And now for something different…..

I really shouldn’t go to bed at 1:30am and get up at 6:30am…. Tis daft and I feel like a zombie who is on auto-pilot with my mind definitely lost in the twilight zone. But what made me laugh was this, bless ‘em that they included me in the line up and the description of the Harpster is funny. I am, apparently, ‘affectionately’ known as ‘Louise’ in the dressing room…and a bit of a tearaway as well….apparently. Anyway, it cheered me up.

Aww. Shucks! I am flattered. And a bit more awake now though still non compos mentis.

Ah, c’mon comrade, you really wanna include Tom Harris in the line-up.

Shome mishtake, shurely….??

Btw: I played netball at school, even at a mixed comprehensive cricket was for the lads…. along with football. But we all played hockey. How strange there was that sexist male/female divide in sports and this was the good old 1980s.

Oh, and by the way….

Please carry on commenting…….though it seems like I can’t promise it won’t get you into trouble.

Sorry about that…..

Stockwell

I have just got back from watching the play Stockwell at the Tricycle Theatre. The play uses the transcripts from the inquest into the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes by armed cops as the narrative.

Very good evening, and it was rounded off with a Q&A session by Michael Mansfield who represented the family of Jean Charles de Menezes at the inquest this time last year, which I attended for the first week. I will write more later as it was an extremely fascinating evening.

No way out

From The F Word

More than 15,000 women called the Women’s Aid helpline last year suffering from physical, emotional, sexual and financial abuse at the hands of a partner. And the support group warned that controlling boyfriends and husbands were making life even harder by withholding and threatening to withhold money.

Margaret Martin, Women’s Aid director, said vulnerable women were trapped amid fears of increased poverty, losing their home and the effect it would have on their children. “Domestic violence is a huge problem within Irish society,” she said. “This year we are particularly concerned about the impact of the recession on women experiencing domestic violence from their boyfriends, husbands and partners.”

This is truly truly grim but unsurprising as people in powerless positions, especially women experiencing domestic violence, will be inevitable casualties of the economic meltdown.

Neither is neoliberalism supportive of equal opportunities. The gap between rich and poor has widened under NL. On the issue of women and pay, latest research has shown that women are being pushed into traditional jobs, along with gender pay gap,widened to 22.6% from 21.9% in 2007.

Mark France’s appeal date

Just as a recap Mark France was sacked for gross misconduct.

And bizarrely, it seems that the DWP are tracking Mark’s every comments (my blog was mentioned here in reference to the reasons for Mark’s sacking…and thanks to Mark for letting me know).

SU on the subject here.

The sacking is an attack on freedom of speech and civil liberties overall.

Mark France has an appeal hearing on 25th September at JobCentre Plus Regional HQ, Duchess Place, Birmingham.

Good luck with that comrade.

Brown: Cuts, Cuts, Cuts…..

Labour will cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets,” he said. “But when our plans are published in the coming months, people will see that Labour will not support cuts in the vital frontline services on which people depend.

Part of Brown’s  speech to the TUC.

Reactions from head honcho bureaucrat of the TUC …though I am not sure which parallel universe Brendan Barber lives on.

Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, rallied to the Prime Minister’s support last night. “This was a jobs versus cuts speech, and he chose jobs,” he said. “Unions are naturally concerned about the best way to tackle the deficit once we have real recovery. But again the Prime Minister made clear that there will be a real choice at the next election.”

Thankfully John McDonnell understands only too well what Brown is saying and sums the speech up as, “unconvincing and disappointing”, adding that his party had become unrecognisable from the Tories. “He has offered people an indiscernible choice at the forthcoming general election,” he said. “Underlying everything he said was the confirmation of Mandelson’s policy that the economic crisis created by the banks will be paid for by cuts to services to ordinary people.”

Mark Serwotka (General Secretary of the PCS) is right as well: “The speech confirmed my worst fears,” he said. “It was lacklustre and he did not take the opportunity to show that he is different from the Tories. His plans to rob £500m from his own workers is a scandal.”

Again it makes me think of Naomi Klein when she wrote:

During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector.

The great TARP swindle…just where did the US bailout money go?!

'Oi Paulson, more billions over here'...

Sub heading: Why global capitalism takes the piss!

Picture the scene, friendly philanthropist handing out bits of blank paper to paupers who, literally are cap in hand, desperate for a bailout and being asked to fill out on a piece of paper the amount of cash they need. Once amounts are duly filled out and noted by friendly philanthropist…and faster than you can say ‘TARP rescue’ those ickle paupers are poor no more..

They can now spend the dosh on buying out other banks, fancy schmanchy junkets for their top people, just sit on the hot billions. But not used, it seems, for what the Treasury intended the cash for.

Well, the scenario above is pretty much how the US bailout worked. October’s edition of Vanity Fair  remembers the one year anniversary of the bailout, and possibly has done more of a forensic examination of where the cash went than the US Treasury. And that’s the scary thing, no one knows where the cash went as the banks were under no obligation, apparently, to state where the money was going.   The banks suckered everyone, and global capitalism knew…but didn’t give a damn.

No independence in overseeing the distribution of this large amount of dosh (well, that’s if you call a former banker at Goldman Sachs independent who downplayed the gravity of the subprime-mortgage crisis only months before his appointment, reportedly sending the message to one gathering on bankers, “There’s no problem here”…)

And if you want to keep track of the cash….don’t fret… a $20 million fee to a private contractor such as the Bank of New York Mellon…who will do the work for you. But hey, don’t worry about the further complications such as this specific contractor being in receipt of one of the handouts.

