Capitalism and profit: just how low it gets

Madam Miaow has written an excellent post about just how capitalism wallows in the gutter by commodfying exploited and murdered women. Certainly made me angry reading it, beauty products making a quick buck off the backs of misery and murder. How quaint!

The big alienating society

I think it is reading an article like this that makes me acutely aware of the kind of society we live in. Simply Andrea had been failed by an uncaring system, a system that ignored her allegations of sexual abuse and that left her to cope without any constructive support and help. And the mental health system labelled her as “an attention-seeker and a time-waster. One psychiatrist wrote in his notes that she needed to ‘pull her socks up’.”… What a callous and uncaring society we live in where alienated and depressed young people are pushed over the edge, where suicide is seen as the only way to escape from the realities of a cold atomised world where nobody really listens instead people judge, stigmatise, stereotype and label (‘troublemaker’). Where people like Andrea fall through the cracks, never believing anyone cares, that they are worthless, insignificant and hopeless.

My own reaction reading this article saddened me to the core, I wasn’t in care but know only too well about the ignorance and arrogance of psychiatric labeling (there but for the grace of god, go I…)  And why was she criminalised and punished, why did the police hold a vulnerable young woman in a cell when she is the victim of a crime, that’s an injustice! Pushed from one carer to another and the overwhelming sense of worthlessness and hopelessness which can lead to self-harming and overdosing as it’s about coping, anaesthetising yourself from the pain. And it also shows how inadequately trained and damned unenlightened these professionals were especially the police who treated Andrea like a criminal. Before she committed suicide, she was apparently, ‘jolly’ and ‘happy’ …. though under cross-examination the police officer said that Andrea had said this, “I am not going to do it now but when I do do it, there is nothing you can do to stop me.”… Indeed gross failure and inaction by the cops (and they also sanctioned the wrong woman!) There are times it is not so much what the person says is what they don’t say (though in this case it was obvious the state of her mind). And why wasn’t the allegations of rape investigated?

She was let down so horribly and utterly utterly shockingly badly… the young woman needed support and help to construct a positive life, the foundations weren’t there but that coulda been rectified with the right support as opposed to being left and trapped in an uncaring world where her only way out was suicide. Reading her story got to me deeply, as it reminded me of countless other young people lost in a myopic system, some I have known and some because of the tragic consequences and impact of their suicides. There were aspects of her life that reminded me of me, that’s possibly why it felt raw and hit a bit of a nerve. The rubbish ideas of past and current politicians with their ‘third way’ or ‘Big Society’ along with the moralising about ‘rights and responsibilities’, ‘culture of dependency’ and ‘broken society’ all evoke a right-wing ideology that continues the trauma, isolation and alienation of vulnerable, anonymous and powerless young people.

People deserve so much better.

Big Society? One big con….

Just what is this Big Society? One big meaningless con. Spin and guff from David Cameron. Kinda reminds me of when Andy Burnham goes on about aspirational Socialism, always pleased with himself when he has the chance to say something that on a superficial level screams left when in reality is establishment safe…But sorry, I digress, forgive me as I just wanted to vent my own spleen over contender Burnham. So back to the big question, just what is this Big Society? I kinda really like this interpretation from Twitter (Simon Mills), “#BigSociety is a neoliberal hallicinogen. It induces delusions of social cohesion but is really a gateway drug for privatization”… Hallicinogens, delusions and privatisation. I like it. Shock and awe.

But let’s hear from the big man with a plan himself….

“The big society … is about liberation – the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street,”

“A “big society” bank will be established to finance charities and voluntary groups. This will be funded using “every penny of dormant bank and building society account money allocated to England”,

“It is not a cover for anything. I was talking about the “big society” and encouraging volunteering, encouraging social enterprises and voluntary groups to do more to make our society stronger. I was talking about that way before we had a problem with cuts and deficits and all the rest of it”.

“It has turned able, capable individuals into passive recipients of state help with little hope for a better future. It has turned lively communities into dull, soulless clones of one another. So we need to turn government completely on its head.”

