Layer 197 Home Time, Keith Floyd, Primary Education, Lehman's and the Shock Doctrine Reversed.

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Last night's television provided two wonderful and unexpected programmes.

1)    Home Time – BBC2 - by Emma Fryer & Neil Edmund

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/01_january/19/hometime.shtml

"Sitcom. Gaynor Jacks, aged 29, returns to her mum and dad's house in Coventry after running off to find her place in the big wide world when she was 17-years-old

Emma Fryer plays the lead role of Gaynor Jacks who returns to her hometown – Coventry, home to her mum and dad's house, and home to her three best friends.
Aged 17, she ran off to find her place in the big wide world, but now aged 29 she's back with her tail between her legs."

"Lucy Lumsden, BBC Controller, Comedy Commissioning, says: "It's incredibly exciting when a new writer/performer comes along with a story to tell that is close to their own experience. Female-led and with a strong sense of place, we eagerly await the world of Home Time which explores the themes of growing up and longing to be different."

The series was commissioned by Lucy Lumsden and produced by Baby Cow, the makers of the award-winning Gavin And Stacey and The Mighty Boosh."

You can watch it here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mx9yr


Directed by Christine Gernon  and produced by Ted Dowd, who both worked on Gavin and Stacey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Fryer

The main character's final words in this first episode were, “I'm so sorry. But I was only seventeen. You know what I mean?”

Edge of Seventeen video with silly visuals but excellent sound quality for Stevie Nick's great track:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVqCWakQFf4&feature=related

2)    Keith Meets Keith

"Documentary about the funny, thought-provoking and moving encounter between the man who 'deconstructed television' years before the phrase became fashionable among the media-savvy, and a protégé who has continued that tradition."

"Actor and documentary-maker Keith Allen was hugely influenced by TV chef Keith Floyd's anarchic presentational style, and is determined to track down his long-time hero. He finally locates him in rural France.

Both known for their wild lifestyles, it's unsurprising that the two Keiths immediately hit it off. The result is a compelling profile of Floyd's life, as well as his musings on the current TV chefs, the mendacity of television, the state of modern Britain, and the human condition."

And then this morning Floyd goes and dies of a heart attack.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/2009/09/15/newsflash-keith-floyd-dies-as-keith-allen-documentary-about-him-screens-on-channel-four-115875-21674795/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_floyd

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2009/sep/15/keith-floyd-chef-television-dies

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213559/BREAKING-NEWS-Keith-Floyd-dies-heart-attack-aged-65.html

You can watch the programme on the web, here:

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/keith-meets-keith/4od#2970765

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On Radio 4 today -

From Abacus to Circle Time: A Short History of the Primary School

“Education journalist Mike Baker traces the controversial changes to the ways we have educated our youngest children over the past 150 years, from the rigidity of the Victorian age to the occasionally anarchic, experiential learning of the progressive 1970s.”

Traditional v progressive?
Facts v child centred?
Open plan and activity led learning?

The Primary Review is about to be published, and this series is a serious effort by Mike Baker to understand the history of Primary education in England.

Classes of 40, sometimes 2 combined into 80, weren't unknown in the past. Far from it.
Lots of caning, sitting in rows, learning tables and poetry by heart.
The Blunk popped up to say “It was more difficult for me than for other people – the whole intention was to get information into the heads of individuals.” Hmmm. Difficult, eh?
Should England still have SATs tests?
We now think knowledge, skills and experiences are at the heart of education, it seems.
Was the 'golden age' post-Plowden really as good as nostalgia suggests?

In the beginning, the purpose of schools was to make children obedient, God-fearing Bible readers.

Then came new thinking about child development – from Dewey, Montessori, at al. We started to believe that schools and education should be based on activity and experience rather than 'knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored'.

The Hadow report – with a major section on child development – was 'revolutionary' – according to Prof Robin Alexander, who is leading the Cambridge-based Primary Review, shortly to be published in full. He also says Dewey was hugely influential.

