.
Radio 4 - Today
"New research published by Downing Street suggests that Labour policies may be narrowing Britain's class divide. The study, from academics at Bristol University and the London School of Economics, finds that family background appears to have less influence on educational attainment than it once did. Shadow work and pensions secretary Chris Grayling discusses the report with Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne. "
So how, exactly, are these ‘policies’ narrowing the ‘class divide’? Here we go again - educational attainment - GCSEs and SATs. The conflation of academic attainment and social mobility? That must be it. Such a pity the Beeb puts such rubbish on its website.
Messrs Grayling and Byrne, aided and abetted by the man from Today, waffled on about whether there’s now a less well-defined correlation between family background and doing well in tests and exams, all of them unquestioningly going along with the ‘common sense’ assumption that academic success is the key determiner of success in life - meaning material success, of course.
So who really believes that child poverty (and its related afflictions - stress, ill-health, etc,) isn’t the key issue when it comes to doing well in school, by whatever measures we might use, and also doing well in life?
Well then, enough of this nonsense and let us focus on something more worthy of attention. Which is - why do these discussions NEVER consider the real factors that determine whether someone will live an authentic, creative and worthwhile life - these factors being the extent to which young people:
1) Become life-long learners who enjoy learning for its own sake
2) Are creative and imaginative
3) Are high in social, emotional and spiritual intelligence.
4) Have high self-confidence and self-esteem.
Assuming that they move on from school possessing high levels of the above then they will always have the option of doing further studies, either part-time or full-time, and moving up the academic ladder towards whatever qualifications they need to pursue their ambitions.
Without these qualities and achievements then it won’t matter that they have 5 A-C grades, or whatever - they will never achieve self-actualisation or achieve fulfillment, or indeed reach their full potential.
So why don’t these pundits address the real issues in education and the development of human potential? Who bothers to track how well schools and pupils are progressing in these four key areas?
-------------------------------------------------------
Failure to address the real issues in the economy and world-wide financial systems have put us in the current crisis, and as I’ve been saying, Will Hutton’s masterwork, The State We’re In, set out all the real issues back in the mid-90’s. It’s pathetic and shameful that New Labour has failed to address any of them, being totally sucked into the neo-conservative ideology and mindset.
In last weekend’s Observer Mr Hutton posted his usual excellent column, focusing on the need to pursue ‘real’ Keynesian policies in order to deal with the crisis and the recession.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/02/economics-economy-john-keynes
“The great economist is back in fashion, but it will be a disaster if his brilliant theories are now misapplied.
For Keynes, the interaction of the financial system with the real economy is capitalism's existential problem.
The job of finance is to recycle savings back into investment and so sustain overall levels of demand, production and employment at a balanced rate.
Intervention in the financial markets - regulatory, institutional, via monetary policy and in collaboration with other governments - is vital. The socialisation of the financial system may, paradoxically, be an imperative to save capitalism. Contra-cyclical government borrowing in recessions may be helpful. But the big game is to do everything you can to stimulate private sector credit flows.
Keynes would be completely unsurprised by today's events; he would have spent the previous decade warning of the existential danger posed by the mania for financial deregulation.
Keynes was the economist who put it all together, the liberal who understood why free [deregulated] finance is capitalism's greatest enemy.
The State We're In was my attempt to devise a Keynesianism for our own times. I will stand by the heart of the book - deregulate financial markets and create a financial system that dominates business at your peril - to my last. But there was no constituency for reform 10 years ago. Keynesians of my ilk were seen as irrelevant and wrong.
But now, with Keynes back in fashion, if we don't do Keynesianism right, we risk a very nasty recession indeed.
There are only weeks left before the downward vortex becomes irretrievably deep.
These are very scary times. Let’s hope someone in government is finally paying attention to Mr Hutton.
More quotes from The State We’re In to follow.
-------------------------------------------------------
Tomorrow’s D-Day for Barak Obama. The latest news bulletin says he has a lead of between 8 and 11 points. Let’s hope all goes well.
His grandmother died today.
-------------------------------------------------------
“This is not just an economic crisis, it is a crisis of democracy”, say Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford in last Saturday’s Guardian.
“New Labour thrived on good times and bull markets. The culture of easy credit and consumerism disguised its evasions of class and power. Now the markets are in freefall, and its ideological failings are brutally exposed. In the manors and town houses of the super-rich those who have brought about the calamity harbour their wealth. They are untouchable and unaccountable. Their tax havens are sacrosanct. Corfu reveals how our political elites, seduced by their opulence and power, do business with them. This is not just an economic crisis, it is a crisis of democracy.
Collective political action and the power of citizenship have been traded in for the ownership society.
The stakes are high. Who will pay for this recession - capital or labour? The Labour party must reinvent itself for this battle.
There are no easy solutions, but the goal is simple: a fundamental transfer of wealth and power back to the people. This will help stop the deflationary spiral and lay the foundations for a more just, sustainable and equal society in the future.
