Layer 319 . . . John McDonnell MP, the Labour Leadership, the Socialist Alternative, and IDS

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Let’s start this piece with a little quiz. Which politician said the following:

"The present benefits system is so complex and unfair that no one understands it. It leads at the bottom end to one of the most regressive tax and benefit withdrawal rates that it is possible to imagine. 

"We ask people to go to work for the first time and then tell them to pay back 70%, 80% and 90% back to the state. These are levels none of the wealthiest bankers are asked to pay – they are moaning at 50%.

"If you are unemployed, and you come from a family that is unemployed, all you can see when you think about work is risk. It is a real risk because for all the efforts you make the rewards are very minimal and in some cases none at all.

"Socially, everyone says: 'You are a bloody moron – why are you doing this? You don't have to do this.' So taking responsibility is a real risk for you."

Got it yet? Yes – it’s the former leader of the Tory Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who’s saying things that are completely bleeding obvious and yet no Labour party politician seems to have said them – ever. Certainly no member of the Labour government has said anything like this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/26/coalition-welfare-reforms-duncan-smith

IDS and his Centre for Social Justice got stuck into this issue sometime last year, and this latest quote is from the front page of the Guardian yesterday, which had a heading, “Duncan Smith starts welfare revolution”. Basically, what he’s now proposing to do, as the new minister for work and pensions, is allow people who are on unemployment benefits to keep those benefits until they are well established in a new job and until they are earning a decent amount, after which there will be a gradual withdrawal of benefits. Sounds sensible? More below.


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Another World Is Possible

In the meantime, this is part of an interview with John McDonnell, one of the declared candidates for the Labour leadership, by John Spence of TheVibe.co.uk

http://www.the-vibe.co.uk/2010/05/23/spenny/another-world-is-possible-an-interview-with-john-mcdonnell-mp/

JS: It’s clear from the interview that McDonnell is one of those old fashioned things – a principled politician. His time in parliament has been characterised by the unwavering articulation of those principles in word and deed, which has seen him branded as one of the ‘awkward squad’ by members of his own party.

It’s also clear that McDonnell is a politician who has not forgotten who he represents and who put him into the position he holds. What struck me most was that in the interview he seldom referred to himself with the terms ‘I’ or ‘me’; it was almost always ‘we’ or ‘us’. I don’t think this is an accident. As the interview shows, McDonnell is a staunch socialist, and thinks of himself in terms of his place amongst a groups of people and workers, not distanced from them.

JM: The reason I didn't vote for Gordon Brown was political. It wasn’t personal.

I can’t support people who have voted for things like the Iraq War, for privatisation, for cuts in welfare and benefits, for the implementation of the renewal of Trident. I can’t support candidates like that because I think it undermines our credibility, and what we’ve got to do is keep a clear distance from those people who have brought about a Tory government (sic) because of their support for these policies.

JS: Turning now to the [general] election; what’s your assessment of the election result, firstly, in terms of the Labour Party?

JM: The Labour result was better than expected, because what we saw was an element of class solidarity where people went to the ballot boxes and decided they wanted to keep the Tories out.

So it was clear that there was a positive Labour vote on the basis of opposing the Tories, but it wasn’t by any means, certainly in my constituency, and based on discussions I’ve had with others across the country, it certainly wasn’t an endorsement of New Labour policies. It was one of solidarity against the Tories and, in places like Dagenham, against the fascists with… regret… about what New Labour has done to the Labour Party.

Now, if you look at what happened in the election itself, it was exactly what we predicted: the coalition of people that we put together, as we always do when Labour is elected, was systematically alienated by New Labour policies – public sector workers alienated by privatisation; trade unionists alienated by a lack of trade union rights and the failure to address the issues of their wages and conditions and the security of their work; students alienated by tuition fees; pensioners alienated by a failure to address pensioner poverty and a refusal to restore the link between pensions and earnings; peace campaigners alienated by the Iraq War and Afghanistan; people who came to us because they saw us as the party of honesty against Tory sleaze alienated by expenses.

So you can see how every element of our coalition was alienated in some form, and that’s what brought about the breakdown in trust, and people no longer recognised the Labour Party as the party they knew and had trusted over the years. New Labour destroyed that bond between working class people and the Party itself, and it was only anti-Toryism that got us those voters out at the end of the day.

The issue for us now is how we re-establish that trust, and I think what people were saying on the doorstep is they want Labour back. We’ve got to re-establish the ‘Labour Party’ because New Labour has destroyed trust in us.

JS: What is your assessment of the Coalition Government in its early days?

JM: I don’t think people should underestimate the ruthlessness of this government. They will seek to solve this crisis on the backs of working class people; they’ll cut services and be ruthless about it, they’ll come from pay cuts, they’ll come from pension cuts and they’ll come from people’s basic services. I think we’ll see a growth in inequality in the same way that we did in the 1980s, and we’ll also see a growth in poverty and deprivation amongst working people whilst others make themselves richer and more prosperous. The discussion we’ve got to have now is about how we organise the resistance against that.

There will be things done by this government, the part of the Lib Dem agenda, that the rest of us [on the Labour left] have been calling for anyway – the scrapping of ID cards, restoring elements of the right to protest, things like that, but that shouldn’t mask or cloud the class nature of this government. The class nature is about the restoration of the casino economy, restoring profitability to the City in particular on the backs of working people through cuts in public services, wages, pensions and the rest.

JS: Given the policy agenda articulated in the Labour manifesto ahead of the election, can the Labour Party in its current guise actually be an effective opposition to the new government?

JM: The problem at the moment is that New Labour is implicated in bringing about the economic crisis that we now face – the deregulation of the City, the continuation of the policies of Thatcherism from the 80s and 90s, into New Labour and through to 2010.

They’re completely implicated in it and, actually, have completely adopted the ideas and ideology of Thatcherism. They believe in ‘the market’, they believe in privatisation as the best option for the delivery of services, and as a result of that it’s very difficult to see how [the candidates closely attached to new Labour] could have some Damascene conversion to socialism or even weaker forms of social democracy, and I think that’s what is going to hobble them, particularly if we get a new leader like one of the Milibands, or Ed Balls or Andy Burnham. If they come from the New Labour stable then ideologically they’ve adapted themselves to neoliberal policies anyway.

The struggle will be, yes, within the Labour Party from the rank and file, but I think also the struggle will be from within the communities themselves, with trade unions and other social groups coming together to resist what this government seeks to do. Eventually, I think the PLP will catch up with what’s happening in wider society.

JS: Turning now to policy related areas, how will your 2010 campaign differ from the 2007 campaign?

JM: It has moved on. 2007 was pre-major credit crunch. I was arguing the case then in the book that we did ‘Another World Is Possible’ that we needed to come to terms with the world as it then was, which was facing the impact of globalisation, how it had created a new world, new forms of exploitation, the opening up of the welfare state in this country to privatisation and profiteering, how it had undermined old securities in terms of state provision of housing , trade union rights, and how it had allowed the plundering of our environment for profit.

So I was trying to explain, at that stage, what globalisation meant, and how we needed to understand the world before we could organise in a way to combat the impact of globalisation in this country and in others across the world.

That was the intellectual debate we were having in 2007. The credit crunch then hit almost as predicted, in terms of a classic crisis of capitalism. What we are now into doing is sharing that understanding of how the capitalist system has gone into crisis again, but more importantly there is a sense of urgency now about what the implications are of that for working people. I think now it’s about motivating people to recognise they’ve got to stand up and fight back, that there will be a movement of resistance and they’ve got to join it.

JS: What are the other key planks of your policy platform?

JM: What I’m trying to say is, let’s understand the world as it now is, let’s understand why this crisis came about, and let’s have a look at those policies, therefore, that we now need to put in place.

 The most important question that people face now is, “Who is going to pay for this economic crisis?” The government has quite clearly made its decision that working people are going to pay for it.

