Layer 491 . . . The Churches of England, A Debate, The Media, Rowan Williams, John Sentamu, the Moral Agenda, Taxes on Bankers and Jarrow Marchers

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I went to church last night - and I've never before seen a church so packed, with every pew taken and with extra seats needing to be brought in. A very lovely church it is too - St Peter's has been the parish church of De Beauvoir Town since 1841.

No need to worry - Oxzen hasn't had a moment of revelation and decided to follow The Lord. Indeed not. The Church of England is going through some interesting times, with its two archbishops saying some very enlightened things these past few days, but Oxzen still sees no reason to convert to a belief in God.

Last night St Peter's hosted the third "Hackney Debate":

"George Alagiah chairs a discussion on media regulation and ownership, phone hacking and journalistic ethics, and public responsibility."

The speakers were Nick Higham, James Anslow and Suzanne Moore - all of them (and George) residents of Hackney.

George Alagiah strikes me as a lovely man and someone with enormous intelligence, together with superb communication skills.

The three speakers all seemed very inclined to accept the status quo with regard to media regulation and the Press Council - i.e. no more regulation, no more control on media ownership, no statutory body to monitor the activities of the press and media. None of them seemed to speak with any great passion about the appalling British media and its collusion with governments to keep our politics, our economics and our financial system going along the same old track. There was even praise for Murdoch and the tabloids generally.

Even Suzanne Moore oozed complacency - telling us that if we don't like the tabloids and the right-wing press then we can find better news reporting and comment elsewhere on the Internet. Maybe she's right - maybe it's not even worth complaining about the power of the right-wing press to dominate the national conversation, since there's nothing we can effectively do about it.

Personally I'd have preferred to listen to platform speakers who could show similar outrage to that expressed by several members of the audience. Maybe if you have a regular column in the Mail on Sunday AND a column in The Guardian, as Suzanne does, you're a bit beyond outrage.

http://stpeterdebeauvoir.moonfruit.com/#/debate/4556340694

Respect to the Reverend Julia Porter-Pryce, who's the driving force behind making this particular church relevant to its community, and has opened up her church to be a venue for these public debates. It's a great venue, and even had wine on sale before and during the debate.

Have a look at the St Peter's website to find out more about what they're doing for the community -

"transforming its Crypt into a real community asset - a thriving centre for social interaction, creativity, cultural expression and community support. We're making the space fully accessible, flexible, practical and welcoming. It's home to the cold-weather night shelter, a thriving community cafe and many groups promoting creativity and healthy living." 

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During the first phase of the St Paul's site occupation, the head of the Church of England very wisely kept out of the debate about the camp, the occupation and LSX. He's now speaking out.

Oxzen has previously commented very favourably on Archbish Rowan Williams -


http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/06/layer-471-essays-rowan-williams-new.html

http://oxzen.blogspot.com/2011/06/layer-472-alfie-bowe-songs-and-singers.html


Occupy London: archbishop of Canterbury backs new tax on banking


Rowan Williams says the protest at St Paul's shows 'widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment'


http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/02/occupy-london-archbishop-canterbury-tax?


The archbishop of Canterbury has outlined a package of political and financial measures needed to take forward the "moral agenda" of Occupy London campaigners encamped outside St Paul's Cathedral.


Backing a new tax on banking, Rowan Williams said the protest against financial inequality and banking excesses had been seen "by an unexpectedly large number of people as the expression of a widespread and deep exasperation with the financial establishment that shows no sign of diminishing".


Endorsing the idea of a "Robin Hood" tax on financial transactions, he said: "There is still a powerful sense around – fair or not – of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of impatience with a return to 'business as usual' – represented by still-soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices."


Williams stepped into the debate as another senior figure in the Church of England, the bishop of London, Richard Chartres, told the Guardian that the protesters' voices chimed in with "alarm bells ringing around the world about the connection between finance and ethics and human flourishing".

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Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams calls for new tax on bankers


The Archbishop of Canterbury has thrown his weight behind the St Paul’s Cathedral anti-capitalist protesters as he called for a new tax on banks.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8863794/Archbishop-of-Canterbury-Rowan-Williams-calls-for-new-tax-on-bankers.html


“The demands of the protesters have been vague. Many people are frustrated beyond measure at what they see as the disastrous effects of global capitalism; but it isn’t easy to say what we should do differently. It is time we tried to be more specific,” Dr Williams said.
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Archbishop Sentamu targets City greed

He suggests denying honours and the Queen's Awards for Industry to fat cat firms; and an interesting way of embarrassing tax avoiders

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/nov/05/sentamu-archbishop-of-york-st-paul-s-camp-corporate-greed-city-of-london?

The Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu, has spoken out about the greed which provoked the St Paul's camp. Typically, he makes two practical suggestions [which can be read here - http://www.archbishopofyork.org/articles.php/2238/archbishops-call-to-re-establish-a-fairer-society]

Changes in public attitudes can take place quite quickly.  Over the last few decades racism has lost its respectability and is seen as unacceptable.  The same applies to homophobia (the irrational fear of homosexuals) and discrimination against women.  My belief and trust is that a society which has shown itself capable of making such rapid changes to attitudes in these areas will also prove capable of recognising that our society will work best when we recognise that as human beings we are all, fundamentally of equal worth and members of one society. 

Let us do it. Let us do it now.

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Archbishop of York attacks high-paid executives


Dr John Sentamu has attacked the salaries of top executives saying that huge differences between the rich and poor "weaken community life and make societies less cohesive".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/8871631/Archbishop-of-York-attacks-high-paid-executives.html


Archbishop of York John Sentamu attacks executive pay

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-15605385

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Jarrow marchers complete journey


A group of activists who have recreated the famous 1936 Jarrow March for Jobs will complete their 330-mile journey by highlighting the growing "crisis" of youth unemployment.


Dozens of people have taken part in the trek from the North East to London, where a rally on Saturday afternoon will be addressed by politicians and union leaders.


Youth Fight for Jobs, which organised the march, will hand in a petition to 10 Downing Street calling for a huge Government job scheme, apprenticeships, the reinstatement of the Education Maintenance Allowance, the reopening of axed youth services and action on tuition fees.


Spokeswoman Claire Laker Mansfield said: "Young people have shown that far from being lazy or scroungers, they want a future with decent jobs and education. The marchers have received huge support up and down the country. People have fed them, put them up and made it clear they back our demands.


"We think it is unfair that in the 21st century young people are facing long-term unemployment. There are almost a million young people out of work, and the jobs market is not getting any better."


Great-grandchildren of those who took part in the original march 75 years ago were among those taking part in the protest march, which started on October 1.


In 1936, 200 jobless men marched from Jarrow in north east England to London with a 12,000-name petition calling for government action to create jobs.

