Layer 524 . . . Bruce Springsteen, Wrecking Ball, Angry Patriotism, Optimism, Rocking, Protesting, Jingoism and Taking Care of Our Own

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This piece is an appreciation of a man whose music is brilliant, and whose art stands alongside the best ever to come out of America, alongside that of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young. His stage shows are still the most dynamic of all time - right up there with the Stones and the Who at their very best. The fact that he's willing and able to follow in the footsteps of the great blue-collar and overtly political songwriters of the past - Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger - is the icing on this particular cake. He's also steeped in the blues and can sing and play the blues as well as the great black songwriters and performers. He also happens to have a sense of perspective as well as a sense of humour.

Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'

The Boss explains why there is a critical, questioning and angry patriotism at the heart of his new album Wrecking Ball

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/feb/17/bruce-springsteen-wrecking-ball?

by Fiachra Gibbons

At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.

Indeed, it is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption: "Hold tight to your anger/ And don't fall to your fears … Bring on your wrecking ball."

"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream," Springsteen told the conference, where the album was aired for the first time. It was written, he claimed, not just out of fury but out of patriotism, a patriotism traduced.

"What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account," he later told the Guardian. "There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism."

The tone is set from the start with . . . We Take Care of Our Own – a Born in the USA for our times –  sung with mocking irony through clenched teeth by a heart that still wants it to be true. "From the shotgun shack to the Superdome/ There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home." It is a typical Springsteen appeal to a common decency beyond the civil war he sees sapping America.

"Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire."

Springsteen, 62, says he is not afraid of how the album will be received in election-year America: "The temper has changed. And people on the streets did it. Occupy Wall Street changed the national conversation – the Tea Party had set it for a while. The first three years of Obama were under them.

"Previous to Occupy Wall Street, there was no push back at all saying this was outrageous – a basic theft that struck at the heart of what America was about, a complete disregard for the American sense of history and community … In Easy Money the guy is going out to kill and rob, just like the robbery spree that has occurred at the top of the pyramid – he's imitating the guys on Wall Street. An enormous fault line cracked the American system right open whose repercussion we are only starting to be feel.

"Nobody had talked about income inequality in America for decades – apart from John Edwards – but no one was listening. But now you have Newt Gingrich talking about 'vulture capitalism' – Newt Gingrich! – that would not have happened without Occupy Wall Street."

You tend get a better class of comment on Bruce features:

kjeeThis a 62 year old musician saying these things.. and all power to him.Can we have a few more 23 year old musicians saying these things as well?

RonnieWouldBruuuuuce!!!Springsteen fucking rules.

BeazleThe greatest American white live act there has ever been and one hell of a genuinely caring guy.

6ofclubsThe boss, not only a great artist, but a great man in general standing up for everything that is decent and just in the world.He is what I would like to think is a true American Partiot.The man is a hero for many differant generations.

ChristinuvielWhat an utter legend! By far the best live act I've seen, and someone whose music is full of intelligence, passion and talent. It's always worth listening to what Bruce has to say, and as others have pointed out, his is true patriotism, wanting what will really help the people of your country and others. Look forward to hearing this album in its entirety, though it will be sad to hear Big Man Clarence's sax for the last time on it.

DontCallMeShirleyCan't wait for this album.The Boss is at his best when he goes political. Still hasn't lost anything, even at 62. I actually felt a little deflated coming out of his concert a while back - I knew that no matter who I would see play live in my lifetime, nothing could ever top that.

stfcbobResponse to kjee, As kjee says why haven`t we got dozens of angry bands/artists making songs like this ?Bruce Springsteen is a legend.

gingerjonI'm going to join the sycophantic parade ... Springsteen is angrier, better informed, more erudite and altogether rockier than artists forty years his junior.

cryddaThe greatest live performer rock has ever known and one of its best song writers.Long may he keep on rocking and protesting.

mmmmbeerThese kind of songs speak to me and for me and I don't care who trolls. Ry Cooder has recently released a similar polemic (Pull Up Some Dust) and it all adds to the groundswell.

Bruce Springsteen is not afraid to use the 'p' word (patriotism) either and I think he's right to do so. Patriotism is exactly about 'taking care of our own' and it's patriotic to care for your citizens. It's the antithesis of patriotism to grab as much wealth as you can, to lobby, bribe and intimidate your way to riches and wave a flag as you secrete your wealth offshore. Here in Britain we are less comfortable with outward shows of patriotism - Samuel Johnson refers - but maybe it's about time we took the flag away from the fascists and gave it to the Occupy group.

nattybumpoSpringsteen has always been political and his message has never been needed more. With muppets like Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich running to be President; his voice could help The USA to escape from the perils of the new type of Reaganomics they offer.It's a shame we can't overturn the moral vacuum we now have in this country with someone of his stature. Someone who could articulate in verse the election lies of "The NHS Is Safe In My Hands"; or "Let's Fuck Over The Disabled"!In fact many Government policies would make excellent song lyrics; all we need now is for someone to add a decent tune.........

jamesdarWhy is it the guys protesting against the effect of the Bush years are the older ones (Springsteen, Neil Young on Living with War)? What happened to rock and pop for rebellious youth?

fortyrunnerSpringsteen is the single most consistent artist for nearly 40 years.
The Stones, The Who, Dylan, McCartney etc had a golden period of maybe 10-15 years. Springsteen has continued to knock out amazing material in a variety of genres and his passion is still as strong.e is also the best live performer I have ever seen - amazing stuff.

aylestoneboy1Why isn't there a British musician saying these things about the horrific state that this country is in? A minority government destroying the NHS and rejigging the educational system with limited opposition. The welfare state is being killed off.

This is a country where clearly the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Culturally Sir Julian Fellowes and Etonian actors dominate. Adele complains about paying tax.

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Jingoism is no answer to England's ebbing power

From the EU to football and the Falklands, England must abandon its memories of empire to survive in a changing world

by Billy Bragg

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/feb/17/jingoism-england-ebbing-power

Jingo is the default reaction of the English ruling class when they feel their interests are under threat. Unsure about our true position in a changing world, they hold on to the union flag like a comfort blanket, wrapping themselves in it to enhance their sense of importance.

While the Scots seem confident about their future, a Little Englander mentality is in danger of taking hold south of the border, in which every external challenge is perceived as a threat.

The rattling of the old jingoistic sword is a sure sign that the English ruling class feels its power ebbing away, torn between a European super-state, the aspirations of the Celtic fringe and demographic changes within England itself. Whether the English can awake from their long dream of empire and use this opportunity to renew their sense of identity remains to be seen.

Unless and until we throw off our imperial pretensions and begin to relate to our neighbours as equals, joining with them in creating new networks of active devolution and shared sovereignty, we English are in danger of becoming an insular people, jealously guarding the right to make our own laws while increasingly unable to control our destiny.

1111 comments on this piece so far.

