Disparate Straights

HORSE RACING - MODERN CAPITALISM : WHICH IS MORE ABSURD ?

2012-01-10T12:43:00.003Z

New Year, but all I am hearing is the same old rubbish from ‘experts’ and expressions of ‘intentions’ of doing something from our elected leaders in respect of the perverse, corrupt and destructive financial system.

In response presumably to the prospect of HMRC being found to have acted unlawfully in respect of the deal it did to excuse Goldman Sachs of some billions of pounds in tax, they are being taken to Court by UK Uncut Legal, the Prime Minister says ’ something must be done’ about large Corporates using legal advisors to run rings around the tax man. But what, exactly ? Given the reluctance to bring in any hard and fast new laws to reign in the City and its satellite operations in far flung tax havens what real prospect is there of any change ? One of the sticking points for this Government on the recent opt out of a revised EC Treaty was that all other partners were intending to put a financial transaction tax into effect. Clearly Cameron’s friends in the City had told him this was not what they want. So even a modicum of change to the existing free for all for the traders in bonds and money that hold whole nations to ransom agreed to by other large developed Capitalist economies, who clearly take the view it is an necessity and is not going to bring their countries down in flames, has been refused because this Government is still behoven to the self interested mutterings and influence of the City.

I used to frequent race meetings, horses that is. I was a simple punter and never had any huge background knowledge of form nor any particular method of betting. I kept it very simple, read the recent form, talked to a friend that had been doing it for years, and almost always put a straightforward bet on the nose of one horse to win. Naturally they very rarely did. It began to interest me how the odds were determined, particularly the trackside odds, which would just magically start to appear before the next race. They would vary from bookie to bookie and continue varying right up until the off. It soon became apparent that they were essentially nothing more than an opinion, a well informed opinion, but no more than that. They were also set to attract money so varied according to what was being staked by the punters. It was highly volatile and clearly effected by sentiment rather than logical, as rather than bet on the horse many would bet on the perceived ‘value’ of the odds, which can be hard to resist.

The parallels with the financial trading markets is obvious. It is, at base, an imaginative projection of what may happen in the future, the big difference being that with a horse race that future is a matter of minutes away, once the race is run bets are settled and its all over, no one in their right mind bets on races years away. There are winner and losers and the biggest winners are always the bookies, otherwise they would not be there next time. It also favours the big players, again a parallel with financial markets, in that there are people called rails bookmakers who do not display their odds, the big time gamblers who stake large sums go to them and can negotiate favourable odds which then filter through to the bookies taking the £5 bets. You cannot negotiate terms with a fiver. It is not entirely transparent, but its actually a good deal more intelligible to someone coming to it cold than what the so-called markets in financial ‘instruments’ get up to. Moreover it is predicated on a real event that will take place in full view of everyone taking part in the immediate future : a bunch of horses running around a race course, one of which will come first.

In the financial market traders can borrow vast sums at preferential interest rates to then use as their stakes. This is akin to me saying to you, lend me a large wedge of money to then put on a horse, if it wins I will pay you back with interest. It’s the sort of thing that one simply does not do, and would never happen on a day to day basis in real life because most people are not that stupid. Yet it does happen on a day to day basis in the financial markets which everyone is supposed to believe are so vitally important and many thousands of ‘experts’ exist solely to facilitate and negotiate this trading. The LIBOR rate, the rate at which banks lend to each other is set each day by a bunch of people sitting in Canary Wharf, they are the equivalent of the rails bookmakers. This key figure is invented, it is a projection in a self-fulfilling prophesy. Even the more honest commentators and players in this gigantic game are now willing to admit that it has been operating completely without reference to reality, nor to any notion of social or political consequence. They have been in a parallel universe in which they stupidly believed they could largely predict the future and virtually eliminate risk. Again, if you bring it down to the race track, if you came across someone saying that they had enough information to win almost every time so give me all your money and I will make you rich, you would give them a very wide berth.

The deeply worrying thing is these are the people now being parachuted into governments, Italy and Greece for example, they are ex-Goldman Sachs, they are financial traders with no political background or vision, its like putting the bookmaker in charge of the race. The bookmaker exists to make money, he does not care about the welfare of the punters or the fairness of the race, in fact they probably care rather more than the typical Goldman Sachs executive. In this country we have a virtual puppet government who are willing to put the interests of the City before the well being of the citizens. This is now crystal clear, the opposition is impotent, afraid to upset the middle classes and deaf to the principles of Socialism on which they were founded. It is partly because of this failure of representative democracy and that the all powerful banking, financial and corporate interests sit right next door to St.Paul’s Cathedral that the rather dozy, socially conservative and equivocal Church of England has been inadvertently thrust into the frame. Thank God, not sure about one, but let in pass in the cause of continuing the case, that one or two of their number, notably the ex-Dean of St Paul’s, have stepped into the vacume between the deaf and blind obsessive self-interest of the acolytes of the ‘market’ ( a totally inadequate and discredited term for what is a corrupt and venal system ) and their willing apologists this, and indeed the last, government.

Where we go from here is not easy to see, both Cameron and Milliband might get themselves down to the Bank of Ideas in Sun Street, because they clearly have none, but if another Commission to ‘look into the matter ’is set up with Lord Sugar in charge do not be surprised if I set light to myself at the foot of No. 1 Canada Square.

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

2011-11-24T14:01:00.001Z

The City Remembrancer : Paul Double, unelected yet sits in the Commons.

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 this magazine 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.

VERILY I SAY TO YOU ...

2011-11-11T13:20:00.000Z

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. ‘

THE BBC : HOW INDEPENDENT IS IT ?

2011-11-07T12:59:00.002Z

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.

OCCUPY TRAFALGAR SQUARE ( Coming soon )

2011-11-02T13:42:00.007Z

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

2011-11-02T13:35:00.003Z

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.

THE BEGINNING IS NIGH

2011-10-23T21:33:00.003+01:00

Yes indeedy.

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

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

2011-10-17T11:01:00.007+01:00

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.'

La Puerta del Sol Madrid

2011-10-16T16:41:00.001+01:00

CLICK ON TITLE : EXTRAORDINARY SCENE : MADRID LAST NIGHT.

KEY MESSAGES : OCCUPYLONDON : ST PAULS CATHEDRAL

2011-10-16T16:00:00.001+01:00

HELLO WORLD FROM OCCUPYLONDON : ST PAULS CATHEDRAL

2011-10-16T15:55:00.002+01:00

JERUSALEM : William Blake

2011-10-16T10:26:00.000+01:00

THE MASQUE OF ANARCHY

2011-10-15T15:14:00.002+01:00

'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 )

HE'S BACK AT LAST ...

2011-10-15T14:55:00.000+01:00

OCCUPY THE LONDON STOCK EXCHANGE

2011-10-15T12:53:00.006+01:00

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

CLARKSON : A GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN ?

2011-10-06T14:27:00.005+01:00

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.

THE RIOT ACT.

2011-08-16T12:48:00.005+01:00

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.

John Betjeman : No Teddy Bear.

2011-07-31T15:14:00.003+01:00

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.

The Triumph of Presentation.

2011-07-29T23:55:00.004+01:00

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.

The Brown Envelope v Freedom of Information

2011-07-15T21:58:00.007+01:00

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

2011-07-15T21:09:00.005+01:00

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.

THE UNHOLY TRINITY

2011-07-08T13:09:00.011+01:00

She was looking about for some way of escape, and wondering whether she could get away without being seen, when she noticed a curious appearance in the air: it puzzled her very much at first, but, after watching it a minute or two, she made it out to be a grin, and she said to herself 'It's the Cheshire Cat: now I shall have somebody to talk to.'

'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.

The Ecstacy of Communication

2011-07-06T14:03:00.003+01:00

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 polyvalence, 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.

Utopian Dream

2011-06-23T14:07:00.000+01:00

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.

FALSE ICONS AND VIDEO ' ART.'

2011-03-28T14:22:00.002+01:00

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.

The Dictatorship of the banks : Total Government Capitulation.

2011-02-18T15:38:00.007Z

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

Ordinary People : What are they ? Does anyone know ?

2011-01-31T15:45:00.004Z

Reading an article by Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph and struck by the fact that this commentator, not known for his liberal or progressive views, is effectively saying that the Conservative leader and his senior colleagues have no experience of and do not have any awareness of the lot of ' ordinary people.'

As he says this term ' ordinary people ' is a patronising insulting cliche and is a euphemism for poor people working class or unemployed who are continually misrepresented and patronised and are woefully under-represented by all the main political parties in this country.

He floats the extraordinary idea that Andy Coulson, having apparently grown up on a Council Estate in Essex, despite being an editor at News International and probable phone hacker, somehow represented or could connect the PM and his cronies with the ' ordinary people.' Sadly, the News of the World and the Sun do connect with many people, but only, I suggest, by exploiting social problems caused by the neglect by the governing classes and appealing to a lowest common denominator form of intensely personalised politics that manages to avoid any wider issues.

Most of the working class were not enfranchised until until 1867, by a Tory Government, but they then perfectly sensibly voted them out knowing full well that they primarily represented the interests of the landed and the wealthy.

Later MacMillan and Heath were, so Heffer believes, fearful that they would be strung up unless they gave some concessions. They had both been in the army and were aware of the views of the working class regarding the gross inequality and exploitation that underlies the distribution of wealth in this country.

The current incumbents have never known anything but privilege and have little or no direct experience or social contact with so-called ordinary people.

Come the revolution ...

BIZZARE JOB SEEKING ACTIVITIES

2011-01-19T12:10:00.003Z

There are now contracted agencies to which people are refered after a certain period of unemployment. Thus far this has been a series of uncordinated non-events involving much sitting waiting for something or someone to indicate what one is supposed to be doing. On more than one occasion I have turned up at the appointed time and then been sent away. On other occasions a ' one to one ' interview has been 15 minutes of general discussion and then leaving none the wiser.
Most recently I have been attached to a group and have to attend twice a week. The coach, for that is what the organizer is called, admitted that he has no special skills and has been in the same position as the members of the group, ie unemployed for a long period. He is nice enough and conceeds that no one wants to be here. On the last visit he gave us a film to watch. It was a regular American box office release, not something dreamed up for the situation. It was a morning session and I never usualy watch television or a film at that time of day. That was the entire morning. Then we were given some printed information on jobs and a ticket to come in the following week. All in all a bizzare way to spend a morning with no clear purpose whatsoever.
The reality is that without actual jobs being avaliable these are a sort of holding operation that allow access to some facilities, internet and phone, and some social interaction, but little else.
Someone in the main area started playing the guitar at one point, but this was then stopped.
A somewhat strange situation altogether.

THE INTERNATIONALE IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES & ESPERANTO !

2010-11-20T21:43:00.001Z

BIG SOCIETY BULLSHIT & 'YOU HAVE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD'.

2010-11-19T12:09:00.014Z

So, the government are not giving up on this ' big society ' rubbish. What tends to happen, if you listen to the debates in the Commons, is that a Conservative back bencher trumpets something they say has occurred in their own constituency where a group of good citizens have got together to save a local duck pond or some-such and then the minister who is speaking says that this is ' a good example of the big society.' No wider context, no outcome, no indication of the status, power or influence of these people is ever given, nor, indeed whether or not the duck pond is really going to benefit a vast number of citizens. I always think of Barnes in south west London, although it is scarcely a part of London in that it is like a separate world, in this regard. Here we have an area that has indeed retained its duck pond, has a local post office, a local butcher, fishmonger, even a cheese shop, pssibly a candlestick maker, I would not be surprised, and all the open space you could wish for, surrounding well kept streets and gardens, established private schools ( St Pauls ) , two train stations with direct services into central London and half a dozen pubs and myriad restaurants. And it is also, I suggest, the home of much old money and can be bought into only if in the upper levels of income. People of influence live here, discretely, and have made sure, over many years of being able to use that influence and having the wherewithall, (polite euphemism for plenty of money), to obtain all the professional advice and use all the additional power that that brings. That is also why it is a little haven of gentility and an illusion of a cosy village within London. The point is these are not the conditions that exist in 99% of this country and even where they do occasionally they will be overridden by more powerful voices. The people of Barnes, well some of them, did not want a Sainsburys in their midst, not a giant megastore, just a modest outlet. But it was inserted after all.

Some people would be more than happy to have a Sainsburys in their high street.

This is the lie at the centre of all this big society bullshit. It is predicated upon the obviously false assumption that everywhere is like Barnes, peopled by those that have the money, time and influence to maintain their immediate surroundings in the way they wish. The reality is so different that it is tantamount to insulting for these ignorant and self-serving conservatives to keep repeating this inanity in the hope that someone will take it seriously. The conservative party spent 18 years assiduously dismantling the already faltering bonds and institutions that were the glue to this society, famously the vile utterance of poison from Thatcher that declared 'there is no such thing as society' which pretty well summed up the underlying attitude of that period of their government. To now try and portray this latest version of conservative rule as concerned with re-building the very thing they attacked and undermined for 18 years is a volte face and hypocrisy of a breathtaking arrogance that could only be spoken from those without any conception or experience of what life in this godforsaken country is like for those without the the means nor the remotest chance of entry to the small sub-section of society that actually pulls the levers and presses the buttons.

Meanwhile the execrable Lord Young, who was in Thatcher's government and apparently still serves some function in the current one, (why do these bastards never just go away to their manor houses and get out of public life, instead of continuing to re-visit and pontificate on the scene of their crimes ? Lord Lamont, the most inept Tory chancellor in my lifetime, appearing to give Ireland ' advice ' at great length on the BBC the other night, another example ) has come out with that ' you have never had it so good ' line that was previously uttered to the contempt even of most conservative commentators in 1957 when Macmillan was in office.

WARNING : ANGER RISING, ANGER RISING...

Real Poltics?

2010-11-12T21:17:00.001Z

A CONSTITUTION BY DEFAULT

2010-11-12T14:39:00.005Z

One of the most extraordinary things to have come about from the hung parliament result in the last election is that there now exists a sort of proto-constitution by default. Because there was a strong possibility of there being no clear winner a senior civil servant, Gus MacDonald, was tasked to put together some sort of handbook, for purely internal use, to avoid the problem of having to ask the Queen to decide who would be the new Prime Minister. This is the reality of the on-going absurdity and insult to the citizens of this country that not having a formal written constitution leaves us all in : at the last minute and solely to avoid the Queen having the embarrassing chore of having to decide which party will take over the running of what is still her government as opposed to ours, a civil servant had to run up something in lieu of a constitution overnight. This now may, and I stress, may, become the basis for a formal constitution, some commentators have said. I wont hold my breath.

I recently heard Tom McNally Leader in the House of Lords in response to a question which referred to the still non-existent constitution say, in a joky manner and quoting some earlier Lord or similar, ' not next week '. It may be an amusement for him, but it appears to me that this is a fundamental and deliberate omission that allows the continued obfusification as to where power really lies and to treat it as a joke is an unacceptable conceit.

Incidentally, having heard his response to a question as to whether any of the governments cuts in welfare provision would contravene Human Rights, which was vague and unconvincing, I asked by e-mail to which Human Rights legislation he was referring in his reply, as that in UK law is not by any means comprehensive whereas at UN and EC level it is quite different. ( See earlier article on this subject ).

I have yet to have any response.

BENEFIT CUTS & THE HOLY GRAIL OF 'WORK'.

2010-11-11T17:28:00.007Z

First, let me recount an anecdote, not funny or hugely interesting, but just bare with me. I was to meet two long standing friends last weekend. We each live in different parts of London so meet in a central location. The weather had turned cold. I check the credit left on my gas meter and the amount left with a week to go before the next JSA payment, £9.50. Its impossible, the fare is £4.20, one round of drinks will be £10. It cant be done. That is the reality of the 'lifestyle' of being on basic benefits in the UK. I cancelled.

Now come the reforms, predicated upon the lie that it is an easy option to live on benefits. There will be mandatory work placements and real cuts in entitlement, the most extraordinary being the arbitrary 10% cut in Housing Benefit if out of work for a year, to 'incentivise' taking a job. Beware a crap word that is not in the Oxford dictionary, it means punish for not having got a job.

While announcing these IDS said ' it is always better to work.' Why ? That is a subjective opinion. Is it really better to work for the paltry £65 a week than not? In the former Communist countries it was often said, as an example of how their regimes treated people terribly, that dissident professors were sweeping the streets because they would not toe the party line. Now what is the difference if I am told to go and sweep the streets for £65 a week because I dissent from our system which cannot allow an individual to receive an already inadequate two weekly sum without working for the privilege, meanwhile rewarding others that engage in dubious financial transactions with vast sums and immunity from sanction ? Am I expected to be grateful for this corrective measure, this re-educative work at poverty wages ? Sorry, fuck off.

On what basis do most members of our government assert that work is the holy grail and something which everyone must take part in to justify their very existence? How can any two occupations, being a merchant banker or a sheet metal worker, for examples, be compared and simply called ' work' ? They are clearly not the same thing. And they are not equally rewarding for those who undertake those activities, nor are they both necessarily good things in terms of the larger society. You can guess which one I regard as useful.