But Hadow made relatively little impact, and in spite of this progressive thinking Victorian practices were still dominant. As was the expectation that working class kids would just follow their parents.
Then came the Plowden Report in 1966-67 – a major review of Primary education
Shirley Williams spoke about the way in which the 11+ dominated primary schools in the 40s and 50s. Tony Crosland, as the Minister of Education, was determined to get rid of it.
Plowden herself was mainly concerned with the joy of learning and emancipating teachers and children from 'the terribly narrow curriculum.' The profession began to seriously consider the real reasons for children to learn – from a fundamental interest in and fascination with with their world, which could   motivate them to learn through the sheer enjoyment of learning.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mltgf
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mk74t#synopsis

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Wasted – Channel 4

You have 28 days left to catch two really excellent programmes on the way in which skunk and cocaine fuck people up. Difficult to watch, but worth it. People with kids should consider recording these.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/wasted/4od

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Shock Doctrine, Continued

It's the first anniversary of the Lehman Brothers' collapse - the event that triggered the worldwide financial crisis. The recent TV documentary on it showed the head man of Lehman's yelling at his staff - “Crush our enemies!” And there we have it in a nutshell. This crazed individual didn't see competitors - he saw only enemies. He didn't want to compete with them - he wanted to crush and kill them. A megalomanic totally off his trolley, using language that betrayed his total lack of emotional intelligence.

This was a guy who was being paid incredible amounts, unbelievable millions, and managed to lead his company to the biggest bankruptcy in history. It was a financial disaster ten times bigger than the collapse of Enron. Lehman's were 40 times leveraged, which means they were working with practically no money of their own, and for every dollar they actually had on deposit they owed the money markets 40 dollars.

Clearly the people at Lehmans thought the company was far too big for the government to allow it to go bust. In a sense it was, and it was really a stupid government that did stupid things that just sat back and allowed the bankruptcy to happen, instead of just stepping in and taking the business into State ownership - which they couldn't bring themselves to do for purely ideological reasons. I guess there were also plenty of 'enemies' that relished seeing it go down.

Thankfully Brown and Darling weren't so stupid and they did act to take failing banks into public or part-public ownership. But they've done nothing since. The Shock Doctrine ought now to be used by the likes of Brown and Obama to transform our societies. This means swift and radical action, justified on the grounds of the necessity of preventing any future financial crises. This means passing legislation to break up the banking cartels and monopolies, capping executive pay, banning bonuses, taking a controlling stake in the major banks, and forcing them to make loans to solvent or near-solvent companies and individuals, instead if withdrawing credit and forcing them to go bankrupt.

It also means cutting all future expenditure on weapons of mass destruction, raising taxes on the rich and super-rich, cutting expenditure on state surveillance and spying, scrapping identity cards, and capping the pension entitlements of anyone 'earning' more than £100,000 per year. No-one should expect a 'pension' of more than £40,000 a year. If anyone 'needs' more than that, they should fucking work for it. Greed is NOT good. All monies saved on these pensions should be ring-fenced to pay a higher minimum wage.

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Obama and the Money Men - Obama Warns Bankers

From yesterday's Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/video/2009/sep/15/obama-warns-bankers
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/obama-speech-wall-street

President Barack Obama delivered a stern warning to Wall Street today that bankers must scrap "quick kills and bloated bonuses" in favour of a new sense of social responsibility as the first anniversary of Lehman Brothers' spectacular bankruptcy dawns with a sense of fragile hope for an economic recovery.

"There are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are recovering, they are choosing to ignore them," said Obama. "We will not go back to the days of reckless behaviour and unchecked excess that were at the heart of this crisis, where too many were motivated only by the appetite for quick kills and bloated bonuses."

Obama has come under pressure from liberal Democrats, and from leaders of European nations, to be tougher in cracking down on bonuses and on unfettered risk taken by top US institutions.