Who cares about conflicts of interests as the US Treasury under Paulson (another former employee with Goldman Sachs) certainly didn’t seem to!

When reading the article my jaw was dropping through shock and sheer disgust at the audacity of this blatant act of day light robbery committed by a colluding Treasury, aided and abetted by a greedy bunch of bankers (known as the Big 9) getting their sticky corrupt paws on billions and billions of dollars. And some of these banks didn’t even need the cash but were told to take it!

There were seemingly no controls, just the stipulation of getting the money out to these banks asap. Plus no accounting was provided by the banks…it seems.

The bailout was one big massive slush fund for the banks with their casino style investments.  Why was this allowed?

Now we are seeing a return to form with big fat bonuses coming back into fashion, like they never went away. Obama may state that, We will not go back to the days of reckless behaviour and unchecked excess at the heart of this crisis.

But where the hell did the original bailout cash go?

There are junkets galore, bonuses, buy-outs yet who is paying for this economic shock crisis? Well, it certainly aint the banks…or the neoliberals who got us into this fine mess in the bloody first place.

Oh, and even better the tax havens are crying poverty. The punch line being: ‘We pay taxes so they don’t have it’…..

Hey, here’s an idea instead why don’t the banks fund the libraries in Philly!

Philly libraries are closing

What the deuce..?!?!?!

All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009

All Free Library of Philadelphia Customers,

We deeply regret to inform you that without the necessary budgetary legislation by the State Legislature in Harrisburg, the City of Philadelphia will not have the funds to operate our neighborhood branch libraries, regional libraries, or the Parkway Central Library after October 2, 2009.

Furthermore

All branch and regional library programs, including programs for children and teens, after school programs, computer classes, and programs for adults, will be cancelled

All Parkway Central Library programs, including children programs, programs to support small businesses and job seekers, computer classes and after school programs, will be cancelled. We are exploring the possibility of relocating the Philadelphia Author Series programs to other non-library facilities.

All library visits to schools, day care centers, senior centers and other community centers will cease.

All community meetings at our branch and regional libraries, and the Parkway Central Library, will be cancelled.

All GED, ABE and ESL programs held at Free Library branches will be discontinued, students should contact their teacher to see if other arrangements are being made.

So what are people expected to do? Libraries are an invaluable resource as they give equal access to education. I started my employment career in libraries and they are a vital component for learning. And as a kid I loved escaping from the traumas of life into the world of books at my local library.

 Again, libraries are a way to collectivise learning, finding out about the world, access to books, in an equal way. And of course collectivised learning doesn’t fit into the schema of neoliberalism!

When you look at how much of a budget is spent on libraries (in the UK…similar I reckon to the States), well it is a drop in the financial ocean! And when it comes to budgetary constraints…libraries are usually the first places for the chop!

I hope there will be a campaign to highlight this utter disgrace?

Hat tip: Political Custard via Twitter

RIP Patrick Swayze

I was watching the film Hot Fuzz on DVD the other night where one of the characters is obsessed with Point Break especially the iconic scene where Johnny Utah, undercover FBI agent, can’t bring himself to shoot Bodhi, chief bank banker, instead he shoots his pistol into the air.

And that’s the first film with Patrick Swayze in that I liked. High octane action adventure, the friction between the two main characters, which evolves over the course of the film, and the narrative revolves around surfing and bank robbing. All the hallmarks of a Kathryn Bigelow film. Incidentally, the day after I watched Hot Fuzz (Midsomer Murders meets any generic US action adventure cop film..I.liked it) I saw The Hurt Locker.

Dirty Dancing just wasn’t my scene, so 1980s, the dancing was cool but the storyline was just too sugary for me to digest. And that Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes tune, The Time of My Life, was just so saccharine. A bit too lovey-dovey for Harpy. The same goes for Ghost where my then boyfriend took me to see at the cinema. I disliked it with a vengeance (boyfriend liked it more than me). And that much parodied pottery wheel scene made me gag, along with the canoodling straight couple in front of me in the cinema distracting me with their antics (‘Jeeze, get a room’!). I just can’t stand these *romantic cum tragic love stories, just not me. Nope they’re not, even the opening to Unchained Melody couldn’t mellow me out.

So wasn’t a big fan of Patrick Swayze’s acting (and Dirty Dancing possibly type casted him as the ‘romantic idol’) until I saw him in Point Break and I thought he was excellent in Donnie Darko, it also made me re-think and re-assess Swayze’s acting especially as I had underestimated his skills by basing my own subjective responses to Dirty Dancing and Ghost. Iconic and memorable they were  for many.

And I must admit I was interested in seeing the television show The Beast, where Swayze played a controversial FBI agent who is being investigated.

While making the series Swayze was fighting pancreatic cancer a fight which he lost yesterday.

*I admit, high octane action adventure/sci-fi, with lots of stunts, fighting and explosions, plus a la early Quentin Tarantino,  are the films for me….

Brendan Barber predicts a riot

Funny that, the worst global recession for decades yet executives at Britain’s top companies saw their basic salaries leap 10% last year.

And head honcho of the TUC, Brendan Barber says, 

The recession has done nothing to stop the gap between top directors and the rest of their staff getting wider every year.

It is even more offensive when the Institute of Directors has called for spending cuts that would hit pensioners, the poor and low-paid public sector staff. We’ve already had the 1980s-style recession, it looks depressingly like we are going back to 1980s greed-is-good politics, too.

Yes, and as we have seen time and time again…the rich are insulated against this recession while it is the working class along with the public sector who will be paying for this economic meltdown.

And Brendan Barber predicts a riot.