Monthly Archives: January 2010

Hyperbole and realism

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I have been accused of many things in my life but never of hyperbole. Ok, let’s have an honest appraisal of NL over the past 13 years, Andy argues:

But it is a mistake to see the record of the Labour government over the last 13 years as all bad in this regard: indeed their policies were informed by an intelligent understanding of the structural causes of inequality in our society, and sincere desire to help the most disadvantaged. But their framework has been a timid one, and in the final analysis failed to acknowledge that equality has to rest upon shared sense of community, and that community is alien to the spirit of free market capitalism.

So lets have a fair assessment of NL’s policies. Indeed NL has been under social democratic pressure and this led to Sure Start, Tax Credits, minimum wage and upped pensioners benefits. They have built more public buildings BUT (and a very BIG one at that) at the expense of PFI and NL have been the accidental nationalisation of railtrack and the banks. But am hard pressed to think of anything else. Section 28… well, it took them 6 years to repeal that homophobic piece of reactionary legislation. Cost free to them as well, they coulda/shoulda repealed it within months of their first term but didn’t…So much for the strive for equality! All of these policies were superficial and scratched the surface again they expose the social democratic pressure NL were under and also the contradictory nature of NL. The policies amounted to sops to the core voters… the crumbs from the table while the financial markets were the big winners. And the report published this week amounts to a society being fractured by inequalities and poverty. Widened by a Labour government….

So while NL has created sops for the working class let’s look at what they have done to further oppress, damage and create an unequal society. Ok, how much time and space do we have when documenting the bad bad bad things NL has wreaked in 13 years: Illegal and unjust wars, the further advancement of liberal interventionism and imperialism, two Welfare Reform Acts that create far more conditionality, sanctions and Workfare, privatisation (PFI and PPP) of legal advice, benefits system, NHS… welfare state overall, marketisation, plethora of anti-terror laws that curtail our freedoms and civil liberties, not repealed anti-trade union laws, didn’t restore the link between earnings and pensions, no improvement to the minimum wage, ASBOS, general social authoritarianism, lack of real constitutional changes, further powers to the police, allowing asset inflation to build up along with allowing the housing bubble to build up, adhering to corporate free markets and the ideology of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism and free markets underpinned the ideology of NL and no matter how much you would want to you can’t escape from that. Hyperbole? No, realist….

If Labour had been truly transformative that created the conditions for an equal and just society then we would not be in this sorry state where the financial markets crashed and burned, the housing bubble imploded and to quote one of the comments from SU on Andy’s thread, ”There is going to be plenty of social mobility for everyone. Down the shit hole”… Crude but true.

And are we out of the recession? Well, the economy grew 0.01% last month but one swallow doesn’t make a summer. It also doesn’t show that much and it is one month’s worth of figures. What will happen next month and the month after? If it showed a trend over the next 12 months then it would be significant but it is too soon to tell whether it is time to crack open the cheap Bucks Fizz from Tesco (well, that’s what I buy). The underlining causes of the recession are still there, the owners of fictitious capital don’t want to take a financial hit. And certainly these are the conditions that will inevitably lead to a double-dip in the economy. This means you have a small recovery based on the massive bailout but the causes are not dealt with and then you go back into recession sans bailout. And that will be the big one…. We aint seen nothing yet as this crisis deepens…

As Andrew Fisher maintains: If a socialist government then wanted to make investments then some simple reprioritisation would free billions: cutting Trident, ID cards, ending the inefficiency of rail franchising, and scrapping the FireControl Project. It would also use public ownership of banking and other industries to generate a surplus to the Exchequer.

Since there is no short-term prospect of such a Government, this crisis is only going to deepen. The probably temporary emergence from recession will be a false dawn before a renewed and deep economic and political crisis takes hold.

Joe Bageant (this month’s Socialist Review)

A Deutsche Bank analyst tells me the worst is yet to come. Bank failures and home foreclosures have not peaked. A commercial real estate bust is coming down the pike. He says that, while there will be some minor periodic upswings, the fraudulent value of the dollar is now evident as it falls against every other currency, except those unlucky enough to be pegged to the US dollar.As former assistant secretary of the treasury Paul Craig Roberts says, “What sort of recovery is it when the safest investment an American can make is to bet against the US dollar?”


Flashpoint 2010

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It was a great day for taking photographs (unlike yesterday) and a great day to be protesting against Section 44. This specific stop and search power has been ruled illegal by the European court of human rights. But Alan Johnson has told cops to ignore that and to carry on regardless…. And dammit we wanted to take pix of what we wanted!

A group of us met at the London Eye we walked along Southbank, with two banners being held, passed the London Eye heading south. Firstly, we were stopped by a security guard who told us we couldn’t protest here as it is ‘private property’…

Big Brother watching us....

We continued walking south, then stopped by two Community Support cops asking what we were doing, ‘going for a walk’ was the reply. They left us but kept their collective beady eye on us…. and then we were approached by another cop and two further cops in a space of half an hour or so, asking us what we were doing and where we were going.

The cops also knew (what a surprise!) about this protest (obviously read about it on the net!) and asked whether more of us were coming. When we said not they looked a tad disappointed, we wondered whether they had vans and horses parked in the side streets!

