Some Thoughts on the Riots (and other middle class bleeding heart liberal bollocks)

The riots were bad. We can all agree on that, can’t we?

None of us like the breakdown of law and order in certain areas, and I’m fairly certain none of us like seeing violence, destruction, assault, and in two cases murder. And while I am sceptical about the police, and the powers they have, I certainly have no desire to see them hurt or abused. They do an extremely difficult and necessary job. We should help them all we can. The people that committed these crimes should be firmly punished.

Now we’ve covered the bleeding obvious, how about some other thoughts

These weren’t directly political riots. They weren’t Brixton or Toxteth. But like all riots, like most criminal behaviour, they had political and social causes. Too many for a soundbite.

I don’t have any unity of response on this, no grand solution, just a set of themes and thoughts concerning me. I have undoubtedly left some out. Gangs for instance, and education too.

1)Family.

Mr Cameron and others have blamed families. A novelty to see that; usually they blame government. Families=good, Government=bad (of course, now they are the government). But they are obviously right to place some blame in that area. The family is the first, most formative environment of our lives, and most of us actually shift little from the values given there. But Cameron’s drive towards the Victorian family isn’t an answer of any kind. As Miliband put it, there a great single parents and awful traditional families. Keeping families together through tax breaks aint gonna help. We need a policy that deals with families in the real world not some nostalgic, slightly outdated ideal. The quality of parenting, and the support, is the thing. David Lammy talked about the lack of male role models, but he also talked about them being not just fathers, but brothers and uncles, friends of the family. Lammy said Labour needed to say more about families, and he’s right. But Labour needs to define the family in a modern way that covers what a family should give, not its particular structure. It’s about encouraging respect, values, and responsibility. It is the first community a person knows, and it forms how they respond to their roles in wider communities.

But families are alone are not the solution. I’d guess we all know someone who is perfectly nice, but whose kids go off the rails, or have one kid among a few who becomes a problem. Outside influences clearly play a role too, and it would be stupid to lay too much on parents.

2)Punishments.

The government, unsurprisingly, has responded with its usual rhetoric of “cracking down” on the rioters. I can’t say I disagree hugely as regards arsonists, muggers, people attacking police etc. And certainly not for murderers. But we’d do well to remember that only a few thousand people did this, and in specific areas. We really should beware of going into Littlejohn-style meltdown. Crime is actually the lowest for a long time. We also need to dispense a justice that is fair to people, and it is preferable to not nudge people into further criminality, or risk greater alienation (not just from them, but their families and communities too). So, no, I have little time for removing benefits or social housing from the families of those involved in the more minor offences. It starts a pretty unjust and dangerous precedent if we can seriously punish people for the actions of their kids. And it doesn’t help the other children potentially involved either. Will we be charging middle class parents for their kids’ crimes? Making people who themselves have done nothing wrong homeless is not civilised or just. And it will have knock on effects in other areas. I’m not surprised that so far only a Tory council has tried it; many of them were trying to disburse themselves of their requirements to house people as soon the cuts started. This is a mere excuse.

We also need to wary of silly sentences for people committing minor offences with no previous convictions: for instance the 23yr old who has got six months for stealing some bottled water. The respect of the justice system is reliant on its being just. This plainly wasn’t. The justice system needs not to lose its temper, and risk seeming like it is one rule for some and one rule for others. Added Value sentences, because we’re all so angry about the riots, are not a good idea. The sentence should be the sentence it would be otherwise, riot or no riot. We don’t want to push more people into serious criminality.

3) Responsibility

A term much used in the last week or so. We’ve seen a total lack of it, no doubt. But, as has been mentioned by many, it’s not a problem limited to the rioters. Bankers, Chief execs, politicians, companies, police, journalists, and benefit fraudsters (not as many of those as the Mail would have you believe though): all have shown a lack of responsibility to wider society in the last few years. We have a culture of self interest that robs the community and the country in every way, and permeates our culture. But that is the culture of free market capitalism: “The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests”, as Friedman puts it. Combine that with: “There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.” (Thatcher), and you have a recipe for non-responsibility, because there is no universal standard of ethics, no community or society. We saw a lot of individuals out there, pursuing their self-interest, and damn the wider consequences. These ideas come from the society we live in.

They felt no responsibility to anyone. This is inexcusable. But in the future we might want to ask if society is fulfilling its responsibilities to them (in terms of opportunities). Responsibility is a reciprocal thing, and as soon as we lose sight of that, the idea doesn’t hold. Can governments do better for those whole communities? I would certainly think so.

4)Equality

Behind the riots, the underlying culture of our society has become explicitly clear: the bailing out of reckless investment bankers (who are still paid the same), the MPs expenses scandal, the Press and Police corruption in the Newa of the World affair. Now these weren’t explicitly political riots, but they will have underlying political and social causes. An basic climate of unfairness rubs off on everyone’s attitudes. It becomes very hard to get people to take part in a system, if the system doesn’t seem fair to them.

If we want people to choose to be inside society and playing by its rules, we need to make sure the rules and the pitch aren’t skewed against them. We need governments that are prepared to help people to help themselves. Governments that make full employment the aim, and a decent standard of living available to all who work. Not just getting by and insecurity. This doesn’t just affect the rioting areas, it affects most areas. High rents, high utilities, high transport costs, and low wages equal not much of a life. It doesn’t seem much to expect that people who work should be able to avoid all that. And rents, utilities, and transport costs are well within government ability to influence if they ditch the dogma.

The fact is that those societies with greater equality have better social mobility, and lower crime rates (see most northern European states). This is made clear in numerous studies and books, using actual facts; the most recent being the Wilkinson and Pickett’s The Spirit Level. It is hardly surprising: if you can work hard and get decently rewarded, and it seems that others are being fairly rewarded too, then crime and disorder become distinctly less appealing. But again, this is only part of the solution.

5)Yanks and Supercops.

We should be very wary of the idea that America, specifically Bill Bratton, holds all the answers to this. Britain has this strange perception that America is more successful on crime when there is actually nothing to suggest that. The opposite in fact. America has a much higher number of murders per head of population, and generally higher crime per head of population. Britain has nowhere near as high a proportion of its citizens in jail. The idea that America’s strong deterrents work is negligible in statistical terms. Which isn’t to say we couldn’t learn from some of their technical expertise, merely that we should be sceptical about its uses. America isn’t here, and we have found our own ways that work arguably better. The idea that one man offers the solution is nonsense. We have our own excellent police. What seemed missing last week were both numbers and leadership. It is also slightly concerning that some police cannot tell when something is a violent disturbance, and when it is a peaceful protest.

6)An Inquiry

Ed Miliband is right to call for an inquiry. We need to get to the root of why these riots occurred. It needs to be wide-ranging, and it needs to be focussed on the communities involved. Many of those communities will know the rioters better than we do. They, for all their anger, will have a better perspective on the problems in their areas. We shouldn’t just assume this is some widespread moral breakdown. It happened in areas with particular problems. For instance, why were Wales, Scotland and the North East largely spared these riots? Why Bristol but not Southampton? Why Manchester, but Leeds hardly at all? There will be particular socio-geographic factors involved and we need to find out. And, of course, Why now? Why not last year or the year before? The government will be reluctant to address that last question but it’s undoubtedly important.

If we are to prevent this happening again, we need to understand why it happened at all. A crackdown, followed by a reassertion of family values, is not going to be enough.

Where to next?

Unsurprisingly, given the neither awful nor breathtakingly wonderful local election results, virtually everyone with any interest in the Labour Party is offering an opinion on where it, and more particularly, Ed Milliband need to go next. A few are happy enough to assume, or imply, that Ed Milliband is failing somehow, and should either go, or shift rightwards to gain those much sough after working-class and middle-class Tories that New Labour once appealed to.

Perhaps even more unsurprisingly, i have an opinion on this too. So here goes.