Are the rights to shelter, food and an existence in basic dignity to be entirely dependent upon work ? Working for whom ? Working for what purpose ? People work manufacturing weapons and assorted military hardware, in fact, during wartime employment is always at historic highs, suddenly there is enough money to create thousands of jobs. There is no question in my mind that this is not constructive or useful and is not something that I would undertake whether paid or not. Selling mobile phones is another random example of a singularly pointless activity. In what way can it be said that these are necessarily good things to be doing ? It is work, and if one is prepared to do it fine, but my view is that they are not good things to be doing and I do not agree that all work is self-justifying.

Someone said in the debate that work was a habit, yes, well, but why is it the habit of working one that a government wants to coerce everyone into ? Smoking is a habit, but it is discouraged. To get up at the same time every day, similar to everyone else, to get in a car or on a train at a similar time to everyone else, to devote the great majority of the day to whatever one's ' work ' is and then travel back at a similar time to everyone else and then get up and do it all again for a week. Explain please why this is such a wonderful habit to have ? And, moreover, why is it being proscribed by regulations that will mean that if one actively dissents from this view that is an absolute an unchallengeable good thing, you will be left high and dry with no means of support ?

For three years, the new rules will say, as if you will last for three weeks with no money at all.

Everywhere the message is the same, on the BBC endless programmes supposed to show how

'hard work' is good for you, how you need to think like a business, behave like an entrepreneur, walk like an Egyptian, no, that was a song by the Bangles, but about as meaningful. These mantras from the C18th are the detritus from a discredited utilitarianism that still infects the lame brains of the Tory party, they mean nothing in the current corrupt, inequitable and morally as well as practically bankrupt late-Capitalist excuse for an ideology. There is nothing left which can justify or assume the right to coerce people into its way of ordering society.

All commentators laughingly still defined as left and right chorus disapproval of the 'workshy.'

Well, in their terms I am workshy and proud of it. How the hell would I find the time to listen to symphonies on the radio, read the complete works of Oscar Wilde and Phillip K Dick, collect stamps, write the occasional poem, waste time in the pub, go for long walks by the river, go to the library to keep abreast of the latest trends in flower arranging, skirt length and trouser shape, write this garbage, um, stimulating prose, and the million and one other things that make life worth living, just.

Oh yes, and one more thing to stick in the pipe of utilitarianism and smoke thereof, why is it that at 65 ( or whatever the arbitrarily chosen age is this week ) it is suddenly perfectly alright to sit at home all day and receive just about enough to live on ? How is it that the great panacea of work immediately becomes entirely forgotten once past a certain birthday ? No one calls a pensioner a workshy layabout.

Anyway that's quite enough for today, there are other things not to do.

JERUSALEM : William Blake

2010-11-05T16:58:00.003Z

VODAPHONE TAX AVOIDANCE : DIRECT ACTION.

2010-10-29T13:06:00.007+01:00

I am not an enthusiast of mobile phones, I do not and never have owned one. They have always seemed like a tracking device as much as a communication tool in my eyes.

But that is incidental to this issue, which is corporate tax avoidance. The articles linked, especially the Private Eye piece, which is particularly revealing of the type of people that are being appointed by this government, explain far better than I could.

Click on title above for link to :

http://www.ukuncut.wordpress.com/

There is to be further Direct Action in London tomorrow, beginning with a gathering at Speakers Corner at 11:00am.

Austerity : Common Sense or Nonsense ?

2010-10-25T15:50:00.006+01:00

This is a straightforward explanation of why the ' we are all in this together ' lie is just that, a LIE and the BBC are being used to broadcast propaganda about benefit cheats on the same day that cuts in benefits are announced. And still not one the executives or directors of any of the financial institutions that caused this situation have been prosecuted in the UK.

Why are the riots and blockades in France being almost totally ignored ? The port of Marseilles is closed down, the French government is deploying large numbers of what are effectively quasi-military police. Meanwhile here the government announces the most extraordinary vindictive and unjust reforms to the already inadequate benefit system which will, for example, require ' long term ', ie one year, unemployed to pay 10% of their rent out of £65.50 a week. This is especially onerous because if you have been on JSA for a year you are likely to have little or no savings. There is a slogan 'Cant pay, Wont Pay ' and there is only so far you can push people. There is a song, ' I predict a riot ', I don't particularly like the song, nor want a riot, but its getting ever more close.

WAR ON THE POOR : UK BENEFIT INADEQUACY & HUMAN RIGHTS.

2010-10-13T09:54:00.005+01:00

Despite all the talk about the necessity for cuts in welfare provision there are certain very significant facts that are rarely raised. In the UK benefit levels for able-bodied citizens have declined significantly from 2001 to 2010 in real terms. This is in contrast to most other European countries where they have increased over the same period. This is clearly shown in research from the IZA at Bonn University and other academic studies. As Professor Van Mechelen of the University of Antwerp sums up 'although benefit level for families have increased for others they have declined and for both households with and without children UK benefit levels are highly inadequate.'
Related research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation confirms these facts , as does data published by the Minimum Income Standards Organisation and The Campaign Against Child Poverty. All have proven conclusively that in the UK benefits are highly inadequate, leave its citizens in poverty and have been declining in real terms to their current historical low. See the links to their published information below.
The JRF research used representative samples of the population and asked them what the minimum list of necessities were that no one should be without. This was a methodically conducted investigation in the real world not the inner sanctum of a government department but it has been dismissed as ‘subjective’ by politicians none of whom could imagine the very real strain of trying to subsist on £65.45 a week, the maximum for a single person.
This is at an all-time low of 10.5% of average earnings. Yet Steve Webb, Pensions Minister, recently accepted that the higher rated basic pension of £87.65 a week ‘ was not enough to live on.’ The privatised utility companies can make direct deductions, further lowering the amount left to live on.
This is combined with increasing conditionality and means testing. Thus even this inadequate and diminishing amount is far less secure and can be withdrawn at a stroke for a variety of reasons.
The coalition has announced further effective reductions in this inadequate provision which clearly goes against countless Declarations, Covenants and Charters to which the UK is a signatory at European and International level. The Labour government ignored these agreements with equal ease, the citizens effected having no coherent voice or influence. Despite there being millions of unemployed at any given time in the ’economic cycle’ and there never has been, and there never will be, full employment, there is no representative body, no Union of the Unemployed. Charities attempt to pick up the pieces of the consequences of this deliberate refusal to improve what is no longer even called a Social Security system, the term has disappeared, and try to draw attention to our government’s obligations which are clearly intended to give the right to all citizens of this country to have sufficient resources to live in dignity not effective poverty.
The problem is that these vitally important objectives seeking to enable social inclusion and provide the resources to do so are not judicially enforceable. What is ’adequate’ is left to individual states to calculate and, although any fair minded person would agree that £65.45 a week is clearly not ‘adequate‘, there is no way of challenging this in law.
It can surely be contended that Human Rights are being breached, poverty being a violation of human dignity. Human Rights agreements to which this country is a signatory may be a stronger way to challenge this unjustifiable situation and create momentum for positive change. Yet the UK Government has refused to incorporate the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights into UK Law, contrary to the recommendation from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
So when successive UK governments wilfully ignore these agreements to which they are a party and with a coalition that is actively countermanding their principles, how will any social progress be made ? It will not arise from academic papers and reports no matter how well researched and proven.
As more and more citizens in the UK come up against the reality that our benefit system, as it stands, does not provide a remotely adequate income and the resulting stresses that this places on individuals and their ability to participate in a grossly unequal society, there will have to be significant changes or there will be increasingly serious consequences both in individual casualties and ultimately in the potential for social disorder.

LINKS :
http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/minimum-income-standard-2010
http://www.minimumincomestandard.org/downloads/means-tested_benefits.pdf
http://www.cpag.org.uk/povertyfacts/index

This piece was also published in Tribune edition of 8 October 2010.

http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/2010/10/cameron%e2%80%99s-social-insecurity/ or click on title at top.

French Internment Camps 1939-1944

2010-10-10T14:30:00.006+01:00

Following on from the piece below to visit a site that has quite a comprehensive list and some limited documentation about the camps in France where Spanish, Polish, French Communists, Jews and others were held, click on the above title. It was put together by a French stamp collecting group, and some of the most poignant and disturbing items are the censored and opened mail being sent by those in the camps to the ouside world.
The picture on the left is a memorial stone from Septfonds. The picture below by the earlier piece is also from the site of that camp and is of a restored shrine that was built by Polish internees.

LINK : http://www.apra.asso.fr/Camps/En/Accueil-Camps.html

The Polish contribution to the defense of Britain in the 2WW.

2010-10-05T13:45:00.014+01:00

(Click on Title to link to Poland in Exile)

With the extensive amount of programming on the BBC in particular to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain it was very disappointing to notice how little, if any, mention was made of the contribution of Polish forces that flew with and supported the RAF during that desperate period. Not only did Poles fly and fight in the historic Battle of Britain and downed proportionately a very high number of German planes there were large numbers involved in ground support, radio operation and maintenance. There is one good book about the Polish pilots called 'The Forgotten Few ' by Adam Zamyosi. Generaly the involvement of large numbers of Polish forces under British military control who fought and died to protect this country which was not their own is indeed forgotten, and not even known to those who were not involved or have researched throughly.
Because my father was one of those I have been able to find out something about what actualy went on, and much of it, particularly the treatment of those that found themselves having contributed to the defence of this country and then effectively told to go back to a Soviet controlled, devastated and physicaly repositioned state, is a very disturbing story.
Approximately 83,000 Polish troops served in France offering their support to the threatened French. Their mistreatment is still virtualy unknown and uncomemorated both here and in France. My father was one of those put into what were effectively French run Concentration Camps which housed a mixture of ex-Spanish Civil War combatants who had fled from Fascist Spain and many others that the French virtualy Fascist government deemed a danger to the state. There were a large number of these particularly in the south and it was in one near Perpignan that my father was placed until the combination of the appaling conditions and then the signing of an agreement between Hitler and the Vichy regime made it absolutely necessary to get out. This he and others managed to do and made there way with no practical assistance from the French to the south western coast. Here, from a small port called St. Jean De Luz, British ships picked up those that could be fitted onto the hastily commandered vessels and made the dangerous crossing to England. The boat he was on, the Arrandora Star, was torpedoed and sank a mere two days after having docked in Liverpool. It was then carrying mainly Italians who were being deported to Italy. Approximately 27,000 Polish troops reached England and Scotland. The fate of the 56,000 that were not able to get onto one of these ships sent by Churchill is very obscure. Once France was effectively collaborating with Nazi Germany, although the south was still nominaly under French control, it is most likely that those still in the camps would have been sent back to occupied Poland or to Germany to who knows what fate. Given that the Vichy Government treated even its own French citizens who were deemed to be undesirable, Communists, resistence members and Jews harshly keeping them in camps and prisons, they are hardly likely to have treated the remaining Poles any better. It is documented that Jews were sent to the concentration and extermination camps in the Reich, it is not so well recorded what happened to the Polish that had attempted to help France defend itself from occupation. It is certain that considerable numbers of Spanish veterans of the Civil War were sent to the camps in the Reich, amazingly some survived until liberation. The notoriously brutal Matthausen in Austria was one were Spanish prisoners were incarcerated.
Once in the UK the arriving Poles for the first time since being forcibly expelled from their own country by the joint invasion of both German and Soviet Russia, got some decent treatment and were welcomed into the mobilised forces of the country. My father was part way through training to become an officer in the Polish Air Force. He was just past his nineteenth birthday when Poland was attacked on 1 September 1939. His station at that time was an air base near Krosno in the south east corner of Poland. Following the destruction of the facility he and his compatriots @ 500 men, marched at night for around 200 miles through the Carpathian Mountains. They managed to reach the Romanian border and crossed days before the Russians then occupied that part of Poland. Note the Russians not the Gemans, this was the deal that had been struck between Molotov and Ribbentrop. As most know later this was reversed and Germany attacked eastward but at this stage the Russians closed the Polish border to prevent Poles from leaving. Romania was technically neutral at this point. they were treated realativly well in a poor country, but still interned into camps. They were better than those in France, my father said. From there he and others made contact with a British Legation office in Bucharest. After weeks in hiding, there were already German officials in Romania, which was soon to be deliberately destabilised and brought into the Axis powers, they managed to get passage on a small ship sailing from Balchic on the Black Sea to Beruit, then part of the French controlled Syria. There was a strange echo in Balchic as my father had grown up in Wilno in the far north east of Poland near the Baltic Sea.
This journey through the Dardanelles into the Aegean took seven days in a heavily overcrowded cargo ship in which they were the human cargo and it was a rough and dangerous sea in winter. On December 25 the Captain sent the SOS signal as sinking was a strong possiblity. They eventualy reached Beirut at the end of December 1939.
From there another larger cargo ship took them across the Meditterranean Sea to dock in Marseille at the end of February 1940. In France they were briefly at an Air Force base but it was evident that there was no real plan or will to fight and defend the country. As stated earlier, after a period in an internment camp, my guess is the French did not know what to do with them, he and colleagues made their own way to the coast and finaly got to England.
Although he spoke Polish, obviously, and also Russian and a little German, my father had never heard English before. It is quite remarkable that within another year or so he had learnt enough English to get by and in 1942 he met and married my mother, who was working as a secretary at Eastwood Films in Fleetwood, having been evacuated from London. He had been seconded to the RAF and within the Polish Division worked to train and instruct fellow Poles in radio operations. His postings were at RAF Blackpool, RAF Halton ( Bucks.) , RAF Halton (Somerset) and RAF Cammeringham (Lincs.) in the Polish Technical Training School and the Polish Deputy Inspectorate General.
At the end of the war the Polish Resettlement Corps was formed. This was a unit made up of Poles that was to arrange for those that had served in the UK to now go back to Poland. It was not compulsory to return but it was encouraged. Now remember that Poland had been drasticaly altered by border changes which effectively moved the country 100 miles to the west. Where my father was from was now no longer in Poland and hundreds of miles into Russian territory. Even within the borders of what was now called Poland there was an illigitimate puppet government controlled by Stalin in Moscow. Here there was hostility from the Unions and members of the new Labour government, which actually had some Communist members. Stalin declared that all Poles those that had fought in a 'foreign' armed force, despite it having been allied to Russia from 1941, were to have no rights to citizenship and no military medals. The British government did protest this, but it was not changed. quite what this meant for the thousands that did return is again unclear, but having no rights to citizenship in the country you come from is not a good thing. I read some exchanges from the time in Parliament and there was clearly pressure being put upon the Poles that wished to remain to leave and even the suggestion, which I do not know if it happened, that those that were uncertain could be sent to Germany. An incredible proposition to be even considered after what that country had just done to its neighbour.
My father worked in the PRC who in London were based at the Savoy Hotel, oddly enough. This must have been very strange, sending back to a devastated and Communist controlled country fellow Poles who had worked to defend this country. He became a Naturalised British Citizen in 1949 and recinded Polish citizenship. He never returned to Poland.

What would St. Pancras have said ?

2010-10-03T13:17:00.005+01:00

I visited the rebuilt and extended St. Pancras station for the first time since it reopened on Friday. By far the most impressive aspects are the original trainshed roof and the revealed structure of the undercroft. The proliferation of shops of one sort and another is not at all to my liking, there seemed to be dozens of retail outlets with all the associated clutter and obstructions they cause. Given that access to the actual platforms is restricted to ticket holders this means that the undercroft area is not a free circulation space and quite easily congested. There are some clear areas at Eurostar platform level, but because of the hotel butting right up against the main trainshed these are dead ends and in common with almost all London termini there is no grand entrance. The new main entrance is from one side, the Kings Cross side, and this leads into the new link rather than the original station.
The new roof is a total non-event, remarkably low and being flat it barely registers from inside the station. Again access to the domestic platforms is restricted and as I was not travelling anywhere it was not possible to tell what it may be like from the traveller's perspective.
The long Eurostar train sets glide in almost silently and are that removed from the busy public areas they almost seem like a side issue to the shopping and general activity everywhere else. At times it felt like being in a vast supermarket that happened to have trains in the middle. This is the way all the big stations have been treated in recent times, as repositories of retail opportunities rather than their principal function : to allow people to get to and from their train easily and freely. It is by no means as bad as some, Victoria being possibly the worse offender with burger outlets right in front of the platform access, but I had thought this rebuild was going to avoid all the clutter and confusion of umpteen coffee shops and flower retailers.
On the subject of the statue, I can only say that it is even more preposterous in reality than in a picture as it is on a monstrous scale.
In every respect it is the quality of the original fabric and its excellent renovation that impresses and the simple elegance of the roof structure that gives a lift to the spirits.
There are also some wonderful views from parts of the building as the platform level is elevated from street level by a considerable amount. It was raining on this occasion and the vista across to Kings Cross was a view that could only be London, a collision of different buildings with no real coherence while people scatter and scurry with an exaggerated urgency betwixt and between.
Next will be a general tidy up of Kings Cross station, actually the older of the two, and a somewhat 'organic' looking addition taking shape to one side.
All in all a great improvement to the whole area has begun centred on this station it just troubles that there is such an emphasis on peripheral so-called leisure and retail nonsenses. What chance will smaller traders have in the streets around now WH Smiths and M&S etc. have established their bases in the centre of the station ?
On a slightly different subject but somehow related there is a television programme called 'Antiques Roadshow' where people essentially bring objects and artifacts to a bunch of 'experts' to find out how much they are worth. A week ago this was done in the middle of Lincoln Cathedral. Only in England could such a confusion of the secular and the sacred take place with scarcely an eyebrow being lifted.