We need urgent action to address the housing crisis, which is replicating that in banking.
This is market failure on a grand scale.
The state must step in with an emergency public-sector housebuilding strategy, and if necessary, take a stake in some housebuilders to revive the sector. Local government must be re-empowered to fill the space vacated by the private sector.
The relationship between market and state is being redrawn. Nowhere is this more needed than in housing. This is where the battle lines are being drawn up. The left must create a democratic and accountable state capable of strategic intervention in the domestic economy and creating global alliances. A new settlement means a progressive tax system, a restructured financial economy and a Green New Deal. Ahead lie the perils of global warming and peak oil. But now let us give homes to people, and with them the hope of a better life.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/01/labour-housing
--------------------------------------------------------
On a lighter note, I had another look at last week’s episode of Brand’s Ponderland. You must try to catch it on the C4 website before Thursday. Hilarious.
Also good for a chuckle - Martin Kelner’s column on the back of the Guardian’s sport section: “Even wrestling honeys can't stir my libido”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/03/1
-------------------------------------------------------
.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Layer 84 Music, Politics, Neil Young and Laughter.
.
In the mornin' when you rise . . .
Are you thinkin' of telephones, and managers,
And where you got to be at noon?
You are living a reality I left years ago
It quite nearly killed me.
In the long run it will make you cry.
Make you crazy and old before your time.
So said Stephen Stills in ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’, in 1970, giving an impression of someone who’s well sorted, tuned in, turned on, dropped out and living a different reality. No more Affluenza for Mr Laid Back L.A. - Christ, he even had time to cry:
And the difference between me and you
I won't argue right or wrong,
But I have time to cry, my baby
You don't have to cry,
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry
In reality this new wave of migrant songsters and sophisticates who moved into L.A., mostly in and around Laurel Canyon, were as obsessed with fame, recognition, happiness, ego gratification, status, money, power and acclaim as anyone else - which isn’t to say that CSNY and the other bands and singer/songwriters didn’t turn out some excellent music from time to time, because they certainly did.
They just weren’t as good as they thought they were, in most cases, and many of them certainly lost their muse, their focus and their inspiration (the counterculture!) in a haze of excess, idleness, hedonism, angst, petty squabbling, and, of course, the heavy use of narcotics, especially coke.
The collective values of the Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock generation had initially generated a sense of unbridled optimism, but the shooting of students at Ohio State and the murder that took place at the Stones’ Altamont concert created a sense of deep foreboding. Concerts were supposed to be fun. College campuses were supposed to be places of peace, love and protest.
The Manson murders in L.A. pretty much shook the rock fraternity to its core, and if such horrors were what drugs and madness could do to people who considered themselves part of an enlightened movement to change the world for the better, what hope was there after all?
Besides which, the brilliant Joni Mitchell was writing songs for her wonderful Blue album that spoke of her own jealousy and greed - so if even the gifted and somewhat saintly Joni could acknowledge these destructive emotions, then where did that leave the rest of them?
Pretty much with the Eagles, ‘country rock’, cowboy fantasies and songs of escapism that demonstrated a complete disengagement from politics. At that point The Eagles were the ultimate corporate rock band, and the L.A. scene had gone from hippie utopianism to the corporatisation of rock in the name of massive profits for all concerned, including legions of smart managers and lawyers.
The increasing use of heroin and speed, as well as shitloads of coke, coincided with increases in greed, anger and cynicism - a far cry from the days of Californian love and peace in low-rent communes. Increasingly there were security guards amongst the hangers-on, and even the clubs where the bands hung out became exclusive to the celebrities and high rollers.
Those who were there at the time recall the rise in self-centred craziness, and the darkness of mounting despair and alienation. The ‘emotional landscape’ had turned very bleak indeed.
Friday night’s repeated BBC4 documentary, HOTEL CALIFORNIA: LA FROM THE BYRDS TO THE EAGLES (Chris Wilson, 2007) offered a decent enough run through the history of the music business in LA, but made some strange omissions in its erratic little journey, such as no mention of The Doors or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, who were LA-based megastars and surely impossible to ignore. Maybe Mr Wilson couldn’t get hold of any decent archive film of them.
BBC4’s mammoth evening of music on Friday was pretty engrossing, and a pure joy for not having your head invaded by a single bloody irritating advertisement. BBC4 itself is a pretty interesting phenomenon.
"There are lots of different ways of being intelligent or serious. There are things that are easily recognisable as television with a serious purpose, such as The Proms or world cinema. But other things are just as valuable. Last week we ran a fantastic programme called Hotel California which featured music from The Byrds to The Eagles. It was about music but it was also about culture, social history, politics, the feeling of the time. Our audience adored that."
