Happy New Year?
Is it possible to be positive as we look ahead?
The same old issues confront us and the old same old con-dem coalition keeps telling us in their High Tory, Old Etonian manner, that we are all in this together.
What tosh!
We are not in it together.
As some of us struggle to pay the gas bill. Huddling round a candle in some Dickensian caricature of life simply in order to keep warm, others lunch in warm restaurants pouring the wine and drinking the health of the economy.
As some of us struggle to balance the growing gap between the money and the end of the week or the month, others avidly read the adverts and recommendations in How to Spend it, or 'phone their stockbroker for investment advice.
Whilst some of us agonise over whether the family car will scrape through the MoT, others order a test drive in a new Range Rover Evoque.
And in a modern take on the Roman Orgy of Bread and Circuses, we are told that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics will provide a celebratory background as we see the Great being put back into Britain in 2012.
But because one is ticket only with many of the venues screened off in order to stop people being able to see events free from a handy view point, as my cousins and I used to watch Droylsden AFC from the branches of the apple tree in my Grandads garden, and the security with regard to Jubilee events will, sadly, be both strictly necessary and mean that only a select few will get close .
The celebrations will I imagine, hopefully, pass me by. I haven't bought any tickets for the Olympics and I won't be queueing outside Buckingham Palace for a glimpse of passing Royals.
Instead of a genuine alternative to the politics of hopelessness to take us forward into a new year we are being offered diversions to take our minds off the pain and convince us that we are all in this together.
I have just decided, as a matter of principle that I 2012 should be the year of putting my money where my mouth has been.
It occurred to me that as a tax payer and a citizen, that when there was a Gas Board and an Electricity Board and a Telephone Company, I owned the business, now the business is in private hands.
It was sold off by this Governments political heroine, so I have made 2012 my year of mutuality and I have asked that both my telephone and broadband services and my fuel be provided through the phone co-op and co-op energy respectively.
I have undertaken a price check in both cases and the results were I admit closer than I expected but it does seem to me that there are advantages in spending my money on a mutual business where as a co-owner of the business I both share in the profits and have a say in the democratic process by which they are managed.
2012 is designated as IYC, the International Year of Co-operation.
If it follows previous years for the young, the old, the disabled, we might not see too much coming out of it but there is no doubt that mutualism offers a better, more principled way forward for society and insofar as we are members we can at least claim to be 'in it together'.
Is it possible to be positive as we look ahead?
The same old issues confront us and the old same old con-dem coalition keeps telling us in their High Tory, Old Etonian manner, that we are all in this together.
What tosh!
We are not in it together.
As some of us struggle to pay the gas bill. Huddling round a candle in some Dickensian caricature of life simply in order to keep warm, others lunch in warm restaurants pouring the wine and drinking the health of the economy.
As some of us struggle to balance the growing gap between the money and the end of the week or the month, others avidly read the adverts and recommendations in How to Spend it, or 'phone their stockbroker for investment advice.
Whilst some of us agonise over whether the family car will scrape through the MoT, others order a test drive in a new Range Rover Evoque.
And in a modern take on the Roman Orgy of Bread and Circuses, we are told that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics will provide a celebratory background as we see the Great being put back into Britain in 2012.
But because one is ticket only with many of the venues screened off in order to stop people being able to see events free from a handy view point, as my cousins and I used to watch Droylsden AFC from the branches of the apple tree in my Grandads garden, and the security with regard to Jubilee events will, sadly, be both strictly necessary and mean that only a select few will get close .
The celebrations will I imagine, hopefully, pass me by. I haven't bought any tickets for the Olympics and I won't be queueing outside Buckingham Palace for a glimpse of passing Royals.
Instead of a genuine alternative to the politics of hopelessness to take us forward into a new year we are being offered diversions to take our minds off the pain and convince us that we are all in this together.
I have just decided, as a matter of principle that I 2012 should be the year of putting my money where my mouth has been.
It occurred to me that as a tax payer and a citizen, that when there was a Gas Board and an Electricity Board and a Telephone Company, I owned the business, now the business is in private hands.
It was sold off by this Governments political heroine, so I have made 2012 my year of mutuality and I have asked that both my telephone and broadband services and my fuel be provided through the phone co-op and co-op energy respectively.
I have undertaken a price check in both cases and the results were I admit closer than I expected but it does seem to me that there are advantages in spending my money on a mutual business where as a co-owner of the business I both share in the profits and have a say in the democratic process by which they are managed.
2012 is designated as IYC, the International Year of Co-operation.
If it follows previous years for the young, the old, the disabled, we might not see too much coming out of it but there is no doubt that mutualism offers a better, more principled way forward for society and insofar as we are members we can at least claim to be 'in it together'.
No comments:
Post a Comment