THE DESTRUCTION OF PLOUGH GREEN

2010-09-26T14:08:00.009+01:00

The Plough @1650 - 2007

This is an account of the proposed destruction of a small park, perhaps garden is a better term, that has quietly offered a little respite on a busy corner in Battersea for many years and that has been sold to developers along with part of the public footway by Wandsworth Council. This particular local authority, (why is it that in this country we have local ‘ authorities’ rather than in say, Italy, the equivalent body is a communale ? ) has a particularly arrogant attitude to its less influential residents and a distinctly obvious pro major development stance having let such companies as St. George build pretty much anything that takes their fancy along great swathes of the riverside. This takes the form of enormous towers of high-end apartments with underground car parking and anonymous empty areas around them that have no facilities nor offer anything other than a view of the river to those that don’t happen to have the necessary half a million pounds for a stake in one of the shiny new buildings.

Back to the little park. As I best understand it the history is thus. At some point there were some buildings on the site, but this would be over a hundred years ago, I saw a picture of a single storey shop. These are long gone and it was turned into an enclosed area with trees and planting. One thing that has always struck me about it, given it being in a busy area and one that was generally not very well to do, is that it was not abused or vandalised and even though there was a pub opposite, it did not become a haven for bad behaviour.

It was owned by the GLC. When this institution was scandalously abolished by the Thatcher regime all its assets were transferred to a shadowy, unelected quango known as the London Residuary Body. Even the very name is grotesque, conjuring up a quite accurate image of a bunch of butchers carving up the residuary remains of London. This is the outfit that sold off the County Hall to a dodgy Japanese businessman for £40 million, and just look at the chaotic and meaningless series of attempts to turn this administrative building into a ’ tourist attraction’ that still go on and blight that section of the embankment.

Now the London Residuary Body is gone, it has done its dirty work, and by the way, where did the money from these sales go, exactly ? It is no more, it is an ex-quango. So, the remaining bits that they had not flogged off reverted to the various local authorities. This is where the little park fell back into Wandsworth’s hands, who have decided they don’t want it, despite it being in established use as a public garden and providing a welcome bit of green and human scale interest in an otherwise heavily built up area close to Clapham Junction.

The formal planning application went through and was approved in exactly eight weeks from validation to the decision to grant permission. This is for a four storey building over the whole site and extends beyond encroaching on the public footway removing additional trees outside the garden, a telephone box, bicycle racks and a post box.

I have considerable experience of the planning process, coming at it from the applicant’s side. I can say that no application that I have ever been involved with has been determined in the eight week target. The usual scenario is that you would allow eight weeks and then it might be possible to start working towards getting a decision from the relevant planning department. Even with a simple domestic extension with no contentious aspects I have never known it to be determined in just eight weeks from validation of the application. Furthermore it appears that many residents in a building that borders the garden were not informed of the initial application.

Having looked through the files there is on record a response from the Chief Engineer which is against the proposal because of the loss of public highway, the trees etc. and the effect it would have on safety at the adjacent crossroads. Incredibly a letter from the architect is effectively telling the planners that this is not the case and, regarding the phone box, it states that ‘virtually everyone has a mobile phone these days.’ These are subjective opinions, what about people that don’t have mobile phones, they do exist, and why is the opinion on the impact on pedestrian safety from an architect employed by the developer to be accepted over that of the Chief Engineer at the Council ? It just all feels wrong.

Apart from all this the actual design of the new building leaves much to be desired, it is a crude attempt to butt a pseudo-1930’s Art Deco façade against a bland brickwork building which also attempts to be what it is not, a Victorian terrace. To cap it all, they have now applied for a basement addition to be used as a bar and restaurant. This has not yet been granted permission but given the way that it has been handled so far I see no sign that it will not be granted.

The whole story reeks of short term asset stripping in the manner of the 1980’s, selling off perfectly decent and useful public facilities for a quick buck with no regard to the wishes of the people in the locality or the loss of the amenity it provides to all.

On the opposite corner there has been a pub since at least 1650. This was the Plough and it has now been demolished to make way for a substantial block of flats with some sort of bar and restaurant within. It will never be a true pub again. This too was an important facility, being a well established locals pub, serving the large nearby Peabody Estate, and despite being nothing much to look at, it had been rebuilt in 1956 after suffering a direct hit in the 2WW, it was a proper all-comers pub with a surprisingly homely atmosphere, particularly in the Saloon, where people of all different ages and types were welcome. Years ago this corner was called Plough Green and it was used for gatherings particularly to protest about the Spencer family selling off parts of the Common to various parties. No one will be able to gather there anymore, not even in the old car park in the front. In a strange way it seems that the small garden opposite could be seen as the last remnant of that green. Perhaps if you feel as strongly as I do that the unwarrented and high-handed proposed destruction of this garden should not be allowed to happen a meeting could take place there once again, in a final attempt to save Plough Green.

MONEY DOESN'T TALK, IT SWEARS, LIES, CHEATS.

2010-08-28T14:58:00.006+01:00

So, Blackwater, the private security firm that has such an appaling record in Iraq where it was contracted by the US government to protect its people, despite their being a massive occupying military force at the same time, has reached a settlement over criminal charges. This is in the region of $42 million. It has changed its name, now Xe, a Limited Liability Company and continues to be awarded contracts by the US government, most recently to protect the CIA in Kabul, this being worth $100 million.

Despite clear evidence of illegal shipments of arms, various asaults and killings that took place in Iraq and the potential for a criminal case against individuals and the company, effectively they have been fined instead. For the US government this is quite satisfactory as it means some of the blame for the abuses and deaths that have occured during the occupation have been laid at the feet of a different organisation, although in the pay of the government, they get to recoup some of the money paid out, and no further spotlight is put upon the cases. And the principle of using private contractors for what are plain clothed armed paramilitary operations remains unchallenged.

The history of the Blackwater organisation, like much American recent history, is almost too weird and unwonderful to believe. Founded by an ex-US Navy seal, Eric Prince in 1997, who apparently entirely of his own volition, bought a huge area in North Carolina called, I kid you not, The Great Dismal Swamp, (hence the name Blackwater), and set up a paramilitary training camp. The permission to do this was presumably granted at high level. The Bush administration then gave contracts to the company to provide additional 'security ' for other ' security ' personnel both in the US and in war zones. Not being a part of the Army, Navy or Air Force what controls or disciplinary procedures they operate under it is impossible to know.

Five former executives may still face prosecution. Eric Prince, the founder, who has given up his role as CEO, now lives in the United Arab Emirates. The UAE has no extradition agreement with the USA.

WHEN'S THE REVOLUTION ?

2010-08-16T20:38:00.005+01:00

Does anyone remember, oh, about three months ago, in the run up to the election Corporal Clegg said his politics were 'revolutionary'.
So.
You are currently in charge.
Where is the revolution ?
To quote David Bowie, not known for his political prowess but he has come up with some memorable tunes, 'Five years, my brain hurts a lot, Five years, that's all we've got.'
Please not.

PUBLIC DEBT MAKES THE STATE GO ROUND

2010-08-15T15:17:00.002+01:00

An excellent article from the German website JUNGE LINKE.
CLICK ON TITLE FOR FULL TEXT.

WEEKEND / 1967 / jean-luc godard

2010-08-13T23:16:00.000+01:00

2222 dead on the roads.

2010-08-10T20:28:00.005+01:00

2222 people were killed on our roads last year. And this government is going to remove speed cameras and leave it up to 'local people' to decide how fast they want to drive.
From the so-called 'war on the motorist' this is tantamount to war on the pedestrian. This meningless mantra of letting 'local people' decide everything is absurd. What is a 'local person' ? Why should this undefined person or persons be suddenly free to disobey speed limits ? I would have thought it is more likely that the people that will be mown down by two tons of steel at 50mph are more likely to be local people, as in live in the vicinity of the inevitable accidents that will occur, than the motorist exceeding the speed limit who could be from anywhere.
What about people with two homes ? Are they 'local people' in both places ? Does owning two homes give you extra rights ? This is a weak excuse for non-policy and middle class preference without reference to a coherent set of ideas.

Merchant Banker

2010-08-06T14:46:00.003+01:00

Comment is superfluous, except that when this was made the high street banks were a little less voracious and there were building societies. The situation now is far worse with most banks and former bulding societies being exactly the same.

ITS OFFICIAL : IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE ON BENEFITS

2010-08-05T16:02:00.002+01:00

The current Pensions Minister, Steve Webb, has admitted in an interview with The Independent that the state pension level is "not enough to live on." Right, that is £97 a week. The current level of JSA or Income Support for a single person over 25 is £65.45, that is £31.55 LESS than the state pension that is quote "not enough to live on." How can this be justified ?
In the recent pronouncements regarding the review of the benefit system the amount that is paid to claimants has been including housing benefit and Council Tax. This is grossly misleading. This money does not go to the claimant, in the case of Council Tax it goes direct to the Local Authority and never touches the claimant's bank account. Housing benefit can be paid to the claimant, but in the majority of cases goes directly to the landlord, which again is often the Local Authority who are effectively transferring their own funds from one account to another.
The claimant however remains in the middle and responsible for the rental payments. Thus when there are delays in the processing of claims, which are, from bitter experience, commonplace and very difficult to deal with, the claimant can be pressed by their landlord and threatened and indeed evicted as this payment is controlled by the Local Authority not by the DWP and there is virtually no control that the claimant can exercise over its payment or non-payment. It is not usable for any other expense and it is not income as it a transfer from the Local Authority to a landlord.
Over the last ten years the rents in the social sector have been deliberately increased to more closely follow the market rents in a given area, this has meant a big increase in the amounts of money involved but this money does not go to claimants. The basic rates of JSA/Income Support have trailed behind and at a maximum of £65.45 for an individual without dependents and making no disability claims it is at a disgracefully low level.

HOW MANY LABOUR LEADERSHIP CANDIDATES CAN DANCE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN ?

2010-07-28T15:06:00.010+01:00

So, yes, there is a Labour Party leadership contest going on, not that it is generating much interest or indeed much heat or light. The Labour Party, I remember them, they ran the country for 13 years and claim to be a left of centre party with its roots in Socialism. Then why is it so pitiful to see the candidates pointlessly rehearsing the postures of both the previous leader and, indeed, the current coalition partners ? They all echo and mirror each other in a desperate attempt not to appear 'extreme' or frighten the middle-classes or, God forbid ' business interests' and the City. They are able to admit only that there was a strategic fault with the last Labour government, that they were too managerial, too remote, but as to spelling out any vision or revision of the values and goals of their politics they remain virtually silent. They are all falling over one another with the same platitudes about fairness but will not stray from the line regarding the mantras of the markets, that competitiveness, entrepreneurial activities by self-interested individuals and that profit focused private business, banking and financial services will remain unchallenged as the only future.
There is the deficit, of course. But, hang on, was that not the result of blind adherence to the mantras of ' the market' ? There are now banks that are in practice owned by the government, but being run as if they are still private companies. There must be scope for serious changes that yes, horror of horrors, might be branded Socialist, but for pities sake, does not one of the candidates have the courage to actually stand up for that view ?
I have a book published in this country in 1940. As most people who are educated know, although not Mr. Cameron, it seems, that was when this country stood alone in Europe and was in a very vulnerable and dangerous position with potential invasion by a hostile Fascist enemy. In America meanwhile it was business as usual. The book is called 'I Believe' , and consists of 25 essays by different people, some politicians, some writers, some philosophers about what they believe in. Some have religious convictions, some do not. The remarkable thing is nearly all of them speak of the need for a radical change from the prevailing Capitalist orthodoxy , even in those unstable and threatening times. There is a clear common ground among these intelligent people from different backgrounds, countries and specialisms that to a considerable extent the then current war had, in some part, stemmed from the vast inequalities and problems created by untrammeled capitalism. That ownership was concentrated in the hand of the few and wealth was very badly distributed is taken as a given, and, moreover, as something that must be actively addressed. It is understood that with such conditions tyrants that claim to be able to sort this out overnight may gain power, and this can result in a justification for war and all the horror and disaster it brings.
It was indeed in this country that in the period immediately after that war that a Labour government under Clement Atlee did address this issue and make a start on the changes deemed to be necessary.
What has happened to so obscure the fact that, if anything, the concentration of wealth and ownership is now even more concentrated in the hands of the few from these well educated so-called Socialist politicians ? Why are they so afraid of saying so ? I watched Ed Milliband, possibly the slightly more 'radical' of the bunch who has a chance of election, on the excruciating programme run by Andrew Neil. A fellow guest was someone who worked with Alan Sugar, so you can pretty well guess his position as a unswerving narrowly focused 'business guru' sidekick. What was noticeable is how Mr. Milliband did not challenge a single bit of the mind-numbing prattle about competitiveness necessarily being a good thing, simply agreeing with every proposition and clearly concerned about being seen as remotely 'leftie' and thus 'loony' and not in the 'real world' that is increasingly being allowed to be defined by such as Mr. Sugar being given such expansive airtime on the BBC in its programming.
When Labour dropped Clause 4 and a commitment to moving towards collective ownership of the means of production it lost a key part of what defined it as a Socialist party. While the idea that any of the current crop of leadership contenders would ever even hint at re-evaluating that goal is laughable, even in a situation where privatised utilities are screwing every penny out of their uncompetitive monopolies with few obligations to their captive customers whatever their ability to pay, is it too much to expect that one of them might clearly state what are the principles and goals of this allegedly post- Blair new Labour project ? Because I am blowed if I can see any that distinguish or give hope for a real alternative to this regressive ConDem old Etonian agreement.

ENTREPRENEURIAL DOCTORS.

2010-07-12T22:58:00.013+01:00

Good grief, this is like another very bad dream. On Radio 4, following the news about the reorganising of the NHS , they spoke to a ' health care professional' in America, not clear what his position was but he was American , and so spoke as if he was an authority. He said, I kid you not, that many of their practitioners are ' highly entrepreneurial.' Quite what this means was not explained.
An ' entrepreneurial' doctor makes me quiver in my boots.
The new Conservative government, for that is what it is, are now embarking on an zero sum game, and copying unproven and eccentric free market ideas ( I hesitate to use that term 'ideas') from America largely and, oddly, Sweden, the ' free ' schools wheeze.
It is actually fairly radical stuff and completely alien and ill advised. They talked soft in the run up to the election, now they are in power some real teeth are showing. This is not Thatcherisim, its even more perverse.
This is serious dabbling in yet further privatisation just at a time when the purely private sector has been proven to be inadequate at delivering long term stability, socially and morally bankrupt and in need of firmer governance. Instead it looks like a decision to allow its tentacles to extend still wider into the previously clearly described public sector operations of the health service, the public education service and who knows what other areas is being undertaken, and this during a period of sustained under-employment and under-investment.

It is hard to comprehend where this revived ideological certainty has come from and its consequences could be seriously destructive, as were those of Thatcher and her caretaker Major.

MARGARET THATCHER'S BRAIN

2010-07-10T20:04:00.007+01:00

The undead one has recently re-visited the scene of her crimes, No.10. Wake me up, please, this must be a bad dream.
This is Monty Pinter :

WHAT IS GOVERNMENT FOR ?

2010-07-07T15:23:00.014+01:00

Something that I feel is particular to this country and in need of review is a general assumption that it is not primarily the job of government to look after its citizens. There is a deeply established cultural preference to prefer to leave the dealing with the consequences of the huge holes in the provision of sufficient means and adequate care of the population to philanthropic individuals, a maze of charities and obscure not-for-profit organisations.
I would ask the question what is government for if not to look after its citizens as its primary duty ?
This new coalition is playing on this remarkably resilient and strangely unchallenged cultural trait with its bizarre suggestion that almost the entire country can function and provide for its citizens by some sort of collection of voluntary enterprises, with the government acting as a sort of patronising enabler but offering no material support.
But while senior politicians in this government could well afford to live without their salaries and might choose to magnanimously waive away their pensions that they do not need anyway, this is simply not the case for the millions of citizens of the country : we need an income, as regular as possible. Whatever it is called, a pension, a benefit, a salary, wages, a basic reasonable amount of month coming in every month is necessary to keep body and soul together and to pay for the fundamentals of food, shelter and warmth in cold weather.
At some point it has to be admitted that there are never going to be jobs for all, and all pretense to the contrary is just that : a pretense. No matter how much economists debate and make their self-righteous proclamations about China importing more will revive the ' western economy ' ( what is that, John Wayne film futures ? ) or some such macro-economic nonsense, the fact remains : there never has been full employment, except in time of war, when the government, yes them, could suddenly find the resources to give everyone able person a job, albeit one making weapons or going off to kill people, and it is increasingly less likely that there ever will be.
The delusion that by 'looking harder' or by being given more 'advice' and more 'help' new actual paid jobs are going to appear is obviously rubbish. As unemployment escalates at some point it will have to be realised by these died-in-the-wool free marketeers that unless a new contract that gives people a right to a basic adequate income wether working or not has to be made, otherwise, quite simply so many people will default on their bills and become desperate as they can not afford to eat, that they will take to the streets and attack the properties and possessions and eventually the privileged people that have too much and the ignorant politicians who refuse to see that so many others are being denied a chance to live in dignity in this wealthy country.

