, as on so many issues, there has been a cigarette paper between the major political parties with supine acceptance and connivance with the major players in the news business being the the way of both Labour and Conservative leaderships, with Murdoch and his cronies having been especially revered and/or feared. Even the BBC do not look particularly good in the way they continually sit on the fence and fail to look outside the cosy self enclosed world of this unholy trinity of the press, the government and the police, who are given currently hours of airtime presenting them doing their work, which they are paid to do, completely uncritically and without any social context. They also routinely give important positions to ex-Murdoch employees such as Andrew Neil with his execrable politics programme in which he seems to be continually seeking to remind viewers that he is not being paid very much ( then fuck off back to News International ) and sinecures to ex-politicians such as the pompous creep Michael Portillo, who gets to swan around the country on First Class trains giving his deeply uninteresting observations and also appears as a pundit on Neil’s show. This nauseating spectacle is another supposed to present ' politics ' and its self-contained mirror of 'the media' is at last being shattered and exposed for the corrupt poxy sham that it is.

The next area that needs some illumination is corruption in local government where again there is far too close and cosy a relationship between certain private companies and Council officers and very little scrutiny from outside given that the local press is almost non-existent in its influence. I am thinking here about the Tory flagship Borough Wandsworth, where developers St George have been allowed to build pretty much anything they want in vast areas of the borough with no regard to the needs of the existing community. There is also a security company called ADT who seem to get virtually all contracts for CCTV throughout the borough. Nearly all Councillors are multiple property owners in the borough and have no declared occupation. I do not believe any sign on.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

The Ecstacy of Communication



This seems particularly relevant and of significance given the growing obsession with so-called social networks and the intrusion of the internet into almost every part of contemporary life. It is a passage from ‘ The Ecstasy of Communication ‘ written by Jean Baudrillard published in 1983.

We are no longer a part of the drama of alienation ; we live in the ecstasy of communication. And this ecstasy is obscene. The obscene is what does away with every mirror, every look, every image. The obscene puts an end to every representation. But it is not only the sexual that becomes obscene in pornography; today there is a whole pornography of information and communication, that is to say, of circuits and networks, a pornography of all functions and objects in their readability, their fluidity, their availability, their regulation, in their forced signification, in their performativity, in their branching, in their poly-valence, in their free expression…

It is no longer then the traditional obscenity of what is hidden, repressed, forbidden or obscure ; on the contrary, it is the obscenity of the visible, of the all-too-visible, of the more-visible-than-the-visible. It is the obscenity of what no longer has any secret, of what dissolves completely in information and communication.

The hot, sexual obscenity of former times is succeeded by the cold and communicational, contractual and motivational obscenity of today. The former clearly implied a type of promiscuity, but it was organic, like the body’s viscera, or again like objects piled up and accumulated in a private universe, or like all that is not spoken, teeming in the silence of repression. Unlike this organic, visceral, carnal promiscuity the promiscuity that reigns over the communication networks is one of superficial saturation, of an incessant solicitation, of an extermination of interstitial and protective spaces. I pick up my telephone receiver and its all there ; the whole marginal network catches and harasses me with the insupportable good faith of everything that wants and claims to communicate.

In any case, we will have to suffer this new state of things, this forced extroversion of all interiority, this forced injection of all exteriority that the categorical imperative of communication literally signifies.

…with communication and information, with the immanent promiscuity of all these networks, with their continual connections, we are now in a new form of schizophrenia. No more hysteria, no more projective paranoia, properly speaking, but this state of terror proper to the schizophrenic : too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore.

What characterizes him is less the loss of the real, the light years of estrangement from the real, the pathos of distance and radical separation, as is commonly said: but, very much to the contrary, the absolute proximity, the total instantaneity of things, the feeling of no defence, no retreat. It is the end of interiority and intimacy, the overexposure and transparence of the world which traverses him without obstacle. He can no longer produce the limits of his own being, can no longer produce himself as mirror.

He is now only a pure screen, a switching centre for all the networks of influence.



Thursday 23 June 2011

Utopian Dream

The back end of a bank holiday, a blank holiday. Piano from Wigmore Hall on the radio, a man painting the walls to the playground black, cloudy.