- UK Press Association

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5i0bboHKNDe1XKO4DBFEe5hD6JJTg?docId=N0466781320418717584A

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Layer 481 . . . The State of the World, the March of the Neoliberals, the Greed Creed, Austerity and Roy Harper

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It's time for a bit of catching up on who's been saying what about these appalling times we're living through - in particular Professor Jayati Ghosh and Stuart Hall. In times like this there's no point in mucking about with halfwit commentators - we need to listen to people who know what they're talking about.

As Michael Moore pointed out some time ago, Stupid White Men are largely responsible for the state of the world (aided and abetted by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and now Sarah Palin). Non-white intellectuals such as Ghosh, Hall and also the likes of Tariq Ali ought to be our major points of reference in these dismal times.

"Times like this"? We're in a depression, not just a recession, and it's about to get worse. So what's worse than a depression? Maybe a suicide pact - like the Tories and Libdems agreed with one another. Like the British people have had with successive shit governments, including New Labour.

Frankly the rich bastards who run the world don't give a toss about the state of Britain, as such. They don't pay taxes here, they keep their profits elsewhere, and they probably don't even live here. If the country disintegrates they'll happily live elsewhere - all of them. These are people with choices. They enjoy having freedom and choice, and they use these words as often as they can. These are nice, positive words . . .  unlike greed, unearned income, exploitation, corruption, tax havens, tax avoidance, etc. These are people who are quite content to asset-strip any damn country they fancy, and then move on to the next one. It starts with asset-stripping individual businesses, individual factories . . . and it moves on to whole cities, whole regions, and whole countries . . . Such is the power of 'globalisation'.

We've become a world fit for asset strippers, fit for bankers and hedge fund managers, fit for itinerant billionaires, and fit for the people who worship them and want to be just like them.

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Last night I was watching "Later" on the BBC when up popped Roy Harper - now seventy years of age, with snow white long hair and a snow-white beard to match. Jules was suitably reverential to Roy, and Roy sang a couple of verses of "I Hate The White Man" - a song that's passed the  test of time, a song that still resonates on this planet that's still sowing the seeds of its own destruction.

"For I hate the whiteman
And his plastic excuse
For I hate the whiteman
And the man who turned him loose..."


"While his golden headed scandal sheets
Present their daily bite
To give their righteous news-bleeders
Drugs to keep them white


While outside in the whitewash
Where the guns are always, always right
A shooting star has summoned
Its dark angel from his night"

http://www.lyricsondemand.com/r/royharperlyrics/ihatethewhitemanlyrics.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k899gOpzWRw - I Hate The White Man

I guess Roy Harper, back in the sixties at least, was the nearest thing that Britain ever had to the early Bob Dylan - a proper poet who composed and sang solo with acoustic guitar - who toured the college circuit with his stoned wit, his ascerbic observations, his provocations and his bite . . . steadfastly refusing to compromise or sell out his uncomfortable truths. Interesting that Roy, like Bob, is a Gemini - they were born within 20 days of one another in 1941.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VHc13c8O_U&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=AVGxdCwVVULXe81kzMqEmsknn-urljTdDT    -   Me and My Woman, Highway Blues, McGoohans Blues, etc. (50 songs)

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

http://www.royharper.co.uk/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3IWCc5NRic&NR=1  -   Acapulco Gold

If anyone ever doubted that Roy is the real deal then consider that the likes of David Gilmour, Kate Bush and Jimmy Page consider him a major influence on their work. Imagine being revered by that bunch of stratospheric musos . . .

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Meanwhile, the state of the world . . .

1. Jayati Ghosh

Spooked into austerity, we dig our own economic grave


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/13/spooked-austerity-economic-grave

Fear of the markets has blinded leaders to the alternatives. Economies can grow out of debt or plunge deeper into crisis

The stupidity of the current macroeconomic stance in the UK is surprising in itself; but when combined with similar voices in Europe and the US, it is downright astonishing. Three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the global economy is not going through a recovery from financial crisis, but simply entering act two after a brief intermission. On current form this play is a farce that will end in tragedy.


Policy discussion on both sides of the Atlantic is dominated by extreme fiscal hawks, who wrongly see public spending as the problem rather than at least part of the solution. The emphasis on fiscal rectitude is accompanied by the inability to rein in finance. All this condemns economies to financial instability, depressed and even contracting GDP and worsening conditions for ordinary citizens.

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2. Stuart Hall

The march of the neoliberals


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals


We are living through an extraordinary political situation: the end of the debt-fuelled boom, the banking crisis of 2007-10, the defeat of New Labour and the rise to power of a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition. What sort of crisis is this? Is it a serious wobble in the trickle-down, win-win, end-of-boom-and-bust economic model that has dominated global capitalism? Does it presage business as usual, the deepening of present trends, or the mobilisation of social forces for a radical change of direction? Is this the start of a new conjuncture?

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3. Angela Eagle MP

[Yes - a decent article by a Labour politician!!]

An end to the greed creed


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/22/end-to-greed-creed-labour


Market fundamentalism's dogma is now exposed. Labour must look to build a new moral economy


Three years on, it is ever clearer that the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global financial meltdown was a watershed. The era of rightwing market fundamentalism forged by the Thatcher/Reagan administrations in the 1980s has at last ended. Things are in flux. We must learn from the financial crisis or we will fail the next generation.


The Tory-led government is unwilling and unable to do this, still in thrall to the discredited doctrine and the old rules of the game.

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And finally . . .

John Crace's take on the Libdem conference -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/22/westminster-digested
Clegg asserts his 'authority'. Everyone else looks baffled

Brilliant.

As is his 'Digested Read' of  Honey Money by Catherine Hakim -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/12/honey-money-catherine-hakim-digested

Digested read, digested: Get your tits out for a job.
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Layer 259 . . . Michael Foot, Political Activism, Wellbeing, Truth, Ashcroft, Anger and Education

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Some interesting links this week.

Michael Foot died yesterday at the age of 96.

An article in the Guardian this week highlighted a linkage between political activism and wellbeing.

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Political Activism

Brain food: does activism make you happy?
Who'd have thought it? New research shows there is a link between being politically active and wellbeing
by Aditya Chakrabortty

Political activism is hardly a barrel of laughs. And yet it makes you happier.

So find two university psychologists in new research that looks for the first time at the link between political activity and wellbeing. Malte Klar and Tim Kasser started by interviewing two sets of around 350 college students, both about their degree of political engagement and their levels of happiness and optimism. Both times, they found that those most inclined to go on a demo were also the cheeriest.

The groups who involve themselves in political debate were far and away the strongest on the "vitality" scale: they felt more alive and enriched than those who merely complained . . .

The study flies in the face of the popular wisdom that happiness resides in creature comforts and relative affluence. Perhaps activism gives people a sense of purpose, or of agency or just a chance to hang out with other people. Most likely it does all of the above.

"I will fight for what I believe in until I drop dead," Barbara Castle told this paper in 1998. "And that's what keeps you alive."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/02/brain-food-activism-makes-you-happy

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A Radical Conscience

Michael Foot has been described as the radical conscience of British socialism. He was a man of principle, an idealist, an internationalist and an anti-colonialist. He was a man with values and convictions. He believed in justice and equality. He pursued big causes with great passion.