We headed to Vauxhall and stopped outside MI6, modernist architecture and extremely ugly (rather reflects British imperialism). I have to admit that I never noticed before just how many cameras and CCTV were positioned on top of the gates. And tiny camera kept moving every time someone moved near it. There was speculation whether a James Bond character would break out of the building and chase us dodgy diabolical dissidents down Vauxhall. But nothing happened and no cops appeared.

I found it quite an eye opening down, just wandering around Southbank with a small banner or two elicited lots of responses from the cops and security guards. And that was precisely what we were doing walking around holding a banner taking pictures, nothing more nothing less.

It also exposes abuses of power by the state, right of protest and dissent being encroached upon and overall civil liberties being eroded. What were we doing wrong? Nothing, just expressing our right to protest and demonstrate. It also highlighted (especially reaction from the security guard) the privatisation of public spaces.

Update: See my Flickr page for more pix.

Blair at Chilcot

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Where most of us would like to see Blair end up...

Judgement Day for Blair today at the Chilcot Inquiry. There were around a couple of hundred people when I got there braving the bitter cold and rain. It was smaller than I thought but weather was awful and middle of a week day.

And Blair had been sneaked in the back way earlier in the morning at around 7:30am. Gutless coward couldn’t face the protesters. The cops were standing behind the barricades looking bored some were lurking around the protesters.

I haven’t looked at the live feed on the Guardian website as have just got back from the protest outside the event and frankly can’t stomach reading his lies. Though I heard a someone from the Military Families Against the War walked out while listening to Blair. And who can blame them!

I got to the protest at 9:30am and was heard the Naming of the Dead Ceremony. Speeches then were given by various people from Brian Eno, George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn, Lindsey German, and the actor Sam West who quoted Harold Pinter. It was a very powerful and poignant performance. All of the speakers spoke about the lies and deceit of Blair et al that led to a barbaric, unjust and illegal war where thousands upon thousands have died, a bloody imperialist war and occupation ,where the infrastructure of Iraq has been destroyed. And for what?

The actor Sam West quoting from Harold Pinter

Later we heard Maxine Gentle, sister of Gordon Gentle who was killed in Iraq on June 28th 2004. She read out a letter she sent Blair in 2004 (included in the pamphlet Iraq: The People’s Dossier). The below is an extract.

Gordon had only passed out in April, and yet by May you sent him and many others in a war zone.

What I find strange is that in order to be a qualified plumber or electrician you need to train for three or four years, but to be a qualified soldier, and learn to kill someone, you only need six months!

The protest finishes at 4pm-5pm as that’s when Blair leaves no doubt out of the back entrance without facing the protesters.

Maxine Gentle

More pix on my Flickr page.

Michael Mansfield on the Iraq Inquiry

Campbell and his latest potboiler

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I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its reviews and I have to say that I nearly missed my stop on the train reading this particular review…. And reading this choice extract especially…

“Our tongues ended a two decade coupled, circled each other again and again, till I sucked her hard into my mouth, and she me into hers. She grabbed at my belt, helped me open my trousers, then force them to the floor and she pulled me on top of her… I thought the walls were going to fall down as we stroked and screamed our way through hours of pleasure …”

And was that torrid sex scene any good for her, perchance?

Indeed that section of the book got me gasping ….. yes gasping for air at the sheer sub-Mills and Boon quality of the above. I am curious to know whether it carries in the same clunky prose….’we lay there in each others arms, sharing a post-coital cigarette remembering our animal passions (Grrr) locked in each others embrace, when two became one’….

If you are wondering who wrote the potboiler of steamy racy passion…then it is no other than maestro spin- doctor, Alastair Campbell. The book is called Maya and it is supposed to hot up (Ooo err missus) as it becomes more about the misuses of secret intelligence and other shenanigans (wonder what he based that on? Experience …maybe?).

The book retails at £18, I will wait until it is in the bargain bucket for a quid….in not that too distant future methinks….

Don’t give up the day job, whatever that is now Alastair…..

“Gin a body catch a body, comin’ through the rye” – so long JD Salinger

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“Gin a body catch a body/ comin through the rye,”

I liked Holden Caulfield, anti-hero and depressive teenager who captured the minds of generation after generation of teenagers. I read Catcher in the Rye when I was around 18-19 years old. I identified with him, loneliness and alienation (chipper book to read after you have been in the shrink hospital!). So it was sad to read JD Salinger has died. He wrote other books but it was Catcher that he will be remembered for.

I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

Defend our right to protest

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The big question for me at the moment is whether there will be a protest outside the QEII centre tomorrow. The cops have halted the planned protest going ahead on the patch of green outside the Centre.

Campaigners have now been told that the area is private property, but that other locations further from the centre may be available as an alternative.

CND and Stop the War Coalition condemn the decision as ‘politically motivated’… The cops say the decision was down to the QEII Centre organisers. They say not. But as the saying goes if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck … then dammit this decision by the Met is politically motivated. The state want to keep this protest a million miles away from Blair and his lies. A way of keeping the democratic right of protest off the streets of Westminster, out of sight, out of mind.