So said the channel’s controller, Janice Hadlow, in an interview in the Indy last year: Welcome To The Sanctuary.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bbc4--welcome-to-the-sanctuary-433125.html
---------------------------------------------------
“There’s a big difference between knowing what’s going on and physically doing something to change it.” - Graham Nash
The main focus of Friday evening on BBC4 was, of course, Neil Young, and what emerged from the hour-long documentary, ‘Don’t Be Denied’, was that NY was always a serious and committed musician, who didn’t give a shit about his image, or cashing in on fame by relentlessly recycling his back catalogue. He was even prepared to alienate audiences by following his muse and performing the music that was currently filling him with passion, even if they were turned off by it and clamored for the ‘hits’. He insisted on speaking of meaningful things. In order to sing something he always needed to feel it. He didn’t give a damn whether his records were commercial or not.
It was Neil Young, of course, who wrote ‘Ohio’ for CSNY in response to the National Guard killing the students - magnificently accusatory and polemical, and how many other artists can claim they made any kind of effort to “speak out against the madness”?
His sense of engagement (and enragement) with what’s happening in the real world burns as brightly today as it did back in the days of the Vietnam protests, as has resulted in him setting up a website, a sort of anti-CNN, anti-Fox news/magazine site, called Living With War Today - LWW.
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html
On the site read the following article and prepare to be scared, very scared:
MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN
As you read it Mr Young will serenade you with ‘Let’s Impeach The President’.
Alternatively you can enjoy the video version:
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/letsimpeach_wm.html
The Restless Consumer has been around for some time and is a fantastic song, and is set to a brilliant video at:
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html
where you can also download it for free.
You can also catch it on U-Tube:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IEA7wcxjJvw
Includes great images of a silent, smiling Dick Cheney. Pure evil.
Sample lyric:
Don't need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don't need no Madison Avenue War
Don't need no more boxes I can see
Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace
People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'.
Read the rest here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/therestlessconsumer.html
It’s hard to imagine anyone feeling more passionate or trying to do more than NY has been doing to combat what the White House has been up to these many years.
Here’s a short video of Neil and the band laying down the track in the studio:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LWI1Wzu-7NE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To try to raise some anti-war feeling in the USA in 2006 Neil decided to reform CSNY and take the band out on the road, literally in buses, to perform across the nation. The documentary of the tour, CSNY Déjà Vu, was also screened on Friday, and was pretty arresting stuff.
Was is naivety on the part of the band or was it deliberately provocative to sell tickets to their concerts without advertising the fact that the evening would effectively be an anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Republican rally? Maybe the Republican-voting punters were just too stupid to realise that the whole point of the tour was to rally people against the ‘war on terror’.
There were some stunning shots of Bushites going into a state of total melt-down when the band launched into songs like Let’s Impeach The President. Those good old boys, and their good ladies, wanted to inflict some terrible violence on the band members, but were mostly reduced to yelling, raising the finger, and walking out, ranting and raving. Said one young woman to the camera, following a volley of expletives from her partner, “It was a little political”. Y’all.
But as someone else wrote in a review, “What a rarity - a concert that sent you home thinking, feeling and rocking.”
Here’s the trailer:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GBxrCY980f4&NR=1
http://www.csny-dejavu.com/
--------------------------------------------------
There’s one of the best-ever covers on Private Eye this week - a real classic:
CORFU! WHAT A STINKER!
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1222&
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joy and laughter seem to me to be the vital ingredients for a life well lived, and of spiritual intelligence, and though they’re not always on tap, they ought to be accessible at frequent intervals. The question is, what gives joy, what raises our spirits, what produces laughter?
This has been quite a week for Russell Brand, and true to form his column in the sport section of The Guardian yesterday was brilliant. On the surface, not a word about what’s been happening to him personally, even though he begins with this paragraph,
“What a palaver! In a season that I'd already judged to be utterly barmy we have seen another week so hysterical and incomprehensible that I'm beginning to wonder if our country is in the grips of a cosmic fever.”
He then writes about crazy things happening in the world of football, and he concludes,
“In these rare displays, these athletic requiems, the player and the game issue an elation that I've struggled to find in a cathedral or a Caravaggio, so we endure the drab, rain-spattered Sundays, the financial indiscretions, the scandals and the heartbreak because instinctively we know that within this sport there is the potential for grace and redemption and incredible beauty. No matter how insane things become or how far from the truth we are led by histrionics and lies, the truly, objectively beautiful remains untainted.”
By some wonderful coincidence the second series of “Russell Brand’s Ponderland” began on Channel 4 last Thursday, and predictably there were critics who sneered at it and pronounced it unfunny. Like the Guardian’s, for example,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/oct/31/russell-brand-channel4
(check out the variety of readers’ comments at the end of the article, including a pathetic response to these responses by the author of the piece.)
This first episode had him pondering the subject of pets, and he showed a series of clips of total nutters who did things like keep a lion in a garage, dye doves in primary colours, put up with regular assaults from their ‘pet’ dogs and ponies, and at the other extreme have sex with their pets.