Our argument is, no, it doesn’t have to be like that, there is an alternative, and the alternative is basically that we start planning and controlling our economy. It means basically that instead of tackling the deficit by cutting services, you tackle it by introducing a fair taxation system where the corporate sector is paying its way, we tackle avoidance and evasion of taxes, we introduce a transition tax, it was called a Tobin tax, we now call it the Robin Hood Tax, and in that way we introduce a system whereby we tackle the deficit straight away, but we increasingly use mechanisms for regulation and public ownership that give us control of our economy in the long term.

At the same time, we do recognise that if people are going to have the opportunity to resist they need the tools to do that, so what we’re campaigning for basic civil liberties and the restoration of trade union rights that can arm people with the arguments with which they can control their lives in the long term.

It’s also about trying to explain to people that there are very simple solutions to our problems. We’re the fifth richest country in the world yet we have a housing crisis with homelessness doubling under New Labour. The question is “How do we tackle it?” and the way we tackle it is by building council houses again in the way we haven’t done in the last 13 years.

We pour money into public services, but see more and more of it laundered out for private profit. The simple solution is that we end privatisation.

We want our children to have the best education possible, but they’re deterred from that, because instead of having free education we’re now charging them for their education. How do you overcome that? You scrap tuition fees.

If you want to tackle pensioner poverty, with two million pensioners in poverty at the moment, you increase the state pension and you restore the link with earnings. It’s the same with child poverty, you simply increase child benefits to the level which cover the cost of rearing a child.

If you want to ensure that families can lift themselves out of poverty, you increase the Minimum Wage to a ‘Living Wage’.

All of these are simple solutions, and they’re all premised on the redistribution of wealth which in turn is based upon primary control of our economy.

JS: The main audience of ‘The Vibe’ will have grown up under the Thatcher government, like me, or the Major and New Labour governments. How would you go about rationalising your policy agenda to that age group, specifically?

JM: The whole point of every political discussion at the moment should be about breaking through the mystification of the economic crisis. We can control the future of our lives. We can control the future of our economy. We can control what happens within our workplaces and our local communities, and the solution is through democratic control of our lives and our economy.

What the Tories have done, and what New Labour have done also, is that… the Tories have told us there is no alternative, while New Labour have told us there is only one alternative, and that alternative is to allow the markets to run free and allow privatisation to happen with limited government intervention at best.

What we have got to reassert for this generation is that it doesn’t have to be like this! What we should be doing now is saying “We should control our lives, and to control our lives we have to control our economy.” To do that we have to band together and use the democratic mechanisms available to us, and if we do that we can control our future.

For three decades now there has been a defeatism inculcated in people. What we have to do is break through that and say, “We’re not putting up with this anymore! We don’t believe the lies. We don’t believe it’s complicated.” There are simple solutions, but they will only come about if we assert control.

JS: Your support for traditional labour elements such as trade unions and public sector workers has been unstinting in the face of wider political, media and private sector hostility. To put it bluntly, what do you think makes you right and them wrong?

JM: Let’s go back to the economic crisis. You can look at this from any part of the cycle you like, but let’s start at the beginning.

If you suppress trade union rights, that allows employers to suppress wages. If at the same time you stop building council houses and you rely solely upon the private market and you create a shortage of houses then that means house prices are going to go up.

If you’re a worker whose wages have been suppressed by privatisation, outsourcing or a lack of trade union rights the one thing you need is a roof over your head. If there is a shortage of housing because no council houses are being built and house prices are going up you have to borrow to buy a property. If at the same time the government deregulates the City and they can lend to you and charge you whatever they want, you’re forced to borrow at en extortionate rate, leading to the build up of a debt bubble which is unsustainable, and then a credit crunch occurs.

That is reality of what happened. It stems from the undermining of trade union rights and the balance of forces between labour and capital being deliberately skewed in the favour of capital. There is a clear analysis there of why the credit crunch occurred, and now we’re having to pay for it, and what we’re being told to do is replicate the same circumstances, – suppress trade union rights, cut wages and public services so the casino economy can spin again.

I think that when the process of how we’ve arrived at this point is explained to people, and people understand what is happening as it reflected in their real lives than I think people will get angry, and they want to vent that anger. Our job politically is to mobilise that anger and use it to make political change.

JS: Do you think you’ll get the space and airtime in the mainstream media to articulate those points?

JM: No. A few years ago someone described me as being like a cult movie – you’ve sort of heard about it, but you’ve never seen it. It’s because most of the mainstream media aren’t interested in any detailed political discussion; it’s all 24-hour, short, sharp, media hits.

Even newspapers like the Guardian, which are supposed to be more liberal and open-minded, are not interested in a proper discussion of radical policies or fundamental analyses of society, so they’re as glib as most of the others as well.

So what we’ve got to do is create our own media. Part of that is using whatever we can in terms of new technology, of course, but also going back to traditional mechanisms like word of mouth, talking at large meetings, small groups, demonstrations, picket lines, climate camps… using the mechanisms that social movements are using all the way across the world to provide an alternative media to enable people, not just to receive information because it’s not about talking down to people, but to get involved in the dialogue and the debate.

JS: Last question; If you were successful in the final ballot, what would be your first action as leader of the Labour Party?

JM: I’d go out to people and tell them we’re now going to produce our own Bill of Rights which would restore trade union freedom, which would restore local democracy, and which would give people social rights – the right to a decent home, the right to a decent health service, the right to a decent education all of which would be enforceable and also the right to have a say, not only in your local community but also when you go to work as well.

I think the whole basis of having a real Labour government is about establishing freedom and that Bill of Rights would establish people’s freedom to control their own lives.

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Re David Cameron, this piece in the MailOnline is actually worth reading.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218964/David-Cameron-cool-says-Rasta-cafe-owner-befriended-Tory-leader-Oxford.html


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Iain Duncan Smith, again

These quotes are from his interview with the Guardian:

IDS: I will tackle root causes of poverty
Former Tory leader outlines plan to help the worst off

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/may/26/iain-duncan-smith-interview-welfare

A dangerous political force has been let loose in Whitehall: a politician with no personal ambition whose only aim is to preside over the wholesale reform of his patch.

He [will] press ahead with his new task as work and pensions secretary. This is to reform what he regards as Britain's bloated and inefficient welfare system, which he believes discourages many of the 5 million people who rely on state support from working.

“I am here because I want this to be the most reforming government on benefits for a generation. I think we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity."

David Cameron brought Duncan Smith back into the frontline after he rehabilitated himself following his unhappy experience as leader by becoming one of the Tories' most influential thinkers in decades on social breakdown. As leader, the former Scots Guards officer was introduced to searing levels of poverty, and the cycle that is often impossible to escape, when he visited the Easterhouse estate on the eastern outskirts of Glasgow. His experience prompted Duncan Smith to establish the Centre for Social Justice, which produced a lengthy report on Breakdown Britain

These ideas will be informing his work as work and pensions secretary and also as chairman of the first cabinet committee dedicated to promoting social justice by tackling the root causes of poverty.

Thatcherite Tories, who believe the welfare budget is ripe for cuts, may be disappointed by Duncan Smith's language.

"The purpose of my life here is to improve the quality of life of the worst off in society." he says. "If somebody tells me I have to do something different then I won't be here any longer. Tattooed across my heart is that I didn't come here in any shape or form simply as a cheeseparer. What I have come to do is look root and branch at how we deliver welfare which is aimed at groups at the bottom end of society who need help and support, either because they can't work or because they can but they are unable to get back to work, or because they are disabled."

The CSJ report proposes the merger of eight benefits into just two, the withdrawal of benefits much more slowly for low earners, and the removal of rules that stop people claiming out-of-work benefits entirely if they do only a few hours' work a week.

Duncan Smith will chair a cabinet committee on social justice, saying it is ironic that it has taken the Conservative party to set up such a committee.