Michael, and his nephew Paul, were major figures and role models for radicals, students and activists back in the Sixties. Both of them were well-informed, great speakers, and often very amusing.

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/03/michael-foot-appreciation-michael-white?CMP=AFCYAH

Michael was an anti-fascist and he was in favour of nuclear disarmament. He was pro-peace, pro-democracy, and in favour of winning debates and arguments through the force of logic and truth.

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Some quotes regarding truth:

Ỳe shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
Herbert Agar

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Plato, Dialogues, Phaedo

Chase after truth, and you'll free yourself . . .
Clarence Darrow

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer

These are all taken from the preface of a book by John R. Talbot called The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street (2009) - currently on sale in W H Smith for a very reasonable £4.49.

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More Tory Lies

The Tories have again been caught out telling big lies. It's now official - William Hague knew perfectly well that 'Lord' Michael Ashcroft had not complied with the undertakings that he'd given (regarding becoming a permanent resident and paying full taxes) in order to be eligible for a peerage.

And it's utter bullshit for Cameron and co. to say that his residential status and tax affairs were private matters for Ashcroft and the Inspector of Taxes, and were no business of the Tory party, as such. The question for New Labour is  - how have they allowed the Tories and Ashcroft to get away with this for so long? If this man made certain promises in order to get a peerage then the least we, the people, can expect is for both the Tory and the New Labour leadership to follow through and make damned sure the bastard had done what he promised he would do. NOT to do so is unbelievably negligent. For TEN years!

William Hague hid Lord Ashcroft's tax status for months
Former leader's disclosure reveals peer kept financial affairs secret from senior Conservatives for a decade

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/03/william-hague-lord-ashcroft-tax-status

The turmoil at the top of the Tory party over the tax affairs of Lord Ashcroft escalated last night as the former leader, William Hague, admitted he had known "for a few months" that the peer had renegotiated the terms under which he took his place in the House of Lords.

Hague's disclosure put pressure on himself and the party to explain why they have repeatedly evaded questions about the matter in a succession of recent interviews. It also highlighted how Ashcroft, the Conservative deputy chairman, kept his tax status secret for almost a decade from his closest Tory ally and the man who lobbied hardest for his peerage in 2000.

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Why David Cameron's schools policy is out of date

The Tory leader says uniforms and pupils standing when an adult walks into the classroom help define a good school. He must be joking

by Francis Beckett

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/01/david-cameron-education-policy

We can stop worrying about how to improve schools. It's simple, according to David Cameron. It's a good school if it's got a uniform, and children get up when an adult walks into the room, and teachers set and teach by ability. That clear? Good.

School uniforms are a British obsession. In most of Europe and America, they don't bother. It always seems to be the apostles of economic liberalism who are keenest to dictate every inch of what our children wear.

Politicians have a key role in state education – to make sure it is properly funded, supported, and accountable. But pronouncing on whether children should stand up or sit down? Come off it, Dave.

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Lambeth is Britain's angriest borough
by Deborah Orr

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/01/lambeth-britain-angriest-borough

London, according to a new survey, is the angriest city in Britain, and Lambeth is the angriest borough in London. What's it like to reside inside this hotbed of throbbing, Brownite disgruntlement? I've lived in Lambeth for almost a quarter of a century, and let me tell you, it's extremely infuriating.

Surveys are sometimes silly. But this one is not. Commissioned by the British Association of Anger Management, which sounds like something from a Chris Morris satire, it does make the right connection. Its director, Mike Fisher, says: "I believe that issues such as crime, violence, domestic violence, road rage, addiction, eating disorders, depression and many other mental health issues all stem from our inability as a culture to handle or express our feelings, especially those of anger."

Lambeth isn't only the angriest place in British, it also boasts one of the highest incidences of mental disorder. GP records for 2009 suggest that about 1.4% of the adult population suffers from a severe mental illness. That's nearly three times higher than the average expected from national surveys. Go figure.

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Affluenza, Greed, Anger and Ways Forward

And why, as a culture, are we unable to "handle or express our feelings, especially those of anger"?

"Crime, violence, domestic violence, road rage, addiction, eating disorders, depression and many other mental health issues" stem directly from a general spiritual sickness and a shocking lack of emotional and social intelligence in our society. Need we say more?

From the lies and obsessions of politicians and bankers, to the general culture of greed, inequality and materialism that's been created in this country, it's clear we're a sick society. It's not that everybody is afflicted by affluenza and a lack of these key intelligences, but when a critical mass of people and the media in general become afflicted then everybody suffers. Virtually nobody really sees the truth, nobody understands what's happening, and nobody sees the way out.

The only way out is for adults to seek enlightenment, and for schools to begin offering opportunities for children to develop spiritual, emotional and social intelligence. Just like they do in more enlightened countries and societies.

Sadly this is unlikely to happen when our leading politicians still cling to the idea that the most important things in education are uniforms, getting children to stand up when an adult comes into the room, and making sure the (allegedly) most academically able kids are split off from the less able, both in terms of the schools they attend and within each school.

What Cameron and his ilk desire is the militarisation of education. Put the troops in ranks, make them wear uniform, make them salute their superiors by standing to attention whenever one appears in their vicinity, break down any semblance of disobedient or disorderly personality or conduct, fill them with the drills and skills they'll need to be either foot soldiers or members of the officer class, and then we'll have an orderly and disciplined society - which is just the way the traditionalists like things to be.

This approach is the polar opposite of an education system that stresses the need for children to become confident, self-disciplined, self-motivated, autonomous, creative individuals who march to the beat of their own individual drum; who live and learn in the ways that they prefer, and speak in their own individual voices. Such individuals define the common good in their own terms, rather than the status quo, and need to be convinced that something is right before they'll accept it as right. They're critical thinkers rather than uncritical pawns in someone else's games.

More on this in the next blog.
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Layer 132 Green Custard, the Death of Industry and Ghost Towns.

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Springwatch 6 - - Green. Shoots. And Leaves.

Throwing a cup of green custard over Mandleson was an ugly, violent thing to do, and the young woman who did it no doubt felt very angry with him. It’s not the way to go, though. We need to show that as much as we may loathe him we’re capable of non-violent, Gandhian protest, in order not to allow him any opportunity to gain the high moral ground. Strange, though, how the assailant, having carried out her assault, was allowed to simply walk away.

A few trees here and there now in blossom, and a few beginning to show signs of green leaves.

Coventry City playing at their Ricoh stadium today - against Chelsea in the F.A. Cup quarter final. Sky-Bluecollar Motown UK versus the Oligarchs. Next stop the semi, at Wembley. Drogba has just scored, but no matter - we were one down in ’87 at Wembley.

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Billy Bragg had an excellent piece in the paper yesterday.