Firstly, let's deal with the English council results (Scotland is a different and, sorry, separatist kettle of fish), which were quite good and perhaps as to be expected (which is to say, i predicted the score). Comparisons to 1980/81 are not applicable. The party situation is different now to then: more parties getting votes, particularly the Lib Dems and the nationalists (Greens too; in many council seats the hundred to two hundred votes gained by Greens would be enough to hand Labour the seat in a three horse race). Labour have also been in power much longer, and are not embroiled in a battle with more leftwing factions within the party. The party is relatively unified. Perhaps more than the Tories, in truth. Labour in 2010 has not pissed off the centre, but had, in many ways, pissed off its natural voter base. Even I was slightly surprised at how, given everything, the Tory vote held up..... however, when I consider it more and more, I'm not surprised at all. In 1997, the Tories got 9.6 million votes, a 30.7% share; in 2005, the Howard-led Tories got 8.8 million, 32.4% share; in 2010, Cameron got 10.7 million, 36% of the vote.... The Tories gained 1 million voters from 1997 to 2010, a poor extra 5.4 % of the vote on a 6% lower turnout than 1997. If people expected the vote share to plummet, where exactly to?! Thatcher had 40-44% vote shares, and never went below 32% (1981) in local elections. and that was before the SDP alliance made inroads on Labour's voter base. It looks more sensible to suggest the Tory vote has bottomed out, and in fact may have topped out too, at between 30-36% of the vote. It is astonishing really: the Conservative Party, even with a unpopular prime minister and a party lacking in ideas after 13 years in office, couldn't get to 40%. They now have a hardcore who aren't going to really listen to Labour unless Labour stop being Labour entirely. And they aren't going to desert over these cuts really; they think the Tories are really right.. As has been pointed out by people on several occasions, Labour lost 5 million voters between 1997 and 2010, but hardly any of them went to the Tories. They went to the Lib Dems, the nationalists (who are social democrats, mainly), the Greens, or just lost interest and stopped voting. These are the people Ed Milliband and Labour need to win back (Milliband seemed to recognise this in the leadership campaign). So those on the Labour right, who wish to revert to New Labour style rightward shift, are ignoring that it was arguably this rightward shift that not only did the damage in terms of our core vote, but also resulted in policy errors such as the failure to regulate the banks, the mess of PFIs, the Iraq War, and ultimately meant Labour was blind to the downturn risk that the Tories now blame them for. It recovered, but too late. When you fell asleep with the cigarette, no-one is going to give credit for you putting the couch out. But the voters are there, waiting for an alternative to the cuts, just not the one these people suppose.

New Labour (that branding was a bad idea, it only gives the opposition a stick, Old Labour, with which to beat you) said that 'one more heave' wasn't enough, but New Labour ideas themselves have become the "one more heave" of the 2010s. New Labour failed because it became naive, complacent and deluded about the real implications of markets and the so-called "choice agenda", and their effects on the majority. The party now needs what has always driven it, but got lost: a sense of egalitarianism, democracy, progressive values, and a scepticism of the uses of the free market and the private sector. Playing to the Mail and the Murdoch press will not get those voters back, those voters who went Lib Dem or Plaid or SNP. It isn't to say a return to 'Old Labour' is necessary, but a modern rethinking of classic principles: core values but modern policies. And this will require a correcting of the right wing excesses of New Labour, which were ultimately where the last government failed (that 50p tax band is actually rather popular beyond the boardroom). The Labour Party should not be the kinder version of Tory party dogma.

Labour now needs to be strong on the environment, keen on finding non-market reforms of the public sector, finding strong but necessary intervention and regulation to build the fairer, more ethical economy we need. growth is important, but so is the distribution of it. And it needs new policies to bring this about. Some should be interventionist, some should be enabling, and some areas it should get out and leave people alone (tough on crime, but strong on civil liberties).

That i guess is the ideological thrust. And Ed Milliband seems to realise this, but until the policy review comes out with real policy ideas and plans, we really won't know. He is genuine, comes across as reasonable (the left always gets media-screwed when someone appears hectoring), and has a decent sense of where New Labour failed. The new Shadow Cabinet look promising, but need to be less by the book, and, frankly, dull; appearing like a competent management figure will not get voters on its own. Furthermore, we need to see real evidence of policy-making skills, and policy selling skills. One area Cameron may have it right is in his ditching of Blair/Brown style top down management. Labour needs serious policy thinkers, or a shadow cabinet who know the advisers to get in this situation. If they've any sense they'll be keeping their eyes on the centre-left thinktanks, the sympathetic economist etc, that can provide Labour with fresh ideas. Because, ultimately, Labour wins by moving the centre to them,like the Atlee government, like the Wilson government, not by moving towards some perceived centre based on newspaper scare stories. it remains to be seen if this will happen, but i am hopeful.

In the next post, i shall posit some areas and policies that may be a step in the right direction.

Race, Culture, and why the indigenous shouldn't confer value

A friend who has a habit of getting into debates with those of disagreeable viewpoints (bigots and idiots of various sorts), posted a link to blog earlier today. The person who wrote the blog, whilst being fairly normal and polite in many ways, described themselves as a nationalist, meaning a BNP supporter. To me, it's still racism.

the peculiarity, a common one in recent nationalist debates, is their ability to use the terminology of liberal/left rhetoric to their own use. So, the person proclaimed the value of defending 'indigenous' cultures from oppression, repression, suppression or dilution.

A funny turn of affairs, but perhaps not surprising. The nationalist movement is always looking for ways to become more palatable to the majority. And after all, if you feel "swamped" by alien cultures and people, then it would be easy to dwell on those words of liberal discourse which suit your prejudice. And, to be fair, the left (myself included) loudly bemoan the imperialist subjugation of "indigenous peoples" and native cultures such as the Maori, Native Americans, Africans and Asians of various sorts. We are right to do so, but perhaps we shouldn't have been so keen to use those words "native" and "indigenous" as if value is somehow tied to place or race, even in an act of separation. The racist right can find a lot of use in them. After all, the phrases do seem to fetishize the native, the indigenous as of essential value in itself.

I think most people on the left are sensible enough to realise that 'indigenous' is an arbitrary, relative and valueless term in itself.

(We assume people have a right to their homeland; though even this is debatable. People have been migrating for millennia, there is no reason that one place should be theirs particularly. And the Jewish diaspora begs the question of where exactly is their place? originally it was Israel alone, but like most people they have migrated. Why should emigrant Jews feel Israel is theirs any more than the descendents of the Mayflower folk feel England their home. It is a long sidetrack i don't mean to go into too much, because of time)

However, the side effect of the over-stressing of the term 'indigenous' seems to be an implication that anyone who isn't should somehow not be in the country because of it (with often a secondary, understated implication that they are lesser). So, the BNP (or the EDL) claim immigrants are not indigenous, not somehow "of us" They are equal, but different and separate all the same. It is a clever bit of idiocy. The BNP conflate ethnicity, race, nationality with values, ideas, and culture.

There is however no connection between the two spheres. It is the usual essentialist fallacy of assuming a link between biological inheritance/qualities and cultural or moral values. It is the same fallacy that sexists fall prey to. biology equals destiny etc.Of course, it does not, and there is little serious scientific evidence to suggest so.

Anyway, if you ignore the flaws, and fetishize the indigenous into a value, then racism is no longer racist. Black Africans, Asians, the Sioux, whoever, are just essentially different. Like the old US segregation ruling, they are "separate but equal". It's neat really, it manages to encompass both rightwing racial separatism and liberal sensitivities about protecting minority racial cultures and rights.It says "We aren't racist, we are just protecting our way of life, our values. we respect your differing values, they are separate from ours." It attempts to turn racial separatism into a positive. The underlying emphasis is race or nationality, it is just construed in terms of cultural difference.

It is the sort of insidious idea that persuades a lot of people who are, shall we say, afraid and not quite thinking right.

Frankly the real scrutiny in our world should be on values. And values are not race or nationality exclusive. A Britain full of people from all over the world would be fine with me. A Britain with less white people wouldn't bother me, nor would it please me. What would please me is a Britain full of people with a shared language (communication makes society; but anyone can learn that), and shared values.