Ironic indeed.
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Layer 239 . . . Political Porn, Souls Laid Bare, and All That Jazz

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This weekend has been a high water mark for desperate over-stressed middle-aged male politicians flashing their naked emotions in front of TV cameras.

It was hard to tear one's eyes away from a gasping Alastair Campbell welling up with barely suppressed emotions to the point of choked silence for what seems like almost a minute in the company of Andrew Marr and viewers on live TV this morning.*

To make it more like a proper porn show we should have had viewers phoning in their own questions in an attempt to get Ally C to expose even more of his private "bits". If he has problems with the mild questions and comments of a pretty non-threatening Marrtian then imagine how much more we would get from him coming into contact (even virtual contact) with proper panting punters who long to see what's really concealed beneath the sharp suit and the professional scowl.

Marr's questioning, of course, was not about Ally's new 'novel', the promotion of which was the reason for allowing Marr this opportunity to undress him a little. No - it was about Iraq, Ally's appearance in front of Chilcott and Co, and Blair's continuing denial that he deliberately lied to and misled Parliament.

We should nail this question right now. Ally sees, quite rightly, that Blair is not a LIAR. To be a liar you have to know that what you're saying is untrue.

What psychopathic liars do is convince themselves that the stuff that comes out of their mouths is true, or at least not factually incorrect, as far as they care to see. Not that they care to delve too deeply into what they actually want to believe, and what they want their listeners or victims to believe.

An example of this would be Hitler actually believing that the Jews were responsible for all of Germany's ills. And also believing that the Final Solution was the correct one. ("I did what I thought was right.")

(Incidentally, I wonder what level of collateral damage Blair would have considered acceptable in Iraq. 100,000 killed, injured and made homeless? One million? 2 million? 6 million?)

Did Ally also believe in WMD and the 45 minutes? Does he still? This is hardly the point. He simply believes that his pal Tony believed it. And Tony was not, therefore, a liar.

Does Ally then see, especially with hindsight, that Tone is/was a psychopath?**

Again, it's beside the point. Nobody's asking him that question, and no-one's likely to. And there's no way he'd answer it honestly if they did.

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I once had the ill-fortune to sit and listen to Blair whilst he made a speech. It's the dead eyes that give it away. Dead in the sense of not being able to connect in any proper empathetic sense with other people. Dead as in unable to really look and observe properly. His eyes function only in the service of his own ego and his own ambitions.

It's a bit like the Terminator - a robot who knows he's a robot, whose relentless existence is only for the purpose of carrying out its mission, which is twofold: to survive and prosper, and to defeat its enemies.

There's nothing wrong with its logic circuits - they're probably better, faster and stronger than any actual human - by far. What it lacks, of course, is a beating, emotional heart, a genuine concern for others, and a spirit capable of feeling either transcendental joy and bliss, or genuine sadness and melancholy.

Joy is presumably what Ally feels when Burnley FC occasionally win a match. (Why else carry on going to their matches?) And as of today, let no-one say that he has no feelings or emotions; or call him Mr Angry or Mr Terminator. The more subtle and sincere feelings may be unusually well hidden, on the whole, but they're in there somewhere.

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As indeed they are in Gordon Brown, who appears to have broken down and cried on camera whilst recording a programme this week.

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*
See the relevant part of the interview on video, and read more about it, and about Gordo, here -

Alastair Campbell in emotional defence of Blair on Iraq

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8502730.stm

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**
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopath

Psychopathy is a personality disorder whose hallmark is a lack of empathy. Researcher Robert Hare, whose Hare Psychopathy Checklist is widely used, describes psychopaths as "intraspecies predators who use charisma, manipulation, intimidation, sexual intercourse and violence to control others and to satisfy their own needs. Lacking in conscience and empathy, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse".

Psychopaths are glib and superficially charming, and many psychopaths are excellent mimics of normal human emotion; some psychopaths can blend in, undetected, in a variety of surroundings, including corporate environments. There is neither a cure nor any effective treatment for psychopathy; there are no medications or other techniques which can instill empathy, and psychopaths who undergo traditional talk therapy only become more adept at manipulating others. The consensus among researchers is that psychopathy stems from a specific neurological disorder which is biological in origin and present from birth. It is estimated that one percent of the general population are psychopaths.

The prototypical psychopath has deficits or deviances in several areas: interpersonal relationships, emotion, and self-control. Psychopaths gain satisfaction through antisocial behavior, and do not experience shame, guilt, or remorse for their actions.

[Remember Tone was given the opportunity by Chilcott to express some regrets - and totally flunked it. Whoops!]

Psychopaths lack a sense of guilt or remorse for any harm they may have caused others, instead rationalizing the behavior, blaming someone else, or denying it outright.

Psychopaths also lack empathy towards others in general, resulting in tactlessness, insensitivity, and contemptuousness. All of this belies their tendency to make a good, likable first impression. Psychopaths have a superficial charm about them, enabled by a willingness to say anything without concern for accuracy or truth. Shallow affect also describes the psychopath's tendency for genuine emotion to be short lived and egocentric with an overall cold demeanor. They do not . . .  deeply recognize the risk of being caught, disbelieved or injured as a result of their behaviour.

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Also important to have on record Clare Short's efforts to put the record straight last week

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8501087.stm

Clare was on Question Time last week, alongside George Galloway, Charlie ('Lord') Falconer, Melanie Phillips, and the makeweight, Teresa May.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/8500549.stm

This Question Time, from Coventry, was one of the best ever. Short and Galloway, especially now they're unconstrained by party allegiances, are genuine loose cannons, not afraid to speak truth to power. See it here -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qn443#segments

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The Virtual Revolution

Another episode of this excellent series on TV last night.

How 20 Years of the Web has Reshaped our Lives

Good talking heads - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Al Gore, Stephen Fry, etc.

Discover more about The Virtual Revolution with our exclusive 3D Documentary Explorer. Mixing video from the series, with the web pages that tell the story of The Virtual Revolution, this is a radical new way to experience a documentary.

See all 4 programmes coming up in the next 7 days (including repeats).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/

http://alekskrotoski.com/

Al Gore said, "The web is capable of supporting a rising political consciousness. It will have a more profound effect on civilisation than the invention of the printing press."

Others said,

* The web tends to lead naturally to openness
* It's impossible for any one government to either police or control the web
* The web allows China's masses to give shape and direction to their spontaneous energy
* The web is "Against the Machine"
* Paypal is one of the means by which barriers between people can be broken down
*The web enables you to contact the kind of people you have something in common with, and people you can learn from.

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Biddles @ Biddles

One of the essentials for a really good live music venue is that it's situated within easy walking distance of home so that you can stroll there after consuming a couple of whiskies, a pint, and a glass of wine with dinner, and still roll home afterwards after drinking more wine, preferably after paying no more than a reasonable £3.20 for a decent glass of house red.

On top of that, if you can get a seat right next to the band, with a clear view of how the keyboard player is playing his Hammond XK3 - which drawbars he's using, etc - then you might find yourself in jazz heaven.

Of course it depends on the quality of the band. The Biddle Brothers Band playing at the bar of the same name were excellent last night. Not perfect, but very good indeed. Well done Biddles for bringing them back, and for continuing to run such a funky venue, late license and all . . .

http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2008/11/29/claptons-community-pubs/

Biddle Brothers
88 Lower Clapton Road E5 0QR

Nestled in a crevice of Lower Clapton Road, the Biddle Brothers pub belies its almost Zen-like external anonymity by its gloriously rich interior, seducing the weary traveller with a warm promise of cold drinks and deep, comfy couches.

Surrounded by paintings from local artists, Biddle Bothers isn’t cheap but it is a beautifully kept and friendly local bar with a thriving community of loyal regulars.

Owned and run by Paco the Dog, the one-time builders’ merchant features a full programme of regular live acoustic and open mic nights, making good use of the obligatory piano-in-the-corner and its pretty good aural acoustics in the tiny hub of a back room.

