Things are coming to a head.
There are angels with trumpets sounding the final warning.
The credit rating agencies are warning that triple A credit ratings are at risk.
Employment figures mask the reality of declining productivity.
The Banks continue to act with impunity and bonuses are demanded and paid.
The latest brilliant idea from a senior banker is a minus interest payment which means that we pay them to keep our money, at last my lifelong overdraft strategy has been justified, at least I pay them for spending their money rather than mine!
But this really cannot go on?
Neither the Prime Minister not the Chancellor are prepared to tackle the serious underlying problem and are still claiming that their policies will ultimately return us to a period of continuing growth if only we digest the uncomfortable strategy they are pursuing until the deficit is paid down.
Across Europe the same strategy more or less is being employed.
In Italy the austerity programme has been rejected at the polls with a vote for a strategy of government out and an end to politics and austerity and free broadband.
In the USA the Democrats and the Republicans confront each other as a tense stand off in the senate reminds those watching of the scenes at the OK Corral.
The world is going to hell in a handcart. Productivity and Manufacturing in decline, except possibly in China and India, and poverty the consequence of inequality, stalks the land.
And we are told again and again, There is no Alternative.
Apparently even the loss of our Triple A rating is a vote for the coalition's strategy.
But there are alternatives. Alternatives, which for our sins, we keep ignoring.
When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister a document was published, Prosperity without Growth.
The report challenged the thesis that Economic Growth is wise, that a forever increasing Gross National Product and sky high shares are necessary to sustain our future prosperity.
The summary, as Jeremy Leggett expressed it in the Guardian, is that Capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity, killing our economies and threatening our children with an unliveable world.
The best way to ensure that the future is re-imagined is another idealistic and seemingly overly ambitious thesis.
Co-operation.
Nevertheless the Co-operative traces its roots back to an practical attempt in Toad Lane, Rochdale in 1844 to replace a corrupt economic system with a fair one. The principle has therefore been known and practised for nearly two hundred years. Sadly however it has escaped the notice of the con-dems whose economic policies continue to head us down a dead end street at 90 mph on a bad motorcycle, as Bob Dylan wrote about a failed love affair, which is exactly what the West's fixation with Capitalism is.
Currently co-ops across the world have more than a billion people who are active members, providing a hundred million jobs, which is a fifth more than multi nationals combined, alongside this the conomic activity of the largest three hundred cooperatives worldwide equals that of the world's tenth largest economy.
Which somehow challenges the notion that it is either idealistic or overly ambitious.
If we want to change the world for the better surely cooperation is better than competition?
There are angels with trumpets sounding the final warning.
The credit rating agencies are warning that triple A credit ratings are at risk.
Employment figures mask the reality of declining productivity.
The Banks continue to act with impunity and bonuses are demanded and paid.
The latest brilliant idea from a senior banker is a minus interest payment which means that we pay them to keep our money, at last my lifelong overdraft strategy has been justified, at least I pay them for spending their money rather than mine!
But this really cannot go on?
Neither the Prime Minister not the Chancellor are prepared to tackle the serious underlying problem and are still claiming that their policies will ultimately return us to a period of continuing growth if only we digest the uncomfortable strategy they are pursuing until the deficit is paid down.
Across Europe the same strategy more or less is being employed.
In Italy the austerity programme has been rejected at the polls with a vote for a strategy of government out and an end to politics and austerity and free broadband.
In the USA the Democrats and the Republicans confront each other as a tense stand off in the senate reminds those watching of the scenes at the OK Corral.
The world is going to hell in a handcart. Productivity and Manufacturing in decline, except possibly in China and India, and poverty the consequence of inequality, stalks the land.
And we are told again and again, There is no Alternative.
Apparently even the loss of our Triple A rating is a vote for the coalition's strategy.
But there are alternatives. Alternatives, which for our sins, we keep ignoring.
When Gordon Brown was Prime Minister a document was published, Prosperity without Growth.
The report challenged the thesis that Economic Growth is wise, that a forever increasing Gross National Product and sky high shares are necessary to sustain our future prosperity.
The summary, as Jeremy Leggett expressed it in the Guardian, is that Capitalism as we know it is torpedoing our prosperity, killing our economies and threatening our children with an unliveable world.
The best way to ensure that the future is re-imagined is another idealistic and seemingly overly ambitious thesis.
Co-operation.
Nevertheless the Co-operative traces its roots back to an practical attempt in Toad Lane, Rochdale in 1844 to replace a corrupt economic system with a fair one. The principle has therefore been known and practised for nearly two hundred years. Sadly however it has escaped the notice of the con-dems whose economic policies continue to head us down a dead end street at 90 mph on a bad motorcycle, as Bob Dylan wrote about a failed love affair, which is exactly what the West's fixation with Capitalism is.
Currently co-ops across the world have more than a billion people who are active members, providing a hundred million jobs, which is a fifth more than multi nationals combined, alongside this the conomic activity of the largest three hundred cooperatives worldwide equals that of the world's tenth largest economy.
Which somehow challenges the notion that it is either idealistic or overly ambitious.
If we want to change the world for the better surely cooperation is better than competition?
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