"It was a collective failure of responsibility in Washington, on Wall Street and across America that led to the near collapse of our financial system one year ago," said Obama. He told bankers that they should not wait for legislative action forcing them to translate financial products into plain language, put executive pay up for shareholder votes and alter bonuses to focus on long-term, rather than short-term, performance.

"Many of the firms that are now returning to prosperity owe a debt to the American people," said Obama. "It is neither right nor responsible after you've recovered with the help of your government to shirk your obligation to the goal of wider recovery, a more stable system and a more broadly shared prosperity."

The Obama administration's plans to avert future crises include a sharpening of financial regulation to cover hitherto free-for-all markets in hedge funds and exotic derivatives, tougher powers for the Federal Reserve to monitor banks considered "too big to fail" and shareholder votes intended to counter excessive pay deals in corporate boardrooms. Mortgage companies will be obliged to hang onto part of every loan, rather than selling them on to shed risk. But the White House has backed away from earlier efforts to cap bankers' pay."

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Lehmans – one year on: have we learned the lessons?

The apocalypse has been averted but banks have returned, unfettered, to business as usual.
Check out this piece in the Guardian on whether lessons have been learned.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/14/lehmans-one-year-after

"Britain should stop dragging its feet and promote global reform on capital requirements for banks.

The credit crunch was not just a financial collapse, but the collapse of an ideology – that the wider and deeper markets became the greater the public good. What response have we had to the crisis at this level of ideas? Virtually nothing.

With the notable exception of Adair Turner there is, as yet, zero sense that those in authority have made any real attempt at the fundamental reappraisal we clearly need.Hardly anything seems to have been learned in terms of required regulation.

Banks that were "too big to fail" have got bigger. Flawed incentive structures continue to promote short-term profit-seeking rather than social good. So we have protected private profiteering and socialised its risks. Meanwhile, speculative behaviour in global commodity markets can still cause a repeat of the recent crazy volatility in world fuel and food prices, which created so much havoc in the developing world. This opportunity wasted by governments – reflecting the lack of basic change in the power equations governing capitalism – will prove to be expensive. We should brace ourselves for an even worse replay of the financial crisis in the foreseeable future. And the lopsided government response – benefiting those responsible for the crisis without adequate concern for the collateral damage on innocent citizens – may give public intervention a bad name, at a time when we desperately need such intervention for more democratic and sustainable economies.

Tragically, The global crisis is still managed by policymakers holding fast to the disastrous Bush-Paulson legacy. Fooled into believing the crisis is over, by a stock market bubble, they share the pathological belief that the market knows best; that banks cannot be fully nationalised or obliged to lend at low rates; and that while wages and incomes fall, top directors can ignore inflation when awarding themselves bonuses and pay.
Sadly, because lessons have not been learned, there will be no policy tools left to deal with the next banking crisis – due in 2010, if not sooner.

The collapse of Lehmans Brothers and the chaos that ensued taught governments an old lesson they had forgotten: finance is too important to be treated like just another industry. No, a system to make payments and extend credit is an essential utility, just like water and public transport. That's why the British taxpayer has shelled out hundreds of billions to keep the entire banking system afloat. Ever since learning that lesson, however, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling have done their damnedest to forget it, again – and to talk instead about arms' length management and (tired old theme, this) Britain's comparative advantage in financial services.

A short-term mindset is still the rule of the day. If a banker, trader or executive can make a bet that yields them riches in the short term and makes the rest of us pay over the long term, who thinks that bet won't get placed?" 

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Eddie Izzard

1100 miles, 43 marathons in 51 days, running for Comic relief. The guy's incredible. Mad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/sep/15/eddie-izzard-charity-run

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Gary Younge

As usual, an excellent piece in yesterday's paper by the wonderful Mr Younge:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/13/afghanistan-war-on-terror-viagra

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Ashley Seager

Keeping up the good work:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/14/unemployment-figures-recession

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/07/financial-crisis-happen-again

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Google

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/sep/15/google-crop-circles
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Layer 192 A New World Order, Economics, Defeatism, and the Future Tory Distopia.