Think nothing of sitting down, putting your feet up, play with Paco and passing an enjoyable evening forgetting about your worries.

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In a way it reminds me of nights at the Mercer's Arms back in the day, sipping pints whilst listening to great bands like the original Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, up close and personal. That was also the beginning of my love for blues and jazz played on the Hammond B3 with a Lesley cabinet amp - standing just feet away from guys like Wynder K Frog as they worked the keyboard, creating amazing soul-gripping sounds from keys and drawbars. Keith Emerson - when he was still with The Nice. 'America'!

Oh yes! - and Brian Auger (with Julia Driscoll) - Season of the Witch. Unforgettable.

Here's an interesting little musical history -

http://deanocity3.piczo.com/coventrysgigconcertguide1960-85?cr=5&linkvar=000044


There's only one mention of the Mercer's Arms though. Strange.

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

Rod Stewart used to sing with Brian Auger's 'Steampacket', along with Julie Driscoll and Long John Baldry: they once played the Hotel Leofric jazz club in Broadgate.

"The Jeff Beck Group snapped him up as lead singer for three years until 1969. Some Coventrians still debate whether Stewart performed with the band when they played the Mercer's Arms, near the old Highfield Road stadium, during this period."

I can clear this up. The confusion stems from the fact that the Beck group didn't actually play there. Auger & Driscoll did, and Rod the Mod definitely wasn't with them.

http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/coventry-evening-telegraph-england/mi_7969/is_2006_Nov_7/cov-rod-40-years-entertainment/ai_n34409181/
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Jazz

Johnny Dankworth RIP

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/feb/07/sir-john-dankworth-obituary

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

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/tv-radio-obituaries/7180882/Sir-John-Dankworth.html

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Desert Island Discs

Gok Wan this week. The wonderful Gok. I hadn't realised what an amazing life story he has, and that he's a lad from the Midlands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qg0r2/Desert_Island_Discs_Gok_Wan/

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

He has good taste in music too - Tracey Chapman, Lou Reed, Brian Ferry . . . In fact two songs by the wonderful Ms Chapman.

"It definitely wasn't because I was talented", said Gok, very amusingly, when pondering why he'd been given a place at a school of speech and drama.

And he was another male who this weekend cracked up with emotion - whilst remembering and reflecting on what it felt like to look fat, and to feel ugly.
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Layer 232 . . . Welcome To The Real World

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The Guardian had a curious "Advertisement Promotion" in it yesterday, a four-page spread called "Welcome to the Real World", wrapped around the Family section of the newspaper - for want of a better place.

It's there in the paper to draw attention to a DVD that was given away yesterday, and the front page of this 'promotion' says, "The world is changing, but our education system is not keeping pace. A new hard-hitting film calls for a fresh approach to learning."

As you probably know, Oxzen is very keen on fresh approaches to learning. Haven't had time to watch the DVD as yet, but will get round to it today. Be assured the next blog will reveal all.

In the meantime, here's a bit more blurb for you:

"The world is changing rapidly, but our education system is not keeping pace with these changes . . .

Young people need an education rich with opportunities for practical and vocational training, alongside traditional academic study. As Dr Cream Wright, (Cream?) global chief of education for Unicef says in a new film, "Schools fail to prepare young people for contemporary society, for the realities of the world we live in and, more significantly, for the emerging issues of our time".

The film We Are The People We've Been Waiting For, inspired and guided by Oscar-winning producer Lord Puttnam, looks at where the education system is going wrong and how we can address the issues that are of vital importance to everyone."

David Puttnam is definitely one of the good guys, so the film is probably well worth watching.

Have a look at this 'advertorial' -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/we-are-the-people/welcome-to-the-real-world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/we-are-the-people 

And it's on the Internet!

http://www.wearethepeoplemovie.com/....................................................

So what else has been happening in The Real World?

Simon Jenkins wrote another superb column that gets to the real heart of the matter as far as the banking disaster is concerned. Everyone needs to get their heads round this piece of reality.

Name, shame, blame the bankers, if you like. But they're the wrong target

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/name-shame-bankers-wrong-target

Who said bankers "just don't get it"? They get it absolutely. Bankers are doing what they pay themselves to do, make money. They are performing what economists from Adam Smith to Karl Marx regarded as capitalism's sacred ritual, profiting by rigging markets and shedding risk. Like all professions, their first responsibility is to their peer group and their second to their shareholders. It is not their job to run the country, only sometimes to ruin it.

The banking community came a cropper last year but manoeuvred itself out of trouble by deploying the oldest trick in the book: claiming that the government needed them even more than they needed it. They were "too big to fail".

Ministers and regulators bought the gambit hook, line and sinker. They all hollered that bonuses were "ludicrous" (Darling), that banks had "lost sight of basic British values" (Brown) and were "antisocial" (Lord Turner). But it was all mouth. For them to accuse the banks of behaving obscenely might be a brief buzz, but what are a few insults to a banker on a roll?

It was not the banks that do not get it, but those on whom the public relies to guard its interests: Brown, Darling, Myners, King, Turner, the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority. The bankers this past year have played a blinder. Next month they will give themselves large bonuses while the nation troops to the dole office. They merit the order of the golden fleece, first class.

Then came today's report from the latest Hercules sent by Alistair Darling to clean the City's Augean stables, Sir David Walker of Goldman Sachs. He predictably concluded that nothing more than a feather duster was needed. He seemed to think that his fellow bankers would decamp en masse to Monaco if so much as rapped over the knuckles. So what?

As if that were not galling enough for the taxpayer, the supreme court – asked to adjudicate on the racketeering of banks towards overdraft customers – stepped forward to pat them on the head. The judges said it seemed fine to them and went off to make daisy chains in Parliament Square.

Nobody but a fool believes that a free market in anything, left to its own devices, will tend to perfect competition. Economic history attests that it tends to monopoly. That is why it must be regulated. Such regulation, in every sphere of economic life, is democracy's most onerous but essential responsibility. In the case of British banking in 2008, the government's clear duty was to ensure that marketplace discipline curbed the emergence of a debt bubble and that no residual liability, let alone one for some £1.3 trillion, should fall on the state.

Last year was a tragic failure of that responsibility and not one person in authority has accepted blame. The best-told stories might be of millionaire salaries, fancy derivatives, subprimes and sports cars; but what mattered was the denouement, saddling every man, woman and child in Britain with unprecedented levels of lifetime debt. This will be paid for in unemployment and higher taxation in the short term, and in a lower standard of living for the foreseeable future. The bank crash was a national disaster, the economic equivalent of Munich and appeasement.

Ministers have spent the past year propping up toxic debt, but not the British economy, which lurched deep into recession. They did nothing to help it, apart from brief and bizarre assistance to the car market. This was at a time when governments across the world were racing to prop up consumer demand, successfully speeding recovery. It was as if Britain was a one-industry town, that of banking.

Darling and his colleagues were clearly out of their depth. Public money was being spent on an unprecedented scale, with no one in charge knowing where it was going. Where were the public auditors? Still no one has explained the meaning of the much-parroted phrase, too big to fail. A failed bank may be a terrible thing, but then so is an economy crippled by long-term debt service. Which is worse? Why did nobody ever ask?

I find it simply incredible that a chancellor can take over a trillion pounds of public money, some of it in secret, without giving a remotely plausible account of why it was risked as it was, rather than in boosting consumer demand. At present the Chilcot inquiry is asking past ministers and officials why they went to war in Iraq. The reason is that war kills people. What happened to the banks last year did not kill people, but in every other sense it was a seismic event in the history of Britain's political economy. It was a true collapse in political authority. I wonder when someone will stop abusing bankers and fix on those really to blame.

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The other Big Event of last week to catch up with is the start of the Chilcot Inquiry - the Iraq Inquiry. Simon Jenkins, again, injects a dose of reality:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/24/blair-chilcot-inquiry-parliament-iraq

We want Blair's head. But Chilcot won't give it to us

Britain's political community, bored at having to wait six months for an election, is baying for blood. The nation may lack bread, but at least it can have a circus.