Cameron also wants your cash…. Funds stuck in dormant bank accounts to enable charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to take over the running of public services…the Big Society Bank…An estimated £500 million lies dormant in bank and building society accounts, and another £435 million in National Savings and Insurance. And before anyone gets their paws on the cash the Treasury has to establish a “Reclaim Fund” tracking down the savers with dormant accounts. How’s about creating a “Reclaim Fund”…. from the banks?

Here’s a simple yet big idea, how’s about funding the public sector and the welfare state rather than cutting it to the bone? These plans are just so bizarre; firstly where’s the accountability and transparency? How will these volunteers be chosen? These proposals have a real hideous nasty whiff nay stench of the Victorian. This is about privatising public services.

As far as the guff itself coming from Cameron, were Messrs Brown and Clegg treated to a whiff when all three were on telly in the Spring? It is so vacuous it is difficult what to say about it other than Cameron is indulging in his personal right wing fantasy while being the leader of a party with a minority of the votes and without a majority in Parliament without the snivelling support of the LibDems.

Here’s a tip Dave…pay people to do the jobs that need doing and take the money to pay them with from your banksta pals! Surely they would be pleased to “volunteer” their surplus cash!

Links: Great minds think alike (tee hee!)

End the barbarism of physical restraint

To weaken the provisions in local communities and then to claim that building the new secure training centres will help to prevent juvenile crime is a sham – Tony Blair in 1994 criticising the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard’s proposals for STCs. The first STC was opened under NL in 1998.

This is the reality of private companies running prisons for young people. This is the grim reality of marketisation and privatisation of justice….

Shocking details of techniques used to inflict pain deliberately on children in privately run jails have been revealed for the first time in a government document obtained by the Observer.

Some of the restraint and self-defence measures approved by the Ministry of Justice include ramming knuckles into ribs and raking shoes down the shins. Other extraordinary passages in the previously secret manual, Physical Control in Care, authorise staff to:

■ “Use an inverted knuckle into the trainee’s sternum and drive inward and upward.”

■ “Continue to carry alternate elbow strikes to the young person’s ribs until a release is achieved.”

■ “Drive straight fingers into the young person’s face, and then quickly drive the straightened fingers of the same hand downwards into the young person’s groin area.”

Furthermore

The campaign for publication began following the deaths of Gareth Myatt and Adam Rickwood. Myatt, 15, died while being held down by three staff at Rainsbrook Secure Training Centre in Warwickshire. Myatt choked on his own vomit and died.

In the same year, 2004, 14-year-old Rickwood, from Burnley, hanged himself at the Hassockfield Secure Training Centre in County Durham. A judge ruled last year that the carers who restrained Rickwood shortly before his death had used unlawful force.

His mother, Carol Pounder, was said to be “relieved” that other parents would now know the truth behind the use of restraint.

It has taken 5 years to get public disclosure regarding this manual of brutal violence, restraining “unruly children”. Oh, and the government were actually prepared to fight this disclosure as well.

More grim reality of the private sector, During the 12 months up to March 2009, restraint was used 1,776 times in the UK’s four secure training centres.

Back in 2008, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights have argued that physical techniques involving “deliberate physical pain should be banned without delay”.. The Court of Appeal in July 2008 held that the rules currently in force allowing children in custody to be restrained for reasons of “good order and discipline” were unlawful.

The spin used by these private contractors, for example G4S,  includes that their policies are “derived from the principles of childcare best practice and reflect the every child matters agenda”. Well, did those principles include creating a macho enviroment where staff were given nicknames like “mauler”, “crusher” and “clubber”? Where children and young people who had been restrained the most times being described as “winners”? And Gareth Myatt who died in the care of Rainsbrook after losing consciousness while being restrained by 3 members of staff. Are these the policies that reflect “every child matters”? Did Gareth Myatt’s life matter?

Many of these children and young people come to these places damaged, distressed and in a highly vulnerable state (Adam Rickwood was suicidal but it was ignored). They are subjected to abuse and violence once in these places. What kind of person will come out of the other side..?

Physical restraint is used as a punishment against children and teenagers. The whole ethos of containment lacks compassion and understanding. These young people are sometimes miles away from any support structure, their human rights breached.