EAT THE RICH : SERVE WITH SAUCE

2010-06-28T23:29:00.009+01:00

So, the ConDem collision are going to war on the poor, no surprise there. Who has the least chance of a coordinated response, other than an uncoordinated riot, which may, eventually happen, than the unrepresented, marginalised and completely misrepresented benefit claimant. Lets get this straight, the levels of basic benefit in this country are scandalously low, it is without doubt that, as with the pollution levels in London, were they to be tested against the many legal documents that the UK Government has signed up to at European level, they would be found to be in breach of those undertakings. I can assure anyone that is listening : it is not possible to live in dignity and pay your bills on the basic £64.50 a week that a person under 65 is allowed without any other income.

The recent changes have widened the gap, which I have never heard or seen coherently explained, between the state pension and the so-called Job Seekers Allowance. There is to be a re-linking between the state pension and inflation, broken by Thatcher ( turn around and spit ) and outrageously not reinstated during 17 years of Presbyterian-minded City sycophancy of the Chancellor and then Prime Minister Brown, ( turn around and weep). The new rules are that the JSA, a basic unemployment payment, is going to be linked to some obscure index that is consistently lower than than the already inadequate one they were using. So, while the payments made to over 65s will be somewhat closer to the real world cost of living, the basic benefit available to those under 65 will fall from its already historically lowest level since its inception in 1912. Then it was about 22% of the average male earnings in manufacturing. In 2008 it stood at 10.5%, this change will mean it falls even lower. The idea that this can be justified by maintaining work incentives is absurd, and amounts to systematic punitive neglect and social irresponsibility.

What is the difference in need between 65 and 64 if one is unwaged? How many Civil Servants are employed, or is it outsourced, to make these arcane calculations? We are talking about reducing a basic entitlement that is already inadequate, in London, as there is no adjustment for region, it is at a truly ridiculous level , the weekly amount is about the cost of a meal and a drink for a parliamentary assistant in a gastro-pub in the vicinity of Westminster. It is a disgrace.

Rather than cutting the basic rate it should be increased to a level where it is useful and made universal. Scrap all the hideous Victorian paraphernalia of means-testing, now done largely by private profit taking companies, introduce a simple, adequate income that all citizens are entitled to and that would prevent millions falling into the clutches of money lenders, bailiffs, Courts and all their outrageous charges which serve only to rack up the money going from the poor to the well-off with absolutely no social stabilisation or general benefit. Lawyers will get rich (and occasionally get mugged) and walls be built higher but if this ignorant, ill-advised and frankly ridiculous group of ex-Etonian millionaires who have clearly never known any financial hardship continue down this particular path, even against the wishes of the arch-capitalist America as presently governed, they will find, sooner or later, that even in this politically temperate country, with the BBC holding hands with whoever is in the job, and its grotesque and unrepresentative mainstream press that operates as a commercial parasite on the back of a hideously unfair system and a sickening money sucking City of insider dealing, banking open season, with its overpaid same school appointees, with its endless diversions : the football and the lottery,( always on a Saturday, the day that used to be the day off and one to organise working people ) the ridiculous royal family and their myriad hangers on, even the continual myth of rock /pop music being the voice of the people,( Brian May on top of Buckingham Palace, Michael Eavis and the Prince of Wales, ‘Sir’ Mick Jagger ) that there could be a bit of a punch up, all no doubt immortalised on a million cameras.

I don’t usually like Bells cartoons in the G2, but today seemed spot on : This is not a surreal joke : eventually, if the CONDEMS and of course, the banks that you own, do not get it then it will get you.

Eat the rich, trouble is, they taste disgusting.

ITS THE IDEOLOGY, STUPID.

2010-06-14T11:27:00.005+01:00

On Newsnight recently there was an unusual spectacle, two individual commentators from completely different ends of the political spectrum almost falling over each other to agree that cutting government spending at this point was the wrong thing to do. The case in point was Germany, but their conviction that there were myriad compelling reasons against this course of action both there and in the UK was strong. One was a Norwegian Socialist and the other a American Republican from an economic ‘ think tank’ who still managed to get in a dig at President Obama. On paper one might have thought that they would disagree on everything, but from their widely different starting points they in fact found nothing to justify the course of action being enthusiastically spelled out by the German and UK governments.

Former member of the Bank of England monetary policy committee, David Blanchflower, scarcely a died in the wool Socialist I would wager, said referring to the cuts ‘ this is ideology, not sound economics. It may be good for investors, it is certainly not good for the British people, who are likely to see unemployment rise inexorably.’ At last someone has the sense and honesty to say this : it is ideology, something like ‘society’ which an earlier Conservative administration tried to pretend didn’t exist, that is driving this ‘new austerity’ despite it being denied that it motivates any of the main parties.

It is an ideology that the Conservative led Government is following, the same one it has always followed, that of the free market, and although it is rarely referred to as such, one which is discredited, utterly morally bankrupt, massively unstable and inherently faulty, and proven to be so, it is this ideology that is motivating their actions. There remains an unswerving quasi-religious belief that the ‘rules of the market’ must be obeyed. But the market has no rules, not unless the government makes and enforces them. The market was left to make its own rules post the ‘big bang’ in the mid -Eighties, and this eventually ended up in the meltdown of 2008.

The self-justifying arrogant pronouncements of a consistent apologist for all the hideous, distorted workings of ’the market’, that poisonous imp-like person called Ruth Lea who, for some reason, is always asked for her opinion, says that ‘the Government is on probation. The financial markets expect the coalition to tame the yawning public sector deficit without wrecking the recovery.’ Note : the Government is put on probation by ‘the financial markets.’ Funny, I thought the people elected the government rather than this unspecified entity ‘ the financial markets.’ In other words we, the ’financial markets’ command that you, the elected Government, do what we want to suit our money making activities. The interest of the British electorate does not enter into it, this is an imperative coming from a self-selected representative of ’the financial markets’ which, because of blind ideological concordance, must be obeyed. Thus slash public spending, hang the consequences in the real world, it satisfies an accountants view of the country’s ‘accounts’ as if it was any other business. I am no economist but clearly a country with a law making and currency issuing Government, with an Army, Navy and Airforce, with a judiciary and largely law abiding population of 60 million is not just another business. Many who are of that persuasion, that is fully paid-up economists, also point out that there are many reasons why the current situation is nowhere near as dire as it is painted by the ideologically driven and severely limited imagination of the new incumbents at Nos 10 and 11 Downing Street and their new pals in the Liberal Democrat camp. As John Eatwell, President of Queens College, Cambridge says ‘deficit hysteria is infecting the political world.’

The weak response of the Labour Party in the face of this alarming new consensus amongst the governments of most European states, each seemingly trying to outdo each other in just how austere their economic measures will be, is worrying. Where is any evidence of a different ideology ? Are all parties now to bow down before the partial, self-serving and incoherent ideology of the free market ? I suggest that liberal free market economics is scarcely a ideology at all, as it leaves out so many aspects of the balancing act that has to be made between the ‘world of finance’ and the real world and the fact that there are many parts of a developed civilised society that simply do not and should not be run at a profit. It is notable that it seems only individuals not normally associated with criticism of liberal free market economies, ex-Bank of England committee members, Republican think tanks, for example to demonstrate that the agenda is being set by those politicians that continue to dance to the tune of corporate financiers and the whims of the market.

In Rhode Island on the east coast of America unemployment is at 12.5%, the 4th highest in the USA. Florida, Michigan and California have even higher rates. President Obama has put stimulus packages into these areas, in the case of Rhode Island $ 1.5 Billion and these have created jobs mainly in infrastructure projects. Initial claims for unemployment benefit in the USA remain at just under half a million a month. This is despite the government putting targeted money into the economy and, incidentally, getting improvements in infrastructure at relatively low cost. Our government is proposing to do the opposite and cut government spending. Where do they imagine any new jobs are going come from ? Alan Sugar ? With cuts across the board in the public sector, no further injection of funds into needed infrastructure improvements and possible cuts in what has been committed, for example Crossrail, a cut back on social housing building, and a necessarily shrunken financial services sector, where are jobs going to be created ?

The banks and their apologists and appeasers in Government may think its back to business as usual. If this blind allegiance to an outdated and divisive ideology that has been categorically proven to be unstable and unsustainable without government intervention is allowed to continue to dictate policy there could be a crude and unpleasant backlash that will not be based on anything remotely like a coherent ideology but embody simple anger and outrage due to the neglect and undermining of anything resembling a social contract between the government and the governed.

It is surely well past time for the Labour Party to re-assess what it is there for and for it to develop a series of policies that need to be rooted in a different soil, from the great tradition of simple, straightforward Socialism, untainted by new-Labour non-values, the obsession with phone poll electability, not frightening the middle-classes, gimmickry and presentation.

My hopes are not high.

LINK TO LIVE VIDEO OF BP OIL SPILL :

2010-06-09T14:37:00.005+01:00

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/4424524

THE B(L)ANK OF ENGLAND.

2010-06-05T16:11:00.000+01:00

So, the Bank of England is to take over ‘ macroprudential supervision ’, who comes up with these ridiculous terms ? Is there perhaps an ‘ Office for Coming up with New Terms for the Same Things ’ ? What this means, to the best of my understanding, is that they will now be in charge of overseeing the mystifying financial machinations and deliberate complexity of the glorified casino that is called the financial market.

I looked at their website for the first time today, I wonder how long they have had one ? A current publication that they are offering for enabling members of the public to understand what they are up to is entitled : ‘ Extending eligible collateral in the discounted window facility and information transparency for asset backed securitisations.’ All words except the short ones are capitalised as if to give added importance to the already important sounding document.
What is it all about ? Will anyone except other members of the inner sanctum at the Bank of England and a handful of specialists at the major private financial operations actually understand it ? Will it change anything ? Or is it all more waffle and circumlocution which appears to be deeply serious but actually further confuses the situation by throwing up yet more defensive and evasive language around the remaining fact that the financial institutions both private and, in this case, nominally public, are still essentially making up their own rules and giving their own fiendishly complicated explanations as to what they are doing. And these pronouncements have little connection to the world that the rest of us live in. Do they change anything ? What motivates these people ? Or do they, as I suspect, keep up a continuous stream of meretricious words to create a dense fog that serves only to obscure the same practices, to maintaining the same illusions and give an image of probity. It is a self perpetuating, self justifying nether world that remains completely impenetrable and unchallenged.

They also say that one of the things they do is issue banknotes. That I can understand, what it is based on, as there is no Gold Standard, is again, a mystery. And they do not print them, that was contracted to a private company, De La Rue in 2002, on advice from an outfit called Close Brothers, who are a private banking firm. So, here we have yet again a nominally public institution taking advice from a private firm who no doubt got substantial fees for this advice. Thus a private company is now paid to print the currency of this country.

As with the remarkable Government Committee hearings post banking crisis when some of the Chief Executives of the major banks were lightly grilled, it became apparent that few of these characters had qualifications in financial matters. There was the extraordinary reply from the CEO of Lloyds who when asked what he earned said not very much, about a million pounds a year, which he seemed to think was what the MP’s on the committee earned. While I concede that it will have changed somewhat it appears to me that the Bank of England used to be something of a sinecure for both its Governor and its staff. What they were getting up to in there was anyone’s guess. The very building is one of an anonymous almost windowless citadel, it might better be called the Blank of England with its walled up windows.

When Kenneth Grahame, who subsequently retired to write ‘Wind in the Willows’, was Secretary for a number of years in the late 19th Century the culture, if it can be called that, was one of very short hours, very long lunches and, presumably to alleviate the boredom, fighting dogs were kept in the basement for occasional bouts held in the toilets. Presumably betting was involved. While it is unlikely this is still the case you never know, nothing would surprise me about the arcane world that these people occupy.

In 1903 one George Robinson asked to see the then Governor. Instead Grahame was sent to meet him. He fired three shots from a concealed gun but Grahame was uninjured. He was described as a ‘Socialist Lunatic’ and sent to Broadmoor. A strange story, without much detail as with much that is associated with this institution.

One earlier Governor was Montagu Norman. He was in charge from 1920 to 1944. He went to Eton and had one year at Cambridge University. After that it was banking all the way. So during the Depression of the 1920’s and the years leading up to and during the Second World War and for a total of twenty four years there was, in charge of the central bank of the United Kingdom someone with no experience outside of being part of a bank, having started with Martin’s, a private bank, where he had relations. It was during his period of office that the Gold Standard was abandoned, in 1931. In 1939 £6,000,000 of gold belonging to Czechoslovakia was transferred to the German Reichsbank. He was also a Director of the Bank for International Settlements, which still exists based in Switzerland, and was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship, a pro-Nazi organisation which included a number of English and German businessmen, military and another Director of the Bank of England, Frank Tiarks. This group was founded by Ernest Tennant, of whom all I know is that he was a merchant banker and was a friend of Von Ribbentrop, the senior Nazi ‘ diplomat.’

He may have been a maverick, yet he was in charge for 24 years, and the details of his actions seem deliberately vague and his connections deeply disturbing.

There is a moral vacuum at the centre of the City. It is given too much respect and has too much power. It is fundamentally lacking in transparency and appears to have no social motivation whatsoever. It is a collection of competing commercial interests. It has no conscience. As the Bank of England is to be given an increased role in controlling the financial operations of this market then its basic principles need to be spelt out in language that can be readily understood. Its purpose and responsibilities need to be clearly defined. Yes, a fine was handed out to bankers JP Morgan, a large sum but clearly manageable, and the salary of the Governor was revealed, £300,000 a year. But sadly, I see no sign of any serious re-evaluation of what they are there for, which clearly should include some recognition of a responsibility to the so-called big society that it should serve rather than remain locked into the obscure, closed and self serving world of the City.

FOOTBALL AND SURREALISIM : Debasement of language.

2010-05-27T18:19:00.000+01:00

A short list of some words and phrases that are becoming or have already become so grossly overused that they now have lost all meaning.

Groundbreaking : no idea what this now means especially when applied to such as a Pink Floyd album, The Wall, that was pompous, boring, long winded and ill-conceived when first foisted upon us.

Iconic : just about anything that has been over-exposed, over-rated, over-publicised, and is definitely not of religious significance, which was its original meaning.

Challenge expectations : ( in relation to an art exhibition ) pointlessly aiming to be provocative in an desperate attempt to gain attention. Quite what expectations are being assumed are never stated.

Community : any grouping of absolutely anything.

Cutting edge : a tedious Philistine fashion.

Profile : list of disconnected ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ that are given on a social network site that may represent the interests of an individual or may have been copied from someone else’s ‘ profile.’

Surreal : applied to just about any event that is just slightly out of the ordinary, which, when someone of extremely limited vocabulary is asked to describe, completely fails to do so and instead misuses this word, which is an adjective derived from an artistic style that claimed to be representing unconscious rather than conscious ideas and can only accurately be used with reference to an art work in that style.

Pro - choice : in favour of abortion on demand.

Pro - life : against the provision of legalised abortion.

Passion : excessive enthusiasm for any sport.

110 % effort : an impossible figure that is often used in a sporting context.

World stage : where a football series that takes place every four years is said to take place. It is in fact in South Africa this year.

A Dream : Winning a trophy in a sporting event. See above, by winning the above mentioned football tournament it is quite possible that one of the winning team will often say that this is ‘ a dream ’ and it will have been on
‘ the world stage ’, so, they seem to be saying that they are on an imaginary stage and in a state of unconsciousness. This does not mean footballers are Surrealists.

Highest level : also used to describe any sporting event in which large sums of money are invested. The altitude of the venue is not being referred to. Neither is the intellectual accomplishment of anyone involved.

Wither a Left Wing ?

2010-05-26T15:09:00.000+01:00

It is most remarkable that while the beast with two backs that is otherwise known as Capitalism or by its familiar amorphous name ' the market ' is in its mindless, moral - free , endless pursuit of profit is busy destabilising countries and imposing punitive terms and austerity measures upon citizens of nominally self - governing populaces, there is virtually no sign of a credible political movement that is challenging its vicious and unjustified orthodoxies. In this country the once left of centre party, the Labour Party, is now so centrist that it has arguably flipped to be to the right of the Conservative led coalition. Witness their current leadership contest : the one distinctly left wing contender, Mr Cruddas, decided not to run, presumably because he knew he would be unsupported, the two other identified as lefties, Mr McDonnell, of whom it would seem accurate, and Ms Abbott, of whom it would seem a historic association rather than anything more substantial, have precisely no nominations as I write.
Meanwhile people such as John Redwood are already feeling confident enough to make speeches in the House arguing for the plight of what he calls ' the inactive entrepreneurs ' read idle rich, and how reducing taxes will encourage them to put some of their ill-gotten gains, sorry, cleverly acquired sums made by brilliant business decisions, back into the economy and create jobs.
It would be laughable if it was not so serious. Having allowed the unfettered free market to operate to its own, non-existent laws for so long and test the Capitalist Anglo - American lassiez faire model to destruction, these apologists with their bamboozling and self-justifying use of terms using the mystique of big numbers, that veneer of expert knowledge and insight into how the market works , are being allowed to spout the same narrow, abject, hermetic, nonsense and are not being challenged. This is because there has been an almost complete evaporation of anything resembling a coherent critique of this view of the fundamentals of how things are organised, which used to be at least attempted by what was once called the left wing.