The BNP and other nationalist groups will give the example of other "positive" nationalist movements. But the latter shouldn't really be considered nationalist as such. They are emancipatory movements; it is about democracy and self-determination, not nationalism. South Africa was wrong to deny the political rights of the black majority because of democratic principle and equality, not nationalist ideas of it being their country. The white South African has a right to their role in that country too. The same with Englis- descended Protestants in Ireland. It is not their indigenousness (?) that counts, but their support for the basic values of the country. And that is why nearly all immigrants come here. Being a Muslim, Hindu, Catholic or any religion is no barrier to being British unless you fail to subscribe to the values of the country. Should Scotland gain independence, it should be because it wants self-determination at a level closer to home. Because, in effect, they no longer feel that the British government acts in accord with their core values.; it becomes a minority dictating against majority Scots opinion and beliefs.The same should apply to the people of Cornwall, Essex or Leamington Spa, should they wish it. Race or nationality has little to do with it, it is the subjection of people of any hue or origin that concerns us. They may have been oppressed because of race, but they do not gain rights (gain value) because of race; they gain rights because they are people. The tragedy of imperialism wasn't that it murdered, exploited and oppressed the indigenous people, but that it murdered, exploited, and oppressed people.Racial or ethnic separatism is no answer; States should be founded on values. If the BNP have issues with the culture an value of immigrants, they need to accept that these values have nothing to do race or ethnicity; the freeborn white Englishman can be as offensive and against our culture and values as anyone. I mean, one need only look at the BNP and the EDL to see this.

what do people want from bookshops? (clue, check their title)

hearing of the marvellous sales figures at our parent company, and its tumbling share price as a result, I've been considering something other than politics for a change.

It is fairly apparent to anyone who goes into our sister store (purveyors of Cd's, DVDs, games, and annoyingly these days, cheap books), that they are falling flailing on their arses. They keep hitting up related areas of product, sales gimmicks, etc, all to no avail. They tend rather to overlook the fact that what made you popular is what sells. Now, obviously it may be you are part of a dying retail area: The Internet is changing everything yadda yadda....

But if you are attempting to maintain yr niche, or adapt it, a company does well to remember what people will still need you for, and this is as true for my employer as her sister company:

1) no-one really shops for pleasure on the Internet. They would prefer to be in shop with items in hand, browsing, reading labels, comparing prices. As most of the silly market research i have to listen to points out: a CD/DVD/book in the hand is worth two on the Internet. the sense of possession when you leap onto something physically there, is much greater than browsing an image. so bearing this in mind

2) YOU SHOULD STOCK AS MUCH RANGE AS YOU CAN. yes, you can never compete with the Internet in terms of what you have in; but equally, the Internet is no more than a catalogue. it has no physical product to put in people's hands. people go back to record shops and book stores for new and different things. why would anyone go into a different branch on their holidays, for instance, if they didn't expect to see something different from home. Furthermore, the chance purchase is based on surprise, is based on people picking something up adjacent, seeing something on a shelf, and looking at it, turning it over. People want to peruse as much choice as they can reasonably find.

3) it is pointless to stock hundreds of copies of something huge, that will be cheaper on the Internet, and could be orderedquickly by your store if desperately needed. Those big items, the ones everyone knows about, by all means stock a good quantity, but remember they are the ones that will be sold largely online and in supermarkets. NEVER CHASE THE VERY CASUAL BUYER, THE MOST PRICE CONSCIOUS BUYER, AT THE EXPENSE OF CORE CUSTOMERS. Yes, you want them, but they are fickle and there is little point in overstocking discounted items for them when the regular users are so tired of you having nothing new that they give up on you entirely. So if you have space for 40 copies of the latest massive sellers, by all means get it, but not if it means pushing out half the subject range. Everyone knows where they can get The Girl With the Deathly Nigella Code or whatever, you'll never win their loyalty by having it in all the time.

4) Prices should be sensible. there is no point devaluing the product, even though you obviously have to compete. Rather than being extreme in your prices, hit a sensible medium. This is a bit problem with the sister company. a CD/DVD comes out at £9,goes on offer at £5 and then goes up to £14-£16. Shops underestimate, i think, how irritating price changes are; especially those that change every couple of weeks (as we did with some items over Xmas). put the CD out at £10, and mostly leave it there. perhaps include it in multi buys, but keep a steady price. People are conservative in shopping terms, and will buy at a reasonable price when the item is there to be taken. Adding an extra £6 onto its price once the item is older is likely to drive people elsewhere; Better to have it at £9 when new, and then maybe up the price by a pound or two after a couple of months. Better still, just price it in the middle and have done. Price reliability is greatly underestimated. And avoid doing what we have done this year and last, by keeping a book on offer even when it is getting close to Xmas. A bit of plain dealing instead of milking will almost certainly go down well. Customers that trust you, consider you fair minded regarding price, are much more likely to keep coming back.

On a more specific noet, our store has, i gather, been singled out for an experiment. Not a particularly clever one, by the sound of it. we are to reduce our non-children's books space to 50% of the store, and expand our Related Product. Given we are the only proper bookshop in the county, and highly dependent on a core of regulars, this will undoubtedly prove unwise. I got quite a few comments over Xmas about how ----- section was half what it used to be; any more shrinkage and many will probably give up entirely. I'm all for experimenting, provided its a clever experiment that takes consideration of the market. The increase in RP seems bizarre, its percentage margin per item may be good, but you'd still need to sell 10 cards for instance to make up the margin on a book. and the margin amount is more important than the percentage, i would've thought. Plus, Related Product is, as the term accurately puts it, "related", its an extra. To expand the range of RP at the expense of books is the equivalent of a restaurant adding lots more sides or starters to its menu and cutting the range of main meals. Few people go in for the sides or starters. After early movement in the right direction at the start of the year, it would seem we are looking into making the same mistakes Smith's made for so long. Jack of all trades, master of none. Smith's figures only improved once they shrank their core concerns; and even now they aren't doing so well to suggest there is a big market for competitors. Finally, Smith's are, item for item, cheaper and more downmarket than we are; it would be unwise to compete when our products are marginally more expensive, and to lower the prices would remove the margin to a financially pointless degree. If the company has any market to expand into, it may be better served by posters and prints, which are these days less available on the high street.

The future, you feel, still remains in rediscovering the core of what we do well, and doing to the highest standards with best staff at sensible consistent prices.

reading the paper the other day, i was confronted by Neo-liberal cliche that bothered me slightly. a person wrote in bemoaning the State "crowding out" free enterprise, and arguing that the private sector are "wealth creators", and the State some kind of parasite.

having been reading some economic theory recently, i thought about this, and came to the conclusion such distinctions are largely bollocks. some reasons why

the notion that wealth is "created" at all is flawed in the first place. Wealth comes from the exchange of labour for money in the production of goods/services. A worker is as much part of wealth creation as any investor or manager. Capital (financial/land/technical) alone does not produce more wealth, it requires labourers. so in a sense the wealth is inside all workers from a furniture maker to a shop assistant to librarian. These people provide the service/product. You could own the whole process, but without people to make/operate/ staff/sell, there would be no end product. the Capitalist is often the least necessary person. This is clear from small businesses, who borrow their capital, from the bank without the bank taking profits or a managerial role.
As such, the economy is the movement and exchange of labour in the production of goods/services, in return for money or payment of some kind, which in turn becomes spent on more services/goods (rent, food, clothes, luxury goods, whatever) which provide jobs for other people. The economy is just a flow of labour and money. To suggest something is created from nothing is plainly simplistic. The point is that economic success is maintenance of that flow. The State providing jobs does a similar role to a bank really in getting someone from a position where they earn nothing (unemployment) and can spend nothing, to a position where they earn (provide a service/good) and spend money.
The latter, as Keynes points out, effects a multiplier: if a state builds something, say houses, and gives jobs to people to build them, it also increases private sector employment: The houses require materials, transport, and sundry other private services which equals jobs in the private sector; The jobs also equal disposable income which is spent...... in the private sector,again increasing jobs in the private sector. The State, as well as providing necessary services (health care, council houses, education, social care and on....) that are often better in accountable state hands, produces economic consumers, or, to be fairer, gets these people back into a situation where they can work and in turn provide economic demand that businesses benefit from. In times of economic downturn, where the private sector is saving not spending, and unemployment is low, equalling low demand for goods (a spiral of non- consumption/ unemployment which is stagnation), the state can effectively jump start the economy by spreading employment and confidence.
Even if you accept that states taxing to spend is somehow parasitic upon private revenues, actually the state is taking from "excess" funds (profits, incomes, CGT), which in a depression are highly unlikely to be spent or invested (the latter insensibly, if at all): uncertainty as to future gains means investment is less likely and saving more likely. Saving exceeding spending is central to economic downturns. The State by appropriating these funds through taxation, is using these funds more sensibly economically, as follows:

A) taking, for example, £120000 income tax from someone on several hundred thousand, pays for the state to provide perhaps 6 or more public sector workers providing a necessary service. this removes them from unemployment and non-consumption, and puts them back to employment and consumption. The people are now, no longer taking from state (benefits) but working for it, and in turn, spending money in the private economy.

this is economically better than a large accumulation of private wealth, which is less likely to be spent (particularly in diverse maintainable spends; the luxury good market is an unstable one) if spent at all. As is said earlier, a key factor in depressions is the preference for liquidity (saving) over investment, especially amongst the rich. The employees spend more diffusely, more necessarily, and ultimately more maintainably (food, clothes, etc,).