The immediate world. The failed. The time, it says 13 : 50 in the corner. Fly flying around and about, already killed two today. And a hole in my shirt. And my socks and almost everything else. Down the tubes, up the ante, break the spell, spurge the system, curse the piston, back the loser, crack the code, blow the nose, shave the face and anything doesn’t go.

Not funny anymore. Knowing its going, knowing its gone. The presumption of guilt, the admission of innocence, the curse of the clock, the chopping of a log. Verily I say to you, few are called, none are chosen. All the bricks in the world, all the sticks in the mud, all the rice in China, all these things laid end to end would stretch from here to there and back again. So they say, but I don’t believe it. No more money business. Not a spelling error. No trials and no tribulations, miles of calculations. Banksters never say sorry. I gesticulate, masticate and ruminate on specific generalities, moreorlesslessly.

So many numbers, not all of them can be right. Endless zeros …

How long is it before the beginning ?

Reason and necessity. Meaning and value. The turn of the screw, the turn of the tide, the change of the season, the last day of the month. Everything has gone blue. Made it up as he went along. Following the correct procedures. Only obeying orders. The Y Factor. The X factory. This alphabet soup is cold.
Spaghetti Junctions. Going to meet thy maker. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but why ? Does that mean a great amount of knowledge is an extremely dangerous thing ? Might it explode ? I prevaricate, therefore I might be, or not, as the case may be.

Due to circumstances beyond your control, way beyond control. Willing it to happen, or to not happen, depending. Presentiment and the growing sense of false alarm. Looking out of the window to see the weather, but it had gone somewhere else. All most strange away. The road curved and lost its bearings. The streetlights all went out. The bus stop ran off pursued by a bollard. The drain woke up from its dream and the kerbstones were singing at the tops of their voices. A cat was thrown from a window and the pigeon laid a wooden egg. It must have been raining, but the clouds were all empty. Today of all days. No seagulls.


The Ship is empty, every bed is full, the hospital is floating away downstream, levitation in all the rooms, the corridors have lost their power …
Monopoly being played by large groups of people gathered on street corners. Boxes of soap are left at every doorstep, milk is piped instead of water and small tubes of toothpaste are distributed. Thousands of pizzas are delivered to a Post Office, but its closed. Wrong address.
All video tapes play the same film, all radios play the same tune, all the dogs leave without saying goodbye. Kentucky Fried Chicken is declared illegal, petrol turns to water and prices are frozen. Vans called Eskimo deliver ice, that is the reality.

Only one pair of shoes to each person and only priests can ride bicycles. Cars must be ceremoniously driven into giant pits and buried. Trains run once a month and all go to the same place, Braintree in Essex. All lawyers are forbidden to speak or write letters and must only communicate with gestures. Football is to be played on floating pitches moored 3 miles offshore and spectators must swim out to watch. The ball is made of aluminium, the goals are fifteen foot wide and two foot high and each team have three goalkeepers. Matches are five days and players can change sides. Cricket and tennis are merged into one game with a bowler and a batsman on either side of the net. The fielders stand around the court where the ball boys used to be. There is no audience. The courts are five acres in extent. Golf is only played in the Artic and Antarctic regions. Rugby is played at sea, similarly to the football, but with no ball. There are 150 players to each side and games are three and a half minutes each half, seven minutes in total. Only children under five years old can watch, unless accompanied by an adult.

The Oxford and Cambridge boat race takes place in the London ring sewer with motorised robot crews and a tape recording of a cox. It is a circular route, the race lasts for nine months. It is the only programme shown on television.

There is no television for the remaining months of the year.

The cinemas show one episode of Z Cars once a week. Only men are allowed in parks, only women in swimming pools, and otters are barred.

Walking is the preferred mode of transport, bicycles are limited to travel at below walking speed and roller skating only allowed on elevated motorways. Balloons are permitted on Christmas Day and in emergencies only.

Police must stay indoors at all times unless there is a fire. Firemen are permitted but must blow out fires rather than use water, which is stored in giant bottles and must never be used.

All flies are to be rounded up and put on flights of extraordinary rendition to unknown destinations where nothing will be heard from them ever again. Birds shall live in an area specially designated for them called Birdland. It is in Surrey and is approximately two hundred miles square. The occupants of this part of Surrey must remove themselves although some will be employed to keep the birds from leaving the area using butterfly nets.
A similar arrangement will be made for fish.