With 25 years' hindsight, Maggie's bitter victory over the striking miners unleashed forces that led directly to this economic crisis.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that the Bank of England chose the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike to fire off its weapon of last resort in an attempt to damp down the conflagration currently sweeping through global capitalism. The wry smile that passes across the lips of those who opposed the naked selfishness at the heart of the Thatcherite experiment will be mirrored by the disconcerted frowns of those who, having wholeheartedly embraced the free market, never thought that it would lead to this. Like Frankenstein's monster, Thatcherism has turned on its creators.

Is there anybody out there willing to stand up – on this, of all days – and raise a toast to the willful destruction of our manufacturing industry and its replacement by the financial services sector? Yes, there were unions who were resistant to change, but whoever came up with the idea that the solution to this problem was to import cars rather than make them ourselves sacrificed more than just the entire engineering skills base.

The forces that Margaret Thatcher unleashed in order to defeat the NUM destroyed whole communities before leeching into our society. Untamed by successive governments, these same forces now threaten to devour us all.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/05/miners-strike-thatcherism-billy-bragg

Coincidentally (see below) Billy was born in the borough of Barking & Dagenham.

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

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The Other Motown UK.

There was a documentary on BBC4 this week called Ford’s Dagenham Dream which told the story of the phenomenal success of Ford of Britain during the period when Ford was designing and producing Anglias, Zephyrs, Zodiacs, Cortinas, Granadas, Escorts and Capris.

My very first car was a 3-speed Anglia, (slow, very slow and please get up this hill you crap little car), bought for less than £100 by parents who were keen to see me off the Lambretta and travelling in something ‘safer’. Definitely a lot slower. I had special permission to park it in the staff car park when I was in the sixth form. I can’t imagine that happening these days.

I learned to drive at 17, and my dad used to take me out for extra practice in his 6-seat Ford Zephyr automatic, which felt huge compared to the Vauxhall Viva of the driving school, in which I had 5 lessons.

Dad later moved on to a Cortina. Right at the end of the sixties Ford produced the Mark I Capri, which seemed incredibly cool and glamorous in its day. One of my uncles bought one, and it remains in the family to this day. My son, who’s no lover of cars, has definite designs on it.

The point of the documentary was that the massive sprawl of Dagenham is now a ghost town, and Ford has moved most of its production to places where there’s a more docile, and cheaper, labour force.

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Coventry was the other British town that was built almost entirely on the motor industry, and the manufacturing and engineering skills of its people.

Coventry was the home of Jaguar, Daimler, Triumph, Standard, Hillman, Humber, Singer and Alvis - all great marques in their day. There was also a massive Massey-Ferguson factory, where members of my family worked for decades.

I also had uncles and aunts who worked in factories like Wickman making machine tools, in foundries, and in factories belonging to GEC, making electrical goods and components.

Unlike in Germany and France, where industrial management was professional and based on solid engineering expertise, boardrooms of the large manufacturers in Britain were dominated by toffs and marketing wallahs, snake-oil salesmen and friends of the Chairman. The kind of people who subsequently went into banking.

Industrial relations were based on all-out conflict rather than partnership. Management tried to screw the workers, and the unions were prepared to use strike action in disputes over the length and frequency of tea breaks.

The original innovative and creative giants who founded the motor industry were gradually replaced by the kinds of idiots who authorised the production of complete rubbish like the Marina and the Allegro, which pretty much put paid to car production by Morris in Oxford and Austin in Longbridge. Engineering and financial disasters.

MG, Rover, Wolseley, Jensen and Aston-Martin, even Bentley and Rolls Royce, were also allowed to flounder and die for lack of investment and expertise - their brand names eventually bought for a song by much smarter operators.

Much the same story applies to the motorcycle industry in England, and in particular the BSA company in Birmingham and Triumph in Meriden.

In the longer term our government, acting on behalf of we, the people, would give hefty bribes to the likes of Nissan and Honda to set up manufacturing in places like Sunderland and Swindon, and teach workers there how to bolt together vehicles like the ‘Bluebird’ and the ‘Avensis’, using components, engines, gearboxes and drivetrains designed and built in Japan.

The ultimate irony was giving huge government subsidies to BMW, a company that designed and built many of the aeroplanes which flattened wartime Coventry, to assemble the revived Mini in the Midlands. Tragic, and pathetic, all of it.

Thatcher, of course, knew nothing about and cared nothing about manufacturing and industry, or the people who had created and sustained it. She hated the working classes and their trade unions. Her family background was in shopkeeping. Buy cheap and sell dear - the ultimate expression of capitalism, and the driving logic of ‘the market’, profiteering and exploitation.

We needed Thatch to teach us that greed is good, that mining, manufacturing and engineering are unimportant, and that the City, the financiers and the oligarchs are the masters of the universe. Having learnt these things from the dear old fool, we’re now having to deal with the consequences. Up the City!

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The Specials were quite a phenomenon when they started producing music in Coventry back in 1977/78 for Gerry Dammers’ Two-Tone label. They were the Arctic Monkeys of their day - original, dynamic, ‘political’, authentic, and in complete commercial control of their affairs, determined not to be exploited by the music moguls in that London.

For a while they were incredibly popular, and highly influential on the music scene. Their music was a brilliant synthesis of styles that blended rock with Caribbean influences, and was performed by an eclectic mix of black and white musicians.

Their best-known and best-selling record was Ghost Town, released in 1981 - an atmospheric and eerie musical rendition of what it felt like to live in a city that was run-down, impoverished and largely devoid of people, work and cultural life. That record, written by Dammers, spoke for the working and non-working people of Coventry, and elsewhere.

Shops are now closing down in city centres all over the country at an unprecedented rate. People are being thrown out of work or put on part-week working in this country as well as America, and around the world, at a rate never seen by the present generation of young people, if indeed by most of us.

If it wasn’t for the quick reaction of governments, and their ability to spend public money by the billion and trillion in order to guarantee the viability of the banks and other major financial institutions, then millions of people would have lost all their savings and millions of companies would have gone bust, with unimaginable consequences for employment and wellbeing. Capitalism would have destroyed civilised life on this planet as we know it, let alone destroyed particular mining villages, manufacturing towns and industrial cities.

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This week the Coventry Telegraph had a report on the re-formation of The Specials for a stadium show at the football ground (The Ricoh!) and a subsequent tour. Jerry Dammers, the founder member, keyboard player and main songwriter is quoted as saying the other members of the band have decided to go it alone without him, to exclude him, for various reasons to do with petty jealousy, rivalry and Gerry’s continuing purism and political idealism.

Ironically The Specials effectively broke up just after Ghost Town when the lead singer Terry Hall and his two dopy mates left the band to go it alone as The Fun Boy Three (!) - a wretched little outfit if ever there was one, and an obvious reaction to Dammers’ serious intent, political commitment and activism.

So the people who walked out on The Specials now want to claim they ARE The Specials! The fools should reform as the Less-Than Fun Boy Three. Or Four. Or Five.

