Friday 30 August 2013

30th August 2013

This blog has steadily moved away from its stated aim of offering a wry look at the 'big society'.

There are reasons for this.

One of course is that the idea of a big society has been lost in translation as the con-dems have moved further and further from the pretence that they are governing in the public interest.

As Suzanne Moore writes in the Guardian, the middle class is being squeezed, and it is being squeezed out of existence, in a reference to Karl Marx, she notes that he saw the decline of the middle class 'crushed by the logic of late capitalism' and so we have moved toward a caricature of society.

Not the big society but the broken society, asking as we struggle, who actually broke it?

The working class were declared redundant by the Thatcherite policies of the early eighties, now the middle class are being eroded, and soon we will be left with an upper class and an underclass, with the upper class in a dialogue that is nowhere as amusing as the the Two Ronnie's had it, blaming the underclass for their own predicament.

Scroungers! As Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Osborne have it.

Whilst the rich continue to grow increasingly and more obscenely rich.

Like so many I was extremely concerned about the possibility that the Government might, as encouraged by Tony Blair in the Times, to launch an attack on Syria as a punishment for its alleged use of chemical weapons on its own population.

Whilst I condemn the use of such weapons, or indeed any weapons as a means of stifling debate and bringing opposition to heel, it must also be said that a country such as Britain has no place intervening militarily in the affairs of another sovereign state.

The international outrage must be expressed in the UN by nations joining voices to condemn and should be accompanied by a clear attempt to establish the truth about what happened, whether the Government of Mr Assad was responsible, whether it was another group seeking to trigger the red line drawn by President Obama.

The result of Thursday's debate was brilliant insofar as Parliament was able finally to address the hegemony of the Osborne, Cameron, Clegg axis.

We can only hope that the other surgical strikes being planned by the axis on the disabled, the poor, the vulnerable and the middle class can also be brought equally abruptly to an end.

But why stop there, as some of the Leaders in today's newspapers have stated, finally we can see Britain's true place in the world.

A nations divided between rich and poor, a nation divided between North and South, a nation soon to be faced with the possibility of geopolitical unity being split when and if Scotland opts for independence, no doubt followed closely by Wales and possibly who knows, Cornwall?

If Scotland chooses independence, then Trident is likely to be the first victim, followed by, who knows what. Of course the money released by that decision should represent a remarkable peace dividend if it can be shared equitably.

The Tory Party is divided between the Hawks and the Doves, in matters of social legislation as well as air strikes and last night the Doves cast the final vote, aided interestingly by the incompetent who managed to miss the division.

So a Prime Minister cut down to size, a party cut down to size and a coalition lacking credibility.

There are still two years before an election.

But, whilst the poorest and most vulnerable in our society are held responsible for the financial crisis whilst Bankers continue to enjoy their champagne parties, as the middle class face extinction as a result of technological changes being engineered in silicon valley, as Parliamentary speeches begin to reflect what constituents are actually feeling, it will become increasingly unlikely that a cabinet of millionaires will be allowed to promote their prejudices as policies.

So maybe, when it becomes clear that we are all in this together, then maybe it will be possible to enlarge our vision and introduce a larger more humanitarian belief, that if we welcome the stranger, if we embrace change, if we care for the environment, if we care for the orphans and widows in their distress then we might become not only a better but a bigger society, offering a vision for a better more peaceful world, across the the globe.



Wednesday 21 August 2013

20th August 2013

It's hard to know what to be more concerned about.

With Tony Blair as the Middle East Envoy it seems that everything is not getting better in either Syria or Egypt.

And here each day brings more conflicting news.

From arresting innocent travellers at Heathrow to zero hours contracts the con-dems continue to consolidate their reputation.

Vote Blue and Turn Green.

Green of course implies environmental integrity and all that.

But it seems that what has happened is that we voted blue and turned green with envy.

Having voted Blue as a consequence of a financial crisis in the hope that we can legislate our way to more settled times, we have moved, inevitably it seems, toward a more divided society, a society which the current Prime Minister insists on calling 'broken', but as the late author, Ian Banks, quoted in The Guardian Newspaper commented:

 'Your societies broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, let's blame the people with no power and no money and these immigrants who don't even have the vote - yeah it must be their f***ing fault'.

And blame them we have, they have been benefit capped, medically examined, rehoused to houses with less rooms, offered zero hour contracts and had to stand and watch as posters have been driven round their neighbourhoods advertising the threats against them.