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Layer 347 . . . Blair, Chang, O'Rourke, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, and Eating The Rich

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The vile bastard Blair has a new book in the shops from today - yet again claiming that New Labour was 100% correct in all its policies and decisions.

Tony Blair on Gordon Brown: 'Analytical intelligence, absolutely. Emotional intelligence, zero'

Tony Blair writes in his memoir that Gordon Brown 'lacked political instinct at the human gut level'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/31/blair-book-gordon-brown-rivalry

The words black, pot and kettle come to mind, and not just because the eponymous Martin is the author of this piece.

Yesterday Polly Toynbee wrote another excellent column:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/30/vain-venal-has-beens-mandelson

Labour's vain, venal has-beens should bow out and shut up

They just can't stop themselves, yesteryear headline addicts, locked in the old quarrels, oozing sectarian malice to their last gasp.

Mandelson's book has been an occasion to reflect on the damage he has done to Labour over the years . . .

Mandelson's sole historic quote – being "intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich" – became lethally emblematic of New Labour's infatuation with super-money.

Power and money sent their compasses spinning, Blunkett and others were seduced too, so many of the Blair entourage now retired to . . .  worlds of lucre.

How could Mandelson be a Labour person, yet spend his leisure hours with tax-exile Tory bankers or powerful Tory society hostesses, Labour's natural enemies? Choosing such friends debased politics – was it just a day job like any other, forgotten in the evenings or on holiday, not a conviction or a way of life? No wonder voters turn cynical if all the party tribalism, the ideology, the fury and passion was only play-acting after all . . .

Why never raise tax on the richest, as boardroom pay rose by 30% a year and bankers' bonuses soared? How did a Labour government let inequality slip backwards in those golden years?

Had Blair taken the Jimmy Carter ascetic route, devoting himself to good works, keeping no more than his sizable pension, he could have done himself and Labour honour. Neither Miliband is tainted with money fascination, but both need to recognise how much of that past needs vocal rejection.

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Heterodox economics refers to the approaches, or schools of economic thought, that are considered outside of mainstream, that is, orthodox economics. Heterodox economics is an umbrella term used to cover various separate unorthodox approaches, schools, or traditions. These include institutional, post-Keynesian, socialist, Marxian, feminist, Austrian, ecological, and social economics among others. These views may be contrasted with the framework used by the majority of economists, commonly referred to by its supporters as mainstream and by critics as orthodox or conventional.

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

Sorry about that. Bear with me.

Ha-Joon Chang (Korean: 장하준, Hanja: 張夏准, b. South Korea in 1963) is one of the leading heterodox economists specialising in development economics. Currently a Reader in the Political Economy of Development at the University of Cambridge, Chang is the author of several influential policy books . . .  Wikipedia


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-Joon_Chang

Ok - I'll get to the point. Dr Chang has a semi-regular column in the Guardian, and it's well worth reading. Oxzen proposes that anyone who has a vote and who could therefore influence the outcome of the next election has a duty to inform themselves about economics and finance. I'll come to P.J.O'Rourke and his book 'Eat The Rich' later.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/hajoonchang

In his book Kicking Away the Ladder (which won the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy's 2003 Gunnar Myrdal Prize), Chang argued that all major developed countries used interventionist economic policies in order to get rich and then tried to forbid other countries from doing similarly. The World Trade Organisation, World Bank and IMF  come in for strong criticism for this kind of ladder-kicking which is, according to Chang, the fundamental obstacle to poverty alleviation in the developing world . . .       - Wikipedia

Following up on the ideas of Kicking Away the Ladder, Chang published Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism in December 2008. Chang argues that unregulated international trade (free markets) has very rarely succeeded in producing economic development, and has a far worse record compared to interventionist policies. He cites evidence that GDP growth in developing countries was higher prior to external pressures recommending deregulation and extends his analysis of the failures of free trade to induce growth through privatisation and anti-inflationary policies. Chang's book won plaudits from Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.                -  Wikipedia

Dr Chang's latest book is called 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism.

We lost sight of fairness in the false promise of wealth

Acceptance of inequality rests on assumptions that 'free markets' make us all richer in the end. Growth figures tell it differently

Debates about inequality show no sign of going away. But the moral arguments are rarely extended far enough . . .

Virtually no politician challenges a basic, erroneous premise that inequality is a price worth paying for a more efficient market system that enriches us all.

The simplistic, free-market view of the Thatcher-Major era said equality of opportunity is all we need for a fair society.

If no one had their market participation blocked . . . the result should be accepted as fair. Today many people, both on the left and the right, recognise that this is not enough. We can accept the outcome of a competitive process as fair only when the participants have equality in basic capabilities; the fact that no one is allowed to have a head start does not make the race fair if some contestants have only one leg.

Children who do not have some minimum level of nutrition, healthcare, and education cannot grow into fully capable adults. The Sure Start programme of the last Labour government and the coalition's pupil premium are based on recognition of this fact, although neither are of sufficient scale and depth to make a fundamental difference.

If we accept children should not be penalised for things beyond their control, shouldn't we accept the same for adults? Most people become unemployed through events such as a financial crisis. And yet, despite that, we insist on punishing the unemployed.

But even giving adult workers second chances does not take us far enough towards a fairer society. We have to question an assumption that has dominated economic thinking over the last three decades – namely, the belief that maximising market freedom is the best way to generate wealth.

From this assumption came the argument that even committed egalitarians should let markets rip, because that would give them the maximum wealth to redistribute. In Britain, the natural "progressive" conclusion was the New Labour strategy that you regulate the City as little as possible because that will maximise the wealth it generates, which means more money for equality-enhancing programmes like Sure Start.

Sadly that assumption has been proved wrong. After three decades of deregulation and tax cuts for the rich, growth has slowed down, rather than accelerated, in almost all countries. The world economy, which was growing at about 3% in per capita terms in the "bad old days" of widespread regulation and punitive taxation for the rich in the 1960s and 70s, has grown at about half that rate in the last three decades. In Britain, average annual per capita income growth rate was 2.4% in the 60s and the 70s, when the country was allegedly suffering from the "British disease"; but it fell to 1.7% during 1990 to 2009, after it is supposed to have been cured of the disease thanks to Margaret Thatcher's heroic struggle in the 1980s.

At the heart of this slowdown lies the free-market policy package. In developing countries it has led to breakneck liberalisation of trade, so destroying swaths of "infant" industries. In both developing and developed countries, policies to reduce inflation to very low levels have choked demand and made business loans expensive. And in Britain and the US, financial deregulation has played a crucial role in reducing growth.

Unleashing finance has enormously increased the power of mobile shareholders in pursuit of short-term profits and high dividends. The surest way to deliver these is to minimise long-term investments, such as machinery and research and development. Shareholders have encouraged such behaviour by paying astronomical salaries to managers good at making such cuts, even though they weaken the growth prospect of companies in the long run. Those shareholders don't necessarily care about the long-term future of their companies: they can always sell their shares.