Serco, (hope you are reading this Polly Toynbee) runs Hassockfield where Adam Rickwood died. Serco has its greedy grasping fingers in many corporate pies (and doing very well with profits increasing) from decommissioning Sellafield to running racist Yarl’s Wood Immigration Remand Centre. Serco makes its money from misery, oppression and violence.

Rather like the numbers of adult deaths in state custody that go unheard, ignored and reduced to statistics, the number of children who have died in custody in the last 17 years is 29. Young, vulnerable and powerless people whose lives end in these hellholes. The continued use of physical restraint shows how immune to criticism & opposition the state is to the UN, the Council of Europe, the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Children’s Commissioner for England nor the Court of Appeal.

Physical restraint is state sanctioned torture and violence against powerless and vulnerable young people, there should be a public inquiry into the way children are treated in custody (as argued by INQUEST) and physical restraint should be banned! Human rights and the safeguarding of young people while they are in ‘care’ aren’t seen as paramount to their wellbeing. Nothing, it seems, has been learned from the senseless, pointless and tragic deaths of Adam Rickwood and Gareth Myatt.

And finally this from Malcolm Stevens, a former government policy adviser and director of secure training centres who helped to develop the government’s guidance for staff working in secure centres during the 1990s, said he could not understand why pain-inducing techniques were endorsed. He said: “I have never seen the need to use pain-compliant techniques, and after 15 years my view has not changed. I have no truck with distraction techniques.”

Outsourcing UK Plc

So the private sector will be committing daylight robbery by stealing from the public sector. Private sector companies are rubbing their greedy hands, salivating from collective mouths while sizing up the contracts, all that lurvely lucre.

Welcome to Outsourcing UK Plc….where everyday life will be dictated by the private sector driven by profit!

Outsourcing firms are preparing for a bonanza of local authority contracts to provide everything from bin men to back office bureaucrats and have reported a doubling in the number of deals on offer this year. Private health companies are also expecting to earn billions of pounds from the planned overhaul of the NHS in which GPs would take over responsibility for spending £70bn.

Executives at Capita, the UK’s largest outsourcing firm, said the number of opportunities for local authority contracts has already doubled this year and they see the healthcare market as “vast and potentially lucrative”.

Richard Marchant, head of local government strategic partnerships at Capita, an FTSE-100 company which already works for councils in Harrow, Swindon, Southampton and Sheffield, said: “A major problem for the public sector is, we feel, a significant opportunity for us. Opportunities are at their highest level in two to three years. This year we have probably seen a 100% increase in opportunities [compared with 2009] and I suspect we will see another 50% increase in the following year.”

Expect to see fraud as accountability disappears when it comes to keeping track on the private sector. Funny how Andy ‘aspirational socialism’ Burnham is appalled by this (“Some private operators are going to have a field day, making a fortune from a system which will offer less public accountability.”) yet …. and yet…. he was part of a government that created the conditions, softened up the public sector for private takeover and marketisation. Ideologically speaking NL started it and you only have to look at welfare reform….

With the private sector running the show it won’t be about services for the common good but it will be about the shareholders. And the private sector won’t come cheap either at some stage they will be bailed out by the government. Where will be the democratic accountability and transparency? What about terms and conditions for workers? Dismantling and selling off the public sector and the welfare state spells disaster, the public cost of marketisation will be huge. It won’t be about “public services” but profit and incentives. And the private sector will fail at delivering.

Dexter Whitfield argues neoliberalism drives marketisation (the book may be called “New Labour’s Attack on Public Services”….but it is still very relevant and arguments still valid as NL created the conditions for wholesale marketisation).

Furthermore he states: In crude terms, business interests perceive the public sector as a multi-billion market. Business and right-wing political interests have never been happy that the public sector delivers many of its own services and has consistently sought to challenge and undermine public service provision. For business it represents a vast new market. The business case to marketise and privatise public services to provide access to this vast new market is couched in terms of efficiency and value for money, but they are just part of a self-fulfilling propaganda war.