This kind of thing is priceless, and had me in tears of laughter. Try to catch it on the C4 website.
Other subjects coming up in series 2 are families, education and class.
If you could do with a quick chuckle or two then try these clips from series 1:
http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/
And on Google Video, the whole of the programme on science:
http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/01/russell-brand This week’s column.
.
In the mornin' when you rise . . .
Are you thinkin' of telephones, and managers,
And where you got to be at noon?
You are living a reality I left years ago
It quite nearly killed me.
In the long run it will make you cry.
Make you crazy and old before your time.
So said Stephen Stills in ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’, in 1970, giving an impression of someone who’s well sorted, tuned in, turned on, dropped out and living a different reality. No more Affluenza for Mr Laid Back L.A. - Christ, he even had time to cry:
And the difference between me and you
I won't argue right or wrong,
But I have time to cry, my baby
You don't have to cry,
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry
I said cry my baby, you don't have to cry
In reality this new wave of migrant songsters and sophisticates who moved into L.A., mostly in and around Laurel Canyon, were as obsessed with fame, recognition, happiness, ego gratification, status, money, power and acclaim as anyone else - which isn’t to say that CSNY and the other bands and singer/songwriters didn’t turn out some excellent music from time to time, because they certainly did.
They just weren’t as good as they thought they were, in most cases, and many of them certainly lost their muse, their focus and their inspiration (the counterculture!) in a haze of excess, idleness, hedonism, angst, petty squabbling, and, of course, the heavy use of narcotics, especially coke.
The collective values of the Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock generation had initially generated a sense of unbridled optimism, but the shooting of students at Ohio State and the murder that took place at the Stones’ Altamont concert created a sense of deep foreboding. Concerts were supposed to be fun. College campuses were supposed to be places of peace, love and protest.
The Manson murders in L.A. pretty much shook the rock fraternity to its core, and if such horrors were what drugs and madness could do to people who considered themselves part of an enlightened movement to change the world for the better, what hope was there after all?
Besides which, the brilliant Joni Mitchell was writing songs for her wonderful Blue album that spoke of her own jealousy and greed - so if even the gifted and somewhat saintly Joni could acknowledge these destructive emotions, then where did that leave the rest of them?
Pretty much with the Eagles, ‘country rock’, cowboy fantasies and songs of escapism that demonstrated a complete disengagement from politics. At that point The Eagles were the ultimate corporate rock band, and the L.A. scene had gone from hippie utopianism to the corporatisation of rock in the name of massive profits for all concerned, including legions of smart managers and lawyers.
The increasing use of heroin and speed, as well as shitloads of coke, coincided with increases in greed, anger and cynicism - a far cry from the days of Californian love and peace in low-rent communes. Increasingly there were security guards amongst the hangers-on, and even the clubs where the bands hung out became exclusive to the celebrities and high rollers.
Those who were there at the time recall the rise in self-centred craziness, and the darkness of mounting despair and alienation. The ‘emotional landscape’ had turned very bleak indeed.
Friday night’s repeated BBC4 documentary, HOTEL CALIFORNIA: LA FROM THE BYRDS TO THE EAGLES (Chris Wilson, 2007) offered a decent enough run through the history of the music business in LA, but made some strange omissions in its erratic little journey, such as no mention of The Doors or Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, who were LA-based megastars and surely impossible to ignore. Maybe Mr Wilson couldn’t get hold of any decent archive film of them.
BBC4’s mammoth evening of music on Friday was pretty engrossing, and a pure joy for not having your head invaded by a single bloody irritating advertisement. BBC4 itself is a pretty interesting phenomenon.
"There are lots of different ways of being intelligent or serious. There are things that are easily recognisable as television with a serious purpose, such as The Proms or world cinema. But other things are just as valuable. Last week we ran a fantastic programme called Hotel California which featured music from The Byrds to The Eagles. It was about music but it was also about culture, social history, politics, the feeling of the time. Our audience adored that."
So said the channel’s controller, Janice Hadlow, in an interview in the Indy last year: Welcome To The Sanctuary.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/bbc4--welcome-to-the-sanctuary-433125.html
---------------------------------------------------
“There’s a big difference between knowing what’s going on and physically doing something to change it.” - Graham Nash
The main focus of Friday evening on BBC4 was, of course, Neil Young, and what emerged from the hour-long documentary, ‘Don’t Be Denied’, was that NY was always a serious and committed musician, who didn’t give a shit about his image, or cashing in on fame by relentlessly recycling his back catalogue. He was even prepared to alienate audiences by following his muse and performing the music that was currently filling him with passion, even if they were turned off by it and clamored for the ‘hits’. He insisted on speaking of meaningful things. In order to sing something he always needed to feel it. He didn’t give a damn whether his records were commercial or not.