If we cannot assume free-market policies to be the best at generating wealth, the British debate on equality needs a total rethink. We have to debate what our macroeconomic, industrial, financial, or even executive pay policies should be, as their exact shapes significantly affect the scale of wealth that markets create. It cannot be blithely assumed that markets know how to maximise wealth – while all we have to worry about is how to redistribute it through taxes and benefits.

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P.J. O'Rourke's book, 'Eat The Rich', is subtitled 'A Treatise On Economics'. It's been sitting unread on my shelf for about 10 years - since I picked it up in the Greenwich cheapo bookshop. PJ used to write for Rolling Stone. Good. He's known as something of a humourist and satirist. Good

O'Rourke was an early proponent of Gonzo journalism. He is considered a libertarian, and is often quoted by libertarian and anti-socialist writers and pundits. During his student days he was a left-leaning hippie, but in the 1970s his political views underwent a volte-face. He emerged as a political observer and humorist with libertarian viewpoints. O'Rourke is well known for his combination of conservative economic views and libertarian views on vice such as sex and drugs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._J._O%27Rourke

Not Good, on the whole. (Vice = sex? Sex = vice?)

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/p/p_j_orourke.html

The reason I've been avoiding this book is because O'Rourke is a smartarse, though nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is. He's a gadfly, a maverick, a jester - but ultimately a conservative stooge who would like to be taken seriously as a social, political and cultural commentator. So why buy the book? Mmmmmm. Important to know your enemy?

Eat The Rich was written in 1997 - just as New Labour were taking power. Capitalism and globalisation were in their pomp - socialism and social democracy were assumed to be defeated and defunct as political forces - especially by New Labour, who of course continued with the Friedman/Hayek/Chicago-School/Thatcher concensus - deregulation, privatisation, promotion of banking and financial 'services', de-industrialisation, etc.

O'Rourke recommended that we read, amongst other neo-conservative tracts, Friedman's books, Free To Choose and Capitalism. He goes on to say in his introduction, "The purpose of this book is to make some broad points about economics, freedom, and responsibility. If the reader examines my work too carefully he may discover I'm only a journalist. This means that when it comes to knowing what I'm talking about, I'm no different from the next person. I just get paid for the talking."

Too damned right.

The book was written as a triumphalist love letter to capitalism and globalisation. Obviously the man knows his market, and there were probably thousands who could be tempted to buy the funnyman's book at its full price. But this was way before the Big Bust, the Financial Crash - before capitalism screwed itself and needed to plead with sympathetic governments to give them lots of free money so that the whole system didn't completely crash and burn and fuck everyone on the planet.

Chapter 2 is called Good Capitalism: Wall Street (!). Chapter 3 is called Bad Capitalism: Albania.

Now here's the funny bit - the really hilarious bit. He says that capitalism works well on Wall Street because it's properly regulated! He goes on to say that capitalism doesn't work in Albania because it's corrupt and was based on an enormous Ponzi scheme!

So let's hear it for Lehman Brothers, AIG, Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, Northern Rock, RBS, the sub-prime mortgage scandal, the property bubble, and the biggest Ponzi schemer of them all, Bernie Madoff!!!

http://www.gmanews.tv/story/120492/World-markets-tumble-on-Lehman-crash-Merrill-sale
http://www.newser.com/story/37459/lehman-crash-triggers-global-market-tumble.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/crash-shares-tumble-as-lehman-brothers-collapses-and-fears-grow-for-aig-931981.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_takeover_of_Fannie_Mae_and_Freddie_Mac
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7502310.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff  is an incarcerated former American stock broker, investment adviser, non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of what has been described as the largest Ponzi scheme in history.

In March 2009, Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 federal crimes and admitted to turning his wealth management  business into a massive Ponzi scheme that defrauded thousands of investors of billions of dollars. Madoff said he began the Ponzi scheme in the early 1990s. However, federal investigators believe the fraud began as early as the 1980s, and that the investment operation may never have been legitimate. The amount missing from client accounts, including fabricated gains, was almost $65 billion. The court-appointed trustee estimated actual losses to investors of $18 billion. On June 29, 2009, he was sentenced to 150 years in prison, the maximum allowed.

He was charged with securities fraud, investment advisor fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, false statements, perjury, making false filings with the SEC and theft from an employee benefit plan.

Are we to assume that the rest of Wall Street, and the City of London, was squeaky clean?

Here's what O'Rourke had to say in 1997:

"Albania shows what happens to a free market when there is no legal, political, or traditional framework to define freedoms and protect market places . . . Capitalism conducted in a condition of anarchy produces some unpredictable phenomena. Albania has the distinction of being the only country ever destroyed by a chain letter - a nation devastated by a Ponzi racket, a land ruined by a pyramid scheme."

Not any more it doesn't, PJ. Not any more.

Which is to say, America, Britain and others WOULD HAVE BEEN RUINED had their governments, in the name of their people, not agreed that the banks etc were TOO BIG TO FAIL and handed them billions of OUR money - to do whatever they liked with, unfettered by any further regulations, agreements and promises. Of course there were better solutions to the crisis, such as wholesale nationalisation without compensation, which is what the banks and the bankers deserved, and what the country needed. But we couldn't possibly let CAPITALISM fail, could we? So in the event we only part-nationalised the poor basket cases that couldn't even have saved themselves even if they'd been given lots of free money - on account of holding too much toxic debt.

Of course many of our 'ordinary' people have had their lives ruined and devastated - but what the hell. At least the bankers and the fat cats were OK, even if some of them saw their assets decline in value. Let's face facts - most of the billions of dollars and pounds that were handed to Bernie Madoff and his ilk were really just the spare change of the greedy and the seriously rich. The idea of the rich fleecing those who are even richer is hardly novel. "Let the buyer beware" is the maxim of the market. No wonder Bernie didn't consider himself a bad guy.

A few more quotes to conclude:

"The Albanians didn't believe they were the victims of a scam. They believed they were the perpetrators - this being so different from the beliefs of certain Wall Street bull-market investors in the United States."

"International politicians are crowing about the free-market victories they've achieved . . .

Laissez-faire . . . seems to have displaced central planning, nationalisation, democratic socialism . . .

Stocks are only one way to bliss out with money. The bond market is also huge. Then there are commodities, derivatives, money-market instruments, and just plain money itself. More than $1 trillion of international currency changes hands every day.

You remember how in 1995 a semieducated young wanker in Singapore, fiddling with derivatives, brought England's noble, ancient Barings Bank to its knees . . . "

Indeed we do.

"The investment industry creates euphoria and panic. It moves astonishing amounts of cash around the world at startling speed with shocking results."

If only he knew then just how shocking.

"Then it pays itself fantastic amounts of money."

Still does.

"Is the investment industry just a bunch of pirates in neckties?"

Do bears shit in the woods?

"Why do we put up with this? The whole business of international finance is dumbfounding. This shit-shower of money flying around the world . . . What's in it for us? Why don't we rise up? Why don't we get rid of the capitalist system and replace it with something that's nicer and more predictable, and gives everybody an even break? What does the investment industry give to society?

