Lost… I certainly am!

I gave up watching Lost at the end of series 2. And I discovered that the final episode was shown yesterday. So here’s a question, can someone explain the bloody ending? I’ve ascertained that the island was some kinda holding place, purgatory (?) before transcending to a some kind of heaven after they have ditched their ‘emotional baggage’. Have the writers been in discussion with the writers from Ashes to Ashes? What is about about parallel universes, and holding places for troubled souls, seems to be a popular device at the moment. Expect to see a re-cycled version (if not already) in a Dr Who episode.

The metaphysics of nonsensical twisty-turny plot devices and storylines. Don’t tempt me into a discussion on the material process of existence….ghosts in the machine, consciousness or neurons and atoms (though I did watch a very fascinating programme on BBC3). Ooo..now my head hurts.

So answers on a cyber postcard explaining the finale of Lost (can see a PhD in the making here…

Public deficit: What will happen to the money when you pay it across to them….?

It isn’t how to pay off the deficit but what happens to the money when you pay it across to them…what are the implications…

There is a serious long term problem with paying off the deficit with spending cuts with no action on bank regulation or a crackdown on offshore tax havens and the rest of the superstructure of neo-liberal financial arrangements. Quite simply we are feeding a monster. The question that should be asked is not how we can render forth the danegeld but rather, what will happen to it once it has been rendered across the bankers who created the mess?

The result of all the suffering will be huge amounts of money including all the interest in the hands of private institutions of one sort or another. Money paid by the working class throughout Europe whether in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Britain and yes the workers of Germany who have been roped into coughing up by the mechanism of the Euro. Lots of money footloose in the international financial system looking for a quick profit. It will be held by a large number of competing financial “players” each looking to outdo the others in getting rich.

So instead of social investment more speculative activity maybe property maybe stocks and shares maybe something else. Property booms have of course been a popular option up to now but who is to say what it will be next. Where of course there is a boom there is a bust as we now know Gordon Brown was wrong on the nature of capitalist progress. Boom and bust are necessary to create the conditions for the creation of huge accumulations of capital. The next bust will be a nasty big bust as well. More demands for the working class to suffer again to pay for the new crisis.

If the deficit is to be paid if should be by taxing the rich and the banks properly. Regulation of the financial system and the clamping down on tax havens and offshore banking. It can be done although the establishment do not want to do it.

They don’t need to slash the public sector!!

 Well, Clegg thinks it’s about ‘no pain no gain’ and that it’s all about necessity. Osborne says this today:

We simply cannot afford to increase public debt at the rate of £3bn each week. Our huge public debts threatened financial stability and if left unchecked would derail the economic recovery. Public borrowing is only taxation deferred and it would be deeply irresponsible to continue to accumulate vast debts that would have to be paid off by our children, and our grand children for many decades to come.”

But even more patronisingly and smug faced from free markerteer, Dave Laws who says: We also promise to cut with care, we are going to be a progressive government even in these tough times.

How the hell can you cut with care? Surely an oxymoron..?

But the thing is, they don’t need to cut. Have a look at Richard Murphy’s blog who argues:

And none of this is necessary. As was reported yesterday, because Labour’s policies were working the budget deficit was £5.5 billion smaller than expected at the end of March – the saving Osborne is looking for by cutting was, in other words, achieved by spending instead.

Yes – I mean that – it was achieved by spending. When there is no private sector demand to take up the slack in the economy – and that is the case now – then only government spending can do the job, create demand, create work, create wealth, and generate government revenue to pay down debt - which is exactly what has been happening – and which works.

This is the virtuous cycle Osborne will destroy.

That’s the flaw at the heart of the Con Dems economic policy.

It is what will pull their government down.

I am sure another area the Con/Dem alliance will be itching to attack is the benefits system …..

More randoms

Spent the afternoon testing my new Tamron lens on my camera. Liked the results.

Con/Dem public sector cuts

Now, it was kinda prescient that C4 televised Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” as on Monday the Con/Dem alliance will be announcing details of the imminent vicious and deep public sector cuts. David Clegg (you may know him by another name) stated that the “move is painful but necessary’… Translated that means everyone else will be suffering from the consequences of casino capitalism and bank bailouts …and not the very people/institutions that created this economic crisis. In a phrase, “we must all feel the pain”… does the Con/Dem alliance also share the pain? I don’t think so, they will be happy to empathise from a safe distance.

“Ahead of Monday’s announcement of the details of £6bn in cuts this year, Mr Clegg said the squeeze was necessary to “bring sense” to the public finances.He said the coalition government would have to “hold its nerve” over tough decisions and attacked what he said had been irresponsible spending by Labour.”

Two  important questions asked in Moore’s film were simply, “Where did the bailout money go, and can we get it back”? No on both counts. In the States back in late 2008 during a dying Republican administration, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (btw former CEO of Goldman Sachs) handed out bits of blank paper to banks who, literally were cap in hand, desperate for a bailout and being asked to fill out on a piece of paper the amount of cash. And the scary thing is, 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. BTW: a  $20 million fee to a private contractor  who supposedly kept a track of cash handed out. But hey, don’t worry about the further complications such as this specific contractor being in receipt of one of the handouts!!

And what it amounted to was a 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’s honour amongst thieves but not banking!

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?