When making tea the revised convention will be that the kettle shall be brought to the pot, not the other way around. The law that stated that the pot may not call the kettle black is rescinded. It remains an offence to fill a kettle with fish, even if different. Fish and chip shops may only serve chips but can retain the name.

Pubs are to serve beer at a flat rate of 50p a visit. No food is permitted in a pub and spirits only of the departed.

There will be four days to a week and three months to a year. Weekends will be 80 days. No one will be poor and shouting is forbidden.

The weather shall be sunny or rainy and nothing in between. Clouds must not move too fast. Wind is to be abolished. It will always rain on a Sunday.

Queuing is compulsory at all times, if there is no queue then it is a civic duty to form one as soon as possible. However, all bus stops will be removed and buses used as living accommodation for retired drivers. All bus drivers will be retired.

The world may be round or flat, depending upon your point of view. There is to be no monarchy and the band Queen are deemed to have never existed. All money will be free at the point of dispense and all former banks will become prisons and all former staff and executives be held therein for lengths of time commensurate with their salaries : the higher the salary the longer the length of time to be detained. All politicians will also be detained indefinitely and all members of the armed forces. They will be employed in making toys for children and the manufacture of sweets. All bad people must become priests and help the ill and the deranged.

Chinese take away will be free.

No land is to be owned by anyone and no property can be bought or sold.

All factories that do not make something edible, useful or beautiful will be closed down.

All roads are to be planted with trees and grasses.

Headaches and accidents are forbidden.

There will be tea and biscuits but not coffee and biscuits.

Everyone gets a pound of sausages each day.

That’s it.



Monday 28 March 2011

FALSE ICONS AND VIDEO ' ART.'

In times such as these with some momentous changes taking place in the Middle East and this country entering what I believe will be a period that will severely test social cohesion and consensus, this may seem a trivial subject. However, as examples of how deracinated and insubstantial a large part of our culture has become and the deluded nature of much so-called critical commentary has become it takes some beating.


I am speaking of the confusing hyperbole spoken around films and video, particularly when it is presenting itself as art. Quite simply I suggest that much of what goes under the name of mixed media art is very close to worthless and the writing about it simply contrives and confuses without making any real case for giving it prominence or attention.


An example. A current exhibition at the Barbican consists of a batch of video games being projected at a huge scale onto the walls of the gallery. It is momentarily diverting as a spectacle. Yet it offers nothing, other than this momentary diversion : it is what it is, no more, no less. There is no attempt to create a narrative, a deliberate lack of aesthetic qualities, almost no evidence of a human involvement at all. No matter how much verbiage is written around it about 'subverting the media' and so on, it remains, as do 99% of these sorts of installations, as vacuous and dispiriting as the thing it is supposed to be 'subverting.' That this might be the point of this sort of production does not mean it justifies being taken seriously nor being treated as a work of art. I do not accept such claims. It is a slightly clever but empty gesture.


Onto another unrelated but highly irritating and now quite absurdly overused word which once had a clear meaning but is now totally demeaned by persistent misuse, the term icon. Recently deceased film stars are now explicitly called 'icons.' The BBC report of Elizabeth Taylor's death made a point of saying that she was ' not a film star but an icon. ' No she wasn't, she was a film star. Well known buildings, for example the Houses of Parliament, are referred to as ' icons.' Again they are surely well-known buildings not icons. An icon is an image created for religious contemplation, a visual expression of a spiritual intention. It is the very opposite of something familiar through mechanical repetition. A famous actress that is familiar through having their image widely disseminated is not an icon. Neither is a building that has become a landmark.


It is perhaps yet another example of the perverted and strange relation that this country has to the visual arts that may originate in the destruction of the religious orders in the reformation and the real icons and images that enriched the Catholic church. Oddly this is commonly called the ' dissolution of the monasteries.' State sanctioned vandalism of the most grotesque order is more like it.

Friday 18 February 2011

The Dictatorship of the banks : Total Government Capitulation.