It was Neil Young, of course, who wrote ‘Ohio’ for CSNY in response to the National Guard killing the students - magnificently accusatory and polemical, and how many other artists can claim they made any kind of effort to “speak out against the madness”?
His sense of engagement (and enragement) with what’s happening in the real world burns as brightly today as it did back in the days of the Vietnam protests, as has resulted in him setting up a website, a sort of anti-CNN, anti-Fox news/magazine site, called Living With War Today - LWW.
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/index.html
On the site read the following article and prepare to be scared, very scared:
MY HOLIDAY WITH JOHN McCAIN
As you read it Mr Young will serenade you with ‘Let’s Impeach The President’.
Alternatively you can enjoy the video version:
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/letsimpeach_wm.html
The Restless Consumer has been around for some time and is a fantastic song, and is set to a brilliant video at:
http://www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday/lwwvideos/therestlessconsumer_wm.html
where you can also download it for free.
You can also catch it on U-Tube:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=IEA7wcxjJvw
Includes great images of a silent, smiling Dick Cheney. Pure evil.
Sample lyric:
Don't need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don't need no Madison Avenue War
Don't need no more boxes I can see
Covered in flags but I can't see them on TV
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
Don't need no more lies
The restless consumer flies
Around the world each day
With such an appetite for taste and grace
People from around the world
Need someone to listen
We're starving and dying from our disease
We need your medicine
How do you pay for war
And leave us dyin' ?
When you could do so much more
You're not even tryin'.
Read the rest here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/neilyoung/therestlessconsumer.html
It’s hard to imagine anyone feeling more passionate or trying to do more than NY has been doing to combat what the White House has been up to these many years.
Here’s a short video of Neil and the band laying down the track in the studio:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LWI1Wzu-7NE
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To try to raise some anti-war feeling in the USA in 2006 Neil decided to reform CSNY and take the band out on the road, literally in buses, to perform across the nation. The documentary of the tour, CSNY Déjà Vu, was also screened on Friday, and was pretty arresting stuff.
Was is naivety on the part of the band or was it deliberately provocative to sell tickets to their concerts without advertising the fact that the evening would effectively be an anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-Republican rally? Maybe the Republican-voting punters were just too stupid to realise that the whole point of the tour was to rally people against the ‘war on terror’.
There were some stunning shots of Bushites going into a state of total melt-down when the band launched into songs like Let’s Impeach The President. Those good old boys, and their good ladies, wanted to inflict some terrible violence on the band members, but were mostly reduced to yelling, raising the finger, and walking out, ranting and raving. Said one young woman to the camera, following a volley of expletives from her partner, “It was a little political”. Y’all.
But as someone else wrote in a review, “What a rarity - a concert that sent you home thinking, feeling and rocking.”
Here’s the trailer:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=GBxrCY980f4&NR=1
http://www.csny-dejavu.com/
--------------------------------------------------
There’s one of the best-ever covers on Private Eye this week - a real classic:
CORFU! WHAT A STINKER!
http://www.private-eye.co.uk/covers.php?showme=1222&
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joy and laughter seem to me to be the vital ingredients for a life well lived, and of spiritual intelligence, and though they’re not always on tap, they ought to be accessible at frequent intervals. The question is, what gives joy, what raises our spirits, what produces laughter?
This has been quite a week for Russell Brand, and true to form his column in the sport section of The Guardian yesterday was brilliant. On the surface, not a word about what’s been happening to him personally, even though he begins with this paragraph,
“What a palaver! In a season that I'd already judged to be utterly barmy we have seen another week so hysterical and incomprehensible that I'm beginning to wonder if our country is in the grips of a cosmic fever.”
He then writes about crazy things happening in the world of football, and he concludes,
“In these rare displays, these athletic requiems, the player and the game issue an elation that I've struggled to find in a cathedral or a Caravaggio, so we endure the drab, rain-spattered Sundays, the financial indiscretions, the scandals and the heartbreak because instinctively we know that within this sport there is the potential for grace and redemption and incredible beauty. No matter how insane things become or how far from the truth we are led by histrionics and lies, the truly, objectively beautiful remains untainted.”
By some wonderful coincidence the second series of “Russell Brand’s Ponderland” began on Channel 4 last Thursday, and predictably there were critics who sneered at it and pronounced it unfunny. Like the Guardian’s, for example,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/oct/31/russell-brand-channel4
(check out the variety of readers’ comments at the end of the article, including a pathetic response to these responses by the author of the piece.)
This first episode had him pondering the subject of pets, and he showed a series of clips of total nutters who did things like keep a lion in a garage, dye doves in primary colours, put up with regular assaults from their ‘pet’ dogs and ponies, and at the other extreme have sex with their pets.
This kind of thing is priceless, and had me in tears of laughter. Try to catch it on the C4 website.
Other subjects coming up in series 2 are families, education and class.