It seems to me and as it say's on the tin, I am thinking aloud, that the public debate really needs to begin in earnest.

Every statement issued by the con-dems over the two years leading up to proomised elections in 2015 needs to be studied closely and subject to a hermenutic, a cost benefit analysis, a lie detector test and anything else that lies to hand.

It seems that the net result of current policies is to create a house price bubble which will make anyone owning a house feel better off as their equity position improves, feeling better off means that they might spend more, spending more will boost output, boosting output will increase taxation income, increased tax income will make the deficit appear to have been reduced.

But it will be another boom and will inevitably lead to another bust, either on their (the con-dem's) watch or on Labour's should they be elected.

The current narrative is being framed in terms of the 'mess we inherited from an irresponsible Labour Government', today in Australia, the Mayor of London, whilst kissing a, very small crocodile,  described falling out with your brother as a 'socialist' thing to do.

Pity the crocodile wasn't bigger, as it said in the Crocodile Dundee movie apropos a knife: 'that's not a crocodile, this is a crocodile'.

The Chancellor describes Mothers who stay at home to care for their children as making a 'lifestyle' choice and therefore not requiring child care support, the man known as IDS dismisses Labour as the party of welfare, which is ironic, given that reports suggest that his attempts to cap welfare have actually increased the welfare bill through increased administrative costs.

So how should the election debate be conducted by the opposition.

Good advice came today from another author who has recently died.

Elmore Leonard has this advice for Ed Milliband and the Shadow Cabinet:

Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue and never use an adverb to modify the verb 'said'. Avoid lengthy descriptions, the word 'suddenly' and leave out the part that people skip. 

Keep at it and keep it simple'.









Monday 12 August 2013

12th August 2013

What right  minded person would vote this lot, the con-dems aka Tory Lite, back into power?

And as is becoming clearer by the day the real Tories are actually a pretty scary lot and completely without the humour we associate with the  UKIP of bonkers, bonkers land fame.

There seems to be little about them of kindness or graciousness or any recognition that the majority of the population really want very little from their Government apart from a secure and quiet, family or single or partnered, life, good neighbours and at the end of each week a little money left over from their budget to enjoy a pleasurable weekend.

Not a lot to ask?

But fewer and fewer seem to have these modest hopes met.

At every turn society appears to be worse off than when Cameron and Clegg sealed their marriage of convenience in the Rose Garden.

The latest news from the frontline is that wages have actually declined since the coalition implemented its austerity programme.

In most European countries wages have increased but not in the UK, here if you are not a banker, a CEO or a politician your take home pay is now worth less than it was, and to add insult to injury the newly installed head of the Bank of England has made it clear that inflation will be allowed to continue to depress income and of course the less you have to spend the greater the inflation-tax will impact on your scarce resources.

And if you have the effrontery to complain you will be advised by Mr Cameron to do, 'the right thing' or you will simply be  inviting yet another sneer from Mr Osborne who will simply blame your 'lifestyle' choice.

In a blog circulating on facebook Aiden Semmans tells an interesting story about Charles Moore with whom he was at University. See: http://aidansemmens.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/if-they-cant-afford-treatment-they-dont.html?spref=fb

As far as I know I wasn't at University with any Tories, probably because I didn't go to University at all, instead, having been invited to leave school by the Headmaster and clutching my one 'O' Level in Woodwork, I got a job as a Tyre Fitter in Stoke on Trent.

Working as a very junior member of the Tyre Fitting team at Normeir Tyres I was radicalised pretty quickly receiving a wealth of advice on subjects as diverse as how to approach a difficult task, don't stand if you can sit, don't sit if you can lie down, although lying down under a muddy sub-frame trying to loosen the bolts on a rusted exhaust wasn't the hugest amount of fun, neither was putting wet muddy overalls back on in the morning.

So I set about improving my life chances, first by landing a job as a Civil Servant, no muddy sub-frames or wet overalls there thankfully. In this job I spent eight hours a day writing benefit cheques (aka Giro's) by hand, after this I was promoted to the contributions section so saw the link between the benefits received in difficult times and the contributions which paid for them in good times (now is that too difficult a link for a Tory to understand?).

Then off I went to Theological College in Salisbury, a bona fide, working class hero in the Tory Shires, I lived in The Close to which Edward Heath retired when he was dumped by his party in favour of a certain Margaret Thatcher whose first action as Education Minister was to take away the free milk and whose subsequent actions are, for some poor bloggers, still too painful to recall.