It even has a star Christian, Tony Blair, who got us into the mess. The cry is for him to die, and die horribly. The camera must toy with his face in the dock, zooming in on the dripping brow, the writhing body language, the phoney meekness and the mendacity. Damned as a war criminal, Blair must be hung, drawn and quartered and his head impaled on a spike at Temple Bar. He must be Chamberlain after Munich, Eden after Suez. There must be nothing left of him but a puddle of sweat.

The same goes for the rest of them, Gordon Brown, the cabinet, John Scarlett, Alastair Campbell, civil servants, generals, bag carriers and tea ladies. Kill them all. The amphitheatre is packed with MPs and journalists, salivating as the gore runs into the sand. Not Nero in all his pomp staged a show like this one.

What else is Chilcot about? We know the truth. The report can be written in a sentence. Tony Blair went to war in Iraq because he lacked the guts to stand up to George Bush, say the invasion was not justified by facts or law, and refuse to join him in Baghdad. Despite being told to his face by Hans Blix that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he deceived the cabinet and parliament and took his nation to war.

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Morrisey and Zen

Morrisey was on Desert Island Discs today, and he was reasonably interesting - though most of what he said we already knew. His choice of music was less than inspirational.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00p068y

For his luxury he chose a bed, which was original. He reckons he prefers to be on his own for most of the time, and says that going to bed is the highlight of everyone's day.

Kirsty was obviously a fan in her youth.


Commenting on his manner and his attitude, she said, "I don't want to use the word Zen . . . but at 50 you seem less spikey, more reflective and thoughtful, and at ease with yourself."

Which is an interesting, inaccurate and very common interpretation of what Zen is about.

Zen is really concerned with helping us to see through to the reality of things, and having seen reality we may well be motivated to become more energised, more challenging , and less 'laid back' if we feel moved to try to do something about the condition of the world.

See also:

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-14-zen-buddhism-breaking-chain.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-18-nature-of-reality-redefining.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-20-fully-evolved-humans.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-12-spiritual-intelligence.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-23-zen-abd-art-of-everything.html
http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2008/04/layer-24-chopping-wood-carrying-water.html
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Layer 216 . . . Remembrance, Wreaths, Wars, Careers, Enlightenment and Entertainment.

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It's late autumn, and it's Remembrance Sunday. For the first time in years I watched on TV the great and the good, including those who were the cheerleaders for wars of aggression on Afghanistan and Iraq, placing their poppy wreaths on the Cenotaph. There was even bonnie Prince Harry, he of the nifty Nazi party gear, he of the snappy camouflaged personalised headgear that proclaimed “We do bad things to bad people”, solemnly laying a wreath on behalf of daddy, who's away doing something important today.

The Cenotaph in Whitehall, London has played host to the Remembrance Service for the past nine decades. But how did the monument become such an indelible part of the UK's commemoration of those who lost their lives in past conflicts?

Originally intended as a small part of the Peace Day events of July 1919, The Cenotaph was designed and built by Edwin Lutyens at the request of the then Prime Minister Lloyd George.

The Cenotaph - which literally means Empty Tomb in Greek - was initially a wood and plaster construction intended for the first anniversary of the Armistice in 1919. At its unveiling the base of the monument was spontaneously covered in wreaths to the dead and missing from The Great War. Such was the extent of public enthusiasm for the construction it was decided that The Cenotaph should become a permanent and lasting memorial.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/remembrance/how/cenotaph.shtml

The Cenotaph was deliberately placed in Whitehall, right outside the Foreign Office, near to the entrance to Downing Street, as a reminder to the people who run this country that wars of aggression are inherently evil, that wars should be fought only as a last resort, and even then should be fought in ways that avoid the unnecessary slaughter of civilians and service personnel alike.

So much for the theory. 1968 was the only year since the Cenotaph was constructed in which our military were not engaged in warfare, somewhere or other. Ah yes – the year of peace and love. The year of wearing flowers in our hair.

Well at least the much-reviled Harold Wilson, back in the Sixties,  refused to send British forces to Vietnam. With hindsight Wilson was a political giant compared to the pygmies and bozos who succeeded him.

Overall, Wilson is seen to have managed a number of difficult political issues with considerable tactical skill, including such potentially divisive issues for his party as the role of public ownership, British membership of the European Community, and the Vietnam War.

US President Lyndon Johnson brought pressure to bear for at least a token involvement of British military units in the Vietnam War. Wilson consistently avoided any commitment of British forces.

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

Mum asked me to go out and buy her a poppy, and spoke movingly about her five brothers and their involvement in WW2, on both land and sea. She also talked about dad's near-fatal injury near Caen, in Normandy. She spoke with regret about having missed the recent documentary on TV about the bombing of Coventry. She still remembers the bombing. She can't stand the bangs and explosions of bonfire night. She doesn't see the fun in big bangs and terrifying noises. There's a fair bit of talk these days about those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, but almost nothing was said about the after-effects of war on my parents' generation. They just had to keep a stiff upper lip and get on with life as best they could.

Every day brings more news of the latest dead and injured soldiers in Afghanistan. More and more of us demand withdrawal, and are countered by those who say that having come this far we can't just back out of the war, leaving the Afghanis to their fate. That would be irresponsible. Even if that's what the majority of Afghanis want us to do. No - we're there to rid the world of jihadis and assorted bad guys, preventing them plotting their devilish plots, thereby keeping the civilised world safe for the good guys. Us.

We've helped to kill more than 100,000 innocent Iraqis in revenge for the Twin Towers - even though Iraq had nothing to do with that atrocity – but we're still the Christian good guys. Even though Jesus said forget about revenge - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Especially the eyes and teeth of people who haven't laid a finger on you.

In that instance “turning the other cheek” would have involved staying in control of destructive emotions and in a completely objective spirit of non-attachment setting about 1) discovering who were the perpetrators of those criminal acts, and 2) bringing them to justice. Yes - letting the international courts of justice deal with the criminal perpetrators. But no – we had to have a War On Terror and the ruthless destruction of an entire country. Just because we could. Regardless of the cost to those involved in and those affected by the war. Regardless of the near-destruction of the entire civilian infrastructure in Iraq. Hospitals, homes, power supplies, industries, commerce, trade and livelihoods. Afghanistan had a lot less to lose from having the shit shelled out of it. Though it still lost plenty. And hasn't noticeably gained a great deal.

Yes – those were the days. Shock and Awe. Hell – rebuilding Iraq, or trying to, or appearing to, was at least profitable. Incredibly profitable for Uncle Sam's favoured sons and daughters – Halliburton, Blackwater, et al.  The world's first privatised war and semi-reconstruction of an entire country.

Well they do say you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. For the USA and its allies the world isn't so much their oyster as their omelette.
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There was an excellent documentary on TV last week about Harry Patch and the last of the WW1 generation, and the things they went through in the trenches.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/6515443/Harry-Patch-the-reluctant-hero.html

At one point during the advance a German emerged from a trench, bayonet fixed, and ran towards Patch. The 19-year-old drew his service revolver and shot the German in the shoulder. Still he came on.
The gun team had made an unusually humane and highly irregular pact that they would not shoot to kill unless absolutely necessary, and Patch remembered this code as he again took aim. “I couldn’t kill him. He was a man I never knew, I couldn’t talk to him. I shot him above the ankle, above the knee. He went down. He said something to me in German – God knows what it was – but for him the war was over.”

Like most of those who had survived the war, Harry Patch simply returned to his former life as a civilian and settled down to married life. But he returned to Combe Down “thoroughly disillusioned”: “I could never understand why my country could call me from my peacetime job and train me to go to France and try to kill a man I never knew. Why did we fight? I asked myself that, many times."