AND

it performs the valuable social function of redistributing wealth; the excessively rich paying for jobs of poorer sections in necessary areas. It is, surely, better to have a rich man paying tax to employ someone, than paying tax to pay their benefit and trap them in a cycle of poverty and non-consumption that doesn't benefit the economy.

Either way, in the end, public or private, money flows back into the economy.
The government performs the important function (the one the private sector often fails to do in downturns; note how companies lay off staff, and banks refuse to lend) of keeping this flow (of labour for money for goods for labour for money for goods,.... and on) going. which is what a healthy economy is about, surely?


(and as a important socialist caveat, The state can do this in way that is accountable and concerned with social well being, not mere private profit, and diffuses money across the population)

Public Image

I was watching the Labour Leadership special edition of Question Time last night (i made an exception to my usual rule about avoiding serious annoyance prior to sleep), and found it largely interesting and thoughtful. There was, however, one question, fairly innocuously phrased, that grabbed my brain. A quite averagely photogenic young lady asked if a recent report showing public sector pay to be, on average, higher than private sector pay made their defence of public sector workers seem a bit daft (my paraphrase from memory).

The implication was fairly clear: public sector workers are overpaid, and should stop whinging, the cuts are necessary etc etc. As someone whose parents have both worked in the public sector, and who, himself, has worked in both, it prompted some anger and annoyance.Partly because i felt no-one was robust in their attack on the implication of the question

David Milliband was right to point out that, due to contracting out, many of the lower paid roles in the public sector are now technically private sector, this skews the analysis quite a bit. But even if we put that aside, the facts are hardly so clear. Yes, public sector median is higher, but the mean average is usually lower. Even allowing for someone wanting to take the median as their average (mathematicians and social scientists of all stripes will see the issues with both), the difference actually isn't that great, being (on average, NOT in every instance) around a couple of grand more a year (I'm quoting from 2007 figures, having not found the recent report yet). And that awful, excessive median figure??
£20,000 a year.

Of course there will be issues with this, many will be part-time working (possibly due to cutbacks), and so earning less (though obviously the pro-rata rate is correct). Either way it can hardly be considered excessive. Actually it is a little surprising, because, of the half dozen people i know/have known working in the public sector, only one person earns over £20000 (and that after 30 years in this area of work, and being quite high in his department). most are paid sub-£18,000. My pay, private sector retail, is £12000 pro rata; it seems too little for my efforts, but then who's doesn't? i certainly don't grudge friends who do a similar role in county libraries their £13000. they are paid fairer than i am, but equally they work very hard. In some areas of the public sector pay is not enough; my mother until recently worked for years as a domestic (cleaner) in an old people's home; it was filthy, physically unpleasant and tiring work; she often left a hour after her shift ended (a sense of duty, they call it), because of under staffing; she has trouble with her back because of it; it is also essential work (can you imagine anywhere short of a hospital that would be dirtier, yet hygiene would be so important??)......she got paid just over £12000 pro-rata. Tell her she was overpaid. if you told me, i would be inclined to boot you down the stairs.


Of course, as the newspapers gleefully point out every day, excessive top public sector pay is a concern. Frankly, no-one is more concerned than your average public sector worker, who isn't terms and conditions go down, while the top brass get brassier every year. But these people are not typical. And sadly, they are rarely, the ones losing substantial sums in pay reviews.No, the people who are, are those on £14k say, who in some cases have lost nearly £10% of their income.
And while top pay in the sector is often high, it is still nowhere close to the sums earned by big private sector executives. You can quibble with whether a council leader actually deserves his £150k, but its difficult to see how his actual role is worth less than the head of (an example close to my heart) a major entertainment goods retailer on £800k. the former administers essential services for millions of people, the latter sells luxuries to us.

The bigger problem, and the one which prompts the private sector to point in the opposite direction, is the often grossly unfair pay scales in the private sector. The public sector gets attacked for earnings that rarely go below £12k pro-rata (except, perhaps, those contracted out to the private sector), and rarely go above £200k pro-rata, while the private whistles and looks the other way, when someone points out its bottom salaries frequently go below £10000 (16-21 year olds mainly), and its top salaries often are in excess of £500k. Of course, it is only fair to point out that most small businesses operate a fairer pay scale than this; the benefits of actually knowing and working with your staff day to day i guess. But in terms of the big private companies, comparable to councils, the NHS, etc, then unfair pay scales are the norm.

the most disappointing thing, though, a point which speaks sad volumes about attitudes in our society now, is that ordinary private sector workers seem to be buying into this tactic. Instead of saying "hang on, why are we paid so badly? how can we get a fairer pay system?", many are looking at the public sector (which performs valuable, often essential, roles: Education, NHS, Care homes, Social Services) and asking "why should they be better paid?". you can probably guess who i blame for the growth of such attitudes., so i won't state it. But the public sector has protected itself better against the relative erosion of pay and conditions partly because of the unions good work. Retail, for example, is rarely unionised because of large scale part-time work, and a rapid turnover of staff. organised resistance is tricky to say the least, especially in a "flexible labour market" where replacement workers are easy to come by, and jobs are much needed.

If Labour has any aim, as the progressive party it is, but has rarely shown in recent government, it should be to stop the growth of excessive pay difference in all sectors, public and private, and to encourage a better society where pay is fairer and taxation more progressive. Pleasingly, there was some evidence of that feeling among the leadership panel last night, but they really need to be louder and firmer on it. 90% of people in this country earn under £40k, and they are all being squeezed, and they all need Labour to be clear it is fighting for them.

Scroungers!

It is a bit difficult to wake up these days without the economic softening up being gently whispered in your ear by Avon bunnies in business suits....

Closely followed by whispers of scroungers..... immigrants... a wasteful benefits system.... in fact the usual right-wing trick of necessary cuts being made to cover ideological warfare and the greed of a stupidly rich few. We all know swingeing attacks on not just the poorest sections, but ordinary middle income earners are coming too..... they point the finger at scroungers, immigrants.... but really, dear people, they mean most of you.... anyone on child benefit, income assistance, rent support? they mean you. anyone here use schools, the NHS, social care, social services, council services whatsoever? they mean you. It is alright saying no frontline services will be cut, but besides being a lie, it is also a simplification: if you cut support staff, administrative staff, then those frontline staff will spend more time doing those tasks than the "frontline" ones they are purposely employed for...... more paperwork for teachers and headteachers, doctors, nurses, social workers.

The coalition has so far proved unsurprisingly adept at it: Ian Duncan Smith's rhetoric is little more than Norman Tebbit's with a smile and a hug; the slightly sinister hug that mafia dons give those they have killed in the next scene. But they're Tories, you expect it.

What is more concerning is the way this rhetoric is being clutched at by Labour leadership contenders ( a peculiarly drab, middle class version of X-Factor, where everyone is desperate to seem 'normal' and 'down with the proles'.... ). Much silly balls (and, of course, silly Balls) is being stressed about a need to deal with ordinary fears over immigration, scroungers, and a "something for nothing culture".... apparently what lost them the election (an election where only 36% voted for the Tories, but 52% voted for Libs or Labs) was a failure to outflank the opposition on the right..... thus, we have them murmuring how they should show they are "tough" on immigration.... "tough on benefit cheats".... want to help ordinary working families.... as if ordinary working families don't need unemployment benefit, child benefit, or support with any aspect of their lives.

The Labour party got duped into this crap before, under Blair. Just because an (actually relatively small) section of working and middle class people get conned into believing such scapegoating crap, a newspaper myth that uses a very small minority to blacken the name of a much larger and more honest set of people who really need help (ask the 2 million plus unemployed if they wanted to lose their jobs, if they enjoy living at pure subsistence level, with a huge dent in their self-confidence and self respect...), doesn't mean their argument is right. the popular argument, if it draws on prejudice, is almost always wrong.