At some point in my political education I became an Anarchist, Politics Out! was the chant, and later I adopted another slogan wearing my Trappist Punk badge on my denim jacket.

Later still I was called an irresponsible socialist, which whilst that amused some, did rather make me wonder what exactly was irresponsible about being a socialist.

After all putting the common interest or good, before personal gain and profit seems to me to be a perfectly responsible thing to do.

But that is exactly the opposite of what the Tory coalition has sought to achieve and what its narrative has promoted.

Mr Duncan Smith frequently calls the Labour Party the party of welfare, as though somehow that is a bad thing, clearly he thinks its a bad thing, but what is so wrong with ensuring that when a neighbour is in difficulty you can come to their aid?

And if you cannot do that personally what is so wrong in organising society in such a way that it is done structurally and effectively.

Food Banks are a visceral response to need but how much better and fairer would society be if everyone could buy their food from the store, and therefore had sufficient to eat.

Apparently, according to this distorted Tory narrative, the reason wages have fallen in value in the UK is not because of the flat lining economy (OK .03% growth or whatever) but because of Labour's financial mis-management leading to the financial meltdown.

I can only hope that Mr Ed comes back from his holidays with his loins girded, waving a bright red banner, and declaring that the time has come to sweep away irresponsible capitalism once and for all.

People want to be given a vision and a plan and reason to vote for a better answer or if that's not possible at least be asked a better question.

Monday 5 August 2013

5th August 2013

Back in time for the rain.

At least we weren't planning a parade!

There is at least a freshness to the air!

As the running joke went during our stay in Genoa: humidity is not a virtue!

The big society which is, on the face of it at least, the underlying theme of this blog appears like the Monty Python parrot to be pretty much deceased.

I loved the photograph in The Times of Mr and Mrs Cameron in front of a fishmongers stall in Portugal on their recent holiday, they appeared to be making a speech although, judging by the glassy eyed stare of the fish, they may well have been rehearsing their speech for the Tory Party Conference.

Certainly the coalition appears to be pretty light on humidity, as increasingly mean spirited policies are rolled out almost on a daily basis to accompanying cheers from the Tory Party and the sound of ice rattling in the gin and tonic glasses.

From the poster vans circulating in parts of London inviting illegal immigrants to go home, to the bed room tax and the weeks delay in benefit payments alongside the 1% cap on increases in benefits each new announcement seeks to tie in support from the Tory Heartlands.

Politicians enjoy power and at a certain point in the lifetime of any parliament on any particular parties watch the agenda shifts from policies designed to benefit the economy and increase the sense of public well being, to simply ensuring that the Party in power is re-elected.

It is a bit more complex in a coalition because the party with the largest number of seats has to ensure that it distances itself from both the opposition and the party with whom it is sharing power.

It may not be as brazen as Robert Mugabe's tricks, printing a few hundred thousand extra voting forms, adding a few extra names to the electoral roll, making life difficult for supporters of the opposition to actually vote, but tricks are inevitably employed.

Labour is being systematically discredited as the party of welfare or in the gift of the Unions and whilst the smear campaign appears to be working, at least to the satisfaction of the lobbyist's, the real problem, Tory supporters switching allegiance to UKIP, means that they are currently being wooed back by a series of campaigns aimed at welfare dependency and immigrants.

Occasionally there is a sense of some disagreement emerging as the Liberal partners in the coalition try to distance themselves from the mean spirited rhetoric of messrs Cameron, Osborne and Duncan Smith.

The election, set for 2015 seems to have started already, it may well be that it will begin in earnest with this round of party conferences but we are it seems set for a long, drawn out and probably fairly disagreeable campaign running into 2015.

Add into the febrile mix, social networking: facebook, twitter etc which were so effectively used by the Obama campaign team and we might see a whole new style of not so much big society but bigging up campaigns exhorting us to vote for this party or that.

The campaign buses are even now being coach painted, the soap boxes prepared and soon the summer of heatwave and thunder will give way to a winter of extravagant claims, undeliverable promises and subtle and not so subtle attacks on sections of our society who don't want to vote for food banks, more children in poverty and attacks on their fellow citizens, but who prefer the large and spiritual ideas which underpin a society in which all strive to fulfil their human potential and are supported by the elected government to ensure that they will.