He never spoke about the war – not even to his wife of 57 years. In this regard, he was not unusual. As Dennis Goodwin, founder, along with his son, of the World War One Veterans’ Association, puts it, these men “simply retreated into their own shell hole of memories”.

Patch refused to join veterans’ associations, had no wish to revisit battlefields, never attended a regimental reunion and avoided all war films. He did, however, keep in touch with his old “No 1”, Bob Haynes, until he died in the 1970s.

Patch did his best to repress all memories of the trenches. It was only at the age of 98, when he moved to Fletcher House, a residential care home in the Somerset city of Wells, that a minor incident brought those memories back. The door to his room was opposite a linen cupboard, and one night someone switched on the fluorescent light inside. Flashes of light came through the glass panel above the door to Patch’s room. Half asleep, he was transported in an instant back to Passchendaele. “It was the flash of a bomb,” he recalled. “That flash brought it all back.” He had been suffering from bad dreams about the war, and decided that the time had come to face his demons.

In the autumn of 2004, aged 106, he was persuaded to travel to Flanders for a BBC documentary, The Last Tommy. He was filmed at Tyne Cot, the largest British war cemetery, containing almost 12,000 graves, many of them holding unidentified bodies.

“Some of the boys buried here,” he remarked, “are the same age as me, killed on the same day I was fighting. Any one of them could have been me. Millions of men came to fight in this war, and I find it incredible that I am now the only one left. Just like them, when I went over the top I didn’t know whether I would last longer than five minutes. We were the PBI – the Poor Bloody Infantry – and we were expendable. What a waste. What a terrible waste."

There was also an excellent documentary on the last days of the German Democratic Republic and the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Eastern European communist regimes. Catch it on the BBC iPlayer:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00nx0y6/The_Secret_Life_of_the_Berlin_Wall/

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For young people contemplating embarking on a rewarding career we have news today of the most rewarding careers. Banking? Stockbroking? Currency trading?

http://uk.biz.yahoo.com/06112009/389/10-rewarding-career-choices.html

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If you bothered to go to that hyperlink you'll have noticed that the thing those top careers have in common is providing direct benefits to other people. Careers for carers. In almost every case they are “labours of love”. None of them qualify for bonuses and share handouts for hitting profits targets, which are very much still happening for our top bankers.

This is what Prince Siddartha discovered on his journey to becoming the Buddha – that to become fulfilled, self-actualised and happy you need to do things in the service of those less able, less strong, less well-off. Or as Bob Dylan once said, you gotta serve somebody. Not God or a god. Some-body. Preferably many. And not at the expense of any other body, or bodies. Such as innocent Afghanis and Iraqis.

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On a much lighter note, although he's actually a very serious guy (see previous comments about John Cooper Clark in a blog I recommend and which now has fully functioning hyperlinks http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2009/02/layer-124-working-classes.html) I found this on The Independent website today -

A life of rhyme: John Cooper Clarke, the 'punk Poet Laureate', grants Robert Chalmers his first major interview in more than 20 years
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/a-life-of-rhyme-john-cooper-clarke-the-punk-poet-laureate-grants-robert-chalmers-his-first-major-interview-in-more-than-20-years-1814712.html

This is a wonderful piece of reportage, that had me laughing out loud, and feeling even more in awe of JCC's talent. Do read it.

Lots of JCC's stuff from Zip Style Method, Snap Crackle and Bop, etc, is on Spotify. Including the ever-delightful 'Twat', which always comes to mind whenever I think of that other fave from Salford, Hazel Bloody Blears.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS5QMT-JUt4
http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/twat.html

Evidently Chickentown - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGWhjojt5dw
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEWT6pdjON8&NR=1&feature=fvwp
and from The Sopranos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2DShC4GhVc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kLhZTP4ywY&feature=related

Beasley Street - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37QUUwp9xIs&NR=1&feature=fvwp
and the words - http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/beasley.html

Midnight Shift - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7DQRWeTWos&feature=related
and http://www.cyberspike.com/clarke/midnight.html

Daily Express - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spvvAdAN5bA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bid-HjogzSw
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Layer 131 Brown, Congress, Mando, Witless Crap and Apologies.

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Oxzen’s view that the world is full of twats and self-important tossers has been amply reinforced in the past couple of days.

BBC2 last night screened an hour-long documentary about the cringe-makingly awful British contribution to the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics - 8 minutes of tacky, embarrassingly awful rubbish.

I needed to watch it because I’ve been wondering who was responsible for such a pile of complete dross - and now I know. Step forward Martin Green and Stephen Powell - godfathers of garbage, impresarios of shameful bilge that made Britain the laughing-stock of the entire planet.

What made matters worse, of course, was the fact that the Chinese had just mounted what may be regarded as the greatest-ever show on earth, when you consider the opening and closing ceremonies combined.

And in comparison, those 8 minutes of British naffness looked unbelievably horrible, nasty, silly and unworthy. Because this country does have some great artistes and creative geniuses, here and there. So who put these two twats in charge?

And who allowed them to carry through with their insane idea to make a roof-shedding London double-decker bus, a footballer and a bunch of crap choreography the centrepiece of ‘our’ contribution? (See Layer 71 - Goodbye To The Games - August 26th.) Lord Sebastian Coe - that’s who. He listened to the ideas of Green and Powell, looked suitably unimpressed, and nodded his daft little head. Deal done. Idiot.

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One of the worst aspects of Gordon Brown is how much he resembles David Blunkett. OK, he’s only 50% blind, but still he has eyes that don’t see, that don’t focus, that clearly aren’t working, that are never animated or sparkle or engage with whoever he’s supposed to be talking to. Two dead eyes that convey nothing at all - no emotion, no warmth, no reaching out or taking in.

Watching him on TV with Obama in the White House was just embarrassing. Two different species of human being. One who’s alert and alive and vibrant, and one who’s a burnt-out wreck.

Brown also has the Blunk’s thick-set dour unattractiveness, the same machine-politician’s dull and deadly delivery, an air of having carefully prepared everything he’s about to say with his clique of readers, researchers, advisers and consultants. He’s therefore a mouthpiece for a set of professional political policy-makers - a group of people that are forever in the thick of it, so to speak - trudging from briefing to briefing, from committee meeting to focus group to Whitehall office.

Brown’s speech to Congress was also embarrassing. A mixture of the leaden and the wooden, with cogs grinding and gears clanking. Why was he doing it? PR of course - selling himself and his dodgy, worn out ideas, whose very structure could be heard creaking and groaning with every dull, clunking sentence. Not so much a big clunking fist - more a set of big, clunking, obsolete ideas.

Obama’s been telling America that it’s the disastrous ideology of Chicago-school free-trade market economics that has brought the world’s economy to total ruin. And here was Brown - having the utter gall and the complete idiocy to lecture Congress on the need to press ahead with open markets and non-protectionist free trade, regardless of the consequences for the downfall of national strategic industries and unemployment.

He expects the Americans to allow their motor industry, for example, to go the same way as ours - either down the plug hole completely, or sold off to smarter foreign operators who will asset-strip and relocate it. And to whose benefit? Does he really still cling to the Friedmanite doctrine that everyone eventually benefits from greater ‘efficiency’ and lower prices, which are supposedly the outcomes of globalisation?

Will he never admit that it’s always the little people that get screwed and then tossed crumbs of comfort after the mega-deals and mergers have gone through, commissions pocketed, lawyers paid off, shareholders paid out, the bosses and their consultants and bankers showered with booty?

He can’t even see how sick we all are of politicians like him acting as the mouthpieces of the fat cats and the bankers, desperately trying to make a busted and broken-down system function as it did before. Not that it ever really worked in the way it was supposed to. As even George Soros has had the honesty to admit - unregulated globalised capitalism itself is the problem, not the solution to anything.

And Brown just doesn’t get it.

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I don’t want to be unfair on Brown. I’m sure he has good intentions, and was as brainwashed as Blair and the others into honestly believing that Chicago-school economics was/is the only game in town, and that it was/is pointless and/or counterproductive to try to regulate Big Finance.