If you could do with a quick chuckle or two then try these clips from series 1:
http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/
And on Google Video, the whole of the programme on science:
http://www.channel4.com/video/russell-brands-ponderland/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2008/nov/01/russell-brand This week’s column.
.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Layer 83 Looting The Public Wealth.
.
There’s a brilliant cartoon by the wonderful Martin Rowson in yesterday’s Guardian , a perfect Halloween summary of the state of our society. It sums up more graphically and powerfully the insanity that’s all around us than any amount of well-argued column inches.
In the background, silhouetted against the light and smoke of flaming torches, are the unmistakable figures of Russell Brand, who’s dangling from a gallows, and J Ross who’s still fighting off a mob that’s armed with pitchforks and rakes.
In the foreground are two hideously fat, grinning, pinstripe-suited fat cats with a case bulging with bank notes, unconcerned about the mob which is clearly not interested in them. One of them says, looking towards us, the readers, “Hey! HE fucked your economy!! Ha Ha Ha!”
And his companion responds, “An’ I ain’t going to APOLOGISE or RESIGN or NUFFINK!”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/cartoon/2008/oct/31/cartoon-credit-crunch-crisis
---------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, alongside the cartoon, there’s a column by Reihan Salam, an editor at Atlantic magazine, who begins, “Despite running one of the worst presidential campaigns I’ve ever seen, John McCain would, I’m convinced, make an excellent president”.
So in other words, he’s convinced that a man who can’t even run a half-decent political campaign is capable of running the most powerful, complex and significant country on earth. Brilliant.
His rationale, naturally, goes like this: “Only Nixon could go to China, and only McCain can reconcile conservatives to some of the hard steps that the US will have to take”.
Reconcile? Interesting word. They have to be reconciled do they? And those hard steps can’t be taken if they’re not? Hmmmm. We shall see.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/john-mccain-us-elections-barack-obama
------------------------------------------------------------
The wonderful Naomi Klein, who’s been sadly missing from the Guardian of late, though it’s possible to read her columns at http://www.thenation.com/ , is back with a brilliant piece called, “The Bush gang’s parting gift - a final, frantic looting of public wealth.”
“There has been no nationalisation, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks as if much of the windfall will cover this year's bonuses. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its $25bn buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts: "At least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion." The US government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans - officially, the reason for the entire programme.
What, then, is the real purpose of the bail-out? My fear is this rush of dealmaking is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business: that the Bush version of "partial nationalisation" is rigged to turn the US treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come. Remember, the main concern among the big market players, particularly banks, is not the lack of credit but their battered share prices. Investors have lost confidence in the honesty of the big financial players, and with good reason.
This is where the treasury's equity pays off big time. By purchasing stakes in these financial institutions, the treasury is sending a signal to the market that they are a safe bet. Why safe? Not because their level of risk has been accurately assessed at last. Not because they have renounced the kind of exotic instruments and outrageous leverage rates that created the crisis. But because the market will now be banking on the fact that the US government won't let these particular companies fail. If they get themselves into trouble, investors will now assume that the government will keep finding more cash to bail them out, since allowing them to go down would mean losing the initial equity investments, many of them in the billions.
This tethering of the public interest to private companies is the real purpose of the bail-out plan: Paulson is handing all the companies admitted to the programme - a number potentially in the thousands - an implicit treasury department guarantee. To skittish investors looking for safe places to park their money, these equity deals will be even more comforting than a triple-A from Moody's rating agency.
Insurance like that is priceless. But for the banks, the best part is that the government is paying them to accept its seal of approval. For taxpayers, on the other hand, this entire plan is extremely risky, and may well cost significantly more than Paulson's original idea of buying up $700bn in toxic debts. Now taxpayers aren't just on the hook for the debts but, arguably, for the fate of every corporation that sells them equity.
Not only were profits privatised while risks were socialised, but the implicit government backing created powerful incentives for reckless business practices.
With the new equity purchase programme Paulson has taken the discredited Fannie and Freddie model and applied it to a huge swath of the private banking industry. Again, there is no reason to shy away from risky bets, especially since the treasury has made no such demands of the banks (apparently it doesn't want to "micromanage".)
This may be Bush's most creative innovation: no-risk capitalism.
Meanwhile, every day it becomes clearer that the bail-out was sold to the public on false pretences. Clearly, it was never really about getting loans flowing. It was always about doing what it is doing: turning the state into a giant insurance agency for Wall Street, a safety net for the people who need it least, subsidised by the people who will most need state protections in the economic storms ahead.
This duplicity is a political opportunity. Whoever wins on November 4 will have enormous moral authority. It should be used to call for a freeze on the dispersal of bail-out funds, not after the inauguration but right away. All deals should be renegotiated, this time with the public getting the guarantees.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/useconomy-banking
-------------------------------------------------------
It’s all happening just as George Orwell forecast it would in 1949, in “1984”.