"Liquidity," said the $2 billion money manager, the investment banker and the specialist broker.

If we're going to have freedom and the money to enjoy it, we're going to have to put up with the stuff in this chapter . . .

Really?

There are alternatives to the free market. Congress could pass stricter investment-industry regulations, more orders and directives . . .

But we wouldn't want that, now would we?

Wall Street's free-market capitalism is doubtless a wonderful thing and a boon to humanity, but it scares me . . . Capitalism scared me despite the fact that I was seeing it operate within a well-defined set of rules (!!) understood by all the players. And I liked the players . . .

But I was still scared.

Free-market capitalism was terrifying under the best circumstances. What it was like under the worst circumstance I couldn't imagine.(!!) And because I couldn't imagine it, I needed to go someplace that had no rules and was full of crooks.(!!) I considered Washington D.C., but Albania looked like more fun . . .

Fun!!! As Bush W apparently said - as the 'markets' were crashing and the banks were going bust, and the entire system seemed to be going belly up  - "This sucker could go down!" How much fun was that, PJ? You smug, smartass, complacent, triumphalist fucking idiot. Scared indeed. You ought to be fucking terrified.

I wonder how often he recommends reading Milton Friedman these days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eat_the_Rich_%28book%29

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For the record, a property bubble IS a Ponzi scheme. I thought we'd realised that after the previous property crash, back in the late 80s . . .

You can only make money out of buying and selling property if you can convince people that a) they 'need' to get on the 'property ladder', and b) your property is worth more than you paid for it. If on the other hand, someone thinks  your property is about to be washed away in a flood, or flattened by an earthquake, or your neighbourhood is about to be taken over by gangsters and drug addicts, or if no-one can borrow money or get a mortgage any more, then your property is likely to be worth precisely nothing. Or nothing like the amount you paid for it . . .


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Part 2. And now for something completely different . . .

Time to lighten up -  and it's Zappa time, together with Captain Beefheart - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVUgQEnxC0g
http://www.lyricstime.com/frank-zappa-the-torture-never-stops-lyrics.html.
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Layer 286 . . . Discovering France, Equality and Fraternity, Bankers Taking Serious Liberties, Competing on Radicalism, Over Confidence and Extremist Moods

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On the radio this morning there was an item about a family that couldn't get back to Britain from Italy because of the no-fly zone, and had to hire a car. In the words of the 81 year old who was involved in the journey, "We got lost near the Alps and drove back along winding roads over the mountains. It was a great adventure!"

The guy who drove the car said, "France is a lot bigger than it looks on the map. It's a very beautiful country. Thanks to no planes and no trains we had a great time."

Well, yes. I just feel sorry for people who've never discovered the joys of unplanned journeys by road through France. Just think what it could do for the rural economy of France if more people chose a slow drive rather than a quick flight in order to get to the Mediterranean. France is a fabulous country with wonderful landscapes and a superb cuisine, and in my experience very civilised people. And they're still proud of their revolutionary slogan - Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

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And talking of revolutions, Polly Toynbee says this in today's paper:

Here's what Labour can do about the Lib Dem dilemma

This surge is about public rage at bankers and MPs. Brown should compete on radicalism, and leave Cameron to be nasty

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/20/labour-lib-dem-dilemma-rage

History will record two mighty reasons for the Lib Dem surge: rage with the political system brought to the boil by MPs expenses; and rage with boardrooms and bankers who crashed the economy, cost jobs and homes, and yet kept their swelling pay and bonuses. Labour has failed to find the language or action to reflect popular outrage on either. Even under attack by business and the City, Labour replies weakly: "We're a pro-business party."

But 1996 Mandelson-speak is useless when business is kicking the hell out of Labour, and useless when people want the hell kicked out of bankers. Yesterday's report from the Centre for Economic Performance showed how bonanza bonuses in the finance sector cause risk-taking that contributed to the financial crisis. Why not use the report to announce that the bonus tax will continue until banks (and board rooms) control their offensively greedy pay? With the right language, that begins to match the Lib Dems.

Oxzen said this on cif:

The Lib Dems have already said they'll allow the Tories to form a government if they get the largest share of the vote. Why? If the Lib Dem surge continues and the bizarre outcome is a parliament in which Labour has the most seats with fewer votes than their main rivals, then the Lib Dems have a duty to make a deal with Labour to immediately push through electoral reform with proper proportional representation, and allow the country to have another election under the new system. The TV debates have thankfully made constitutional reform THE main issue, and the country will benefit from the policies that would follow from a more progressive parliament. Without a pledge to join with Labour in a government of constitutional change the Lib Dems will find much of their current popularity swiftly waning.

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Nick Clegg's poll rise casts doubt on David Cameron's change claims

In Guardian/ICM poll, Conservative leader is seen as much less honest than the Lib Dem leader

by Julian Glover

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/apr/20/nick-clegg-poll-cameron-change

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George Monbiot had another good column in yesterday's paper:

Wales's unreported revolution

In the latest of a series of articles by Guardian writers on issues they care passionately about, George Monbiot asks how, when English politics is trapped in a neoliberal consensus, is green socialism able to flourish in Wales?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/19/wales-devolution-welsh-assembly

While radical rural politics are familiar in parts of France, Mexico and Brazil, those of us brought up in England associate the countryside with conservatism. Here in the remotest parts of Wales there's overwhelming support for policies well to the left of Labour's.

Why, when the three main parties in Westminster appear to be trapped in a neoliberal consensus, is a green socialist party sharing power in Cardiff? What has Wales got that England hasn't?

For the past few years a quiet but momentous revolution has been taking place. That this has passed largely unnoticed in England reflects the media's lack of interest in Wales. English progressives know more about the political transformation in Bolivia than the similar shift happening over the border. Perhaps this is just as well. The Welsh have been left to get on with it, and nobody in England cares enough to try to stop them.

It was Plaid Cymru that led the attempt to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. It opposed the conflict in Afghanistan from the outset. It wants to scrap Trident and cancel the aircraft carrier and Eurofighter contracts. It would break up the banks, ban short selling, tax foreign exchange transactions, raise capital gains tax, raise income tax for the rich while reducing it for the poor. It would set a maximum wage and give workers seats on corporate boards.

It seeks to renationalise the railways and curb the power of the supermarkets. It wants a living pension for everyone over 80, to raise benefits in line with average earnings and to scrap tuition fees. It would abandon ID cards, stop detaining asylum seekers and shift sentencing away from prison and towards restorative justice.

Such policies are widely held to make parties in England unelectable. But in Wales they are considered mainstream, and not just among Plaid supporters. The Labour party in Cardiff is a different beast from the Labour party in Westminster.

The Welsh Assembly government, where Labour is the senior coalition partner, has stopped Sats in schools, scrapped the private finance initiative, is abandoning the internal market in the NHS, has imposed tough social housing policies, helped set up a network of credit unions and – belatedly – more or less killed new opencast mining.