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Right now there is nothing more important on this planet than making sure there's a swift transition to a new economic and political order. The Guardian has launched a campaign called 10:10 which is aimed at getting people to take climate change seriously, and to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels and their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. However, there's no chance at all that attitudes to consumption and climate change will shift dramatically unless there's a preceding shift in the way we do politics and economics.

Can it happen? It seems pretty much in the balance, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that capitalism as we've known it, and globalisation, are busted flushes. Why might it not happen? Because America is pretty much impossible to shift in its ideology, in spite of having some very intelligent and astute people now in charge of the country, much to everyone's amazement. And because in Britain we still have New Labour, with the New Conservatives waiting in the wings to take over, and a lingering mentality that greed is good, and equality and social justice are bad or unachievable.

We also have enormous amounts of ignorance about the way in which economics and finance operate, and a tendency to switch off when these subjects come up, hoping that the clever bastards that got us into this mess will also get us out. Some hope.

Thus we have a situation whereby, having been pre-eminent in the world's financial 'markets' in the period leading up to the meltdown of 2008, America and Britain (not you and me – the people who run these things) are dancing around the issues and the need to take action because they want to ensure that whatever action is taken is not going to disturb their pre-eminence. Woe betide us if other countries, as a result of greater regulation, become more important in terms of currency markets, investment funds, insurance markets, etc.

In 2009 we have a similar situation to 1979 in that Britain's economy is fucked up, as a result of the inequities of capitalism and the stupidities of politicians, people are blaming the Labour party, and there's a Conservative party waiting to take over with a lot of right-wing radical policies they can't wait to implement in order to reduce government spending, cut back on public services and privatise everything in sight, including education and health. As in 1979 the Tories deny they'll do any such thing, or do anything that could shift wealth from the less well-off to the already wealthy and downright rich.

In a sense none of this matters, insofar as New Labour has never been nor will ever be a party of  of socialism or even social democracy. Does anyone seriously see them as anything other than Tory Lite? But it matters very much if we aspire to being a better and a fairer society, and if we aspire to creating a more enlightened and more cohesive, more sustainable planet.

So as Naomi Klein says, we have to get out there and force the politicians to do what's right. We also have to do it in ways that model a non-violent, non-coercive, intelligent, moral and enlightened approach to doing things in the public and well as the private realm. I for one have no interest in working with people whose attitudes are violently aggressive and likely to remain so if they ever achievedany measure of power and influence.

The new movement has to be about all of us working together and acting together, and not about a clique or a cabal of pushy, egocentric would-be leaders. It has to be about linking arms and minds and going forward as a non-violent mass movement, not manning barricades and using weapons on the instructions of those who can shout loudest or exude the most charisma.

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This is going to be a short blog because I'd rather readers use their time to read a couple of excellent columns which have appeared in the papers in the past few days, and if necessary re-read them in order to fully appreciate and internalise what these authors have written about so well.

These pieces are so well written, so well argued, and so full of important ideas that I find it hard to extract paragraphs from them as mere summaries. They really do need to be read in full. Having said that, I can't NOT give a flavour of their main points.

First, Will Hutton's page in the Observer:

The G20 has saved us, but it's failing to rein in those who caused the crisis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/g20-financial-crisis-banking-bonuses

“It must rank as one of the least fair deals in economic history. Over the last 12 months, western governments have taken unprecedented and extraordinary action to avoid what undoubtedly would have been a global slump. The good news is that they have succeeded. The bad news is that what caused the crisis – the stranglehold of a new financial oligarchy upon public policy – has hardly been touched. And not only is this grossly unfair, but unless there is change, a second and more serious crisis potentially awaits.

What to do about the banking system and its bonuses, the excesses that created the credit crunch and division among the great nations? Banks are exploiting this vacuum to return to business as usual. It is hard to believe that only 12 months ago their recklessly overstretched balance sheets threatened an implosion of the western banking system.