Congratulations working class folk! you've bought the shit again! the people who are actually screwing you (who took huge salaries and ran your economy into the ground) now want to pay less tax than they should, and want you to sacrifice for them.... well, not you obviously (you're decent, ordinary, hardworking)...... but THEM.... the others.... the scroungers... the immigrants...
Of course the argument recurs now, because the last few years have made most people rightly sceptical of the value and work of the wealthiest. Support for fairer taxation (more on the richest £100k plus earners, less on low earners, and more on unearned incomes and business profits), and sympathy for the downtrodden has been on the rise, because many more people fall into that category; of course, at this point, the scapegoating starts again, the media sleight of hand that attempts to divide and conquer..... we are back to the "deserving poor and "the undeserving poor".... could they be deflecting attention? Of course they bloody are.

The grotesque image rather reminds you of the wealthy kid who's nicked your tuck money all year, suddenly turning round at the point of confrontation and pointing at the scruffy, slightly foreign kid that smells funny, and shouting "but he's got a packet of Fruit Pastilles!".... and waiting for everyone's fear and prejudice to kick in.

But, as anyone who is on benefits knows, and anyone who has friends on it too, will tell you: life on these benefits is hard, and given the difficulty of obtaining them and their tendency to fuck up, you really wouldn't want to be on them very long..... sure, there are a few exploiters of the system (always are, in any system; many of whom will see the self-interest and greed our society cultivates , and think well this is how the system works for me), but most people on them are honest and doing the best they can to get themselves out of difficult straits. Unemployment and incapacity is soul-destroying, confidence-sapping and frankly boring... people want to work. people want to achieve. They don't want to be treated with contempt, and made to feel wasters by people with large houses, large unearned incomes, and considerably more political influence than them.

Part of the problem, i guess, is the myth the successful construct for themselves: everything i have is deserved (even my £200k income)..... everything I've achieved is through my own merit and hard work (even though i went a top private school, and a friend of a friend got me this job), therefore why should i be taxed more. Truth is, we are all guilty of it. I like to think the good things are my just reward, and the bad things aren't my fault (the lie of merit). No-one denies many of these folk work hard, or that in some sense they deserve success for their work.... but The truth is people's background and opportunities, their networks, and their accents, and then just plain old luck.... the self-made millionaire is the exception not the rule..... most people work hard all their lives and get nowhere near £50k, let alone higher, through no lack of ability. The mistake of the successful is not to realise their luck or their better chances, and to assume that everyone else who achieves less is stupid or lazy, or undeserving. it is rubbish.

A combination of the City and business mismanagement with goverment borrowing rather than increasing the tax yield, created this "crisis" (which isn't as serious as many across the world). Now a small section of people (CBI-endorsed, discredited rightwing economists, and the upper middles classes who wish to hang on to their material and social advantages) want to escape their responsibilities. They got seriously rich in the boom, and now they aren't prepared to help the rest of us in the crash, by absorbing some of the trouble..... poor souls.... its truly hard to cope on £100k a year, rather than £150... you must understand.

As for the racial scapegoating of immigrants (and much of it uses racial fears).... well, it happened in the 80s causing social division, and it happened in the 30s (some place called Germany had serious problems with it.)

Decreasing benefits and more stringent means testing, fewer and poorer public services, and greater unemployment are not an acceptable price for so-called "economic recovery"... it is no recovery at all to force millions of people into greater hardship, while protecting the incomes and advantages of the highest earners. (90% of people in Britain earn under £40k; it is entirely justifiable to protect them over the very few earning £100k plus; besides when the average income is that low, is the earning of £250k truly acceptable in a time of economic contraction??)

If the Labour party, or the Condem Coalition for that matter, wants to get people off benefit, then firstly do nothing to threaten an increase in unemployment. That should be the first concern. Secondly, do not cut services essential in enabling bearable life for the mass of people in this country; poorer public services equal poorer opportunity for not just the weakest, but even those on middle incomes (most of use these services, particularly education and the NHS). Thirdly, don't cut benefits and make them ridiculously stringent: the majority of honest claimants will be the ones to suffer; instead work on increasing low pay levels, so it is genuinely affordable for those supporting families, assisted by state help, to leave those benefits for work. Make it pay to work, don't punish those who are trying. Finally, actually do something about affordable housing, about social housing, council housing; the country desperately needs these things; if housing is affordable, then fewer people will need benefits to help them live, and fewer will need rent assistance.
Don't punish those in hardship; make working life fairer, and properly rewarded, for those going into it.

a couple of poems

Bushes
Ripe shiny bushes play in the heat,
The bees are flicking back and forth
As whittled hopes relax on walls
Of crumbling insignificance.

If you shut down outside sound,
Collapse, your head just by the bush,
You hear so much vibration
Of life, of order, of swirls
Of magic-eye occurrence,
You can almost forget
A world beyond it.

New Town, Old Problem
The three-stories and factories, now reclaimed
By vegetation: old ships with broken windows, brown,
And home to obese pigeons, feeding
From upturned polystyrene cartons
Swept across the glasshouse casino car-park.
Twenty years in disregard, even squatters
Have moved on, these places worse than deathtraps.
The trade decayed because the town couldn’t face
The railway and the outside world, and then, finally,
It had no reason but to hold people in.

The guidebooks will tell you its countryside is
Some of the finest in the region: marbled halls,
and patchwork fields that tumble across the motorway
(the land-barons stopped the train, but not the car);
The locals do not stop to look, as if they know
Somehow, this nostalgia is to blame,
For a “burgeoning retail sector”: all they have to show
For a town that looks regrettably the same
As almost every other New Town craphole
whose funding dried up, circa 83.

Hmm, Interesting argument

turning on the ever-declining BBC Breakfast News this morning, i was fortunate enough to hear another statement from the banking fraternity explaining precisely why they should be paid on the Croesus scale. they've been doing a lot of this lately. nearly every couple of days, the Brekkie news has some small item on the bankers pay and why it might be alllllll fiiinne. one does rather wonder whether the Beeb might have friends in the community.

today's fatuous argument was that "actually Bankers are paid quite reasonably compared to say film stars or Footballers". the latter grouping bore the brunt of the comparison, unsurprisingly.

Now, few people would disagree that footballers are grossly overpaid. in fact the big similarity between footballers and bankers seems to be how massively unequal the pay distribution is: no-one can seriously argue that Robinho (to give a highly pertinent example) is 100 times better than your average League Two player, and you certainly couldn't argue that he works 100 times harder, and you'd find it just as hard to make a similar argument for the pay difference between your local bank employee and the top investment bankers. The people at the top in nearly all professions are hugely overpaid; perhaps the only exception being public services, where often the wage distribution is a little better (only a few people earn over £150k a year in most councils, and most of the lowest earners earn higher wages than they would in equivalent private sector roles). it's an endemic evil of capitalism, but not an ineradicable one.

anyhow, there are three important ways in which football clubs and banks differ greatly, and thus should not be subject to similar standards:

1) Football clubs generally pay bonuses for Good performances, Bankers appear to expect their bonus as a yearly perk independent of any kind of above-average performance. let's face it, we all know it must be a tax dodge in some way. Darling's one year tax on bonuses isn't gonna change that; the banks will just pay it from their profits this year in the knowledge the tax won't apply next financial year.

2)The fortunes of football clubs do not impact as centrally or seriously on the overall economy: as far as i know no-one (well no normal person) invests their savings in a football club, and even fewer are likely to get their mortgage from one. several football clubs go into administration every year, to much sadness on the part of fans and commentators, but thankfully little financial discomfort to them. Their lack of prudence affects relatively few people. The banks are central and defining to the state of the economy, and their behaviour affects our lives in nearly every detail.

3) Football clubs are not owned substantially, or bailed out by, the British electorate. quite a few of the banks are. So, of course, it seems perfectly reasonable that the banks should be made to behaviour in a fiscally responsible manner that benefits the wider public.