It’s as though the Beatles got back together without Lennon, or the Stones without Keith Richards or Santana without Carlos. It also brings to mind the deluded Roger Waters trying to stop Pink Floyd continuing to perform after he left, on the grounds that he was effectively the heart and soul of the band, since he’d been the main songwriter. As if! And the posturing front man Terry Hall wasn’t even a songwriter or a musician!

Why are humans so fundamentally vain, egocentric, stupid and pathetic? Green custard on the lot of them. Whoops!

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

My word of the week - Non-attachment.

My word for next week, and every week - Enlightenment.
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Layer 122 Benjamin Dover and the Pig Roast; The Culture of Greed

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This should have been posted two days ago.


If you have time for a moment of Zen today then consider this - the civil servant who accepted the most invitations to corporate hospitality last year, the guy who on more than 50 occasions bent over, spread his cheeks and said to his pals in the business sector, “Stick it in there, boys”, was called Sir Brian Bender.

SIR Brian? For services to corporate cluster fucks, presumably. As the astute Matthew Parris said on R4 this morning, you have to admire someone who has that level of dedication to self interest and corporate self-interest. It can’t be easy spending so much time schmoozing with slimy business lobbyists and boring PR arseholes. I paraphrase Matthew, and his remarks were far more subtle and witty, but you get the point.

Yesterday’s moment of amusement was provided by an article in the Guardian pointing out that the film Slumdog Millionaire has been a great boon to headline writers. Apparently the Sun had an article about bankers with the headline Scumbag Millionaires, and on the sports pages Kevin Pieterson was described as a dumb-slog millionaire. Private Eye also has a cartoon of KP with the same caption. Excellent.

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It’s impossible to overstate what an appalling individual Hazel Blears truly is. This ghastly muppet had the nerve to put herself forward as a candidate for the deputy leadership of NuLabour, and was duly trounced, coming last in a five dog race. Which probably struck her as grossly unfair since she’s consistently been a slavish adherent to every neo-conservative policy put forward by her party leaders, unlike at least one of the other candidates.

I mentioned briefly in Layer 119 that she’d had the ‘audacity’ (i.e. foolishness) to write a repost to George Monbiot’s recent piece in the Guardian, calling him cynical, blah, blah, blab, blears.

Since then I’ve been looking forward to George’s next column, licking my lips in anticipation, and duly feasted on it this week. Well done George! Hazel on a skewer, on a spit - a pig roast of the first order. Wonderful stuff.

Just what exactly do you stand for, Hazel Blears - except election?

The minister claims to have political guts, but the only principle her voting record shows is slavish obedience.

An open letter to Hazel Blears MP, secretary of state for communities and local government.

Last week you used an article in the Guardian to attack my "cynical and corrosive commentary". You asserted your political courage, maintaining that "you don't get very far in politics without guts, and certainly not as far as the cabinet table". By contrast, you suggested, I contribute "to the very cynicism and disengagement from politics" that I make my living writing about.

Courage in politics is measured by the consistent application of principles. The website TheyWorkForYou.com records votes on key issues since 2001. It reveals that you voted "very strongly for the Iraq war", "very strongly against an investigation into the Iraq war" and "very strongly for replacing Trident" ("very strongly" means an unbroken record). You have voted in favour of detaining terror suspects without charge for 42 days, in favour of identity cards and in favour of a long series of bills curtailing the freedom to protest. There's certainly consistency here, though it is not clear what principles you are defending.

Other threads are harder to follow. In 2003, for instance, you voted against a fully elected House of Lords and in favour of a chamber of appointed peers. In 2007, you voted for a fully elected House of Lords. You have served without public complaint in a government which has introduced the minimum wage but blocked employment rights for temporary and agency workers; which talked of fiscal prudence but deregulated the financial markets; which passed the Climate Change Act but approved the construction of a third runway at Heathrow; which spoke of an ethical foreign policy but launched an illegal war in which perhaps a million people have died. Either your principles, by some remarkable twists of fate, happen to have pre-empted every contradictory decision this government has taken, or you don't possess any.

You remained silent while the government endorsed the kidnap and the torture of innocent people; blocked a ceasefire in Lebanon and backed a dictator in Uzbekistan who boils his prisoners to death. You voiced no public concern while it instructed the Serious Fraud Office to drop the corruption case against BAE, announced a policy of pre-emptive nuclear war, signed a one-sided extradition treaty with the United States and left our citizens to languish in Guantánamo Bay. You remained loyal while it oversaw the stealthy privatisation of our public services and the collapse of Britain's social housing programme, closed hundreds of post offices and shifted taxation from the rich to the poor. What exactly do you stand for Hazel, except election?

The only consistent political principle I can deduce from these positions is slavish obedience to your masters. TheyWorkForYou sums up your political record thus: "Never rebels against their party in this parliament." Yours, Hazel, is the courage of the sycophant, the courage to say yes.

It seems to me that someone of your principles would fit comfortably into almost any government. All regimes require people like you, who seem to be prepared to obey orders without question. Unwavering obedience guarantees success in any administration. It also guarantees collaboration in every atrocity in which a government might engage. The greatest thing we have to fear in politics is the cowardice of politicians.

I believe there is a vast public appetite for re-engagement, but your government, aware of the electoral consequences, has shut us out. It has reneged on its promise to hold a referendum on electoral reform. It has blocked a referendum on the European treaty, ditched the regional assemblies, used Scottish MPs to swing English votes, sustained an unelected House of Lords, eliminated almost all the differences between itself and the opposition. You create an impenetrable political monoculture, then moan that people don't engage in politics.

It is precisely because I can picture something better that I have become such a cynical old git. William Hazlitt remarked that: "Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are and what they ought to be." You, Hazel, have helped to reduce our political choices to a single question: whether to laugh through our tears or weep through our laughter.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/10/hazel-blears-george-monbiot

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Meanwhile Polly Toynbee wrote an excellent column this week, headed:

End this culture of greed. If Obama can, Labour must.

Culture change may be coming, but it's not here yet. The financial sector will pay itself £3.6bn in bonuses this month: banks are rumoured to be rushing to beat any proposed cap. Even 70% state-owned RBS will pay generously, despite losing £28bn at the blackjack tables of investment banking.

Barack Obama's thundering words resounded around the world this week. He castigated "disgusting payoffs" and "lavish bonuses", fixing a $500,000 pay cap on bailed-out banks and firms. Is it heartening or depressing that Labour only dares echo such words when Obama has said them? It raised top tax two weeks after Obama won an election promising the same. After 12 years of celebrating the filthy rich, Peter Mandelson finally tells RBS to reconsider "exorbitant bonuses" and "how it looks and what public opinion will be".

The rationale for runaway pay was market competition; but the crisis revealed they were not brilliant, just deluded group-thinkers harvesting bonuses in a rising market. Often, when meeting them, they seemed lacking in intellectual curiosity, ignorant about ordinary life, breathtakingly selfish, and to have testosterone where their brains should be. Ask the universities: those heading for the City are rarely the cleverest, just the greediest.