Governments have got to reform the entire structure of western finance –bonuses, credit rating agencies, capital adequacy requirements, banks that are too big to fail, the use of offshore tax havens, the role of derivatives – from top to bottom.

Yesterday's communique was disappointingly minimalist – a lowest common denominator between Europe and the US, with Britain sitting unhappily in the middle. Too little is happening and what is being done is so slow that it is imperceptible.

The whole debate is extraordinary. Right-of-centre European politicians – President Sarkozy and his finance minister, Christine Lagarde, supported by the right-of-centre Swedish prime minister, who is currently president of the EU, and German Christian Democrats – believe that western governments should challenge the bank bonus culture head on. It is offensive, they think, that a banking system that owes its continued existence to massive government intervention should pay itself extravagant salaries and bonuses that are massively out of line with the top of business, let alone the ordinary taxpayer. They are right. France proposes a mandatory cap and the outlawing of guaranteed bonuses.

In opposition, there is allegedly left-of-centre Britain and the US – liberal politicians defending the indefensible. The bonus culture works on a London/New York axis, with financiers having a sense of entitlement to astonishing earnings that have no economic justification in terms of value creation or relation to profitability.

90% of investment bank profits is not directed to strengthen balance sheets or to shareholders in dividends, nor to customers in lower fees, nor to taxpayers – it goes as bankers' bonuses. Our role is to bail them out when things go wrong.

We know it is a scam . . . If G20 governments demanded limits and made continued liquidity provision dependent upon compliance, no bank could refuse. The threat of an exodus of bankers is nonsense. No bank trading outside the G20 in financial centres such as Dubai, Hong Kong or Dublin could muster the capital or scale to pay mega bonuses. The issue would be dead.

Obama and Brown are right to press for continuing the aggressive economic stimulation. They should show the same determination in confronting the powerful financial oligarchs who have so rigged the system in their favour – and their rewards. After all, they did very nearly bring the world down and could do so again.”

The comments posted after Will's column are an interesting mixed bag, and largely sane and sensible, though I haven't read them all yet.

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In yesterday's Guardian economics correspondent Ashley Seager wrote a superb column that should be required reading for every adult with the capacity to understand words of three syllables and above.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/07/financial-crisis-happen-again

In the paper it appears under the headline, “Will Brown stop the drift back to the casino?”
On the website the headline is, “Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis?”

“Rescued banks are returning to the 'casino-style' speculation that brought us trouble in the first place”

 Have we learned nothing from the financial crisis of the past two years? Very little, it appears.

The investment bankers are out there making money again, popping the champagne corks and telling themselves how clever they are – after all, they have managed to pass a good proportion of their huge losses on to us, the taxpayers, and are sitting at the roulette table again.

There is a danger that in spite of all the talk among the G20 finance ministers at their weekend summit about the need to do something about bankers' bonuses and banks' capital ratios, the drive to reform could fade as the economic crisis recedes.

Hence the recent call by Adair Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority, for some sort of action against the excess profits banks make on some of their casino activities, which he correctly labelled "socially useless".

Later today we will have the launch of the annual trade and development report from the analysts at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). It will put the case for far-reaching reform of the world's financial system and foreign exchange markets so that they serve the people and productive economic investment, rather than the other way around.

"All these rises in markets are said to reflect economic recovery but it is just another bubble," Heiner Flassbeck, Unctad's chief economist, told the Guardian. "These markets are reflecting a recovery that is not there. Wage deflation is a huge danger everywhere and this is not being recognised.

"Banks have been rescued by the taxpayer and are just returning to casino-style speculation that brought us trouble in the first place. We need to focus banking on supporting investment in productive businesses."

Unctad comprehensively rebuts the arguments of parties such as Boris Johnson and the British Bankers' Association that what's good for the Square Mile is good for the country.

"Financial markets in many developed countries have come to resemble giant casinos; which almost always win and when they lose they get bailed out, while everybody else loses.