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 as we can see tomorrow when the likes of bourgeois wealth-friendly George Osborne unveils plans to slash and burn the public sector.

The scenario during the bailout in the States is pretty similar to the one over here. Again, nobody knows where the cash went. Why didn’t they leave the big banks to go under, it would have cleared them out of the system, it would have been traumatic but it would not have left this big deficit hole which we are all experiencing the pain…though not the banks and certainly not global capitalism (which is alive, thriving and exploiting the rest of the 95% while the remainder 5% do very nicely indeed)

Come the revolution!

Own goal committed by the SWP

I am usually a big supporter and defender of direct action but what the SWP did earlier this evening was an utterly ultra-left stunt. What was the aim, to impress their own members? Also, who gave the SWP the authority to do that? What was the point as these were important and crucial negotiations between the Unite and BA. Yes, Woodley is a union bureaucrat but he has more accountability than a bunch of SWP organisers. And did the SWP organisers actually speak to the cabin crew or was it the usual ultra-left adventurism where they just went off on their own without any discussion?

I am not a fan of a bureaucrat like Woodley but frankly I don’t blame him for being angry by this wrong-headed stunt. This is not the way forward. What is the political cost of those actions orchestrated by the SWP? The union probably went into those talks in a position of strength since the court ruling and the SWP, accountable  to nobody other their own political committee i.e. a bunch of nobodies, decide to disrupt these negotiations.

Did you feel good chanting away and then wandering off thinking the revolution is only a barricade away? That stunt could backfire dearly.

Own fecking goal comrades!

See also Random Blowe, AVPS, Socialist Unity, and Marshajane who has been twittering about this stunt from the start (and H/T to her as well as first discovered it from her tweets)

More pix from Brighton

Another couple of pix from Brighton

Com/Dem proposals on rape anonymity

This is unbelievably diabolical!

What the Con/Dem alliance is proposing is an utter misogynistic and retrograde step. Women already have an uphill struggle when it comes to the reporting and prosecution of rape….and this will only further undermine and alienate rape victims. It is indeed a proposal that turns the clock back to 1976 under the Sexual Offences Act (later repealed), the Con/Dem alliance is indulging in a nasty little time warp.

And on the issue of anonymity? Why make sexual offences difference when it comes to the accused? If someone is accused of, say, robbery and they are charged with the offence their name ends up in the public domain. For anyone with a job that involves any kind of trust or responsibility a conviction or even an allegation of dishonesty or violence is likely lead to a set of career choices.

What about speculation about who the accused is? Say the accused works for a particular firm in a particular area. Someone else working for the same employer is likely to suffer from the tittle-tattle that inevitably occurs when such things are covered up.

Most importantly though it surrenders to the (vague) idea that somehow men accused of sexual offences are entitled to some sort of special protection that other defendants are not. This was the ideology behind the old “corroboration rule” that existed into the 1990′s that required judges in sexual cases to warn juries that women where prone to making up  such allegations!

What’s next for this vile coalition, removing anonymity for rape victims?

What the Con/Dem alliance is proposing obstructs justice!

Gene Hunt RIP

I got the significance at the end of Ashes to Ashes where an early clip of Dixon of Dock Green was shown. The character, PC Dixon (played by Jack Warner) was resurrected in the series Dixon of Dock Green as he had been killed off in the film, The Blue Lamp, bumped off by a young Dirk Bogarde (seen the film as well)… But have to say the final episode of Ashes to Ashes was surreal bordering on Lynchian. Though the reference in the Guardian’s review to Wham’s Club Tropicana played on a loop in hell was kinda funny. Hey, I liked Club Tropicana….and found myself humming along.

So it transpires that Gene Hunt was, erm, kinda dead all along as he had been shot long ago as a young copper and buried in a shallow grave. And poor Alex, alas she was dead too never coming out of her coma, the other characters dead as well. The nasty Keats character was the…erm… devil (?) who tried to entice the others away from Gene Hunt’s purgatory for troubled coppers to a Club Tropicana hell. It was kinda symbolic while they were waiting for the lift to take them down, down, deeper and down to the bowels of Keats inferno. Shaz, Ray and Chris discovered how they died as Keats had conveniently dropped off videos of their respective demises…

We discovered that Alex died at precisely 9:06 (am or pm is not known). We also found out what happened to the original time traveller to Hunt’s spirit world, Sam Tyler (from the far, far, far superior, Life on Mars) who made the transition from purgatory to the the Railway Arms that signifies heaven or something like it.

And while Chris, Shaz, Ray and Alex end up in the eternal pub on the corner that doesn’t close (make mine a pint btw) Gene Hunt goes back to his office and then ….wait for it… a confused bloke wanders asking where his iPhone was and unsure where the hell he is. The process starts all over again.

Another series… hope not. Gene Hunt RIP.

Differences between McDonnell & Abbott

If you want to read a balance sheet that succinctly explains the differences between McDonnell and Abbott then look no further than Liam’s blog. Spot-on comrade, spot-on!

And what exactly is Diane Abbott saying about this:

The Cabinet also discussed work to find £6 billion of cuts in departmental spending – ahead of an announcement by Chancellor George Osborne on Monday – and the “big society” agenda.

We will be facing deep, massive & vicious cuts, John McDonnell has been consistently arguing that people shouldn’t pay for the crisis in the economy but what does Diane Abbott say…? Can someone enlighten me?