It is as if the whole creaking edifice is a fixed given, that it has to maintained, propped up, and religiously believed in. But it is a mechanisim, it is run by humans, it is nominaly organised and controlled by secular organisations subject to Laws. It can therefore be changed.
One of the few people I have heard say anything which re-evaluates and challenges in a perfectly reasonable way the orthodoxy of the market was not from the astonishingly unimaginative and craven grouping of politicians we still have in the UK. The German ambassador, who was given little credence, on Newsnight said that his country's Government were going to put the well being of their citizens and their country before that of the financial institutions and the practices of the market. He represents a scarcely radical Christian Democrat Government of Angela Merkel. Here, as soon as the one slightly loose cannon Vince Cable has got into a position of power, he has dropped into line so as not to 'upset' the market, after one conversation with the Governor of the Bank of England.
And by the way, can anyone explain to me why a North Korean ship being sunk by a South Korean ship, or was it the other way around, has any bearing whatsoever upon the share or money markets ? If this is what our economic future is predicated upon then God help us.

80's MADNESS : J'accuse la BBC.

2010-05-24T16:28:00.000+01:00

Thinking a little about the 80’s. I was not really at all political with a big P then. I guess that I thought the Tories were so dreadful and stupid that they would not last long in power. That did not prove to be the case. It was just about possible to survive without working as the dole was a little more proportionate and rent was low. It was not so easy to get into debt as it was not so easy to borrow money.

The so-called boom did not get going until the late 80’s, that idea that the whole decade was one of excess and easy money is just another gross simplification, some places never ‘ boomed ‘ at all, both inside and outside London. The ‘ deprived ‘ parts of London remained so, and in places where the main industries were wound up it was depression time. And it did not last long, five years approximately and as usual only a small minority did very well, not the majority. Taxes for the higher earners were reduced which further skewed the wealth creation to the top end. Society was famously derided as a fiction, there were to be individuals and private companies rather than a common good and public institutions to facilitate that aim. The results of the dismantling and undermining of the social fabric began in earnest during that decade and the weakness and factionalism of the left let it go on for eighteen years. I contend that many of the ideas introduced into ‘ serious ‘ political debate during that horrible period still remain fundamentally unchallenged : that the country must be run like a corner shop as if it is just another business, that its citizens are ‘ customers ’ and ‘ consumers ’ not individuals and that society is simply a result of commodity relations and is not shaped by other values that can be encouraged or made more difficult to maintain by the actions of a Government.

Charter 88 was published in 1988 signed by a self-selected group of the more fair minded great and good. I retrieved my copy the other day and was immediately struck by the fact that of its ten point list only one has come into being, and that was about five years ago, the Freedom of Information Act. All the others including a written Constitution , which would have helped in the recent farrago around the legitimacy or otherwise of Gordon Brown remaining Prime Minister after defeat in the election, where conflicting interpretations of the situation added to the confusion with newspapers able to make all sorts of unsubstantiated claims while constitutional ‘ experts ’ had to be called in to explain the absurd complexities due to their being nothing but precedent to go on. God save us from experts. The new government is following in the trying and deferential manner so prevalent in this country of rather than acting on principle or, God forbid, ideology , which no one admits to having anymore, gets together a bunch of unelected ‘ experts ’ to ‘ look at ’ every vaguely contentious issue. You can look at something infinitely, eventually you have to decide what it is and if you want it anymore, is it doing any good , make a value judgement. Act.

I submit that it was because the last Labour government jettisoned just about all its original motivating ideals that so it was seen to be doing something it enacted numerous proscriptive measures which were presumably designed to show that it was doing the work of government. The trouble was these were precisely the opposite of positive enabling legislation, they were authoritarian and born of strange convoluted thinking that imagines that you can control behaviour by legislation, without ever tackling the major issues of policy such as the degree to which markets are given free reign and how a more inclusive and fairer society facilitated.

To recap, the nine points that were in Charter 88 and remain un-enacted :

A Bill of Rights : civil liberties such as the right to peaceful assembly, to freedom of association, to freedom from discrimination, to freedom from detention without trial, to trial by jury, to privacy and to freedom of expression.
Subject executive powers and prerogatives, by whomsoever exercised, to the rule of law.
Create a fair electoral system of proportional representation.
Reform the upper house to establish a democratic, non-hereditary second chamber.
Place the executive under the power of a democratically renewed parliament and all agencies of the state under the rule of law.
Ensure the independence of a reformed judiciary.
Provide legal remedies for all abuses of power by the state and the officials of central and local government.
Guarantee an equitable distribution of power between local, regional and national government.
Draw up a written constitution, anchored in the idea of universal citizenship, that incorporates these reforms.

Oddly, looking at Unlock Democracy, which is what Charter 88 has morphed into, they seem to have moved to the more esoteric and confusing STV and Alternative Vote ideas rather than sticking to the clear aim of proportional representation. I suggest that this needs to be extended to Local Government also, which is wildly unrepresentative and not at all transparent. Local Councillors are highly influential and yet manage to be strangely obscure creatures that are elected in bunches of three, for some reason, and whose ward boundaries and even names seem to change with alarming frequency.

I would add another to the list. This would be a right to a basic income for every citizen. At present I contend that this country is in breach of articles signed up to in the European Convention which are designed to ensure that citizens have the means to live in dignity. Our means tested allowances are amongst the lowest in Europe and bear no relation to an average or median income. The numbers of people being left to try and exist on this inadequate ‘ safety net ’ are in the millions. Administering this complex and non-productive system of benefits is costly and outmoded. A simple and straightforward entitlement would sweep away all that paraphernalia and take millions out of effective poverty, enabling much greater chance for social inclusion and the renewal of civil society.

Remarkably , given that it now appears to have been accepted by the political classes that the link between earnings and the basic state pension must be restored, another anti-social and unfair measure introduced in the 80’s by the Conservatives and shamefully not reinstated by the Labour administration, no one seems to see that there is the same disparity between the current JSA or Income Support levels and anything approaching an average wage. How is it that even at current levels before the pension is changed to link to average earnings an unwaged single man is expected to survive on £65 a week until 64 then this suddenly changes to £97 a week at 65 ? What arcane calculations have established these figures ?

So, back to the 80’s. I have to question why the BBC is in the process of showing a number of programmes purporting to be about that decade. The Martin Amis book ‘Money’ was published in the early part and, like most of his writing, while well crafted and funny, is a poor record as a social document. I will leave aside his low life obsession, which is very much a product of and an indictment of the continuous chasm between those of different classes and backgrounds in England and their complete failure to understand each other, and is actually quite prejudiced, producing caricatures rather than anything enlightening. For example, the main character in this book, John Self. As far as I am aware most of the people who go into advertising and PR are not working class blokes that ‘got lucky’ but rather well connected and well educated middle classes that have creative tendencies but would rather not risk being an out and out artist, and found the City or Law too boring a prospect. I suggest that far from being a critique of the 80’s the book, perhaps despite itself, contributed to a shift from the City and its besuited money making men being seen by those with the entrée to this area as dull and unexciting to it being ’sexy’ ( I hate that term, but am afraid it has to be used here ) and exciting, the conspicuous consumption and greed as a high.

With the pop themed programmes, the Boy George one I watched, they work within their own very limited form, but as an insight into the period they are super-lightweight. Quite why the writer of the Boy George tale was chosen given that he was too young to have been contemporary with that time I do not understand. This absurd idea that wearing some make-up and funny clothes was in some way revolutionary and made the slightest difference to anything other than contributing to making that one individual a famous pop singer, is a very tired cliché and is simply not the case. I was around at the time and can assure that in general people did not take a blind bit of notice, and the handful of people who did dress somewhat differently only went out at night to a very limited number of places where they were amongst their own little clan.

‘Ashes to Ashes’ does not purport to be a serious effort, (does it ?) this type of mixed up period drama that veers between harsh realism, whenever there is a bit of violence, and a fantasy view of a place and time based almost entirely on pop music and fashion references, strikes as most odd. No female Police Officers in the 1980’s dressed like a backing singer for Wham! It is always wrong, it may be amusing, but it is part of a broader failure to deal with actuality in 99 % of the BBC TV output.

Is it significant ? Well, it is very strange how I now see periods of time that I lived through and aspects that I was quite closely involved with being presented in these skewed forms and such a filleted unrepresentative manner. It naturally makes one think about all the received mediated accounts of earlier periods that one did not live through, or were too young to be fully conscious of , and how accurate these rewritten histories might be.

Perhaps it takes many years before a clearer view can be seen of any period, and of course there is the important matter of when certain facts emerge, but it worries me that events and the context of which I can remember clearly are being misrepresented in such an organised way, being turned into fictions and
Irrelevances, somehow the big media organisations never get it remotely right.

LE CORBUSIER IN FIRMINY

2010-05-23T00:31:00.000+01:00

This is a short video which shows the church at Firminy, a late work by Le Corbusier . While his politics were dubious and meglomanic tendancies obvious, some of the buildings he created are remarkable. This is one.

THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER CAPITALISIM

2010-05-16T19:17:00.000+01:00

The Labour Party manifesto for the recent election sounded as if it had been written by an elderly spinster on a state pension, no, hold on, it might have been more radical if it had been written by an elderly spinster on a state pension, this imaginary person may have had a strong opinion on the inadequate level of the current pension. It was so polite, lacking in bite, lacking in any attempt to deal with the glaring inequalities that have been increased during the Labour administration and had a complete lack of anything resembling a coherent ideology.
Nothing remotely challenged the Capitalist market led orthodoxy has so spectacularly failed and hung itself with its own gilded petard while the false rhetoric of the banking / City cabal was left to its own vice - ridden devices. Dont get me on to the Masons. Even the Queen, not widely known as a radical thinker, asked the question why did'nt the LSE forsee anything ? BBC ? LSE ? PriceWaterhouse ? What are they paid to do ?

I thought it was to interogate and make clear the gross mechanicals.

Famously the Conservatives at their most arrogant and free market obsessed said there was no such thing as society. Now even a nominaly Socialist party effecetive says there is no such thing as ideology. All parties seem pathologicaly fearful of using any language, let alone ideas, that spring from a broad and coherent ideology and, remarkably, the so called left of centre party, Labour, has been least likely to say anything that appears to stem from an ideology that is critical of Capitalisim. And that does not have to be an off the shelf existing ideology, surely that worrying post-ideological position that was mooted by certain academics after the fall of Communisim, ' the end of history ' cannot be accepted as an adequate response for the clear and present deficiency and malfunctioning of the hands-off , the market knows best approach that has been given free reign for at least thirty years now.
And its not good enough to replace the ideology-free stance of the last government with an ideology - lite that tip-toes around the fact that if governments and non-commercial institutions that are ment to represent the greater good do not take decisions that come from ideas about how things can be better organised, that aim for more equitable distribution of wealth and fuller involvement and integration of all members of society, then nothing will realy change and all problems will be exacerbated.
Ideas form an ideology, it need not be dogmatic and absolutist, as was Communism as practiced, but this retreat from anything that remotely resembles an ideology has to be checked.
Oscar Wilde once argued eloquently that the soul of man would not survive under Socialisim, substitute Communism and he was absolutely right, but equally the soul of man is unlikey to survive under Capitalisim and his suggestion that the problem was that Socialism would take too many evenings, although amusing, needs now to be revised : it will take as long as many evenings as it takes, and whatever 'ism' you call it, Socialism is good enough for me, surely it has to be done, the time has come, bring back ideology, almost all is forgiven.

THE CHIMERA OF THE CITY.

2010-05-12T14:28:00.000+01:00

So, what has changed, amoungst all this blather about a new type of politics ? At one point during this election campagign I was listening to Nick Clegg being interviewed on the radio, and there was something about his voice and the way he was speaking that was reminding me of someone else, and then I realised, it was David Cameron. It is that earnest but empty rhetoric that is managerial rather than rooted in any commitment, any actual belief or developed argument, it just floats, being reasonable, not scaring the natives with anything resembling an ideology, a critical concept that might challenge the orthodoxy that is acepted as a given : that this thing called ' the market ' exists and functions of and for itself and is not a construct and a concept that was created by and is maintained by those in political power.
Whenever I hear that cliche of 'difficult decisions' it is clear that is ment is ' we are about to make life even harder for those who can least bear it. '
The more I attempt to understand this monster called the financial services sector, the more clear it becomes that it is based on fictions and duplicity, it is not operating according to a natural law, it could be swept away entirely if there was the will to do it. That euphemisim ' The City ' gives the whole dark and dirty business of making money out of money a completely false image of being a physical reality, a unitary, bricks and mortar entity when it is in fact the opposite : it is a Chimera.
The Chimera was a mythological beast composed of parts of other animals, a fitting discription of what these banks and their offshoots realy are. It was the sibling of further hybrid monsters such as Cerebus and Hydra, read LIBOR and CDO's, ABACUS or something called BISTRO, Broad Indexed Secured Trust Offering, if I am not mistaken.
The City has its Griffins to guard its boundaries, another mythological creature, but this is again a fantasy, the gold is no longer there, it has been spirited away. Once upon a time there were actual warehouses of goods that were traded in the Exchange, but now it is capital, and the arcane mysteries of how it is traded, as ' futures ' notional values speculatively traded, all the time trying to create more money from existing blocks of money, without any connection to anything back in the real world.
Spotlights need to be shone into this self-perpetuating world and if no one has the temerity to actualy curtail it altogether then at least put down some serious controls as appears to be starting to happen in America.
I heard some bankers talking yesterday in a pub, blithely saying how London remains a tax haven for the rich, and saying how the British dont go in for riots. Well, not too often, but if this situation is not addressed I would not be so sure.

BRING BACK CLAUSE 4 ! KILL THE SQUID !

2010-05-05T16:50:00.000+01:00

With the beginnings of serious social unrest in Greece despite the EC and IMF loans under a nominally Socialist government I think we may be starting to see clearly the emergence of the need to review thoroughly all the accepted economic mantras.
Who are these rating agencies that wield such power ? They are private companies based in America. They are closely connected to the investment banks such as Goldman Sachs who profit from their pronouncements. Who are these ' investors buying debt ' that are so important in this perverse scheme of things ? Why are governments in thrall to these people who make money from manipulating markets ?
Is it not time to fundamentally challenge this form of market making which is about as divorced from reality as it can be. Is the stability of Europe to be threatened by continuing to slavishly follow a model of aggressive Capitalism in which barely regulated privately owned banks who dream up these complex financial instruments hoover up money while the problems this causes are to be tackled by imposing austerity measures upon people that still simply work for a living ?
Even the in house commentators such as Mr. Wolf in the Financial Times are now saying that there has to be radical reform, only now note, when the greed and total lack of control led these very 'institutions' (which is giving them too much kudos), to bring the whole system to the brink of meltdown due their own hubris.
I had cause to refresh my memory as to what Clause 4 of the Labour Party manifesto was the other day, it was the one that was excised by Tony Blair in his drive to 'modernise' the party. It was actually a foundation stone of Socialist principle and concerns the objective of bringing all the major elements of the operation of a developed society into public ownership and thus outside of the machinations and mystification of the world of private capital.
A salient example, was the re-nationalisation of Railtrack yet again only after their hand being forced by the appalling sequence of preventable deaths following the privatised Railtrack's cutting back on maintenance : read austerity measures. The Government took back control of the infrastructure of the railways so that it was not subject to the vagaries and whims of a profit driven private company that had been handed a monopoly on a public service on a plate.
The pitiful record of this Labour government did not go any further and the remaining franchises for train operation are a patchwork of competing private companies, with the notable exception of Deuche Bahn the German State Railway which has two. This means these two, Chiltern and London Overground are the only ones that are outside the private sector and guess what, they are two of the very best train operators in the country. The rolling stock is still largely owned by banks, an ultimate absurdity given that you cannot run a railway without trains and yet these are currently in the hands of banks who lease them out or sell them when necessary to make their profits which then sit in their coffers doing nothing useful.
Someone with some balls should try and get this crucial idea back on the agenda although I hear only deafening silence from all the major British parties as they all live in fear of being branded as Nationalisers. What is wrong with putting the interests of the country as a whole before that of the precious 'market' ? For how much longer are senior politicians going to accept the greater wisdom, read:self interested greed and the smoke and mirrors of their complex financial instruments, from the unelected, discredited self-selecting elite of the City and the precious, vastly over important, overpaid, under regulated, venal and arrogant commercial banking, insurance and credit rating cabals ?
It is simply not enough to have a few show trials and for fines and settlements to be made : government has the power to legislate these bloodsuckers out of existence, (calling Goldman Sachs a vampire squid is an insult to vampire squid), or at least clip their wings so short that they can no longer fly in permanent First Class while everyone else has to crawl along the pavement looking for the pennies they have dropped.
As I write this Golman Sachs have already settled by making a payment over one accusation but admitted no wrong doing whatsoever.
I strongly suggest that something very close to Clause 4 is used as the basis of future government legislation by whatever party or coalition take over, otherwise it may be forced to do it by the increasingly untenable effects of allowing policy to be made in response to the pronouncements and the machinations of those in control of capital whose only raison d'etre is to keep it and accumulate more.
Why was the BBC interviewing at length a very rich American investor, one Jim Rogers, about what to should be the governments of Europe response to the Greek situation ? Why on earth should his view, which was that Greece should go bankrupt, as if it was a private individual, and sod the consequences, given such credence ? These moral and intellectual pygmies cannot be allowed to attempt to dictate the policies of our elected Governments simply because they have mistakenly been given increasingly free reign to accrue vast quantities of wealth over the preceding 50 years.