The manifesto Labour has just published for the Westminster vote would be a lengthy suicide note for the assembly elections. What explains the difference?

When I asked why a radical party could succeed in Wales, Llwyd replied instantly, as if the answer were obvious. Proportional representation had created space for a politics inhibited by Middle England. "Not the actual people of Middle England but the idea of it. First-past-the-post politics means that you are always chasing those swing votes in marginal constituencies."

But, I argued, while this might explain why Plaid does well in Cardiff, it doesn't explain its success in Westminster elections.

"Traditionally Welsh people belong to the left. There's a deep and ingrained sense of fair play. They want to see people being looked after. The University of Bangor was built on donations from quarrymen, earning a pittance because they wanted a better future for their children."

There's no question that, as Llwyd claims, devolution and electoral reform have been decisive factors. They have created a culture of political responsiveness that's mostly lacking in England. Politics in Wales is closer to the people; politicians are forced to listen. Perhaps in England too there is a peaceful revolution waiting to be unleashed, but with a parliament in which Welsh, Scottish and Irish MPs can be drilled through the lobbies to vote on purely English matters, where grassroots politics are continually thwarted by dodgy voting systems, ruthless party machines and antediluvian powers, the box in which it lurks remains firmly nailed down.

The English like to think of themselves as a modern and sophisticated nation . . . but as far as democracy is concerned, the English are light years behind.

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Comedian Mark Thomas wins £1,200 over police search

'Over-confident' comic was unlawfully stopped and had his bag checked as he left arms protest

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/apr/19/police-payout-stop-mark-thomas

Police have paid compensation and apologised to the comedian and activist Mark Thomas after they admitted unlawfully searching him for looking "over-confident" at a demonstration.

The Metropolitan police stopped and searched Thomas after he gave a speech at a rally against the arms trade in 2007.

The police searched his shoulder bag and wallet for weapons, which they said could be used to cause criminal damage.

A police officer recorded on an official form that Thomas may have been carrying weapons as he had an "over-confident attitude". Nothing was found.

In January the European court of human rights ruled it was unlawful for police to use arbitrary stop-and-search powers against peace protesters and photographers under terrorism legislation. Kent police admitted conducting unlawful searches on 11-year-old twins and other activists at an environmental demonstration.

The officer said his shoulder bag "may contain such items due to the over-confident attitude of Mr Thomas". He is also said to have told Thomas he "appeared to know what you were talking about" at the rally. The officer added: "If we only stopped and searched people who looked nervous and shifty and didn't stop the ones who looked over-confident you would be able to get one past us," according to legal papers lodged by Thomas, which were not disputed by the police.

The officer noted on the official document recording the reasons for the stop-and-search that Thomas was "believed to be an influential individual".

The comedian's photograph had been on a secret "spotter card" issued to officers to identify people considered to be potential troublemakers at a demonstration against the arms fair two years earlier.

The Met paid £1,200 for "falsely imprisoning" Thomas for 12 minutes. He said: "£100 a minute is slightly more than my usual rate. If over-confidence is a reason for a stop-and-search Jonathan Ross should never leave his house."

Thomas said he would donate some of the money to the Miscarriages of Justice Organisation. He will also use it to fund his next standup tour, saying advertising posters would contain a line thanking the police for their financial support.

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Nick Clegg's rise could lock Murdoch and the media elite out of UK politics

At the Sun, we deliberately ignored the Lib Dems. The cosy pro-Cameron press may now be left floundering

by David Yelland

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/18/clegg-media-elite-murdoch-lib-dem

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Bill Clinton's warning on extremist mood in US

Growing concern in White house about anti-government mood
Trust in US government at its lowest point for half a century

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/19/bill-clinton-political-commentators-rhetoric

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The UK isn't so different from Greece: a financial crisis could happen here too

The markets fear a hung parliament but the real risk for the UK's grotesquely unbalanced economy lies further ahead

by Larry Elliott

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/19/uk-greece-financial-crisis

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Goldman Sachs prosecution threatens to open the floodgates on Wall Street

Pressure grows for stricter controls on derivatives
Timothy Geithner says banks will be made to pay

by Andrew Clark

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-prosecution-wall-street-crackdown

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Some excellent columns from Ruth Sunderland:

Labour and the Tories are just too scared to take on the bankers
Both the UK's main parties seem terrified of crossing an unelected – and unaccountable – financial elite

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/uk-politicians-afraid-regulate-bankers


The crisis is no American invention – the City was in it, up to its neck

Look at how many of the characters in the credit crunch were operating out of London

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldmansachs-credit-crunch


Goldman Sachs finds $5bn for pay and bonuses amid fraud investigation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/goldman-sachs-pay-bonuses


Unemployment across UK is back to 1999 levels

Decade of job growth effectively wiped out by financial crisis
Don't cut spending after election, business leaders urge

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/uk-jobless-levels-double-recession

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If the Conservatives cut the deficit it's all downhill from here

by William Keegan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/18/election-economics-william-keegan
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Layer 219 Bonuses, Private Enterprise, Wall Street, 1989, Alternative Economics and Tough Love

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Listening to Question Time and the question of squillions of pounds being handed over to MoD civil servants by way of 'bonuses'. Can this really be true? How? It makes you wonder whether the poor bloody troops are getting bonuses. I think not. For the number of kills? Shots fired? Overtime? Night shifts? Danger money?

Can this government get any worse? When did civil servants become part of the bonus culture? It's outrageous.
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Why is Will Self trying to look like a psychotic Freddie Mercury lookalike?
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Seamas Milne had a very good 'big picture' column in the Guardian:

The real lesson of 1989 is that nothing is ever settled

The fall of the wall brought freedoms, but also war and crisis. Now that is creating the basis for a new alternative

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/11/lessons-of-1989-new-alternative

From the point of view of western self-esteem, 1989 is a year to die for: a tale of the triumph of individual freedom and the defeat of an ideological competitor, all captured live on television in the ritual destruction of a reviled enemy symbol in the heart of Europe. So the blanket coverage of the anniversary of the fall of the wall, and the parade of platitude-mouthing politicians in Berlin to mark the implosion of European communism it symbolised, was only to be expected.

What has been more striking, though, has been the lack of ideological confidence and enthusiasm that would have been expected only a few years ago. In the rest of what was eastern Europe, there have been barely any high-profile celebrations of the wider collapse of the old regimes. Given the eruption of wars, global insecurity and now economic crisis that have marked the 20 years since the end of the cold war, the larger narrative of peace, capitalist prosperity and the end of history peddled in the wake of 1989 just seems ridiculous.

But the question in 1989 wasn't whether the old system had to change; it was how it would change. The political force that had turned the Soviet Union into a superpower, industrialised half of Europe and sent the first human being into space had exhausted itself. There were, however, alternative routes out of its crisis. What the protesters in first Gdansk and then Leipzig were mostly demanding was not capitalism, of course, but a different kind of socialism. Even given a restoration of capitalism, there were softer landings that could have been negotiated by Mikhail Gorbachev and guaranteed by the United States and its allies.