The counter-argument has always been that the market is king: but as Keynes and various others knew, the market is not a divine force, and can, and should, be manipulated and regulated to benefit the wider society. As a few politicians are acknowledging, the riskier activities need to be separated off from the everyday banking altogether, or even cut out completely. It would be far better for the banks, whether the retail or otherwise, to treat consistent long-term small scale growth as the aim, not ludicrous quick term rewards, and expensive payouts to both shareholders and bankers. It is this sort of nonsense that caused this downturn in the first place. That and the linked lack of regulation of the City and its banks.

but what, ask the bankers, of the Footballers, the film stars???!! well, we could always just increase the taxation levels on earnings over £200k for everyone........60%, 70%, say,: that would be a start, wouldn't it?

persistent niggle

quite a while ago now, whilst having a conversation with a friend (albeit a fairly new one), i was asked what one thing would make me happier. not in a personal sense, but in a wider social/political sense; its probably seemed a good question to stop me roaming all over the china shop of my political and moral grumbles. "what one thing, if you could apply from it tomorrow, would you have happen or change or whatever?"

i thought about this. mostly while admiring the girl's pleasing belief that one thing could make me happy. in a world of sometimes blithe innocent unthinking cheerfulness, i possess a list of things as long as my "to read" or "albums to buy" lists that i would like to see change. my anger and annoyance is multifarious and insatiable.

however, after several years of consideration (my productivity is definitely increasing, folks) i have managed to think of one thing that, while it wouldn't make me completely happy, would make me happier, and relieve me of periodic persistent rage.

i would like, no, love to see all private education abolished.

this probably isn't a surprise to anyone who's grasped the unsubtle tenor of my political views. it is, though, something which looms for me far above every other iniquity of the current state of the country.

i cannot fathom how it is allowed (i hope one day in the future it will be looked back on with the same "how could they allows this???" type disbelief that we associate with burning witches and children working up chimneys). It is one of the more disturbing sights and sounds of the media to see people appear from the woodwork to justify private education on television and radio. usually people who either work in the private schools, or people who send their children to them. red of face and vociferous they often are. the classic argument in defence is as follows:

"why should we prevent parents providing the best possible education for their child? we have a right to use our hard work and labour to gain better opportunities for them?"

the simple answer is "no. you don't" i can understand you want the best for your child. but your child is of no more importance than anyone else's. they do not deserve "better opportunities" than anyone else. we cannot claim to live in a fair society, a meritocracy if you like, where some children have better educational opportunities. And certainly not better opportunities based on their parent's earnings or property. any "right" that is based on money or power is spurious and unjustifiable.

i used to use a two question method on people that argued there was nothing wrong with private education; it seemed the quickest, and clearest, route to making the issue clear:

1) why would you purchase education for your child?

(answer: because i wish to provide them with the best possible education and

opportunities. let's face it, no-one would spend the money otherwise, would they?)

2) why should your child, important to you as they may be, talented as they may be, gain better opportunities by dint of your greater wealth than other parents?

(answer, usually more garbled and annoyed: because i have worked hard for my money and

i have right to do whats best for my child..... or words to that effect)

needless the say, the second answer is not in any way satisfactory. it is based on a falsely competitive notion of society (ironically, people who have a lot of money and are used to buying their privileges get astonishingly, and entertainingly, angry when other factors prevent them accessing the thing they want: for instance, not getting into school or a club or whatever because their religion or their child's ability is considered "wrong").

Furthermore, the nastier implication, never mentioned, is that they worked hard for their money and deserve the privileges it brings. well, firstly there should be no privileges in education, and secondly, it would be nice to have them openly tell other parents: "I'm afraid you don't work hard enough, my dears, or you too could have our opportunities". because that is what the argument amounts to, effectively: my child is more deserving than yours, and my wealth is proof of this. your poverty is proof you don't deserve the best

anyway, the view is pretty abhorrent to most people. my favourite retort is that the rest of us are merely "envious"; yes, too bloody right we are, in some sense, envious; only in another sense, a sense these people will never understand, we aren't.

Because we don't form our ethics and beliefs around what money we have, and what our position will allow us to do. "if you had the money you'd do it too" they often say.

but, simply, no. we would not send our children to private schools, no matter how much we'd like them to experience the highest quality of education and facilities (and that itself is often a moot point; not all private schools are remotely good anyway, many are there merely to take financial advantage of wealthier parents deluded hopes for better chances), we don't feel that something is right to do merely because we have the money or power to do it. if my having a lot of money (oh, the thought!) allowed me to get away with murder then that would not make me commit the act or feel it justifiable. wanting the best for your child is justifiable and understandable, but not a reason for acting to put them ahead of the pack.

in fact, quite honestly, it wouldn't matter whether you were a bad parent, lazy and feckless, who had no desire to improve your child's chances, they still deserve as much chance and as high a standard of education as the wealthiest, most doting parent's child. arguably they deserve it even more, because they have no parental support, no financial advantage, and almost certainly no emphasis on achievement in their lives.

every child, from richest to poorest, brightest to dimmest, whitest to blackest, deserves the same highest standard of education and opportunity. no-one should be exempt from either the best or the worst. if the local school is failing, then all the children in that area should be subject to that failure, just as if the school is excellent that excellence should benefit all children. we cannot have a system where children from wealthier backgrounds go state schools when they are good, and then get bought out when they are bad. it isn't a fair way of doing things. and it leads to my final point:

the continuance of the private sector only works to diminish the state sector. it drains money, it drains resources, and perhaps worst of all, by allowing the wealthier in society to escape the state system, it strips much of the impetus for increased funding and improved quality and standards. what is more, it maintains a state of social immobility whereby your background and your parents background works to determine your opportunities in life. and no-one surely would agree with that?

so, yes, i think your child deserves the best; but he/she also deserves the same as every other child. your having money or power (or for that matter, the right address or religion) should be no factor in their getting "better opportunities" than their peers. no child has more right to better opportunities than any other child. the sooner we get rid of the private system, and get everyone working under the same system (on a level playing field, as the principle has it), and working to make it the best it can be, the better for everyone. otherwise, the whole country will remain tied to a socially immobile class system it misguidedly thinks it has grown beyond.

BNP, racism and apathy.

i have a bad secret to reveal: i didn't vote in the local and European elections.

no, wait, come back.......

yes, i know to some this may invalidate any political statement i make. i don't think it does, though you are right i should feel shameful for not voting.

But, being the mouth that i am, i do have some things to say.
i didn't vote for a combination of reasons: a combination of disillusion and laziness.
i had three choices for my local election:
a Labour candidate (not now, not without serious policy changes)
a Lib Dem candidate (currently shifting to the right, and virtually identical to Labour)
a Tory (well, i'm not dead yet, am i?)
its an interesting question: where does a progressive/socialist sort go with those options? as far as i'm concerned they are all now abhorrent. Obviously i don't want a Tory government, but equally i can be fairly certain i will get one even if Labour or the Lib Dems were to win the next general election.i had no Green candidate; the agreeable Independent wasn't in my ward; there weren't even any other options.maybe i should have turned out, and voted for my least disliked; but i'm fed up of having my vote taken as tacit acceptance of Labour's neo-Tory policies. the Labour Party cannot rely on voters to vote for them when we can't tell any difference between them and the Tories anymore.
the Right is the only game in town at present.

unsurprisingly the Labour vote collapsed. it either didn't turn out, or it voted elsewhere (judging by the stats, mainly the former). Unfortunately large quantities of people seem to have voted BNP again. a slight increase on last time; but they got their seats not because of a real increase in support (as they claim) but because the other parties simply didn't get their voters out. i don't blame them frankly, though some people will have had other party options.
anyhow the near-million people that voted BNP is still disturbing. i heard MPs on the election coverage desperately trying to play down this action: it was a protest, the public were conned by the BNP's presentation, they weren't really racist.
utter balls! there is no excuse for voting BNP. even if you are dissatisfied with how immigration is handled (who isn't??), this is not a reason to vote BNP unless you are stupid enough to be sold the scapegoating of the immigrant community. if you can vote BNP, you are a racist. it isn't something one can slip into by mistake.. i heard lots of talk about how the main parties(particularly Labour) weren't representing the concerns of the (presumably white) working-class people; i certainly wouldn't disagree with this, but in what way do the BNP? the only way the BNP represent working class people is if you buy that immigrants or non-white people are somehow 'stealing' resources/jobs/whatever from some romanticised white "native" populace.
and that is pure offensive shit.
the problem is that for many years we've been sold the idea that some groups are more deserving than others; largely this has mean the scapegoating of poor immigrant communities by poor white working-class communities, when they logically should be on the same side. both are occupying similar (exploited) positions in the economic chain.
recently when the 50% tax band came in we heard loud decrying from the right-wing press anxious to protect their own, not the general public (who, the surveys show, seem largely to support its introduction). this is rather typical of the situation. both the the press and the parties are guilty of protecting and deflecting attention from the wealthy, and scapegoating the immigrant community. the working-classes have been daft enough to take the dummy. thus, exploitative labour practices are fine, super-rich paying themselves huge bonuses and dodging tax responsibilities are fine, the unregulated capitalism that has led to this current economic crisis is fine, but the working-classes and the immigrant communities are left fighting each other for the scraps of what's thrown from the top table.
what i found laughable on Sunday night watching the television coverage was that:
a) no-one was prepared to admit that we have a serious racism/ xenophobia issue (UKIP are a
manifestation of this too, despite their seeming respectability they are part of the more subtle
prejudice of the middle/business classes).
b) all the other parties, especially the Tories, were keen to separate out the BNP as the only
party of racists; when its clear that within the other parties too the race issue is played
regularly. there are racists in the other parties, particularly the Tories. we shouldn't forget the
tacit vilification of the black community in the Eighties by the Tories with their allies in the
press. the racism may be better hid, but its there behind the sharp smiles and the blue-rinses
of the conference crowd. the BNP are merely more open about their disgusting attitudes.