My difficulty in feeling any sense of empathy or caring for him is that he patently failed in the empathy and decency stakes when it came to standing up for principle and what is right. Where was his empathy with the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who were bound to be war victims and bound to suffer homelessness, injury and death? Where was his empathy with the millions of anti-war protestors?

Whereas Obama could see from the outset that the invasion of Iraq and the notion of a war on terr’r was always going to be a ruinous disaster, and had the courage to say so, Brown ranged from staying silent to actively supporting Bush and Blair.

Whereas Will Hutton and other progressive economists & commentators said consistently that NuLabour must re-regulate the City and the money markets, Brown sat in No. 11 Downing Street and paid them no attention - and showed them no respect.

It’s not as if Brown continued to play ball with Bush and the big boys whilst at the same time warning that things had to change, that the party was over, that tax havens had to be closed down, that the bonus culture was no longer acceptable, that the gravy train was about to hit the buffers, as so many predicted it would.

So now he ought to be big enough to deal with the derision and indeed hatred that’s being rained down on him for doing nothing whatsoever to get a grip on the excesses of the City and the bankers, for allowing tax havens and tax avoidance on a huge scale to continue, for allowing industry to flounder, for allowing the bonus culture and naked greed to run rampant, for encouraging oligarchs to prosper and seek refuge in Britain, for allowing the minimum wage to remain so inadequate, for encouraging more and more privatisations and ‘private finance initiatives’. In a word, he ought to apologise, and just say sorry for his pitiful inadequacy as the man in charge of the economy and finance all these years.

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In the Guardian today there’s a piece by one of Blair’s former speechwriters - one Peter Hymen - sorry, Hyman - a callow little twat of the first order if you go by his photograph - whose verdict on the Brown speech was that he “didn’t just give us substance but a little style too”. Substance? Style?!!

Whereas Michael Billington said emphatically that the speech was “low on substance”, and that Brown would do to remember that Mark Anthony’s seemingly triumphant speech was “short-lived and followed by civil commotion, global turmoil, and his own ultimate downfall . . . ”

-----------------------------------

Mando

Someone on Radio 4 yesterday described Lord Peter Mandleson as ‘effectively’ the Deputy Prime Minister. As it happened I’d just been thinking about Harriet Harman, the Deputy Prime Minister, and the attempts by the political establishment to marginalise her and disown her recent statements to the effect that government would ensure that the bankers would not get their fat pensions, regardless of what the current law permits, or insists on.

So let’s think about this. Mandleson, a failed politician and a European Commissioner, a professional bureaucrat, is plucked from Brussels by our Prime Minister and installed as a noble Lord in Parliament, with such duties and status as to make him effectively the Deputy Prime Minister. And we think we live in a democracy?

A man who is regarded by the majority of the population as a scumbag and a toff, a nasty piece of work, and the co-architect of NuLabour, who we therefore hold responsible for the betrayal of the electorate after 1997 and All That, is now someone we should regard as a ‘Lord’, and effectively the Deputy Prime Minister, even though he’d never win any election he now entered.

Not only that, he’s made it his business to press ahead with part-privatisation of the Royal Mail completely against the wishes of the electorate, which is coming round to understanding that nationalised industries, especially where they are also monopolistic and potentially able to benefit from economies of scale, are preferable to privatised businesses which owe no responsibility to the electorate, and operate solely in the interests of shareholders.

It’s clear the man is a megalomaniac and egotist of the first order, with no inclination whatsoever to pay attention to what people actually want, such as radical social change that benefits regular people rather than fat cats. He’s therefore a would-be dictator, with contempt for the masses, and a determination to pursue his own political agendas regardless of the consequences for social justice and democracy.

It’s as though Brown has installed in Parliament as his philosopher’s stone, his business guru and his private mentor, someone with the tendencies of a Hitler, someone who uses every opportunity to use dirty tactics, to smear and ignore opponents, to use disinformation, to do business through cliques and cabals, to empower himself at the expense of everyone else. Which is another very good reason for disliking and reviling Brown, and wanting him to just pack it in and push off.
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Layer 130 . . . The Spirit Level, The Decisive Moment, and the Bankers

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Start The Week this morning featured a book called The Spirit Level, by Wilkinson & Picket. http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/the-spirit-level

Its thesis is that societies which are more equal are healthier. Sweden, Norway, Japan, etc. They have better mental health, less violence, less bullying, less obesity, less crime, smaller prison populations, less teenage pregnancy.

Societies like ours suffer from high levels of “status competition and status anxiety”. And high levels of status consumption.

We therefore have more debt, and more bankruptcies,

We must look again at issues of equality and values. What is the good life? Material standards? More time for contact with families and friends, for proper relaxation, for personal creative pursuits?

The rich must in future pay a greater percentage in taxes.

All of this is well and good, but I think it’s already been written about by Oliver James in ‘Affluenza’, a brilliant book which I'll return to. A real must-read book.

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This week’s Book of the Week on Radio 4 is The Decisive Moment: How the Brain Makes Up Its Mind, by Jonah Lehrer.

Here’s a review in the New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126962.500-review-the-decisive-moment-how-the-brain-makes-up-its-mind-by-jonah-lehrer.html

And another in The Guardian last Saturday: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/28/decisive-moment-element-lehrer-robinson

The Guardian quite cleverly reviews the book alongside another called The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, by Ken Robinson & Lou Aronica.

Weirdly, though, this review never refers to the word “passion”, which is surely the crux of the matter. The problem for all these authors is that they can’t or don’t differentiate between passion, emotion, instinct and intuition.

“Emotions are a crucial part of the decision-making process”, says Lehrer, and it’s true that reactions such as fight, flight and freeze, which appear on the surface of things to be emotions, are key determiners of how we behave. But if we look more closely, we ought to realise that those reactions are part of our instinctual, not our emotional, behaviour. Emotions are primarily negative and stem from our social interactions - anger, greed, jealousy, etc.

Emotions are negative elements that arise from un-intelligence. Emotional intelligence consists of getting a conscious and rational grip on them, and not letting them control us. There’s nothing “intelligent” about emotions, as such - quite the opposite. Emotional intelligence arises from calmness, objectivity, restraint of the ego, and in many cases control of the instincts that are urging us towards fight or flight - although those instincts can be life-savers in certain situations.

It’s so annoying when people talk about and write books about the importance of “emotions” and “instincts” when they actually mean “intuition” and “empathy” and “passion”.

Lehrer says, “When the emotional centres in the brain are damaged or removed, mundane choices become excruciatingly difficult,” when he’s probably talking about the removal of the intuitive and empathetic centres.

He says, for example, “Shooting a film with a multi-camera set-up, as a director you don’t have time to carefully consider each decision - it’s all very instinctual - you just know how things should go”. Which is partly true, in the sense that decision-making by skilled practitioners becomes automatic from practice and experience - but he then goes and spoils it by saying “It all depends on the emotional brain.” No it doesn’t - it’s about memory, learning from experience, and about instinct and intuition. Nothing to do with flaming emotions!

“The process of thinking requires feeling,” he says, which is also true, but again he’s using ‘feeling’ as a synonym for ‘emotion’, which it isn’t. Or rather - it is, because it’s become that, in our dumb society, but it shouldn’t be!

“Reason without emotion is impotent.” Again, no! We can do very nicely without emotion. What we need in order to be potent, and to be effective, is instinct, intuition, passion and empathy, together with a well-developed intellect, and all of them working together harmoniously, preferably during periods of ‘meditation’ or reflection, rather than under pressure during an emergency.

http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/footsteps.htm

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Andrew Rawnsley wrote an excellent column in yesterday’s Observer:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/01/fred-goodwin-pension-rbs

These bankers are lucky that they are not going to jail.

The government has been too timid about confronting these failed financiers. It's time that it showed some teeth.