Instead, 1989 unleashed across the region and then the former Soviet Union free-market shock therapy, mass robbery as privatisation, vast increases in inequality, and poverty and joblessness for tens of millions. Reunification in Germany in fact meant annexation, the takeover and closure of most of its industry, a political purge of more than a million teachers and other white-collar workers, a loss of women's rights, closure of free nurseries and mass unemployment – still double western Germany's rate after 20 years.

And east Germany has done far better than the rest. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, the crisis created under western tutelage and nomenklatura capitalism was comparable to the Great Depression in the US, and national income took more than a decade to recover. In Russia itself, post-communist catastroika produced the greatest economic collapse in peacetime in modern history. Mortality rates rose steeply across the region in the 1990s – in Russia, the market experiment produced more orphans in the 1990s than the country's 20m wartime deaths, while Gorbachev's democratisation went into reverse.

Now, after a decade of profoundly unequal economic recovery, eastern Europe has once again been plunged into deep crisis by the west's own meltdown, with ethnic violence spreading and public sector workers facing wage cuts of up to 40%.

The German Democratic Republic was home to the Stasi, shortages and the wall, but it was also a country of full employment, social equality, cheap housing, transport and culture, one of the best childcare systems in the world, and greater freedom in the workplace than most employees enjoy in today's Germany.

Along with the humiliation of the takeover, that's why Der Spiegel this year found that 57% of eastern Germans believed the GDR had "more good sides than bad sides", and even younger people rejected the idea that the state had been a dictatorship. Just as only one in five Hungarians believes that the country has changed for the better since 1989, only 11% of Bulgarians think ordinary people have benefited from the changes and most Russians and Ukrainians regret the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

By destroying its main ideological competitor, 1989 opened the door to a deregulated model of capitalism that has wreaked social and economic havoc across the world for two decades. That, in turn, led to the economic crisis of 2009, which has so palpably discredited the neoliberal model. It also created the conditions for the wave of progressive change in Latin America that has challenged the post-89 social order and raised the possibility of a new form of socialism for the 21st century.

Only 11% of those questioned in a BBC poll across 27 countries this week said they think free-market capitalism is working well, nearly a quarter believe it is fatally flawed and most want more public ownership and intervention in the economy.

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Almost missed this excellent letter from Helena Kennedy in the Observer:

The big issue: EU presidency. Tony Blair is the last leader Europe needs

The presidency of Europe will be highly symbolic and Tony Blair is a wholly inappropriate person to hold the role ("Is Tony Blair the right man to be president of Europe?", Observer Debate, Comment). He misled our country – to secure support for a decision he had already made to join George Bush in the Iraq war. In doing so, he showed total disrespect for international law, the United Nations and the views of his European partners; he destabilised the world and was naively cavalier as to the cost in human lives.

Domestically, he was disrespectful of the rule of law and civil liberties, hollowed out the Labour party and deepened the divide between rich and poor. He cravenly bowed to the demands of Rupert Murdoch, the neoconservatives in America, the extreme pro-Israeli lobby and his friends in the City. He showed poor judgment in his choice of associates. His freeloading was shameful. Indeed, his lifestyle epitomises the worst values of a materialistic age. He does not have the qualities of a leader, but would be an excellent television presenter.

Helena Kennedy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/nov/01/the-big-issue-tony-blair

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Will Hutton

These money-grubbing companies make the public sector look good

The simple equation that the private sector is good and the public sector bad has blighted our lives for decades

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/01/will-hutton-nimrod-afghanistan-raf

This is, I know, a question that defines me as a maverick; everyone knows that the public sector is a slough of inefficiency while the private sector is the home of innovation, enterprise and customer service. All I can say is: not in my recent experience.

Yet public service reformers remain animated by a desire to follow private sector examples. One fashionable wheeze is that local authority services are to be organised like low-cost airlines.

The best in the private sector can, of course, be exemplary – but to be great there has to be a culture that says the firm is more than merely an engine to deliver goods and services as cheaply as possible. Sure, cost effectiveness counts. But great firms – just like great parts of the public sector – are animated by a sense of purpose.

What has been wrong with too much of the public sector is not the fact of being owned by the state, or bureaucracy. It is a loss of a sense of purpose. Too many dumb, clunky targets; too much preoccupation with narrow cost saving and too little concern with greater purpose – from which poor leadership and management derive, and of which the MoD is an exemplar. To look to the private sector for quick-fix solutions, just because it is private, is to draw the wrong conclusion.

What the best in the private sector shows is the result of rigorous implementation of purpose. If Virgin.net felt passionately that it wanted to be a great server provider, I doubt it would collapse so much. Equally, what went wrong in the City was a complete loss of purpose, so the only point of banking became to make bonuses. If Charles Haddon-Cave wrote a report on either, I'm sure he would find the same lackadaisical approach he found in the Nimrod saga – if only with much less deadly results. The private sector never offered the magic bullet that New Labour or Thatcherites imagined. Efficiency and innovation are tough to deliver – and too much of Britain has failed in that mission.

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Making Wall Street pay

Wall Street's irresponsible bankers caused this economic crisis. It's only fair that they pay to clean up their mess

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/nov/09/us-wall-street-financial-transactions-tax

While we may need additional revenue at some point, it makes far more sense to impose a financial transactions tax, which would primarily hit the Wall Street banks that gave us this disaster, than to tax the consumption of ordinary working families. We can raise large amounts of money by taxing the speculation of the Wall Street high-flyers while barely affecting the sort of financial dealings that most of us do in our daily lives.

Since the financial sector is the source of the country's current economic and budget problems it also makes sense to have this sector bear the brunt of any new taxes that may be needed. The economic collapse caused by Wall Street's irrational exuberance has led to a huge increase in the country debt burden. It seems only fair that Wall Street bear the brunt of the clean-up costs. A financial transactions tax is the way to make sure that this happens.

In short, we have to tell the deficit hawk crew, many of whom earned their fortune on Wall Street, to slow down. The country does face serious budget problems, even if they may not be as bad as this crew claims. However, if we need taxes to address a budget shortfall, then Wall Street is the place to start. After we have put in place a tax on Wall Street speculation, if we still need additional money, we can talk about a tax that will primarily affect the middle class.

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Paul Moore, the bank whistleblower whose revelations forced the resignation of a senior Government adviser, has called for Prime Minister Gordon Brown to go for his part in creating the financial crisis.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/4629670/Gordon-Brown-must-go-says-HBOS-whistleblower-Paul-Moore.html

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The iconoclastic wisdom of David Nutt

This is not the first time Professor Nutt has challenged dearly held beliefs – as many sufferers of depression will gladly testify

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/03/david-nutt-depression-drugs

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How tough love breeds smart children

Report says that parents who use mixture of discipline and warmth are most likely to produce well-rounded individuals

by Anushka Asthana

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/08/tough-love-smart-children

Children brought up by parents practising "tough love" are more likely to become rounded personalities with well-developed characters than those who face either authoritarian or laissez-faire approaches, research reveals today.