i got this from the BBC website responses to "why i voted BNP":

"ivoted for the BNP for the first time in the European elections. I read the party's policies, they are not racist, they simply want to look after people who are British first, and that includes all races who have a right to be here.
Our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve
People who work and contribute to our country and society (irrespective of colour or religion) are welcome and people who come here for our benefits system and the NHS who have never contributed to this country are not so welcome. Neither are bogus asylum seekers and criminals. We have enough of our own. I have every sympathy with people from countries where the system is not so generous, but we can't look after all of them in Britain. We're full up, and our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve. It's because we are so generous that everyone wants to come here, to the detriment of people who have lived here all their lives, paid their taxes and deserve to have their place in the queue."
Nick, Oxford

it seemed a fairly representative email, and shows a lot of the daft assumptions made by people. the noticeable underlying thing is that old chestnut about not enough resources to go around. the immigrant community is not really taking that large a share of the resources, its merely that we aren't getting anywhere near the amount of tax revenue (in proportion to population) that we used to. the myth that they take our jobs is in there too, but ,as most people who investigate the lowest reaches of the employment market will tell you, the immigrant communities are frequently doing the worst paid jobs that others are not prepared to do. what's more they are doing this with the minimum of protection and the maximum of exploitation by employers.
our elderly citizens are not getting the care they deserve because of firstly underfunding, and secondly what funding there is is being drained away by the private sector who are contracted to provide this care for government agencies.
the middle section is another recurring theme: the view that the country is "swamped" by bogus asylum seekers, and criminals. if you read the wrong newspapers you'd undoubtedly think this, as they seize on the proportionally uncommon behaviour of a few bad examples and allow it to misrepresent an otherwise law-abiding and friendly group of people in need. note also he says "we have enough of our own". the spurious notion of "our own" somehow being preferable presumably to "the other". the language is one predicated on fear of other groups, who all present some vague threat. i didn't see a single politician on Sunday night who wanted to make the argument that these people are, in most important ways, like you.

i also liked the mention of taxes at the end. again, we're back to funds, and the idea that these people are scrounging by not having paid any taxes. but by that argument, the unemployed or the sick shouldn't get any support either. the point is that when people are doing well they pay taxes proportionate to their earnings, and their wealth; thus, when they aren't , they don't and they receive state support until they can pay again.
we need more taxation; 50% of the country's wealth is owned by 2% of its population. and the myth that they work so much harder for it is sheers balls. even if you are prepared to believe that those that earn £200,000 work harder than those that earn £20,000, do you really believe they work ten times harder??!

the saddest thing in all this is to see unemployed people berating immigrant communities as "undeserving" of state aid in the same way the Tories villainised the poor and unemployed as "undeserving", when they should be standing side by side.

I honestly cannot face news-based television at present. its overrun by the coverage of the MPs expenses scandal, and every thing you hear is more immoral and perverse than the last.
the expenses system has been deliberately abused on a scale none of us could've predicted; though it seems obvious, as the rules were set up by MP themselves, that they knew exactly what they were doing. it may have been disguised as "well, we can't justify paying ourselves more", but clearly the underlying motive was "we can exploit a laxly enforced expenses system even more to our advantage, an those dim fuckers WON'T KNOW A THING".

what's most galling about the whole affair is the explanations given by guilty MPs, and often just other MPs, that "i have done nothing that contravenes the regulations". as if the regulations define their whole sense of ethics. even when they do admit the rules are clearly wrong, as 'orrible Hazel Blears did, they act as if their taking adavntage of these lax regulations isn't a matter of personal conscience. like the system is there, and they HAD to make these expense claims its like listening to children caught out, "i know its wrong, but i only did it 'cos Lisa did it"
if you want a good example of the disgusting level of self-defence MPs are giving, then check out the clips of Margaret Moran on the BBC website. the sort of person who oozes into chairs.
its also clear that many MPs are using the expenses to make money through property investment, flipping claimed poperties, in Blears' case avoiding paying capital gains tax on sales of property, and generally treating the money as an investment opportunity.

no wonder the parties do nothing about fat-cats and tax avoidance schemes! their whole view is: if we can get away with it, without breaking the law, its fine. some of the suspects are fairly unsurprising: a load of Tory grandees (their ethos has always been that they deserve more), the more dubious Labour politicians like Mandelsohn, Shaun Woodward, and Keith Vaz, but it extends to most of the two main parties,(its pleasing, at least so far, that most of the more genuine old Labour members have remained unscathed).
it remains to be seen how many Lib Dems are similarly guilty.
Furthermore, its shameful to hear the genuine argument for expenses, that they are necessary to allow more people from less affluent backgrounds to be active representatives in democracy, being abused and used by sheer greedy bastards like Barbara Follett or Shaun Woodward, who have fortunes valued in the millions. why on earth are we giving money to these people, whilst we make ever more stress-inducing and unfair tests to genuine public servants like nurses, teachers, and other public sector workers?

frankly, the love of wealth, and awe with which its owners are treated, becomes clear in this case; many MPs, regardless of party, don't see exploitative affluence as wrong. it just doesn't occur to them.their lifestyles are givens and must be kept up at all costs. usually ours.

almost every group in this country, from students to benefit claimants to the elderly to whoever, has spent the last thirty years having what little they could claim from the state whittled away by unfair overly stringent and offputting means-tests. people have been victimised as spongers, layabouts, and workshy; those who do work have had their working rights ruthlessly cut away; genuinely needy groups have been scapegoated; and we now know why:

because it is one rule for the wealthy and successful in this country, and another for everyone else. as every good Leftist of any variety has been pointing out for years, the rich are making the rules for their own benefit. freemarket capitalism DOESN'T work remotely fairly. the fact that it puts greed before ethics is, in this case, made explicit. (the most pointed illustration of this is that, everytime someone suggests remaking/remodeling/properly regulating the financial institutions and businesses in this country, the wise men of economics say "but it will have a negative effect on investment, people won't want to set up business here/we'll lose our talent"; well the recent economic malaise has shown the talent of the the cityboys is a mirage; besides this, should other people's greed be allowed to dictate our distribution of wealth, and the services the state offers its citizens?course it bloody shouldn't).

in all honesty, none of this surprises me, though it does appal me; what truly surprises is that the people in question are so detached from normal living standards, that they actually thought these claims acceptable.
the one excuse i've yet to hear, but know i will soon, is the "if parliament doesn't pay this much/offer these expenses, then the best won't want to work in politics, because the pay will be be too little". well, again, we have to draw the line somewhere, and i think the MPs' basic salary of £64000 a year is no-one's remote idea of poverty. besides, do we really want someone in politics who would consider principles less important that earning more than this amount?? the pay should be fair, and the job is undoubtedly a stressful one. but personal wealth is not the reason to enter politics, and anyone with the idea that it is should be allowed nowhere near the House of Commons.

i fundamentally agree with the need for MPs to claim expenses, but certainly not with this laissez faire attitude to what can be charged to them. travel expenses certainly, maybe eating expenses (within reason), even the second home near parliament is often a necessity. in many cases however, its clear MPs are claiming for unnecessary properties too. the ever-annoying Keith Vaz has been claiming for a second home in London, when he in fact has a third home in Stanmore, North London. considering vast numbers of the country manage to commute from the feeder towns outside London (Luton, Northampton, Barnet, Reading etc) to jobs in London, it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect the same of MPs. To have your family home in Manchester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, even Birmingham, say, and need a second place in London is reasonable. but once you're within the commuter routes, and the Underground network, the need is disputable. Finally, in the cases where the MP is, for example, Oliver Letwin, an MP with a sizable fortune and income from various sources, then the taxpayer can hardly be expected to foot the bill. At the very least, give them a flat-rate housing allowance based on current average London living costs to put towards whatever they choose.