What could be done? Abolish bonuses altogether. The evidence is that they don't work or have perverse effects. Performance-related pay demotivates losers without motivating winners. Changing the greed culture needs champions, so turn the Low Pay Commission, which sets the minimum wage, into a pay commission with a remit to set guidelines on the maximum shareholders should tolerate. Obama's $500,000 translates in the UK to 15 times the median pay of £23,000. That seems a generous maximum: CEO total pay packages have risen in the UK to 75 times the average pay within a company.

At this budget Labour should consider reward from top to bottom. It would be the right time to raise the minimum wage. If inflation is likely to be zero or less, will benefits be adjusted accordingly? Labour should take steps to narrow the great income divide in this last chance to halve child poverty by 2010. That would cost £2.7bn - less than this month's City bonuses.

Obama arrives to clean up the explosive aftermath of Cheney-Bush neo-conomics. He reasserts the communal values of the state and public services, and the fairer distribution of rewards.

But in the UK everything is out of joint. It should be Labour riding to the rescue after a Tory era of City excess, debt and bubble. The idea that the Tories can reinvent themselves as the nation's saviour from the City culture is bizarre. They are the City, and the City roots for them, however ardently Labour wooed its denizens.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/07/bonus-culture-city-excesses

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Scams and Scumbags

This month is the Office of Fair Trade’s Scams Awareness Month. According to the OFT at their Consumer Direct site, almost 3 million UK consumers fall victim to Internet, post, email, text and phone scams, costing in the area of £3.5 billion per year.

£3.5 billion. Every year. And most of those are probably the old and gullible and the young and naïve, who are the people least likely to be able to cope with being cheated and robbed. We live in a world full of scumbags and complete *&$%*!$%££! Words fail me. Bankers, politicians, lawyers, tax accountants, estate agents, and scammers.

My mum’s phone bill was considerably higher than it should have been last quarter as a result of phoning premium rate numbers to claim prizes she was supposed to have won, spending at least £1 on each call. She knows better now, but the conniving bastards who devise these scams surely ought to be locked up at their own expense? How come we don’t do it?

Off with all their heads.
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Layer 77 Rapping Bankers, Scrapping SATs.

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The events of the past month or so have been so wild and whacky there’s very little that any blogger can really say that isn’t superfluous and hasn‘t already been said. Wherever you look there’s craziness going on that’s almost beyond satire or even comment - the events speak for themselves. 

There's Gordie Broon as superhero, deftly clearing up the mess he’s made, thanks to his admiration for the City and his determination not to regulate its greed and mad excesses. 

There’s the USA and the UK nationalising the major providers and guarantors of mortgages, and the pillars of the banking system, in a manner advocated all those years ago by Michael Foot and various other socialists. 

There’s John McCain trying to make himself electable by selecting as his vice presidential candidate someone who’s obscure even in her own country, and clearly a dimwit even by backwoods standards. 

How do you satirise any of that? Fortunately Jon Stewart’s ‘The Daily Show’ (on More Four) and Private Eye are still having a very good go.

Stewart and his team are pretty much unmissable in this run-in to the election, especially in a time of financial and economic chaos and meltdown. Last week, commenting on what the Republicans can now do to improve their electability, he swerved around Obama’s crack about McCain choosing Palin for VP as like ‘putting lipstick on a pig’ and delicately settled for any future actions by McC & Co as being like ‘putting perfume on a turd’.

Stewart replayed the footage of the mad woman in one of McCain’s audiences fulminating about Obama being an Arab. Whereas the casual observer might have thought McCain gained some credit from the incident by telling the batty one that Obama was ‘a decent family man’, the Daily Show skewered him for letting the label ‘Arab’ stand as a something true and self-evidently a bad thing - i.e. no attempt to say a) he’s not ‘an Arab’, and b) even if he were, so what? 

The woman was a barking racist, and all McCain did, whilst backing away from her, was condone her racism by merely pointing out that at least Obama had a family, as if that has anything to do with his character and his ability. Later in the programme one of Stewart’s team, in role as a Republican commentator, said to Stewart with pride in his voice, “The McCain campaign speaks for us - the Ignorant - the people who shouldn’t necessarily speak”. 

Meanwhile, the current issue of Private Eye carries an ‘editorial’ by the former boss of the ‘Royal Bank of Gnome’ (i.e. RBS), which begins, 

“The Royal Bank of Gnome has been taken over as of this morning by the Government. I welcome this development and I am happy to give a reassurance to members of my family that my money is perfectly safe. Despite my sadness at leaving a bank that I have done so much for over the years, I can walk away with the knowledge that I have done everything in my power to safeguard my salary, bonuses and pension scheme. Investors may take comfort in the knowledge that although they have lost all their money, I haven’t.”

The Eye also points out that Sir Fred Goodwin last year received a ‘performance bonus’ of £2,860,000 for his work in manoeuvring the Royal Bank of Scotland group into a position where it needed a £20billion bail-out. 

The Eye carries ‘An Apology’ that’s ‘Exclusive to all Tory Newspapers’:

“In recent years we may have given the mistaken impression that the City was the driving force for growth in the economy, and that the “masters of the universe” and “superwomen” in the City who raked in mega-bonuses for deals which had transformed London into the banking capital of the world were people everyone should be proud of, as the wealth they’ve created has benefited each and every one of us in some way.

We now realise, in the wake of the ongoing credit crisis, that nothing could be further from the truth, and that the City is in fact nothing but a collection of sharp-suited robber barons, crooks, spivs and peroxide blond harpies, all shamelessly feeding at the trough as they scoop up mega-bonuses for dodgy deals which have taken us to the brink of Armageddon, and who are deserving of nothing but stoning or beheading for the misery they’ve wrought. 

We apologise for any confusion caused, and any confusion in the future when we criticise the government’s plan to take a share in the banks, saying that stifling risk-taking in the City will only make us all poorer in the long . . . etc, etc, etc.”

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Our government, meanwhile, didn’t shirk the opportunity to slip in, undercover of the cacophony of a collapsing financial system, and their own collapsing credibility, a decision to quietly scrap KS3 SATs, whilst retaining tests at KS2. Well Hoo-ray. Two bloody cheers. A left turn, or a U-turn? Maybe not as momentous a U-turn as now promising to strictly regulate the money markets as well as put overseers on the banks’ boards of directors, but a major reversal of policy all the same. 

Jenni Russell, as ever, in her Guardian column, neatly hit the nail on the head: 

“These are good times to bury bad policies, and the government is making the most of it. Less than a day after the Home Office dropped 42-day detention came the totally unexpected announcement of the abolition of Sats for 14-year-olds. This was a U-turn of the most remarkable kind. The blind defence of the testing system despite a wall of evidence about its failure has been the defining and depressing characteristic of the schools policy for a decade. And on Tuesday, in a near-empty Commons, the facade finally cracked. A test that skews the education of hundreds of thousands of children every year was suddenly found by schools minister Ed Balls to be "not justified", and "less and less relevant" to children's learning. It is a welcome change of perspective from a minister who has insisted until now that Sats are essential.”