The study, by the thinktank Demos, tracked the lives of 9,000 families and found that 13% used a "tough love" approach, combining warmth and discipline. It did not matter whether the parents were rich or poor – those that adopted the approach brought up children who were more likely to be empathetic, more able to control their emotions and bounce back from disappointment, and more capable of concentrating and completing tasks.

The research found that it was the style of parenting, rather than income or social background, that developed the strength of character.

It claimed that such "character capabilities" had become increasingly important in life. Skills such as empathy, self-regulation and application were 33 times more important in determining income for those who turned 30 in 2000 than for those 12 years older, it said.

Richard Reeves, director of Demos, argued that "tough love" was successful because it built up a child's self-esteem but also taught them to be restrained and respectful.

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Layer 217 Chomsky, Hutton, Hyde, Toynbee and One To Avoid.

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A couple of friends have recently said they often read the magazine The Week as a good way to keep up with what's happening in the world. I agree - it's well edited and it gives a clear digest of current events, interesting topics and the best media reports.

In the spirit of The Week here's a mention of some recent pieces in the papers, beginning at the genius end of what's being said:

'US foreign policy is straight out of the mafia'

Noam Chomsky is the west's most prominent critic of US imperialism, yet he is rarely interviewed in the mainstream media. Seumas Milne meets him

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/07/noam-chomsky-us-foreign-policy

Noam Chomsky is the closest thing in the English-speaking world to an intellectual superstar. A philosopher of language and political campaigner of towering academic reputation, who as good as invented modern linguistics, he is entertained by presidents, addresses the UN general assembly and commands a mass international audience. When he spoke in London last week, thousands of young people battled for tickets to attend his lectures, followed live on the internet across the globe . . .

Chomsky is America's most prominent critic of the US imperial role in the world, which he has used his erudition and standing to expose and excoriate since Vietnam.

Like the English philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke out against western-backed wars until his death at the age of 97, Chomsky has lent his academic prestige to a relentless campaign against his own country's barbarities abroad – though in contrast to the aristocratic Russell, Chomsky is the child of working class Jewish refugees from Tsarist pogroms. Not surprisingly, he has been repaid with either denunciation or, far more typically, silence.

Chomsky supported Obama's election campaign in swing states, but regards his presidency as representing little more than a "shift back towards the centre" and a striking foreign policy continuity with George Bush's second administration. "The first Bush administration was way off the spectrum, America's prestige sank to a historic low and the people who run the country didn't like that." But he is surprised so many people abroad, especially in the third world, are disappointed at how little Obama has changed. "His campaign rhetoric, hope and change, was entirely vacuous. There was no principled criticism of the Iraq war: he called it a strategic blunder.

The veteran activist has described the US invasion of Afghanistan as "one of the most immoral acts in modern history", which united the jihadist movement around al-Qaida, sharply increased the level of terrorism and was "perfectly irrational – unless the security of the population is not the main priority". Which, of course, Chomsky believes, it is not.

He argues that since government officials first formulated plans for a "grand area" strategy for US global domination in the early 1940s, successive administrations have been guided by a "godfather principle, straight out of the mafia: that defiance cannot be tolerated. It's a major feature of state policy." "Successful defiance" has to be punished, even where it damages business interests, as in the economic blockade of Cuba – in case "the contagion spreads".

He describes himself as an anarchist or libertarian socialist, but often sounds more like a radical liberal – which is perhaps why he enrages more middle-of-the-road American liberals who don't appreciate their views being taken to the logical conclusion.

But for an octogenarian who has been active on the left since the 1930s, Chomsky sounds strikingly upbeat. He's a keen supporter of the wave of progressive change that has swept South America in the past decade ("one of the liberal criticisms of Bush is that he didn't pay enough attention to Latin America – it was the best thing that ever happened to Latin America"). He also believes there are now constraints on imperial power which didn't exist in the past: "They couldn't get away with the kind of chemical warfare and blanket B52 bombing that Kennedy did," in the 1960s. He even has some qualified hopes for the internet as a way around the monopoly of the corporate-dominated media.

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Will Hutton

Discarded mobiles, wire-taps and Mr Bigs. Welcome to Wall Street

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/will-hutton-wall-street-corruption

Imagine The Sopranos, The Wire and Gordon Gekko's Wall Street all rolled into one. You don't have to: the FBI has just broken one of the largest-ever insider dealing rings in Wall Street. It wire-tapped its way into a seedy world of secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones. A network including staff of New York law firms, hedge funds and share-trading companies, with links extending to top Plcs, investment banks and consultancies has been revealed. Five people have pleaded guilty, while others maintain their innocence.

The reputation of the financial markets is already at rock bottom. The crash, the bailouts and the extravagant bonuses have convinced ordinary Americans as much as us ordinary Brits that morality and fair play are not values much  found in the financial markets. And now there is this.

In 1720, the London stock exchange was a minor casino that represented a fraction of Britain's GDP.  Now, the value of the assets traded outstrips world GDP many, many times. The financial markets and their values have become the most dominant economic force on the planet. They give capitalism its culture. If London and New York financiers are part of a casino that is crooked, only fools and the naive continue to play by the rules.

Financial services now constitute a kind of tax on the real economy as well as distorting its priorities; short-termism and the search for impossibly high returns are rife. The culture, of which systematic insider trading is part, is having a growing impact on business ethics.

Most people in the financial markets start with a working moral compass, but retaining it becomes ever harder. Capitalism had its origins in a Protestant commitment to saving and investment, along with the Enlightenment commitment to truth. Great companies still have a strain of moral purpose; they seek to do something great from which they make profits. Today's financial markets mock such sentiments. Their destructiveness and awesome power goes well beyond the credit crunch. This culture of amorality reaches everywhere . . .

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Marina Hyde

Sit back and await the joy of Simon the singing canary

With its top-class cast and horribly fascinating location there could scarcely be any more to love about the Mann saga

In the supermarket yesterday, I wondered how many enforced bathroom visits Mark Thatcher had rushed to make since hearing the news that the organiser of the failed Equatorial Guinea coup in 2004 had been pardoned – he's out, and he's still singing like an amphetamine-charged canary! – and I almost had to sit down in the canned goods aisle at the gorgeousness of it all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/06/await-joy-simon-singing-canary

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Polly Toynbee

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/10/brown-tax-convert-hard-believe

Brown, a tax convert? Hard to believe, but let's hope so

A Tobin transaction tax would be a bold, sensible, social democratic move – so it's a shock to hear the prime minister backing it

After the crash Brown needed a public reckoning, a time to say: "The world has changed and so have I. Like other leaders and most economists in the boom years I got things wrong. I should have regulated more, not less. Our new industrial policy acknowledges that I relied too much on the financial sector. When the facts change, I change my mind. As everyone should, I learn from experience, and now I see what must be done. Not only was the whole economy unbalanced by the dominance of finance, but the rewards were too unfairly shared in the boom years; we must ensure the pain of these hard times is born by the broadest shoulders."