ELECTION BLUES

2010-05-02T16:12:00.000+01:00

As the election lurches and looms to some sort of conclusion it becomes apparent that despite the creditable inroads of the Liberal Democrats the deep seated conservativisim of the majority will prevail. Despite all the corruption and self evident failings of the unfettered market which still is refered to as if it is a given and is unalterable, a broadly conservative reassertion of the primacy of the financial reality being the only reality and a rhetoric of ' difficult choices ' and 'austerity' mask a refusal to fundamentaly reassess and revalue how our society is structured.
Instead a reversion to pre-crisis acceptance of vast inequality, unaccountable private financial interests calling the shots and a blind acceptance that this mythological beast 'the market' will 'recover' and there will be jobs for all.
I note with utter dejection that virtualy all the British newspapers are backing the Conservatives. I also note that there seem to be a lot of high fences being errected and burglar alarms being installed around the immediate vicinity.
I am no big fan of Gordon Brown but Sky sticking a radio mike on his lapel and broadcasting off the cuff remarks would seem to be a blatant deliberate dirty trick, strange it never happened to Cameron. Another small observation, listening to an interview on the BBC radio with Nick Clegg I was wondering why there was such a protracted series of questions about wether he believed in God. Then I read The Telegraph pointing out in a shock-horror manner that his Spanish wife is a fully paid up Catholic and it became clear : the establishment fear that Nick, should he somehow get into a position of power, might be one.
We have had the most conservative and least egalitarian Labour government that has ever been, now, unless there is a huge swing to the Liberal Democrats, it looks like a return to the intellectual pygmies of the actual Conservatives, who are plainly and simply incapable of progresive policy in politics or in society, which they have recently apparently discovered does exist, but for some reason has been renamed as 'Big.' Its hard to smile.

Entrenched Anti - Catholicisim.

2010-04-26T21:21:00.000+01:00

Good grief, events are continualy outstripping my admittedly somewhat jaundiced view of the institutions of this country. Having been astonished at the headline level of coverage to the vaguely defined 'abuse in the Catholic Church ' which clearly wells from a remaining deep seated hostility to said relgion and a desire to discredit it at every opportunity, there has now been an officialy sanctioned memo circulated in the Foreign Office that is almost unbelievable in its highlighting of Anti - Catholic predudice at an institutional level. This insulting, sneering and utterly pointless drivel was the result of a number of Oxford educated and well paid Civil Servants having a ' brainstorming ' session, which I hitherto thought was the advertising industry's way of coming up with inanities to sell things. To call the resulting banalities 'ironic' is a misuse of the word, and since when has the Foreign Office been in the business of irony ? Neither were these excruciating examples of the clear disrespect and inate opposition to the standpoint and moral convictions of the Catholic Church represented by its temporal leader Pope Benedict in any way humourous. These were not jokes, (although again jokes at the expense of Catholics are still not uncommon amoungst contemporary comedians), they were glaringly unfunny, symptomatic of a perverse attitude the shows a fundamental failure to properly consider the Catholic position, rather to ineptly attempt to undermine and trivialise its ideas and traditions.
How much abuse, sexual and physical, has occured in the many absurdly called Public Schools that, no doubt many of these Civil Servants attended, over the preceeding fifty years ?
Or in the many secular institutions for young persons run under the auspices of the State ? Or in the Anglican Church ? Any apologies ? No, it appears that the Catholic Church, a very large organisation made up of individuals with virtues and failings like any other, and could never be completely controlled in every aspect by one person, even if this person is the Pope, is the one and only place that it has occured.
This touches on another misaprehension that the majority and even the more enlightened have in this country, namely that to be a Catholic you have total commitment to and obey every word ever said at any time by the current Pope : WRONG, this is not the case. I was brought up a Catholic, and I seem to recall as much disagreement as agreement with sucsessive Popes and their pronouncements. These had effects, particularly in the way the church services were conducted and the physical fabric of the church buildings, but the idea that one looks to the Pope as the guide to every aspect of being a practicing Catholic was absolutely not the case. Strange as it may seem Catholics make up their own minds and are not controlled by thought beams direct from the Pope's brain in Rome.
During the last year of Tony Blair's Prime Ministership I recall a piece in The Times stating catagoricaly that a Prime Minister could not be a Catholic. I found and still find this deeply disturbing and fundamentaly wrong in the early 21st Century. Being a Catholic does not mean that you swear some sort of blood oath, unlike being a Freemason, and vow to obey to the letter some all powerful authority. It is not a secular activity, it is a faith, it is a council of perfection, not a set of laws, it strives to bring out the better in people, to follow values that are rooted in what is good, and this is a spiritual conviction, assisted by the form and councillors of the church but not controlled by it like a puppet.
In this country with its connection between the state and its church, this is not understood, and this link is, I contend, to the detriment of both its state and its church.

THE DOME (after Coleridge )

2010-03-12T14:36:00.000Z

THE DOME
In North Greenwich did Mandleson
A state pleasure dome decree :
Where Blackwall, the infernal tunnel ran
Through Thames mud, measureless to man
Down to Bugsby's Reach.
So half a mile of foetid ground
With strings and wires were girdled round :
And there were no gardens no sinuous rills
But a Giant Bubo on a Gaseous peninsular
And here were yellow pylons piercing
This shallow meniscus.
And Oh! That deep ventilation shaft
protruding and evacuating poison
Through this Tent of Inanities
This sunless place ! As unholy and misbegotten
As e'er beneath the looming tower was planted
For a bemused people awaiting a win on the lottery !
Five Fat Eels meandering with a mazy motion
Into the dark Thames they swam
To reach Tilbury and the estuary measureless to man
And sink and slither into a lifeless ocean
As far from the tumult was heard the sound
Of ancestral voices prophesising War !
Proclaiming shame.
Prolaiming shame!

2000

In the Loop : HORROR RECOGNITION.

2010-03-08T20:56:00.000Z

Watched ' In The Loop ' last night. If that is close to what it is realy like, we are in a worse way than imagined. How is it that the BBC have the knowledge about how things realy are but never reveal it, even this was semi-comedic. I think we should be told, before we are too old.
Not quite connected, like me :
Not paying your licence fee is a Criminal offence. Arrest Charles Moore , editor of the Spectator immediately, he is refusing to pay and has said so via his organ. Extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo Bay, being deprived of Porsche and tottie for a year or two may break him. Who backs this crapulous magazine ? Ashcroft ? Mick Jagger ? Nigella Lawson and her pornographic puddings ?
Who knows.

INCREDIBLE ARROGANCE : CONSERVATIVE REALITY

2010-03-04T21:10:00.000Z

Ashcroft. Well, anyone with an ounce of sense has known that he had overseas interests and was a serial tax dodger, but why does someone already so rich, already in such a position of power and influence, who is able to ' negociate ' his own terms for becoming a Lord in the House of Lords, want to influence the outcome of a General Election ? He is already grossly rich, and yet withholds as much as possible from British taxes while simultaeously backing the Conservative Party to run the country.
If anything should alert people to what remains at the root and the base of the Conservative Party this is it : people who are already so privileged and flush with largely unearned wealth want even more and want to hang on to every damn penny rather than let any
'trickle down'(not that it does) or to be used in any way they have no control over.
This is fundamental and not insignificant. This is the essense of the what the Conservative Party is about : retaining money and influence in a self-selecting minority. That is it. And no matter how much you dress it up, and give them respectable titles, that is what they all want, and no matter how much they have, they always want more, and allways want to obscure their tracks, because they are stealing, vicious and unscrupulous and they continue to get away with it.
Horse Stealers, that's what the Tories were named after. They still are.

THE MIDDLE CLASSES : ENDANGERED SPECIES ?

2010-02-19T14:53:00.000Z

In an interview to be published in this weeks Tribune the Prime Minister states that the Tories, if elected, would ' betray the Middle Classes.' The message being given is therefore that it is the Labour Party, if elected, that will defend the Middle Classes. Aside from the issue that the Labour Party now and ever since its re-election in 1997 has clearly put the interests of the Middle Classes as central to its policies rather than its traditional constituency of the conviniently ignored working class,
I was not aware that the Middle Classes were under any great threat.
Are the Middle Class an endangered species ? While certainly the recession is effecting all surely those that are most keenly feeling its icy grip are the working class, if, indeed they are still in work. With Corus closing down today one is seeing free market callousness still very much alive and the destruction of thousands of jobs where people do actually make things, rather than those precious so-called middle class occupations where people manage things. This chimes with my earlier post about 'You and Yours' that having to get by on slightly less and perhaps rethink that third holiday in some far flung unspoilt paradise ( before it is spoilt by large numbers of visitors )and maybe buy just virgin olive oil rather than extra virgin olive oil, is not being seriously disadvantaged, neither is it being 'betrayed' and it does not make the blessed middle class an endangered species.
What it does betray is the ideals of the founders of the Labour Party, who foresaw increasing inequality and wanted to put in place checks and balances through well considered socialy driven legislation and organisation, which are aimed not at maintaining the status financial or otherwise of any one defined interest group but that broadens wealth and well being as widely as possible. And if an idea is good, its good, ideas do not have sell-by dates, before inevitable cries of 'idealisim'.
I suggest that the middle class are a tenacious species that under the guise of mild manners will do everything that is necessary to maintain their position. Why the leader of the Labour Party and, naturaly of the Tory Party, should be squabbling over who can 'protect' them best is pretty damn ridiculous.

SMUG CITY : 'YOU AND YOURS'

2010-02-19T13:36:00.000Z

The output of a mid-morning radio programme may not be the most important thing in the world but it realy is deeply irritating and an example of the ingrained editorial attitudes at BBC radio. Undoubtedly called one of their 'flagship' programmes, 'You and Yours' (the very title makes me uncomfortable), consistently runs content that is aimed so squarely and smugly at, well, the square and the smug that it is almost provocatively banal. Endless probes into how to save that extra pound on your car insurance, to get a refund when your holiday in Barbados was not quite as inch perfect is you expect it to be. It caters, by and large, for a section of the population who are already in a relative position of comfort and security and seeks to assist them in making themselves even more comfortable and secure. It is unbelivabley smug and self-righteous, never for a moment considering that plenty of folk, myself for one, dont have any insurance, never owned a car, never go on holiday to Barbados and find the travails of those who do and the seriousness with which their complaints and whinges, nearly always to do with money, which underpins the whole exercise, completely uninteresting and facile.
Today, for example, no doubt in the interest of some beserk idea of fair handedness, there was a whole piece on how business class travel is actualy not that great and can have its drawbacks, no doubt in response to the inane comments by Nicolas Winterton MP, who, incidently has been both a dolt and yet in that job for donkeys years.
The problems associated with those poor souls who have travel business class all the time are quite simply irrelevent and a waste of airtime. You can find someone to complain about anything, and the higher the price and the more they are ment be given special treatment the more likely they will complain. On this subject one train operator has got it right by abolishing 1st and 2nd class, adjusting the fares and giving everyone a decent traveling experience while filling the trains.
This is just one example, but 90% of the programme consists of features aimed so obviously at the same decile that the major political parties aim at : the reasonably well-off middle class who actualy need the advice and support being offered far less than many, many others. Why is'nt there a programme aimed at the millions of unemployed people struggling to survive on starvation level benfits ? They are more likely both be at home listening and could do with some moral support and practical help.
I recently got a letter from the DWP regarding my JSA. It is going up in April. By how much ? By £2.60 a week.
Do a feature about that, you and your smug bastards, how was that worked out ? What difference is £2.60 a week going to make? A return ticket from where I live in Zone 2 to Waterloo recently went up from £3.50 to £4.80. And that is not travelling business class. That is lucky to get a seat class.

WAR PR

2010-02-16T18:11:00.000Z

Listening to the spokesperson, it was a man, in fact, for the British Forces in Afganistan after a rocket that 'went astray' killed 20 people.
This was said : 'Tragically, in warfare you cannot guarantee that there will be no loss of life.'
This PR-speak just defeats me. Warfare is about violence and loss of life, trying give the impression that it can be conducted without loss of life is absurd.
Who is this sort of statement aimed at ? Granted there is no total control over war reporting as has been the case in the past, but this sort of 'proffessional' PR approach is facile and pointless.
Again, it reminds me of business gobbledegook.

THE CAR CULTURE

2010-02-07T16:55:00.000Z

The dominate car culture is so little challenged that one cant help but to start thinking conspiracy. Its more likely a group of linked vested interests, but it certainly stinks. Aside from the now well rehearsed argument regarding the detrimental impact on the environment through pollution, an aspect that that never seems to break into common conciousness is the physical space that cars consume. When they are not being driven, which is most of the time, if every car in the country took to the road at the same time it would probably result in an infinate traffic jam, they just sit there taking up space and getting in the way. It has allways struck me that the presumption that one should be able to put these large metal lumps almost anywhere and inevitably obstructing the movement of persons going about their business is one more misguided assumption that is made almost exclusively for these hallowed objects called cars. The cumulative space taken up by the thousands of parked cars must be the size of a small County.
Possibly the most absurd buildings that have ever been created and that can only realy be explained by a sort of car mania are the inappropriately named multi-storey car parks. How the word 'park' ever became linked to these grotesque repositories for these machines is a mystery.
Lets go back to 1930's Germany. The Fascist National Socialist party are in power. One of their first priorities is to produce the People's Car : Volkswagen. The ' auto ' mobile. The self mobile. Strangely the rear end of the early models looks like a gas mask, and indeed adapted Saurer trucks were used as mobile execution vans. The firm is still in business. Then there were the auotobahns, one of the first being a dead straight road from Berlin to a lake some miles away. I read an article in Punch from that time where the writer had gone to Germany specificaly to drive along this piece of road at unlimited speed. He conceeded that it was not actually a very interesting experience, but, as would happen all over Europe, driving was becoming a ' leisure experience ' in itself, unconnected to the actual need to get to a remote place.
The autobahns remain speed unlimted, and this obsession with speed, again not linked to anything but in itself, as a goal, an expression of will, was a notable feature of Fascist culture. In Italy the Futurists, who blurred the line between art and politics, were advocates of speed and mechanised warfare. This was also the period when motor racing developed, this bizarre automated form of horse racing which developed with the car industry, and, indeed with Fascisim.
To add another illustration, there were night rallies of French Fascists which were organised gatherings of cars outside Paris.
Ford operated in Germany during the Nazi regime.
It may or may not be a coincidence that Max Mosely, son of Oswald,the leader of the Brish Fascist Party of the same period, is currently head of the European motor racing organisation.
Both the marginalisation of criticisim of the car industry, and the incredible degree of toleration to the negative impact of the obiqutous use and slavish promotion of the car that continues to be shown by sucessesive Governments and the mass media is remarkable. One small but telling example : the nationaly broadcast two hour programme on BBC radio 5 from 16 :00 - 18 : 00 every weekday is called 'Drive'. Is the assumption that the audience are all in their cars ? The suggestion is that the natural thing to be doing at this time is driving. Why ? I can think of no other radio programme that specifies a form of transport to its listeners.
It is well past time that car culture was challenged. One person is murdered and it tends to get airtime, hundreds die on the roads in so-called 'accidents' , my next door neighbour was cruelly crushed by a HGV, yet this is virtualy ignored. Meanwhile the senseless witterings and juvenile stunts of car worshipers such as Jeremy Clarkson and his cronies are given acres of airtime and unfettered funds ( my bloody Licence fee ) to fritter away on pointless promotion of these detestable machines, these paragons of selfishness.
Damn the things.

SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE

2010-02-07T14:56:00.000Z

This is a remarkable book, there is a link to the left.

MISSION CREEP : BUSINESS SPEAK

2010-02-03T19:29:00.000Z

MISSION CREEP : BUSINESS SPEAK
Listening to the improbably named Jock Stirrup, nickname Jock, oddly enough, and others discussing the proposals for possible cuts to the military budget or our National Security as it is neatly flipped to when necesssary, I was struck by the way all the irritating current business terms were being used as if this was just any other industry. You know the sort of thing, increased efficency by multi-layered integration synergyzzzz etc.
It may be seen as a business by those involved but couching the discussion in the sort of facile trendy terms that are used throughout the management and economic ' expert ' fields just adds to the disgust I feel for the continued blind acceptance that the whole military superstructure is a perfectly normal and vital part of the country's life.
Even some senior soldiers, Mike Jackson for example, are now expressing doubts that what they do is productive, and conceed that sometimes it is not.
Someone described what the UK want to be as a mini-Superpower, is that not an oxymoron ? I, for one don't want to be a mini-Superpower.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH GOOD IDEALISIM ?