Jenni then went on to say, 

“Every argument against Sats at 14 applies even more strongly to those at 11. They are simplistic and unreliable, they usually ruin year six, and they don't reflect what children understand. Almost every secondary school retests its 11-year-olds. At least a quarter can't do what the Sats claim they can. Yet since primaries' ranking, heads' survival and teachers' pay depend on the results, no junior school can afford to let a true picture of children's achievements emerge.

Every recent report on education has concluded that this system of perverse incentives is demoralising pupils and failing to develop their talents. We know why ministers have clung to it: the fake results have been a fig leaf for policy failures. Now we will find out whether Balls has real political courage.

He stepped out of the bunker this week, but if Balls is to retain any consistency he can't stop mid-stride. The biggest problem in education is the boredom and alienation of children. It's good to be acting to cut the disillusionment of 11-to 14-year-olds, but if he really cares about children rather than statistics, he needs to tackle the primary problem too.”

Oxzen’s comment in Comment Is Free, in case anyone missed it, was 

As ever Jenni Russell has done a great job in skewering New Labour’s ludicrous and harmful education policies, and in highlighting the ridiculous and inconsistent arguments used by Ed Balls for not following his own logic and moving to an effective system of tracking pupil progress at KS2 as well as KS3.

Mr Balls must think educational professionals and parents alike are entirely stupid if he thinks he can get away with saying, effectively, that we must have external and objective tests at the end of Primary school because, well, we have them at the end of Secondary school.

This is a typical politician attempting to fudge the issue and behaving like someone who cares more about covering his own back from attacks from both the Tories and from within Labour than he does about the wellbeing and educational success of children. If Balls sincerely believes what he’s saying then he really is stupid, and if he doesn’t then he’s as cowardly and shifty as his media performances would indicate.

As Jenni Russell says, the testing regime has as harmful an effect on the learning and motivation of pupils at KS2 as it's had on the learning of pupils at KS3, and the tests don’t even give an accurate picture of what pupils know and what they can do. Only evidence-based expert teacher assessment and regular tracking against clear learning targets can do that.

The Year 6 SATs results are more often an indicator of the willingness of individual schools to abandon a broad, rich and balanced curriculum and cram their pupils for tests than they are an indicator of actual pupil progress and ability. As for schools producing pupils who love learning for its own sake, who are creative, confident, imaginative and emotionally intelligent - you must be joking. Schools that focus primarily on cramming and "standards" (i.e. their position in the league tables) normally don't even address these issues.

Recent New Labour murmurings of appreciation and praise for the success of the Finnish system of education don't seem to appreciate that the Finns don't formally test pupils until they are 16. They DO, however, rigorously track their progress throughout their school years, instead of relying on formal tests at the end of each Key Stage.

New Labour were wrong about formal tests for pupils at KS1 and had to recant. They were wrong about holding on to formal tests at KS3 and had to recant. Do we really have to hope the Tories win the next election in order for the right thing to happen at KS2?

Layer 32 Taking the Rap, Talking Crap.

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Film One. Our first venture into making a music DVD.

Scene One. A large commercial estate, somewhere in south east London. Early evening. The two young singers, their manager, their record producer, and a couple of their friends arrive. My business partner and I unload the gear from his vehicle and set up the camera and the lights in the rented studio. We’re good to go. Let’s rock.

Take one. Action! I hit the clapper board. Clack!! Something I’ve always wanted to do. The soundtrack plays from the portable hi-fi, unexpectedly melodic, gentle and subtle:

Quiet rap voice, saying, “Sex, drugs and violence will destroy us -
We need to focus . . . "

Second voice, singing, imploring,
“We don't need to hurt each other,
You're my sister, you're my brother . . .”

It's going well. The two singers - the stars - dressed in cool casuals with yellow turbans around their dreadlocks, are moving well, swaying gently, singing sweetly, looking cool, relaxed . . .

Over to the right their crew are sorting out some drinks and food. I’m not sure why they’re even in the studio when they could be doing this next door in the lounge area, but it‘s none of my business. For all I know they could be having a party right there. Guinness flows. The takeaway bags are emptied out, the food shared out. But what's this? Problems?

(To the sound of “We don’t need to hurt each other . . . “)

“Hey man! This chicken’s hard!”

“Don't shout at me man. It's not my fault!”

“And the chips are fuckin’ cold!”

“I told you don’t shout at me man! I did you a favour going to get some food!”

“This food is shit! I can‘t eat this!”

The film-maker joins in - “Hey! What's going on? Be quiet!”

“Don't you start shouting at me as well!”

“We’re trying to work here! This is a take!”

“You’re disrespecting me man!”

.

"Don't talk to him like that!"

“Fuck you! You better come outside and we can deal with this!”

And so on. Ho hum.

*
Scene Two. Outside. Semi-darkness. Sounds of shouts, threats, challenges. Voices calling out, pleading for calmness and peace. More shouted accusations, counter-accusations, and general “cussing”.

How did we get here? Evidently the record producer and the manager have a history of rivalry and mutual suspicion. Both of them sense that this is a really good song, and someone could make a lot of money from the success of the song, especially if the promotion is good and effective, especially if this video turns out well. They both want some creative input into the video. They both want some influence on the finished product. The video director, on the other hand, has his own ideas, though he’s now threatening to pack up his gear and go home if these fuckwits can’t calm themselves down and allow the filming to go ahead immediately. Nobody needs this shit to be happening, and nobody really understands why it is. The singers stay out of it, and roll another spliff.

Eventually the manager and the record producer wander off down the road between the deserted business units, talking animatedly, but at least not stabbing or shooting one another. In fact they’re not even throwing punches, though it seemed like a close call. It seemed for a while there like things were really starting to rumble. Really kicking off, as they say in this part of the world.

When they come back they’ve apologized to one another, and each is explaining how they’ve had a stressful day, and how the sudden warm temperatures have made it even more tiring and ‘stressful’. We’re just not used to warm weather in this country. The manager’s been dealing with high-powered lawyers all day, big-shot record company executives - nothing to do with these young rasta hopefuls - some other artists he’s handling, an act he’s pushing hard. Some soul sisters, some R & B good-looking shooting star look out we’re about to take off can’t fail to hit the big time chicks. The mother lode. The big bucks. The jackpot. Or so he reckons.

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

So what’s happening, man? What’s really going in here? What’s causing this weirdness, this stupidity? This complete and utter lack of emotional and spiritual intelligence?

Here we have some guys, the video director included, who appear to have some issues. All kinds of crap to do with flakey egos, frustration, stress, ambition, greed, exhaustion, desperation, rivalry, pride, possessiveness, jealousy, anxiety, thoughtlessness, and lack of kindness and consideration.