Without some explanation of his intellectual journey, any change of direction will be seen as the frantic opportunism of a drowning man. Proposing a Tobin tax just doesn't fit the Gordon Brown story. As chancellor he did not conduct a progressive tax policy. He eased tax for the richest, while taxing the middle more.

Brown thought it enough to use the proceeds of tax for progressive purposes, without redistributing tax itself. As a result Britain became less equal, and income and wealth were shared less fairly. Instead of shifting attitudes to appreciate the social value of tax, he colluded with an anti-tax ideology that calls all tax a burden.

That is why his sudden espousal of the Tobin tax looks unconvincing. It doesn't belong in his back story – unless he redefines that story as a journey of rediscovery of lost social democratic tax ideas. Then he might take people with him: because his Tobin tax should be a roof-raising, banker-bashing, debt-defying, public-service-saving, rabble-rouser of a political winner.

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And here's One To Avoid . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/08/football-education-childhood-school

The touchline timeline

Just as in my childhood, winning or losing together remains a basic lesson on the great field of life

It's Peter Preston, of course, who writes in a lazy little column this week about watching his grandson play football, and has some useless thoughts on . . . nothing really. It's writing for writing's sake. It's what he does. The only explanation for the continuation of his regular column in the Guardian must be that it was part of his retirement package from his editorship of the paper, and essential to maintaining his self-esteem and ego – that his thoughts are still read and appreciated. Well they're not. At least not by anyone with half a brain.

“Here I am, back on the touchline again.

That's one of my grandsons in the centre of the defence . . .

The world of the touchline is frozen in time – and your heart bleeds a little as you sample it again.

Ahhhh . . .Still the bleeding heart liberal, then?

The real fields of dreams have no stands, no roaring crowds – just a few dozen kids, with dads and mums doing their stuff . . . somehow showing they care.

And Peter really cares! So Pete – What is point? (I really miss the Paul Whitehouse character in Down The Line.) We're back on one of Pete's old favourites, of course - smack the teacher. All teachers. Cos they're all the same really, are they not? The regular common or garden State school variety of teacher, that is.

Earnest teachers – invoking the policies of two decades ago that saw school playing fields sold off to supermarkets and competitive games shunned because they involved losing as well as winning – will wince over even a trickle of testosterone. Some 72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork, 81% will never play anything against another school. Yoga and juggling are much in individual vogue.

Well we all know how useless yoga is! Never catch Pete and his pals doing any bloody yoga. Or their grandchildren, if he's got any say in it.

But the central pitch of existence still teaches many useful things. It shows you in a trice who's good and who never can be better than mediocre.

Does it? Once a crap footballer, always a crap footballer? Here's a man who always thinks in absolutes – you're either 'good' or 'bad', or 'never better than mediocre'. At anything, presumably.

Does it hurt, though, to know early on that you're an also-ran, that you'll never have the X factor that brings riches and renown in train?

No, not really, because that isn't the true point whenever little lads trot out to show what they can do; because being part of something is a quite different feeling; because winning or losing together, whatever teacher says, is one of the basic lessons for those on the great field of life – and for those strung out, shouting, clapping, cheering, above all involved, along its eternal touchlines.

Where to start with this bullshit? They're not 'trotting out' to 'show what they can do'. They're on the pitch to enjoy a game of football. Ideally they don't need to show anyone anything. Not even their grumpy old grandparents, or their over-ambitious parents.

Here's a man who perhaps wasn't able to amass what most people in his circle would call riches, but who was always chasing 'renown'. So clearly he had to have some kind of X factor to become a successful journalist and an editor of a newspaper, and so clearly Pete can't be considered an 'also-ran'. Whereas in reality he's just a pathetic has-been, except maybe in the kind of social circles where grumpy old men are the norm, and flailing around with reactionary and badly-informed opinions gets you some sort of status and 'renown'.

As a young teacher I used to spend at least one weekday after-school session per week and every Saturday morning coaching the school football team and taking them to matches. Brother J and I did it together, and he was always hugely enthusiastic, come rain or shine. In the summer we did cricket.

Preston doesn't realise – why would he? - that all over the country there are still lots of teachers who do these things, in spite of the fact that the demands on teachers are now massive in terms of preparation, marking, assessment,  record keeping, staff meetings, on the job training, curriculum leadership, professional reading & correspondence, and assorted meetings with colleagues, parents, etc. And how could anyone even suggest that teachers should feel obliged to involve themselves in sports (or any other extra-curricular activity such as drama, music and singing) when they're already working in the evenings and weekends at keeping up with their regular workloads? Work-life balance is a joke when you're just doing your regular job as a teacher.

What a lot of schools do nowadays, and what my old school still does, is employ specialist coaches to work with children on various sports – football, basketball, netball, tennis, cricket, volleyball, etc. Of course Preston knows nothing about any of this. “Wince over even a trickle of testosterone” indeed.

The man's a total ignoramus. Testosterone Pete. Not least because he's still stuck with the myth that because a few misguided teachers in a few places did make some waves about not liking competitive games, and argued the case for involving more children in collaborative rather than competitive games, that this somehow represented all teachers.

And it certainly wasn't the teachers that sold off school sports grounds. Of course you can't expect Fleet Street Pete to know any of this. He's the original Private Eye Lunchtime O'Booze, or one of them. At least that's what he shounds like these days. He's shurely got to go. Bleating into his cups about his childhood polio and his land of lost content.

In a way I feel bad about being so critical of someone who's so pitiful, but what the hell – he started it! He shouldn't talk such shit about subjects he knows nothing about. He should show some more respect  to teachers and to people who do more for kids than he's ever done. And it's not like he's going to read this blog anyway.

The truth is that if  “72% of kids on the latest government research don't get a regular chance at teamwork” then it's because of people like P Preston esq, who have beaten on about “the standards agenda” and raising test scores to the exclusion of practically all else. These days there are probably more kids in after-school “booster classes” learning how to perform tricks for academic tests than kids doing after-school sports, thanks to the fear of ruthless reactionaries like Preston and his gang who see life only in terms of successes, failures and also-rans; who think that getting to Oxbridge etc is the be-all and end-all, who think there's “no excuse for failure”.

And then they bleat on about the benefits of learning about collaboration and not getting “regular chances at teamwork”. That's right Mr Preston – make education and the learning process as individualistic and competitive as you possibly can and then rue the fact that kids don't develop social, emotional and spiritual intelligence, which is precisely what this “teamwork” amounts to.

Thank goodness there are some good teachers who see the benefits of allowing their pupils to actually learn collaboratively and don't rely on competitive team sports to develop these other vital intelligences. Roll on the day when we all realise that the gaining and expanding of human knowledge is best done as a collaborative effort, and one in which everyone can and should participate, whether or not we are intellectually gifted and academically  talented.
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