Wikipedia says,
The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states. The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain"
Winston Smith has in his possession a book called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
When the aforementioned Reihan Salam talks about reconciling “conservatives” to the steps the country needs to take he is, of course, referring to the oligarchs whose collective views and decisions determine what goes on in the country, with “conservatives” like McCain (or Mandleson, or Osborne, or Cameron, or Brown) acting as their mouthpiece.
Arguably there are four, and not three, “intercontinental totalitarian super-states” - the US and its satellites (including the UK and Japan), the EU, Russia and its remaining satellites, and China. Things are a little blurred, however, by the existence of NATO, which acts as a unifier for the US and the EU.
What’s clear, however, is that in the USA, at least, there’s now no separation whatsoever between the government and business (the oligarchs), and the government is now clearly and blatantly revealed in its role as first and foremost supporting US finance and US business (think Halliburton and Blackwater as well as the banks and Wall Street), which in turn determine the policies of the government.
This is in contrast to a social democratic system of government which sets out to make we, the people, the governors of the country’s business and financial sectors - laying down strict regulations to ensure that their activities benefit the nation as a whole, rather than enrich those who already possess most of its wealth and are greedy to possess even more.
Control of the planet, as such, is now less of an issue than control of its remaining oil and gas reserves, as they now begin to go into serious decline, at a time when consumers in China and India are beginning to compete very seriously for these resources with consumers in the so-called First World.
Control of the planet’s finances also seems to be a key issue, and China holds several trump cards. The US, as the world’s biggest debtor, would appear to be in considerable difficulties. They borrowed low in order to lend high, but will the creditors want to continue to make credit available?
We’re now entering a very interesting period of history in which the power of the US is being seriously challenged and there are several possible scenarios ahead of us.
1) The US becomes even more of a neo-fascist militaristic superstate, which is less likely to happen if Obama wins. In this scenario the US presses ahead with military expansion and a quest for world domination, with disastrous consequences for world peace, justice and enlightened cooperation between nations.
2) The “intercontinental totalitarian super-states” compete ever more vigorously, but peacefully, for power, influence and resources, with dire consequences for the masses, the proles.
3) The superstates realise that the only possible way of achieving a stable, sustainable, peaceful and viable planet is for governments to work together with an agreed set of principles based on human values. Perhaps set up an umbrella organization called something like the United Nations. George Orwell’s preferred option.
Place your bets.
.
There’s a brilliant cartoon by the wonderful Martin Rowson in yesterday’s Guardian , a perfect Halloween summary of the state of our society. It sums up more graphically and powerfully the insanity that’s all around us than any amount of well-argued column inches.
In the background, silhouetted against the light and smoke of flaming torches, are the unmistakable figures of Russell Brand, who’s dangling from a gallows, and J Ross who’s still fighting off a mob that’s armed with pitchforks and rakes.
In the foreground are two hideously fat, grinning, pinstripe-suited fat cats with a case bulging with bank notes, unconcerned about the mob which is clearly not interested in them. One of them says, looking towards us, the readers, “Hey! HE fucked your economy!! Ha Ha Ha!”
And his companion responds, “An’ I ain’t going to APOLOGISE or RESIGN or NUFFINK!”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/cartoon/2008/oct/31/cartoon-credit-crunch-crisis
---------------------------------------------------------
Meanwhile, alongside the cartoon, there’s a column by Reihan Salam, an editor at Atlantic magazine, who begins, “Despite running one of the worst presidential campaigns I’ve ever seen, John McCain would, I’m convinced, make an excellent president”.
So in other words, he’s convinced that a man who can’t even run a half-decent political campaign is capable of running the most powerful, complex and significant country on earth. Brilliant.
His rationale, naturally, goes like this: “Only Nixon could go to China, and only McCain can reconcile conservatives to some of the hard steps that the US will have to take”.
Reconcile? Interesting word. They have to be reconciled do they? And those hard steps can’t be taken if they’re not? Hmmmm. We shall see.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/john-mccain-us-elections-barack-obama
------------------------------------------------------------
The wonderful Naomi Klein, who’s been sadly missing from the Guardian of late, though it’s possible to read her columns at http://www.thenation.com/ , is back with a brilliant piece called, “The Bush gang’s parting gift - a final, frantic looting of public wealth.”
“There has been no nationalisation, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks as if much of the windfall will cover this year's bonuses. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its $25bn buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts: "At least for the next quarter, it's just going to be a cushion." The US government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans - officially, the reason for the entire programme.
What, then, is the real purpose of the bail-out? My fear is this rush of dealmaking is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business: that the Bush version of "partial nationalisation" is rigged to turn the US treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come. Remember, the main concern among the big market players, particularly banks, is not the lack of credit but their battered share prices. Investors have lost confidence in the honesty of the big financial players, and with good reason.