2010-01-30T15:52:00.000Z

Having just listened to a BBC radio feature about the proposed sell-off of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, I refuse to call it High Speed 1, a preposterous bit of re-branding, I was struck by the fact that no one from any Government Department would appear to justify the proposal and the only person whose comments and opinions were reported as being of importance was someone from the accountants Ernst & Young. This seemed to neatly encapsulate the complete removal of any motivating philosophy that might still exist in a nominally Socialist Government. Here we have a useful and fully functioning piece of up to date railway, the one example in this country, as opposed to the hundreds of miles that have been built in France, Germany and Spain in the last twenty years, that was funded by public finance and it is going to be sold off for a fraction of its cost to build and it is left to a representative of a firm of private Chartered Accountants, who, no doubt will be well rewarded for doing the sums in any such sale, to explain why.

What has happened to the principles that brought Socialism into being ? Would William Morris or John Ruskin recognise any aspect of their philosophy that sought to introduce values other than those of profit into the marketplace in the machinations of this Labour Government ? Whenever these two are brought up the first thing said tends to be ’ they were Idealists, they were an artist and a philosopher‘.’ But it was surely because they had ideals and were willing to attempt to follow them through that made them strong and, for a time, influential. What is wrong with a bit of Idealism ? Especially Idealism that was rooted in an attempt to find a way to improve the lot of the many not the few, to try to introduce a fairer distribution of the wealth that was being created and a more principled way of doing business than that which was becoming entrenched in this country in the mid-Nineteenth century.

Visiting the William Morris Museum in Hammersmith I was struck by the fact that it was here in this small coach house and the meetings that were held here that began the Socialist movement. And these ideas, ideals if you like, were not wholly impractical nor highly complicated but sought to restore a link between art and utility, good practice and decent reward, to re-introduce values that did not place monetary value and the maximisation of profit at the very centre of all activity and all social relationships. These, I suggest, are still ideas that, rather than be dismissed as irrelevant or historical, are well worth bringing to the table again or we may as well let accountants run the country, privatise the Government and have a Chief Executive and a board like any plc.

It is true that Morris was from a wealthy background and could afford to take the risk of trying to put his somewhat utopian ideas into practice. Ruskin, with his unsuccessful tea shop in Marylebone, was certainly a man of ideas and ideals rather than an entrepreneur. But they did try to develop and foster an alternative form of commerce and practice which included a moral, human and even aesthetic dimension, no wonder they were ridiculed by the majority in an England that was and remains deeply utilitarian and conservative to its core.

But were these ideas so wrong ? The products of Morris and his fellow workers certainly found a place in homes of those that could afford them and continue to this day to be appreciated and bought. His wallpaper and paint is still available but his project appears to have got nowhere.

As we emerge from this vile period of celebrity artists and the blurring of advertising and art, the whole Saatchi funded balloon of pomposity, empty gesture, moral equivalence and the dancing charlatans that were promoted and feted by those that bask in their reflected glory, perhaps it is a good time to reflect on what these whiskered and well minded gentlemen were aiming to do. It is easy to dismiss and yet a real political party grew out of Morris’s meetings and he had been inspired by John Ruskin’s writing, as indeed was Ghandi.

Peter Fuller was one lone voice who tried to bring them to the front again in his art criticism and also clearly warned about the coming cult of celebrity and the general cheapening of cultural values. Sadly he died in a car crash in the early 1990’s and the apologists for the vacuity of Brit Art, took over championing the latest Philistine nonsense as clever and avant-garde rather than as the work of meretricious and cold, calculating con-artist-businessmen, step forward Mr Hirst, this re-hash of the self-important shock tactics of such as Duchamp and his chums.

When Labour came to power in 1997 what started to take place was a blurring of previously more distinct areas of high and low culture, a confusion between the ethnic background of the artist and the merit of the work, an obsession with pop musicians and the disastrous equation of the squalid and ugly with veracity and authenticity.

Notions of quality, of concern with content, with aesthetics, with beauty, with aspiring to anything at all went out of sight. The idea that art could have any redeeming social value almost ceased to have any currency.

While notions of strict boundaries between high, low and, that always derided term middle brow, culture can be overly rigid to simply ditch all distinction and declare that all forms of cultural production are equal is foolish and creates an environment where he who makes the biggest noise and the crudest gestures takes precedence. Artists have, in some cases, become inseparable from pop stars, vulgarity has become ’cool’ , intelligence, sensitivity and subtlety in cultural fields has been greatly undermined. A nadir was reached when one J Ross, still employed by the BBC, used his platform on national radio to abuse for his own amusement a 70 year old actor.

While high brow culture has continued to exist in its own shrinking world, low brow has been elevated and merged into a no-brow mess from which we have still to emerge. I mentioned how Middle-Brow culture is routinely ridiculed, but I see nothing wrong with something which used to be a sort of stepping stone between low and higher culture and would have a certain merit in itself , yet it has been almost crushed out of existence. I suggest that the contempt that it is held in by many commentators is a form of snobbery, it is acceptable to like almost anything but not if its middle-brow. What is it then ? Could not Dickens be seen as middle-brow, for example ? Football has been embraced by the middle-class as it is still seen as low brow yet it is written about and analysed as thoroughly than Proust. Similarly pop or rock groups and a liking for same is usually seen as in some way connecting with a vital lower brow force. I disagree. It is very largely the product of and the preserve of the middle class and always has been. The myth of the working class kids producing pop music and it being a rebellious activity is almost completely fictitious.

As with football it is a very good way of distracting people from any meaningful political activity and acts to divide people along partisan lines. Football clubs are businesses first and do not represent the interests of their supporters. When the Thames Ironworks works team started to employ paid professionals and charge to get into the games the employees ceased to be interested, why, after all, should they pay to see a player earning more than they were paid to work in shipbuilding allegedly representing them ? This team became West Ham United.

Both football and pop music are consummate spectacles. They appear to be enlivening and involving, but they in fact confirm individual alienation. They invite you to be part of a mass spectacular operation but to no purpose other than that of the spectacle itself. ‘ And the songs we sing, they’re not supposed to mean a thing’ That’s a line by Morrisey, by the way. Have you ever noticed how when the football is turned on in a pub suddenly 90% of people’s attention ceases to be their fellows but instead becomes this arbitrarily imposed spectacle of paid protagonists acting out a stylised contest on a remote patch of grass ? Its like a General Anaesthesia sets in.

Back to Mr Ruskin.

‘Unto This Last‘, by John Ruskin’s was translated into Gujarati as ’Sarvodaya’ which means ’ The Well Being of All.’ That is still some way off, like Jerusalem, but this aim and this ideal, and just how it may be achieved remains well worthy of being placed at the centre, at the heart of what The Labour Party should be.

REAL LIFE ON THE DOLE : PART 4

2010-01-30T15:05:00.002Z

My shoes are falling apart. As I have just one pair they get heavy use as I walk a good deal. The problem will be buying a new pair. Someone once said you can tell much about a person from the state of their shoes, mine are a pair of Clarks bought for a reduced price that are now splitting apart, uppers from sole, very much as I am.

Being on the dole is being in a condition of constant anxiety. There is plenty of time but it is often spent in a condition of paralysis brought on by a fear of expending money. All your activities are highly limited, your confidence undermined, your sense of exclusion emphasised. You are constantly aware that you cannot afford anything. Every phone call or letter is dreaded, as it will almost always be a demand for payment. It is a form of social suppression and control by economic means.

To repeat : the current level of benefit given to an adult citizen in this country is totally inadequate. It does not meet the terms of the EC Joint Report on Social Exclusion 2002 to which this Government is a signatory to ‘guarantee an adequate income and resources to live in human dignity…and participate in society as full members.’

To buy a new pair of shoes I will be relying on the possible sale of some LP’s from my record collection. Fortunately some of these have become ’collectable’ but they are a finite number. But is it right that these have to be sold to keep shoes on my feet ?

Like a minimum wage, which was eventually enacted despite the howls of protest from various ’ Captains of industry ’ and the opposition of the Conservative Party, there is a strong case for a basic minimum income below which no citizen should have to live.

In France where the benefit system is considerably more generous, there have been riots in consequence of social exclusion and poverty. A sort of manifesto has been recently published ’The Coming Insurrection’ by The Invisible Committee which provocatively challenges the blindly accepted mantras of work being the only way to take part in society. There never has been nor will there ever be paid work for all I contend, and furthermore the very term is no longer meaningful. What do we mean by work ? The highest paid jobs are the preserve of those who manipulate elaborate financial schemes and do not make anything useful in the real world. Yet there is a continual assumption that ' real jobs ' are created by their machinations. First, that implies that what they do to make money is not real, and indeed it appears to be some black art which is given pseudo-religious reverence. Listen to the solemn intoning of the stock exchange figures at the end of the BBC Radio 4 news every day, as if it underpins all else and has some ultimate almost holy significance.

Second, where are these real jobs that an outfit like Goldman Sachs, who continue to reward themselves obscenely for their unreal jobs, magically created ? Once their extravagant hidden HQ had been built, on the former site of The Daily Telegraph in the late 1980’s, other than ensuring the local Starbucks stays in business can anyone show me how one new ‘real job’ has come about through their arcane practices and fanatical devotion to appropriating enormous amounts of money into their wallets ?

What does the ‘City’ do exactly ? What is it ? It is not a single entity, although always referred to as if it is, it is not an elected Government, why is this thing called ‘The City’ always given such importance ? Share prices and currency exchange values are given at the end of every BBC news bulletin, like a holy incantation. Relative currency and share prices are of interest only to those who make their money from dealing in same, why are they cited as if they underpin society as some underlying given with vital significance for all ?

Even the Corporation, the more tangible organisation that provides the services and facilitates the financial ‘City’ is a very strange animal. No more than a couple of thousand people live in the square mile, not that it is square, nor indeed is a square mile ever used as a unit of area elsewhere, and it takes in a huge amount in business rates with but what does it do ? Granted the streets are the cleanest in London, the sewers in good order, there is the Barbican Centre, where I sit writing this, although for many years the library was only accessible for those who lived or worked in the City. And it doesn’t keep Tribune but it does keep Vogue.

There has always seemed to be a vacuum at the heart of the City of London, no discernable purpose, no guiding principle other than its own material preservation and the maintenance of its power. Its obsessive care of the fabric of its buildings, its boundaries, its bollards, its pavements ( recently all chewing gum was meticulously removed ) is symptomatic of a deep commitment to utilitarianism, a disregard of the society and citizens it is supposed to serve.

It is notable how in Italy, for example, cities have Communales as their local Government, here we have Authorities, and, in the particular case of the City, a Corporation, which is, of course, a term for a business.

Getting back to some facts about how the ridiculously complex and inadequate benefits system operates in this country. If I do earn some money only the first £5.00 is disregarded, anything over that is deducted from your basic benefit. Thus if I was paid £25 for writing this I would be £5 better off. This is how a means tested system operates. It is absurd and encourages non compliance.

Yet there is an incentive deal available for employers called, incredibly, a ‘Self Marketing Voucher.’ This gives an employer £500 if they trail you for a job and a further £500 if you are still there in six months. This bribe goes direct to the employer if they ’ create ’ a job while you continue to try and survive on £64.50 a week while working full time. This is crazy. Why cant that £500 be given to the person who needs it the most : the claimant. £500 seems like a fortune when you are on the dole and if £1000 can be found to give to an employer who does not have to pay you anything and does not have to offer a paid position after six months why cant it be found for the claimant ?

I have been unemployed before, in the early Eighties and the early Nineties, two other periods of deep recession. It was just about possible to manage on the level of benefits in those periods. It is impossible now.

It disturbs me to continually hear the assumptions and accusations that are made about those claiming legitimate benefits. There are millions of unemployed people, the percentage that defraud the system is tiny, the vast majority are trying to exist on £60.40 or less a week. It is remarkable how little complaint is heard in the mainstream media.

It is badly misguided and dangerous for this or a future Conservative Government, and they seem identically minded on this, to tinker with the basic entitlement and make it conditional. It is already at a scandalously low level and completely inadequate. To introduce some form of work for this already inadequate provision and to perhaps remove it from those not prepared to submit to these coercions would be a further step away from the principle of a form of social security. I for one will refuse to work for a benefit that does not come anywhere near the minimum wage.

It is rather a Minimum Income that should be introduced by any progressive and civilised Government.

This gradual undermining of the principle of social security and the avowed aim of social inclusion to which this country is committed at European level will further stress the already fragmented society and add the to the sense of injustice I and many others already feel. It will give more credence to extremism from both Left and Right wing groups and could lead to civil unrest on a considerable scale.

To quote Geoffrey Wheatcroft ’ Blaire did not destroy Socialism, he did destroy two older traditions that had long nourished Labour : the liberal and the radical. I concur, Socialism is an idea, a philosophy it cannot be destroyed.

This has to be the time for these radical traditions to be revived. For the Labour Party to stop doing the Conservative’s work for them and instead introduce a simple, universal minimum income entitlement which would be a very important step toward making this country less unequal, less socially stressed, more fair and more civilised.

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you

Ye are many , they are few.

The Mask of Anarchy

XCI

P B Shelly

REAL LIFE ON THE DOLE : PART 3

2010-01-30T15:03:00.001Z

So, a further visit must be made to the JobCentre, for an ‘ interview.’ There are as usual various slightly dangerous looking individuals hanging around the entrance, often with vicious dogs in tow. Some sit on the steps to the entrance, which are in disrepair. It is next to a monstrous 1970’s Arndale Shopping Centre, in fact that is the address. This has security staff, mostly Polish, but outside the JobCentre entrance there are no visible staff, no entrance foyer, you go into a narrow stairwell with a small steel doored lift much like in a block of Council flats.

Up on the 2nd floor is a large open plan area with a security guard near the doors. There is a standing receptionist at a sort of desk where there is always a queue. There are a number of machines which are operated while standing, like at a gambling machine, that have screens to show vacancies. If you request a print out it comes out on a paper roll much like toilet paper.

After the inevitable wait, your name will be called, you have to be careful not to miss this as if you do it is deemed that you have missed your appointment. This can effect you benefit. This is easily done as the seats are a good 6 or 7 metres away from the desks. These interviews are now being done weekly. There is no option but to agree to attend, even if largely pointless, because the threat of withdrawing benefit always hovers in the background. The interviewer will bring up a few jobs that may match your usual occupation, but often they are only distantly related given that there is no specialist knowledge that the person behind the desk has with you or your field. The staff are acting out the role of a recruitment agency while not actually being a recruitment agency. Similarly one is acting out the idea that this is where one goes for a job lead, when in fact you are there to ensure that the miserly benefits are paid. I have never obtained a job through a JobCentre, only through direct applications. There are professional recruitment agencies, but even they only act as middle-men. They are parasitic on the real economy. Its simple, either jobs exist or they don’t. Agencies thrive in good times when recruiters cannot be bothered to recruit direct. In bad times agencies wither away and JobCentres pretending they are recruitment agencies is faintly ridiculous.

When my father died I was claiming benefits. I informed them and had to delay my next signing date. When I went in and made the advisor aware of this she still persisted in asking me what job searching I had done in the preceding week. I explained that this was not what was uppermost in my mind during the weeks leading up to my father’s death and his funeral. This is the degree to which the staff stick to the prevailing absurd rules and fail to treat people with a degree of dignity and as individuals.

The increasing amount of conditionality on the already inadequate level of benefit is further undermining any form of what was termed social security. When people feel insecure they often look for others to blame for their position and, rather than the people who have the power to improve their security and increase their inclusion in the wider society, will pick on other vulnerable groups and individuals. It is quite clear that the rising levels of unemployed combined with inadequate levels of provision produce tensions in societies. These can and do turn into violence against others, often the most recent arrivals in the country. Discord, crime against the individual and less security for all, both the haves and the have-nots is the outcome. This is being seen in the rise of the BNP and at flashpoints such as in Birmingham city centre recently. Why this point has been reached, where the benefit system has been run down operationally and let fall way behind adequate levels of provision during a period of a Labour Government is a tragic falling.

Here I wish to quote Paul Nicholson, the founder of the admirable Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, a rare voice of reason and humanity in this neglected debate.

" There is a naïve belief in Whitehall that coercion by destitution works. Nevertheless hungry people and others with no prospects of work or no right to work do not jump the way intended. So the prisons and the hospitals fill up with poverty related crime and ill health. The tax payer’s money would be better spent housing and feeding the destitute and observing international commitments. "

Here is just one of the numerous articles that this country has signed up to : European Commission, Joint Report on Social Inclusion ; Employment and Social affairs 2002

Page 27 [ 5 ] Guaranteeing an adequate income and resources to live in human dignity. The challenge is to ensure that all men, women and children have a sufficient income to lead life with dignity and participate in society as full members.