"A large segment of their activities is entirely detached from real sector activities. The crisis has made it abundantly clear that more finance and more financial products are not always better, and a more sophisticated financial system does not necessarily make a greater contribution to social welfare."

The point is we are all going to pay higher taxes and see cuts to public spending for at least a decade as a result of this mess and many people may never get another job. Therefore we have a right to cut the City down to size if we want to. It's our money, remember.

[Unctad] points out that the financial services industry managed to "capture" policymaking in a number of important countries (certainly Britain) into believing the myth that what was good for the sector was good for the economy.

But Unctad is no less scornful of academic economists who, it argues, should have known better than to believe the argument for free markets.

"In view of the vast literature and rich empirical evidence on financial markets' proneness to excesses and crises, it is surprising that there was so little challenging of the popular belief in the supposedly unchallengeable wisdom of unfettered market forces."

The report lays out a prescription of how supervision of markets can be hugely improved and how the foreign exchange markets could be reformed to prevent speculative, damaging swings in exchange rates in many countries that bear no relation to the underlying economic health of a country.

We cannot let the chaos of the past two years happen again. We have to change the current system and make it work for us. Our policymakers seem too tired to do much about it. But failure to do so will leave the clock ticking down towards the next crisis.

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Talking of policymakers being too tired to do anything about the system and the fat cats that run it, Jackie Ashley, also writing in yesterday's paper, said, 

A Tory dystopia looms, yet ministers meekly sit and wait

We're months away from a government the left will hate. But Labour, gripped by defeatism, is just going through the motions.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/election-conservatives-labour-recession-brown

“Let me take you by the hand and lead you to a very different Britain, one that's perhaps not more than half a year away. It's a country convulsed over its future in the European Union, one in which welfare is being slashed and new prisons are the only public investment still growing. Bodies set up to make life fairer and safer are disappearing in a "bonfire of the quangos".The BBC is being dismantled and a Fox News-style Murdoch broadcasting agenda is ripping ahead. A rightwing Conservative parliamentary party is in power and sees little chance of opposition for a decade. Labour is a shattered shell of a party – nobody cares about who becomes its leader – and the future of opposition politics seems to lie with the Lib Dems.

The country will be seen to have taken a strong and decisive move to the right. David Cameron's period of soft-Blairite reassurance will be a half-forgotten footnote. Look at the most powerful thinking among today's Tories on the alleged iniquity of the EU, or the need to slash the size of the state.

After the failures and disappointments of recent years, many people will be pleased. Democracy requires, from time to time, a major clearout and a fresh start. What is baffling is that the Labour government itself appears to be quietly reconciled to a change that may destroy the party as a major player for 10 or 20 years – perhaps forever.

Jon Cruddas will tell the Compass pressure group tomorrow that the party seems paralysed, afraid and "meekly accepting defeat, unable to show what we believe in".

If so, things are worse for Labour now than they were for John Major's Conservatives before 1997. It should not be this way.

Where has the current government gone? Let's not talk about Brown. Let's talk about the rest of them – David and Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, Jack Straw, Alan Johnson, Andy Burnham, Douglas Alexander, Ben Bradshaw, Yvette Cooper?

It is as if ministers have gone on a collective go-slow . . . Where's the fire? The enthusiasm for the big picture? The aggression? How many of them are fighting to get onto the Today programme or Newsnight to make the case for Labour's record, and to attack the increasingly rightwing Conservative agenda? The effect will be to drive Labour's vote down to somewhere so appalling that there may be no coming back.

Even now, there is an alternative. Labour politicians do have a story to tell. It's the story of underfunded public services being built up again, of health workers being paid decently, of a big expansion in further education, public investment in transport and of success in containing terrorism. It's about the emergence of a more tolerant country. It's about relative peace in Northern Ireland and democracy in Scotland and Wales.