Assuming it is out of the question to hang, draw and quarter Sir Fred Goodwin, pluck out his intestines while they are still warm and wriggling, stuff them into his greedy mouth and then display his severed head on a spike at the Tower of London, could we settle for shooting him instead? Yes, I know, I'm going soft.

Politicians can use whatever adjectives they like to deplore this banker and his wretched ilk for demanding gargantuan rewards for abject failures. The issue is, what is to be done about it? Bankers are hated by the voters, universally pilloried in the media and their excesses have been condemned by every political party from the SWP to the BNP and all points between. And yet still they don't give a damn.

Exhortation and condemnation is wasted breath unless it is accompanied by action. Even though the bankers are now supplicants to the taxpayer, the government is still showing them far too much reverence. Having been in thrall to the erstwhile masters of the universe for a generation, the political class has still not entirely shed its deference to the fallen money changers.

Even though the banking system is now effectively nationalised, Gordon Brown wants to keep his distance from managing it. That leaves the government with responsibility while still being highly hesitant about exercising control.

Ministers mutter that contractual obligations make it all very difficult. Yet it should not be beyond the capacity of the politicians to cut through the legal thicket. This is one of the advantages of being the government: if the law is an ass, you can change it. Had RBS been any other sort of business, it would now be bust. But for the billions poured in by the taxpayer, this bank would be kaput. There would be no pension honey pot for Sir Fred to stick his paw in. If the law is the problem with stopping him, then the law can be changed.

The voters have seen things more clearly. Their fury with the feckless financiers has cut through the complexities that fog the minds of ministers. The bankers behaved with an arrogant recklessness which broke their own businesses and devastated large sections of the economy.

Now they are getting bailed out with everyone else's money. Bankers should be grateful if they still have a job and relieved that they have not been lynched. They should not be slurping up enormous bonuses and vast pensions. End of story.

The politicians have lacked the clarity of that anger. Even after the bankers had wrecked the financial system, ministers were hesitant about putting them in their place.

If Sir Fred was bothered about what everyone thought of him, he would have long ago left the country to live the rest of his life caring for the destitute of Mongolia. Men like Fred the Shred do not feel shame. They feel only for their wallets.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Barack Obama has had a clearer eye about what he is dealing with, and therefore a firmer grasp of what needs to be done. The president, being new to office and of a younger generation than Gordon Brown, is not trapped by the past compromises with casino capitalism which were made by the prime minister and other centre-left leaders of his vintage. Obama did not hesitate. He crisply told bankers that their salaries would be capped and that they could forget about pocketing any more bonuses until the taxpayers had got their money back.

In his speech a few days ago to both houses of Congress, the new president gave a compelling and unflinching account of the vices of the bubble years. "The fact is our economy did not fall into decline overnight," he told America. "We have lived through an era where too often short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity." He used the pulpit of the presidency to tell his people that they had arrived at a "day of reckoning".

I recommend that the prime minister watches Obama's address to Congress. That succeeded because he gave a candid account of what went wrong during the bubble years and that allowed him to be persuasive about how it can be put right. How does Gordon Brown follow that? He could do a lot worse than copy it.

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Charlie Brooker’s column is better than ever today, cynical, funny and very angry, and relates to what I was saying in Layer 129 about people waking up to reality. It also sits with what Andrew Rawnsley is saying about bankers and politicians. Here’s a couple of Charlie quotes:

It's all over. The politicians have finally shut us out of their game for good and we have nowhere left to turn. We're not part of their world any more. We don't even speak the same language. We're the ants in their garden. The bacteria in their stools. They have nothing but contempt for us. They snivel and lie and duck questions on torture - on torture, for Christ's sake - while demanding we respect their authority. They monitor our every belch and fart, and insist it's all for our own good.

Straw wrote, "If people were angels there would be no need for government . . . But sadly people are not all angels." That rather makes it sound as though he believes politicians aren't mere people. Maybe they're the gods of Olympus. Maybe that's why they're in charge.

Thing is, they could get away with this bullshit while times were good, while people were comfortable enough to ignore what was happening; when people were focusing on plasma TVs and iPods and celebrity gossip instead of what the politicians were doing - not because they're stupid, but because they know a closed shop when they see one. But now it looks as if those times are at an end, and more and more of us are pulling the dreampipes from the back of our skulls, undergoing a negative epiphany; blinking into the cold light of day.

Consequently the police are preparing for a "summer of rage". To the powers that be, that probably just means more tiny monochrome blobs jumping up and down on the long-distance monitor for their amusement. Should it turn out to be more visceral than that, they'll have no one to blame but themselves.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/charlie-brooker-politicians

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Gary Young’s column today is one of his very best:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/obama-administration-ambitions

It's about to get nasty: time for Obama's movement to get moving.
On Monday he held a bipartisan fiscal summit where he pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term. On Tuesday he addressed both houses of Congress for the first time, promising the nation: "We will recover, we will rebuild." On Thursday he produced a budget that set out to redistribute wealth, heal the sick and save the planet. On Friday he stopped the war. On Saturday he threw down the gauntlet to special interests and lobbyists. And on the seventh day he rested.

In the course of a regular presidency, any one of these might be seen as a bold project. To tackle them all in one term seems ambitious to the point of foolhardiness. To announce them all in one week lies somewhere between the audacity of hope and the pugnacity of hubris.

But then this is no regular presidency - a function not just of the man but the times. "You never let a serious crisis go to waste," his chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, told reporters after the election. And this crisis is serious.

This is the planet’s only real hope - that Obama uses the Shock Doctrine against its originators, and moves very quickly to change the things that need changing. As described above, he’s certainly not hanging around.

Domestically he has committed himself to a paradigm-shifting budget that marks a decisive break with more than a generation of neoliberal policies. The notion that taxes can go up as well as down, that the government has the ability and duty to do good, and that tackling inequality has moral values challenge the core assumptions that have dominated political culture in London and Washington for almost three decades. It is an agenda that Labour had a mandate to deliver - and wasted.

Those who point to the troop surge and recent elections in Iraq as evidence that the invasion was a success are trying to put lipstick on a pig that has been slaughtered, gutted and turned into chops. The war has killed more than 1 million Iraqis and caused 4 million to flee their homes - half displaced internally and half externally. It has strengthened Iran in the region and created a generation of Islamic fundamentalists worldwide. On every front, by its own tawdry standards, it has been an unmitigated disaster. Its failure is not just humiliating for America's neocons, militarists and Republicans but for the useful idiots who gave them cover, including the British government.

Bush certainly broadened and sharpened disdain for US foreign policy and mobilised huge numbers against it. But he did not invent American imperialism, he just revealed its limits. Those who claim he tarnished America's great reputation abroad were apparently unaware that in vast swaths of Central and South America, the Middle East (with the exception of Israel), the Arab world, and parts of Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, it was already pretty grubby.

Obama's budget is a different matter entirely. Its signature elements involve tax increases on families earning more than $250,000 (£175,000), the introduction of a universal healthcare system, an economy-wide carbon-trading system, and grants for low-income students. In short, it intends to address the growing inequalities in American society.

Conservatives are in ideological retreat and organisational disarray. The system they cherish - capitalism - is collapsing around their ears and taking their mantras with it.

The left is better organised than it has been since the 1960s. It has a popular president, controls both houses of Congress, has a grassroots presence and - thanks to eight years of Bush - fire in its belly. A group of leftwing bloggers, unions and other activists have just teamed up to form a leftwing pressure group within the Democratic party. The blogosphere has done for the left what talk radio did for the right in the 1990s - provided the base with a platform and organising potential to put pressure on its leadership.

This week was busy - the weeks to come may also get nasty.

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Jackie Ashley’s column is also worth a read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/02/labour-policies-opinion-polls

The parties must end this mood of confusion and drift.

On all sides there is everything to fight for. The dominance of the City types is over, and ideology matters again..