So, the excuse for a rigorous reassessment of the practices of the major virtually state owned banks results in no significant change whatsoever. It amounts to complete capitulation by the coalition and proves conclusively that the city, whatever that chimera is, amounts to a form of dictatorship by an unelected and extremely wealthy banking fraternity who are treated as a special interest group with power and influence way beyond any other. It is also clear that this power is not remotely connected to the interests of the people of this country and that it is being allowed to prevail over the government whose job is supposed be to serve the people of this country, not a self-selected elite of financial manipulators.

Why is this government acting in the interests of the banks and not the people ? Speaking of the pitiful results of the consultations with the banks ( why were they involved in consultations at all ? What other group would get such consultation and collaboration prior to measures supposed to curb their behaviour ? ) the chancellor spoke of ' no more retribution ' : what retribution was that ? After a couple of years of slightly less profit after a financial crisis brought about directly because of their amoral and reckless behaviour for which no one has been held to account, other than a few embarrassing moments in front of a select committee, they are back to business as usual. Bonuses to just one of the big largely state owned banks, RBS, total £950 million for the last financial year. Compare this with the capital raised for the so-called Big Society bank : £200 million. No one has forfeited any of their massive individual nor corporate gains.
It is sadly hardly suprising. One of The Supreme Court's first decisions since occupying its new HQ was to overturn the previous two judgements by the High Court that the level of bank charges were unfair practice. This decision was made against a backdrop of the immediate post financial crisis caused by, guess who, the banks and various financial operators that had left many in dire straights. Nevertheless these unelected Law Lords, the same that used to sit in closed sessions in the Lords back rooms, came down in favour of the bank's position that they can effectively charge what they like no matter how excessive or unfair. This clearly indicated that there is no willingness in the Westminster elite to challenge or fundamentally alter the effective stranglehold that the banks have on the economy and there ability to dictate their own terms to individuals and businesses without any public accountability or any requirement to include a social dimension in their arcane money making practices.
The degree to which any dissent from the freewheeling entirely profit driven, unaccountable and deliberately complex banking and financial manipulations that are currently running rings around the regulators and the tax system has been re-marginalised can be seen in such as a recent ' debate ' ( sponsored by the dreadful excuse for a daily London paper the Evening Standard ) under the title 'the financial crisis only proves the strength of Capitalism. ' I also recently read, admittedly in a right wing journal, the Quarterly Review, an article attacking the conclusions of a book, The Spirit Level, that was widely applauded as a necessary analysis of the current situation in developed western countries regarding social financial inequality and its consequences. they were that societies with the worst distribution of resources are the most fractured and least content. Not a particularly extreme view and cogently argued and backed up with facts and information. However this view is ridiculed by the piece.
In the borough where I live the Mayor recently proudly opened a soup kitchen. Meanwhile Ferraris and Land Rovers litter some streets while new basement extensions are being added to the houses. This is in London in 2011 not 1911.
Those that continue to believe in an unfettered free market often claim to be also free of ideology : this is a lie. It may be an incoherent ideology that only explains things its own narrow terms, but it is definitely an ideology. In some respects it closed to a religious belief in that remains a matter of faith rather than anything that can be proven in reality.
In some ways it seems that we are now entering a period where the false Gods of paper profit and a fundamentalist belief in the Capitalist market economy which is increasingly being run bu organisations which are outside of effective government control are being tested to destruction.
Or rather the societies they produce are being tested to destruction. Clearly this does not appear to worry those that continue to gain from the prevailing orthodoxy. But if government fails to intervene other than to temporarily shore up this system and continues to allow the weak to go the wall while the most highly rewarded continue to reek havoc by acting outside the framework of any justifiable social purpose then there will eventually be real retribution.
The actions that took place over the last weekend in branches of Barclays were fairly playful and light-hearted. The indicate that not everyone has accepted this new ' settlement' in complete silence. At some point in the not to distant future, unless there is root and branch change and the mute acceptance of the overt self-interest and scandalous influence of the 'city' : the Corporation of London and its umbilicaly linked residents : the banks and financial institutions, in public policy making is overturned, there will almost certainly be much more serious disorder. Moneylenders and temples come to mind ...
A handful of quotes :
' The City is the home of the devilry of modern finance.'
Herbert Morrison 1917
'Those that control money can pursue a policy at home and abroad contrary to that which has been decided by the people.'
Clement Atlee 1937
' I hope this Egypt thing does not give people in other countries the idea to overthrow governments.'
Alan Sugar ( for it is he )2011