I can state with absolute conviction and highly stressful personal experience that our current welfare system does not enable a Citizen of the United Kingdom to do so.

You will soon realise this is a fact if you try to exist solely on the current level of JSA without access to any other funds. Try it Mr Bercow, Mr Duncan, Mr Cameron, Mr Brown and whoever is the current Minister in charge of the Department for Work and Pensions.

Meanwhile banks are still able to harass and bully people who have little to no way of repaying debts, charge excessive interest rates, and refuse to acknowledge that anything they have done was unfair or punitive. In my case I have been identified as ‘ in hardship’ yet the Co-Operative Bank plc has refused to repay a penny. I then went to the Financial Services Ombudsman, filling in yet another set of forms and they have simply agreed with the bank’s position. To even get to this stage of a decision from either has taken more than six months.

I am currently selling off my record collection to make ends meet, which they still don’t.

While the NHS has become an institution that both major parties now agree must be maintained in principle as it is a common good and should not be undermined by part - privatisation, the social security system, the very name of which has been erased, has been undermined and continues to be turned into some preposterous low-budget copy of a recruitment agency. The arcane, complex series of rules and means testing over amounts that may be provided and the increasing conditionality are taking it even further from its basic purpose. Crucially this further confuses and distances it from the simple necessity in a civilised country of providing a basic modest level of income to which all law abiding members of that society should be entitled. Surely this is what any Government that could claim to be aiming for a fair and more equitable society must address, and if the Labour Party continue to dream that everyone is middle class now and that no one is in need while the Conservatives still remain self-serving charlatans at root, witness Alan Duncan’s real feelings about the perks of being an MP and The Speaker John Bercow’s recent appointment of 100K + media advisor, the future looks very worrying indeed for a very large number of British Citizens and therefore for the whole country’s well being.

I may emigrate to Poland, which was a line in of a typically deranged Fall song, but now sounds quite sensible.

REAL LIFE ON THE DOLE : PART 2

2010-01-30T15:01:00.003Z

Having had some surprising reactions to my last piece including ' wear a suit ' and ' you are insulting former criminals ' ( ? ) I will attempt to continue with the reality of the way in which an unemployed individual is dealt with in Britain in 2009.

I recently had to attend an interview at the Jobcentre. The letter came from Belfast. I sign at a large centralised office in London. It is an anonymous tower block that replaced the smaller local offices in this Borough that at least had a human scale. First I was informed that I did not fit into any of their categories. I was then given a sheaf of bad photocopies outlining a new scheme. It is called a Work Trial. This document is addressed to a prospective employer and nowhere does it have any reference to an individual. It makes the assumption that you are willing to work under the following terms : The employer does not pay anything to the employee. The employer may at some point unspecified offer a paid position. Meanwhile you work as free labour with no contract of employment and thus no rights and no wages. You continue to try and exist on the inadequate JSA, mine is currently £103.40 every two weeks, while working until the employer makes up their mind whether or not they want to offer you a job. There is no indication how long this trial should last nor that there will any job at the end of it. But you would be off the unemployment headline figure.

Given that there are far more people unemployed than there are permanent paid positions available what is to stop an employer taking on people on this basis at no cost and then saying they were not suitable rather than offering a job with security and a living wage ?

There have been a number of academic studies completed that establish that the current level of benefit for a single adult is considerably below what is required for healthy living. For example in 2004 The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine suggested a stringent minimum to be £84.76. There are pages of clauses in declarations, covenants, conventions and charters that the UK Government has signed up to at International and European level that are clearly intended to guarantee as a basic right sufficient resources and social assistance to live in a manner in keeping with human dignity. This is not a poor country. Yet the wealth is more inequitably distributed than ever. Surely the resources can be made available to go some way towards implementing these agreements which remain mere words on a page and should be deeply embarrassing to a ostensibly Socialist Government.

Now, it seems, there is a move to get people to work for a level of benefit that as it stands is one of the lowest in Europe and is wholly inadequate and places the individual in a highly vulnerable position.

My Local Authority, despite being aware that I am unemployed, have enforced repayment of overdue Council Tax by the use of a private firm of Bailiffs. They set the repayment rate at £90 a month. These agents then apply there own charges on top of the debt, the Council apply charges of £25 for a Summons issued for £60 of arrears. This too is added to the debt. The use of bailiffs to collect a local tax, wholly unrelated to ones ability to pay is draconian, intrusive and highly stressful. Yet those who are unemployed are far more likely to be at the receiving end of their visits and demands. Again, incredibly the Government were on the point of giving them additional powers of forcing entry. This has only just been averted after some effective independent lobbying.

Instead of this vast complex means tested benefits system that is inadequate and unfair why is nothing heard about a basic Citizens Income ? This would be payable as a right, and not related to increasingly conditionality and these unrealistic schemes to ' encourage ' people back to work : into jobs that don’t exist and or can be magically created and will pay starvation wages of £60.50 a week.

There is a small largely academic organisation the Citizens Income Trust and the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust produced a Memorandum on Benefit Inadequacy and its consequences which was sent to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004. What response it had, if any, I do not know. What I do know from painful experience is that living on current benefit levels is tougher now than it ever has been, and it is scandalous that this reality is distorted by the drip-feed to the tabloid media of exceptional cases of individuals that have in some way apparently ‘ worked the system ’ to their advantage. These people are exceptions and have been investigated and exposed in any case. They will have to pay anything received fraudulently back, which is more than any of the executives in the corrupt major financial agencies have had to do.

What is being done is private sector consultants are being given Government contracts worth millions of pounds to coerce people into jobs. What jobs ? Consultants cannot create lobs. Jobs as private sector consultants to get people into jobs ? Granted the staff at Jobcentres are not best placed or experienced in the harsh reality of the free marketplace that has been created by the Tories and sustained and unchallenged by the policies of New Labour. But to apply the mantra of ' get in the Private sector to sort it out ' is a waste of resources and time. It is the failed Public sector that needs to be fixed and brought up to an acceptable standard.

There are so many problems that arise out of this abandonment of a certain level of basic provision that should be set in Law in a fair and just society : a reasonable non-negotiable basic income, an adequate stock of what is now called ' affordable ' housing, (which always seems to imply that the majority of housing is unaffordable to a great many people, and it is, unless you already have a mortgage on another unaffordable property) and financial institutions that can foster and assist in attaining a modest financial stake in our society. Instead there remains a largely unfettered, uncaring, un-Christian, un-Muslim, as it happens, bunch of usurers that still form 99.9% of the banking sector and who, despite having been saved by going to the Government when their greed and hubris nearly brought down the house of cards, remain morally bankrupt, parasitic on the real economy and seemingly unable and unwilling to accept any fundamental change in practice.

And remember that one of Oscar Wilde‘s, that the rich take pleasure in hoarding their money, the poor in spending it. By giving a little more to those in most need, which are at this time again in the millions, there is no doubt that it would indeed be spent in the real economy, which is a good thing, is it not ? Instead the argument from all sides seems to be seen to be tightening the screws even tighter on those that are most vulnerable.

REAL LIFE ON THE DOLE : PART 1

2010-01-30T14:57:00.002Z

This is about the actual experience day-to-day of trying to maintain any sort of half-way decent life while relying on the woefully inadequate benefits system in this country. Life on the dole, if you like, not that its called that anymore, nor is the Government Department that administers it the DSS anymore. This stood for the Department of Social Security. Now it is the DWP, the Department for Work and Pensions. This strongly suggests that there is no such thing as social security anymore, there is only work and pensions, the idea of social security has been quietly dropped. A far more accurate name would be the DSI : the Department for Social Insecurity, for that is what it does, it gives just enough for you to feel permanently insecure while not in employment.

The dole, unemployment benefit or the silly, demeaning current phrase ‘ Job Seekers Allowance ‘ now stands at its lowest level as compared to average earnings since it was introduced in 1912 at a rate that was 22 % of average male earnings in manufacturing. Since then it has fluctuated but by 1979 was still about 22% of average earnings ( manual and non-manual, male and female .) By 2008 it had fallen to an all-time low of 10.5% of average earnings. The maximum amount that an adult over 25 can receive is £60.50 a week. That is to cover all living expenses other than rent and Council Tax which are assessed separately. I no longer have any savings and try to get by on this benefit. Academics that study these issues have made detailed analysis of the consequences of this inadequate level of income for individual citizens expected to live a decent life and participate in society when this is all there is to rely on. What this column is about is being at the sharp end, the day to day reality of this miserly and outdated as well as unfair system.

First, it creates a situation of continual worry and stress about how one is going to meet commitments on basic expenses such as electricity, gas and water bills. All of these have been increasing markedly over the post - privatisation period. I was visited last week by EDF operatives with ultimatums on bills in arrears. The electric is going to be deducted directly from my JSA at a rate of £9 a week, which is going to reduce my two-weekly income to just over £100. The gas has been put on a card pre-payment meter. I now have to think before boiling an egg. I have decided that scrambled are quicker.

Second, there is the effective exclusion from simple social activities, a visit to the pub, a trip on the train. I am no sociologist and no statistician but when a pint costs approximately 5% of your weekly income and a one day travel card for Zone 1 & 2 (off-peak) costs 8% of your weekly income and colossal 10.5% at peak hours it is clear that your participation in everyday life is going to be very limited. Boris Johnson, who I suggest has never experienced anything like this level of income, recently gave a concession : once a massive form has been completed one can get half-price on the buses if claiming JSA. This is exactly the sort of measure that just adds to the sense of being an inferior and sanctioned lesser citizen because one has no job and has to claim benefit.

Third, the continual concern about how one is going to get through the next week actually mitigates against being able to settle down calmly and organise and facilitate income earning ideas or applications for those jobs that exist. One is more likely to seek distraction and panacea when under financial duress.

There is something called the Social Fund. This is a means tested one off loan up to a maximum of £348, note not £350 but £348, I wonder what arcane calculations went in arriving at that figure ? This is immediately then deducted from your basic allowance, as, presumably the Government need that £ 3.35 more than I do on a weekly basis. This is an admission that the basic benefit rate is inadequate, so you have to then get into debt as well.

I recently applied for an emergency loan from the Social Fund when my electricity and gas were at risk of being disconnected. I was telephoned some three or four weeks later and told that unless I was in danger of dying that they could not make a further loan. That was said quite straight faced and without irony.

The Labour Party has presided over this complete failure to bring the benefits system to a level acceptable in a civilised society. I suggest that the Socialist project was effectively abandoned in this area and many of the knock-on problems of crime, social incohesion and inequality have grown as a direct result. Now that the economy has stalled an awfully large number of people are going to realise this and that the myth of the scrounger living comfortably on benefits is a tabloid deflection from the harsh truth. While a life consisting of drinking cans of industrial lager while sitting inertly indoors, barely eating and being able to pay any bills is indeed how some exist, that is not a result of a generous benefit system : it is the opposite. I can assure you that it takes a great amount of strength and ingenuity to not fall into that sort of situation when being drip fed on the woefully inadequate and morally indefensible absolute minimum amount currently allowed when not employed. It is remarkable how little is actually spoken about the reality, there are millions now unemployed and they have virtually no voice, there is no Union for the unemployed, no group is larger and yet still almost completely marginalised and excluded.

As to that other long standing myth : full employment, as far as I am aware the only countries that claimed to have full employment were Nazi Germany during the 2nd World War and the Communist Soviet Union, which hardly seem like models to be followed. Surely it is way past time that this mythical full employment mantra was excised. There is never going to be continuous full employment under a Capitalist system, to say so is to lie. As the deep flaws in that system have been exposed, not, it must be said, by it being challenged by a Labour government who were supine in the face of the grinning Cheshire Cat of the ‘ City’ and its worshipful financial services ‘ industry ‘ ( what does it make, if its an industry ? Oh, people who play complicated games with large sums of money very, very rich, I see ) and as the devastating effects trickle down rapidly to the broader population, many more are going to come up against the consequences of a Darwinist ‘leave it to the markets’ philosophy. There has been a surreptitious removal of the safety net, like in Catch 22 when Yossarian in an plane about to crash discovers that he has no parachute because it has been sold for the value of the silk. Of that I am highly conscious every single day.

And they wonder why people turn to crime.

REAL LIFE ON THE DOLE : Four pieces for Tribune.

2010-01-30T14:37:00.000Z

The Bland leading the bland : Obsessive Neutrality at the BBC.

2010-01-25T14:51:00.000Z

While it is difficult not to admire the BBC for its intention be an arbiter of truth and impartiality this obsession with a neutral position in all matters is becoming increasingly unrealistic. Particularly in current circumstances this perceived necessity to give every side of the argument a say and a stand well back and don't make judgements editorial policy on just about everything is becoming both irritating and, I suggest, counter productive. There is much that is neutered rather than neutral.
There was a situation on 'Newsnight' recently when two Muslim guests were left to talk over each other, both becoming incomprehensible, while Jeremy Paxman just sat it out. This offered nothing other than demonstrating that these two individuals were not going to agree on anything and added little enlightenment to any issue. This presentation of binary opposites is what seems to be a preferred format as it allows the BBC to maintain this stance of being an impartial referee. But at some point judgements and points that come from a gathering of different views must be made, otherwise no progress is made.
I sometimes wonder if the massive amount of airtime given to comedy is not in a way a result of this refusal to put out strongly argued editorial material.
In particular programmes like 'Have I got News for You' which, although amusing enough, manage to criticise quite freely political decisions and corporate and individual actions because it is under the banner of 'comedy' but these are the same decisions and the same activities that are rarely challenged outside of this cosy comedy format.
The recent bad weather is another great excuse for dropping all possibly contentious material and devoting hours to pictures of snow and cars stuck in it, which add very little to the sum total of human knowledge but cannot be said to be of any particular political persuasion.
I wonder what they would do if snow was red or blue ?

The Not So Co-Operative Bank.

2010-01-13T13:53:00.000Z

Yesterday the Chief Executive of the 84% publicly owned RBS Bank joked about his £9 million salary and restated the justification for continuing the practice of huge bonuses to 'keep the best people' working in the banking business. The same day I opened a letter from my bank, the misleadingly named Co-Operative Bank, which is NOT a co-operative it is a PLC. This was their final response to my complaint about their excessive charges following the judgement by the Law Lords, which found in their favour.
This batch printed letter explained in a long-winded way that they would not be refunding any charges despite having accepted that mine was a case of hardship and that any further action would have to be through the Financial Services Ombudsman. I have already been told by them that it is up to the bank.
One might have thought that one bank, particularly one that puts on a show of having some ethical policy rather than simply being a machine for making money out of other peoples money, would make some attempt to regain some credibility and show an understanding of the fact that their practices have clearly been proven to be unfair and punitive. The ruling from the Supreme Court did not compel any changes but again one might have thought that they would attempt to generate some goodwill by acting without compulsion and address some cases.
But no, no its business as usual in the UK. Only Santander, a Spanish bank and one subject to much tighter legislation under Spanish law, are moving towards a fairer position. Meanwhile the UK banks banded together to fight any suggestion that they have been fleecing customers for years and years and will continue to do so unless compelled to change.
I draw attention to the Co-Operative Bank's position, which was one of the six that fought the case through the courts, no doubt at considerable expense. While some parts of the Co-Operative group are, I believe, something like a true co-operative, the bank is not. Therefore how is it able to go under this name ? All of its advertising material implies that it is different from other banks but never makes it clear that it remains a private shareholders company and it certainly behaves like one when it comes to its practices and policy on charges.

THE JOB SEARCHING ADVICE INDUSTRY.

2010-01-12T16:50:00.000Z

I recently had a so-called one-to-one advice session with a job search advisor. He was from a private company contracted to the DWP somewhat absurdly and grandiosely called 'Global Solutions Services UK Ltd.'
This consisted of being berated for 45 minutes for not doing enough ' job searching.' The individual concerned told me that he used to spend eight hours a day every day ' job searching' sending off speculative CV's and contacting people about non-existant vacancies. I was also told to wear a suit, despite the fact that this was done over the phone, so I could have been wearing a suit for all he knew. Quite why wearing a suit when sending off e-mails should increase your chances was not explained. I think he was suggesting that 'job searching' should be seen as a job. Yes, well, it is'nt and the job that this chap ended up with is not, I submit, a real job. He is being paid to berate and worry people who are already in a very difficult and vunerable situation due to the inadequacy and conditionality of the benefit system.
If jobs in the sector that one is best qualified to apply for have been reduced to a fraction of their pre-collapse level then no matter how many speculative CV's one sends off you are no more likely to be offered a paid position and simply pestering people is quite likely to annoy them. I once phoned an architects practice after having an interview to confirm my interest and was criticised by the agency and the practice for doing so.
This is simply the ' get on your bike ' patronising simplification dressed up in new clothes, ' put on your suit ' if you like, and adds insult to the already injurious and woefully insufficient level of unemployment benefit in this country.
Instead of paying private companies like this which do not create any real jobs except for themselves in this fantasy ' advice-world ' these funds could better go direct to the unemployed who are struggling to survive on £64 a week and not about to buy a speculative suit when there is a gas bill to pay.
It makes me very, very angry.