 And every piddling bizarre excuse has been used by some NL apparakchik historically, one used by Tessa Jowell (reminded by Random Blowe’s post…. Gosh yes, I remember now, utterly witless….) when trying to stop the Feb 2003 rally in Hyde Park as it would ‘damage the grass’…. Never mind the damage, destruction and deprivation awaiting the Iraqis in 2003!

 The right of protest under NL has been curtailed, the right of protest is part of a healthy democracy. Instead protesters will be denied that right to voice their dissent.

  Anyway I shall wander down to Parliament way tomorrow and see what is happening outside the QEII Centre.

Neoliberalism: the poor get poorer the rich get richer….

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Gordon Brown describes this report’s findings as ‘sobering’ yet who has been at the helm of creating this unequal society that has devastating consequences on the poorest in this society? Gordon Brown PM and former Chancellor…

The report makes grim reading (below is a taster from the executive summary).

The Panel’s report, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, finds that:

• Inequalities in earnings and incomes are high in Britain, both compared with other industrialised countries, and compared with thirty years ago. Over the most recent decade, earnings inequality has narrowed a little and income inequality has stabilised on some measures, but the large inequality growth of the 1980s has not been reversed.

• Some of the widest gaps in outcomes between social groups have narrowed in the last decade, particularly between the earnings of women and men, and in the educational qualifications of different ethnic groups. However, deep-seated and systematic differences in economic outcomes remain between social groups across all of the dimensions we examine. Despite the elimination and even reversal of the qualification differences that often explain them, significant differences remain in employment rates and relative pay between men and women and between ethnic groups.

• Differences in outcomes between the more and less advantaged within each social group, however the population is classified, are much greater than differences between social groups. Even if all differences between groups were removed, overall inequalities would remain wide. The inequality growth of the last forty years is mostly attributable to growing gaps within groups rather than between them.

• Many of the inequalities we examine accumulate across the life cycle, especially those related to socio-economic background. Economic advantage and disadvantage reinforce themselves across the life cycle, and often on to the next generation. Policy interventions to counter this are needed at each life cycle stage. Achieving ‘equality of opportunity’ is very hard when there are such wide differences between the resources which people and their families have to help them fulfil their diverse potentials.

 This is what happens when a government adheres to a neoliberal and free market ideology, and that means class warfare.  Twelve years they had to implement redistributive and equitable policies that could have truly transformed society but they chose a very different political path. And the relentless savage vicious divisive cold hearted attacks on working class people these deep wounds of poverty and deprivation will reverberate for generations….

And while the poor get poorer the rich get richer. But then NL were always relaxed about the rich……

TUC concert for Haiti

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Alan Rickman, Billy Bragg, Tom Wilkinson, Frances De la Tour and Benjamin Zephaniah are just some of the names headlining a TUC Concert for Haiti next Wednesday (3 February) in London.

The concert – organised by the TUC and the Cuba Solidarity Campaign – will raise money for the victims of the 12 January earthquake through the TUC Aid Haiti Appeal. It takes place at Congress House, 23-28 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS. Doors open at 6.30pm and the night gets underway at 7pm.

Performing alongside Billy Bragg will be Cuban band Son Mas, featuring jazz violinist Omar Puente. There will also be readings from Jamaican poet Jean Binta Breeze and speeches from Tony Benn, Ken Loach and actors Frances and Andy de la Tour, who appear alongside Hollywood stars Tom Wilkinson and Alan Rickman.

Tickets for the night cost £10 and are available at www.concertforhaiti.co.uk or by calling 0208 800 0155. Ticket sales from the concert and donations to the TUC Aid Haiti Earthquake Appeal on the night are expected to raise over £100,000.

Since disaster struck two weeks ago, the TUC Aid appeal has funded the purchase of tents, medicines and food which have been transported into the country via trucks from the Dominican Republic.

The latest information about the concert is available at www.concertforhaiti.co.uk

and donations to TUC Aid Haiti Earthquake Appeal can be made at www.tuc.org.uk/haitiappeal

And there’s Poetry Live for Haiti at Central Hall Westminster this Saturday (30th Jan)

Hat tip: Madam Miaow

From the bizarre to the ridiculous

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Ah now, picture the scene, you work for ITV1 and are a children’s hit television host. You are filming on the South Bank dressed in fake fatigues, holding children’s walkie-talkies and hairdriers. And while you are filming with lots of cameras, crews and a boom mike for ‘Toonattik’ this specific segment being ‘Dork Hunters’ you get stopped by the police...

…..under anti-terrorism legislation..

Yes indeed, children’s TV hosts get stopped for wearing fake combats, walkie-talkies, fake bulletproof flakjacket and ‘spangly’ hairdriers.

Why? From Her Majesty’s Finest… ‘We are holding you under the Anti-Terrorism Act because you are running around in flak jackets and a utility belt’…

Ay Caramba!!! You can’t make this… What next puffa jacket wearing hoodie clad in fatigues? My fashion garb for Saturday then.

If the cops have nothing better to do then how about arresting this bloke... Wanted for war crimes…