This is where the treasury's equity pays off big time. By purchasing stakes in these financial institutions, the treasury is sending a signal to the market that they are a safe bet. Why safe? Not because their level of risk has been accurately assessed at last. Not because they have renounced the kind of exotic instruments and outrageous leverage rates that created the crisis. But because the market will now be banking on the fact that the US government won't let these particular companies fail. If they get themselves into trouble, investors will now assume that the government will keep finding more cash to bail them out, since allowing them to go down would mean losing the initial equity investments, many of them in the billions.
This tethering of the public interest to private companies is the real purpose of the bail-out plan: Paulson is handing all the companies admitted to the programme - a number potentially in the thousands - an implicit treasury department guarantee. To skittish investors looking for safe places to park their money, these equity deals will be even more comforting than a triple-A from Moody's rating agency.
Insurance like that is priceless. But for the banks, the best part is that the government is paying them to accept its seal of approval. For taxpayers, on the other hand, this entire plan is extremely risky, and may well cost significantly more than Paulson's original idea of buying up $700bn in toxic debts. Now taxpayers aren't just on the hook for the debts but, arguably, for the fate of every corporation that sells them equity.
Not only were profits privatised while risks were socialised, but the implicit government backing created powerful incentives for reckless business practices.
With the new equity purchase programme Paulson has taken the discredited Fannie and Freddie model and applied it to a huge swath of the private banking industry. Again, there is no reason to shy away from risky bets, especially since the treasury has made no such demands of the banks (apparently it doesn't want to "micromanage".)
This may be Bush's most creative innovation: no-risk capitalism.
Meanwhile, every day it becomes clearer that the bail-out was sold to the public on false pretences. Clearly, it was never really about getting loans flowing. It was always about doing what it is doing: turning the state into a giant insurance agency for Wall Street, a safety net for the people who need it least, subsidised by the people who will most need state protections in the economic storms ahead.
This duplicity is a political opportunity. Whoever wins on November 4 will have enormous moral authority. It should be used to call for a freeze on the dispersal of bail-out funds, not after the inauguration but right away. All deals should be renegotiated, this time with the public getting the guarantees.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/31/useconomy-banking
-------------------------------------------------------
It’s all happening just as George Orwell forecast it would in 1949, in “1984”.
Wikipedia says,
The book has major significance for its vision of an all-knowing government which uses pervasive and constant surveillance of the populace, insidious and blatant propaganda, and brutal control over its citizens.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in Oceania, one of three intercontinental totalitarian super-states. The story occurs in London, the "chief city of Airstrip One", itself a province of Oceania that "had once been called England or Britain"
Winston Smith has in his possession a book called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
When the aforementioned Reihan Salam talks about reconciling “conservatives” to the steps the country needs to take he is, of course, referring to the oligarchs whose collective views and decisions determine what goes on in the country, with “conservatives” like McCain (or Mandleson, or Osborne, or Cameron, or Brown) acting as their mouthpiece.
Arguably there are four, and not three, “intercontinental totalitarian super-states” - the US and its satellites (including the UK and Japan), the EU, Russia and its remaining satellites, and China. Things are a little blurred, however, by the existence of NATO, which acts as a unifier for the US and the EU.
What’s clear, however, is that in the USA, at least, there’s now no separation whatsoever between the government and business (the oligarchs), and the government is now clearly and blatantly revealed in its role as first and foremost supporting US finance and US business (think Halliburton and Blackwater as well as the banks and Wall Street), which in turn determine the policies of the government.
This is in contrast to a social democratic system of government which sets out to make we, the people, the governors of the country’s business and financial sectors - laying down strict regulations to ensure that their activities benefit the nation as a whole, rather than enrich those who already possess most of its wealth and are greedy to possess even more.
Control of the planet, as such, is now less of an issue than control of its remaining oil and gas reserves, as they now begin to go into serious decline, at a time when consumers in China and India are beginning to compete very seriously for these resources with consumers in the so-called First World.
Control of the planet’s finances also seems to be a key issue, and China holds several trump cards. The US, as the world’s biggest debtor, would appear to be in considerable difficulties. They borrowed low in order to lend high, but will the creditors want to continue to make credit available?
We’re now entering a very interesting period of history in which the power of the US is being seriously challenged and there are several possible scenarios ahead of us.
1) The US becomes even more of a neo-fascist militaristic superstate, which is less likely to happen if Obama wins. In this scenario the US presses ahead with military expansion and a quest for world domination, with disastrous consequences for world peace, justice and enlightened cooperation between nations.
2) The “intercontinental totalitarian super-states” compete ever more vigorously, but peacefully, for power, influence and resources, with dire consequences for the masses, the proles.
3) The superstates realise that the only possible way of achieving a stable, sustainable, peaceful and viable planet is for governments to work together with an agreed set of principles based on human values. Perhaps set up an umbrella organization called something like the United Nations. George Orwell’s preferred option.
Place your bets.
.
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