the question now, is whether we can trust Parliament again, when its' members interests are so clearly corrupting their ethics? more immediately, can we trust them to revise the expenses regulations to something fair and reasonable?

and my recommendation for the next election? check yr MPs expenses, if they aren't too bad, vote for them. if not, then try voting for one of the smaller parties. Frankly, most Labour voters could vote Lib Dem and notice little real difference in terms of policy; The Tory right can go back to UKIP or the BNP which they've always wanted to anyway, and the rest with a progressive agenda can try Greens, Socialists, or independents. for one election at least, it might the scare some ethics into the big two.

are not my pastures so lovely and new?? eh?

well, no not really. its largely stability. but new things are occurring for me, quite big new things. OK, so its nothing to dislodge Obama-McCain from the front pages, or make me a redtop regular like that darn Cheryl Cole (now, am i not more interesting, surely than that racist old moose?), but its a still something in the mundane litany that is life.
my course finally starts this week, and whilst I'm still in the "oooh, its gonna be so great" stage, and I'm also into the "shit, now I'm scared" stage. its not even a conscious thing, just a generally nerviness; i had a bad nights sleep for the first time in a couple of months the other day, all fear, panic etc. part of the usual fear/anxiety attack package. its not surprising, new places, new people, and plenty of opportunity for me to embarrass myself in some way. of course I'm not trying to think like this at all, drawing on the marvellous kind remarks of all and sundry (who seem to think I'm more suited to doing this course than is actually possible), and remember I'm actually entering an area I'm good at, and engaged by. but unlike my first time at uni, this time i have invested a lot of money, and, more importantly, hope into this. i don't think I've ever wanted so desperately to do well at something in my life. the first time round everyone was going, my expectations weren't high (i wasn't the greatest student at school, believe it or not, in spite of people's impressions), my uni wasn't considered great (though i can't speak highly enough of those who taught me, and put me on this course), and i just went with a fairly open mind. this time , a desire for success weighs slightly heavier on my bony little frame. frankly this is as close to ambition as i get; its my cup semi-final, if you will. now, I'm fairly certain of my abilities, and fairly certain of my work being as good as any, but after 6 years out it still feels big. and there's a little man in a quasi-SS uniform saying "zere can be no failure!!"
so its tense. but i should be fine, once i get past the first few days.
on a brighter side, i am still in the gainful employment of Satan's Own Bookseller, but now for the diminished hours of about 16 a week. enough to keep my wallet ticking over nicely, and able to buy the odd drink for the Ammah et al.work is rapidly going down the chute, frankly, so I'm glad to have it in a less prominent place in my life. The company's ability to do whats in its own best commercial interests in our store gets more lamentable every day. despite the masters getting the big bookseller gong, I'm sure on the ground level in many branches it's a mess. i know it is at ours. too many head office edicts that counteract each other and divert us from keeping our most basic services running efficiently (IE customer orders, and books shelved and in the right place etc.). we have an increasing lack of order, and an increasing inability to stay on top of deliveries and duties, that is largely due to staff cuts and new staff being inexperienced. also, head office, and their henchwoman in the form of our regional manager, do not know when to ditch an idea because its impracticable in our particular store; their continued interference in store layout is meaning sections are fitting very badly. fact is, the workers in shop know the capacities of the sections, and the best way to keep them. they've needlessly meddled in the layout to the detriment of organisation, and thus, sales. the other day i counted a loss of £80 sales in a day because i couldn't find the books customers were after; i think this can be a similar figure for each person. its a lot of money. and the main reason is the layout changes and staff cuts. its very silly.
furthermore, good staff are leaving due to dissatisfaction and stress, and the some of the part-timers are not up to the increased responsibility on them. i can think of one specific example in particular, and i have no idea why he's being offered the hours. this Xmas could be the most shambolic in my time there; with less staff,and more inexperienced staff in charge of completely inexperienced Xmas temps.it will not be good. we've over-relied on the ability of replacing key experienced booksellers with weekenders, and now the we're dependent on them. dependent beyond their abilities or experience. it will be interesting, at the very least.
hopefully, for my self at least, less hours will = less caring and the ability to leave knowing I've done my best, and i don't have a come back for 5 days.

apologies, for general earnestness of this whole blog, but you know, if i only wrote when feeling funny, it'd be twice a year. and you REALLY wanna know my progress don'cha? :)

keep you're best end up, my children

Democracy-government by the people. yay!

A very kind, and politically conscious, friend of mine bought me John Pilger's documentary film The War On Democracy a while back, and I've finally got round to watching it. It's an exceptionally good film, that, without being excessive, hits the real threat the USA is, and has been for half a century, to genuine democracy.
The documentary shows how the USA has for fifty years now been conducting secret wars against Latin American countries and their democratically elected socialist governments. One after another has been removed in coups funded by the United States; in fact often trained and actively participated in by them too (usually through the CIA). The myth is that these are defences of democracy, and national security; they rarely are. They are anything but, and are more to do with the maintenance of US political and economic power in countries in which they have no sovereignty. The list is very long: Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Venezuela,...... the list goes on.Most of the regimes the US helped to install were not democratic, and in cases (Pinochet in Chile notably) they were openly fascist military dictatorships.Arguably the most "stable" (meaning free from direct US interference)country in South America is Brazil, and Brazil operates a capitalist "democracy" on the terms the USA likes, ie a wide poverty gap, reliance on America, and free from such distressing ideas as egalitarianism.
Of course the other reason for US interference in these regions, other than the basic ones of political and economic power over their policies, is the fact that a successful socialist country (or even a social democratic one) in Latin America would be a powerful precedent and example to its own disenfranchised minorities. I can't pretend to be utterly anti-American; i love too many American bands, writers, films, and various other products to declare that i am. but most of these cultural products are very much within the oppositional sphere of American culture. They are not the folks in government, in business, they are not the ones with political power. Mind you, not that i have much need to state this. I love sixteenth century English poetry, but I'm not remotely fond of its political system. But, to some unfortunately, to like some aspects of a culture equals tacit approval of its politics. it plainly doesn't.

Democracy for most people in this age seems roughly equatable to a vote every few years. Now I'm not the man to get into a debate on the varieties of democracy and their problems; this isn't the place, and I'm not good enough to do it anyway. But democracy is not just about a vote. it is about the people of the country having control of its government. it is about power, and equality of power. it is about one man/woman having one vote in the wider sense of the word. How powerful is your influence? How powerful is your bosses influence? Are you as politically powerful as the man who owns a local business? Are you as politically powerful as the great Satan Rupert Murdoch himself?
The answer, naturally, is no; its arguable that Murdoch is the most powerful man in Britain, and he doesn't even live here. But he has such financial clout, and media power that his "vote" is worth several million of your own. Not just him, but many many others have this excessive power. A power that corrupts any so-called democracy from day one. so i guess by this reasoning I'm declaring we don't live in a proper democracy? Well, I'd say no, we don't. It has many aspects, but not enough.

The USA (and us by implication, we behave similarly, if not so extreme) is conducting the modern form of what Pilger (and me, for that matter) calls Imperialism. the wielding of economic and political (and cultural) power in a country in which they have no right to interfere. They are distorting what democracy exists in their favour, and for their economic benefit. The current fear is about China and the power it increasingly wields; little mention is made that the USA has held a much greater level of power than China currently has, since the second world war, and with a malign influence almost everywhere they've interfered. Some of the US establishment is open about this: for them Might is Right (just like the playground bully); others hide behind a facade of "democratising" and "progressing" these countries. It isn't new, we did it in Africa and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries, under the banner of Christianity and progress. what it reality means is the exploitation of others resources for our own benefit. The terms have changed, the motive and outcome has not.
Of course large parts of the USA don't understand this animosity towards them; mainly because the ideology runs so deep in America, the ideology of a specific form of harsh free market capitalism, that to question it is to question your own parentage.

Anyway, i just recommend you watch Pilger's documentary, and you take an opportunity to read about the new forms of democracy being tried in Latin America with Chavez in Venezuela, and Morales in Bolivia. I don't know where they'll lead, or whether they'll prove the genuine emancipation they seem at present. But if the US media opposes them and tells you they are awful, then they're almost certainly doing something good.

i hope you'll take the time to think and read about these things ,and most importantly question who's telling you what and why. Cheers