Even if unemployment is bad now, and house prices lower, millions did very well for a long time. It wasn't all an accident. It wasn't all wasted or meaningless just because the thunderclouds rolled back again.

For every positive one can find a negative – failures, mistaken wars, breaches of faith. But it isn't all black. A Tory government will do things people on the centre left will hate. If ministers and other Labour MPs have an ounce of spirit, or even self-interest, it's time to point these things out. They can't prevent defeat. They could halt catastrophe.

.................................................

I'm going to have to stop reading Jackie Ashley because she pisses me off so much. She writes quite a lot of sensible things, and then she says things that show she has no real understanding whatsoever.

The reason the bunch of twats and political pillocks she mentions can't and won't do or say anything is because they have no alternative beliefs or vision. They've fully subscribed to everything that the Blair and his Bitch project has ever said and done, everything the City Boys and the Chicago Boys wanted them to say and do, and they know full well they've been finally shown up as fucking arrogant arseholes with no economic literacy, no alternative vision and nothing else to say. They're not about to apologise for wasting huge landslides and mandates for radical change from Thatcherism, from selling off and privatising, from deregulation, from casino banking systems, etc. They're fucked, and they know it.

They can't espouse an alternative political philosophy because they don't know what one might look like. They can't embrace MPs to the left of them, and what they have to say, because they've spent so much time slagging them off and they know they're not welcome, especially as rats leaving a sinking ship and mere opportunists.  They fully deserve to go down.

The big issue for the rest of us, is indeed, as Jackie Ashley says – do we deserve a Conservative government? Well perhaps most people do deserve one – for their failure to protest about what NuLabour has been up to, for their going along with the casino and bonus culture, etc. I'm talking here about the people who read the Times, the Telegraph, the Mail, the Sun and all the other shit that supports the current political consensus about unfettered capitalism and trickle-down economics. As far as those people are concerned, I say fuck the lot of them.

Unfortunately, under a Tory government, it's the poor, the ignorant, the sick and the young who will continue to suffer, to be exploited and to remain ignorant of the real causes of their suffering. That's true in this country, and it's true globally.Not that the affluent Right aren't also ignorant, in their way. Not that they aren't also poor in many ways - in spirit, in time for enjoying life, in emotional wellbeing, etc.

The world's only hope is going to lie with the likes of Obama, assuming he's able to grow stronger as well as wiser and more experienced, the new progressive government in Japan, the intelligent wing of the EU, especially Scandinavia, some of the South American countries, possibly China, and perhaps the United Nations.

As for Jackie Ashley claiming, “Millions did very well for a long time. It wasn't all an accident. It wasn't all wasted or meaningless . . .” all I can say is that the millions who did very well weren't the poor, who have got poorer, and it wasn't children, whose lives have become increasingly stressful and miserable. And these are the very people that progressive governments are supposed to support, protect and make stronger.

In a sense it was indeed all “an accident”, as Jackie says, in that NuLabour merely channeled more money to public services - they didn't care about where the money came from, or how it was generated, or whether such generation was sustainable. As it turns out it was our money all along - none of it came out of the pockets of the tax avoiders, the tax evaders, and the offshore bankers.

New Labour did nothing to restructure British industry, ensure long-term investment and long-term employment, or regulate the UK's financial system so that it served and met the needs of our people. They deprofessionalised hundreds of thousands of public sector professionals, and they messed up and distorted the quality of health care and education with their culture of targets, payment by results (akin to old-fashioned factory piecework) and league tables.

All of this, plus Iraq and Afghanistan and support for Bushism, is a  shameful blot on Labour Party history that will be impossible to expunge. With any luck the little tosspots and carpet-baggers that supported “the project” will now quietly disappear and get on with making loadsamoney on the gravy train they tolerated and encouraged. Fuck all of them.

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Here's an interesting selection of readers' responses to what Will Hutton wrote about the BBC and the Murdoch empire.

The big issue | Murdoch and the media

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/sep/06/big-issue-james-murdoch
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