For the rest of the evening the record producer was desperate to explain himself and justify his behavior - to anyone who cared to, or had the time to, listen. He's only 24, and I’d guess he had a track record of getting into trouble thanks to his tendency to sound off first and think about the matter later. He was pretty choked, and really close to tears - just a big kid really.

The manager, the Big Man, having explained all about his heavy day, said his farewells and left us all to get on with this business of making a video, which, it seemed, he hadn’t been keen to do in the first place - because he hadn’t instigated it himself. The thing is, he was a charming and clearly not stupid guy, provided people were deferring to him and things were looking positive as far as he was concerned. I’ve known a lot worse.

*

To be continued.

Layer 7 A Long Strange Trip To The Buffers

I’m glad I managed to nip into Italy this year to visit Venice whist Berlusconi was out of power, as it’s looking likely that he’ll be back as president quite soon. Maybe everyone in Europe and elsewhere who regard themselves as progressive, liberal or left-wing should boycott Italy whenever it elects a raving neo-fascist to be its leader. That’s the least we could do by way of protest and to show solidarity with those in Italy who oppose the old bastard.

It seems he recently told a woman who was heckling him about poverty that she should have married a millionaire. He’s also on record as saying that women on the left are all ugly.

There’s an interesting line of enquiry here about good-looking women, and whether they do indeed tend support the rich and famous and fascistic. And an even more interesting issue about why the poor, the downtrodden, the sick and the unemployed often vote for people like Berlusconi, Thatcher, Major, Bush, etc.

It’s often thought that they vote for conservatives, neo-fascists and fat cats out of ignorance and stupidity, but such voters are not all ignorant and stupid. They are, however, victims of the power of a national media and a hegemony that blindly accepts that neo-conservative and right-wing political and economic theories are demonstrably correct, and that the world’s economy ought to be run for the benefit of short-term profit, capitalists, bankers and shareholders.

The poor who vote for parties of the right may well do so because they’re merely brainwashed and convinced that capitalism and its adherents are more likely to run the national and world economy better than the Left, and as such they’re more likely to do better themselves from ‘trickle-down’ - the crumbs that fall from the tables of the wealthy.

Is this not the way it works in the shires and the rural areas which are traditionally Tory: farm workers vote for conservatives because the interests of the farmers and agribusiness are deemed to be their own interests?

Where this falls down, of course, is the supposition that progressive governments are unwilling or unable to manage the economy, including the rural economy, as well as the Right; that they inevitably tax the rich and damage profitability. There’s also the fallacy that poor people do better by doffing the cap to their wealthy masters than they do from progressive tax and welfare policies, and higher investment in well-run public services such as health, housing and education.

The Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs was back on Thought For Today this morning talking about how our economy’s pursuit of short-term profit is destroying economic stability and damaging our long-term interests. This is indeed a spiritual issue. I really like this CR. He’s always struck me as a very wise and spiritual leader. I remember him years ago on TFT quoting the old adage that education, more than wealth or power, is the key to human dignity.

The neo-conservative economic model that’s ruled and raped the world economy for so many years has now hit the buffers and everyone’s crapping themselves that the ‘credit-crunch’ is the beginning of a world economic crash. Even the fattest of the fat cats is yowling for government interference and bail out. Everybody fears banks falling like dominos. It’s easy enough to say ‘well fuck them’ but it’s actually the less than fat cats that will be hit the hardest by economic chaos and instability.

There’s good sense in government interference, and there always was. The problem has been that governments in the UK and the USA haven’t interfered enough - that they’ve given the City and Wall Street and the money markets free-reign and largely left unregulated their short-term greed and financial stupidity.

Germany and France by contrast have very sensibly maintained a properly balanced and regulated system and seem to still have a social-democratic concern for making capitalism responsible and effective and operating in their national interests - in the interests of their countries as a whole.

Professor Ulrich Beck had an excellent article in the Guardian yesterday, in which he says, “Even advocates of a global free market now detect that, after the collapse of communism, only one opponent of the free market remains, namely the unbridled free market itself. The market has shrugged off any responsibility for democracy and society in the pursuit of short-term profit maximisation”.

In this context ‘the market’ means the super rich and the financial elite, who clearly have no intention of regulating and restraining themselves and behaving responsibly towards the rest of us. They take the view that fools and their money are easily parted. As are the ignorant and ill-informed.

They have no intention of making themselves responsible in any degree for the well-being of the rest of the nation that supports them and provides them with a base for their activities. They don’t regard themselves as members of any nation. They are simply part of the world elite. They laugh at the idea of a social contract. They don’t need a base. They bank their profits ‘offshore’, and control their financial empires remotely, electronically, digitally.

This is why factories and production and call-centres are relocated to China and India. This is why oil prices are spiralling. This is why we’re seeing the beginning of food riots in many countries, and why fish sellers in places like Naples can’t afford to eat the fish they sell. Who gives a damn about the poor and the wretched of the earth? And will the poor re-elect Berlusconi tomorrow? Will the poor re-elect a Republican president in the USA later this year? Will the poor vote for Cameron and the Tories?

No-one could ever accuse any American president of being a social democrat - even the Democrats have always been on the Right of the political spectrum as we know it. Even the Kennedy’s and Roosevelts. No-one ever accused Harold MacMillan of being a closet left-winger. And yet politicians back in the post-war years all recognised the need for government controls over the economy and government investment in public services.

That was when Keynes was king and Keynesianism was the dominant economic ideology. I remember well the war taking place in universities and in government back in the Sixties and Seventies between the dominant Keynesians and the upwardly-mobile Monetarists led by Milton Friedman. Well, the monetarists won, at least in Britain and the USA, thanks to people like Thatcher and Reagan, thanks to the stupid tendency. And here we are - completely fucked. What a long, strange trip it’s been.

Postscript
A guy on the radio has just described Italy’s political class as the most degenerate in Europe. Come on you Brits - we can do better than that!


Ulrich Beck: This Free-Market Farce Shows How Badly We Need The State :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/10/creditcrunch.economics

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Jack Mapange

I was delighted yesterday when I found out from listening to Front Row on Radio 4 that there’s a Malawian poet, Jack Mapange, who teaches poetry at Newcastle University. He teaches a course called Literatures of Incarceration, and he was probably banged up in prison as a radical or a dissident when I was working as a volunteer in Malawi, supposedly helping the country to ‘develop’, under the leadership of its dictatorial Life President, Hastings (Kamuzu) Banda.

At last I see a way, through Jack Mapange, of re-establishing my links with the family of my dear deceased friend John Mwale, and with Malawi. Like my friend John it seems Jack Mapange came to Britain as a political refugee. John was just an amazing human being, and all these years after his death (during a wisdom tooth removal) I still miss him badly.

Time to get on with writing my Malawi memoires.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/natpoetday/jack_mapange.shtml
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=5495