Welcome to the brave new exploitative corporate world…what is your bet that in a few years time the remaining public services will be privatised, wages and conditions will be worse, services will be worse or non-existent and all the hooh-hah about the deficit will have gone even though public borrowing will be the same/higher?

Save our courts: cuts deny justice

Ministry of Justice announced on the 23 June 2010 a public consultation on proposals to shut 157 courts (county and magistrates). The consultation end on the 15 September 2010. You can see details of the proposed closures here. The reasons given are the usual ones, rationalisation, centralisation and utilisation. There was a debate  in Parliament 2 weeks ago where Jonathan Djanogly (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (HM Courts Service and Legal Aid) argued:

The decision to consult on the closure of courts was not taken lightly or in isolation. We know we cannot deliver the quality of facilities the public rightly expect and deserve, because we are working out of too many courts. Our low utilisation rate-only 65% across England and Wales-shows that we do not need the number of courts we currently have. Recent improvements in transport and communication links mean that people can travel further in less time if they need to. More can be done to access justice online and via the telephone, which reduces the circumstances in which a visit to court would be necessary.

Moreover during an adjournment debate Djanogly argues

We need fresh thinking on the wider question of access to justice. We need to consider whether the ideas of the past about needing a court in every town are relevant today, or whether, as with almost every other aspect of modern life, things can be done differently. We need to embrace innovation and technology to ensure better access to justice and meet the needs of modern society. We are already doing much to improve the service experienced by witnesses, defendants and other users of the courts. We have increased access to online and telephone services; currently, 70% of money claims and the vast majority of possession actions in the county courts are issued centrally via electronic channels. People can pay fines online for driving infringements or for not paying their TV licence fee on time. They can also pay off debts or court fees online using a wide variety of methods.

One of the reasons Djanogly mentions is improvement in transport links so people can travel easier but as both MPs Andrew Percy and Tom Blenkinsop the opposite will be true…it will take longer for some people to travel as some of these courts, geographically, will not have accessible transport routes and it will be costly for the individuals. What of course is going to be done to public transport in the austerity drive? The savings from the closures are an estimated £15.3m and £21.5m from not having to undertake maintenance of the buildings (nor making the buildings DDA compliant!!)

Courts are places where the difficult issues for a society are, to one extent or another, resolved. It still needs face to face contact with people, whether parties, lawyers or court staff to make sure that things are understood, that people will be able to give evidence, that lawyers can reach agreements and where people have the space to take difficult decisions and deal with what will often be extremely unpalatable prospects and outcomes. This cannot be done by email or even by video-conferences.

Lack of accessible courts will mean lack of justice, and coupled with the attacks on legal aid (both under Labour and Con/Dem alliance). It will also mean the “Tesco-isation”of  justice where the future will bring call centre “justice”… Already there is some anecdotal evidence of advice in welfare benefits and housing being dumbed down. Instead of a skilled adviser or lawyer looking at the merits of your case you are given a leaflet and told to pursue “self-help”. This is likely to spread so that the scales of justice will tip further in favour of the slum landlord, the dismissive Atos “health professional” deeming you fit for work or the over-zealous prosecutor.

Review: Inception

There’s a scene in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” where Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) says to Ariadne (Ellen Page) why can’t you remember the start or end of a dream but only the middle? And that is part of the fascination with this ingenious and inventive film. The film’s narrative revolves around Cobb, with his band of specialists, literally indulge in daylight robbery of the subconscious mind during a dream state, cerebral espionage where confidential and sensitive information is extracted. Cobb can’t see his children as he is wanted man, wanted for murder. And corporate boss, Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers Cobb a life line and a way for him to redeem himself. The offer involves not extracting information but planting information which neither Cobb nor Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) have done before. The mark is Robert Fischer, Jr (Cillian Murphy)., whose father’s company is a rival to Saito.

In order to be able to implant an idea into Fischer’s mind, Cobb needs to find further specialists such as Eames (Tom Hardy) who is a thief by trade, Yusuf (Dileep Rao) producer of sleep potions and Ariadne who is the “architect” of these dreamscapes. They have watched every detail and have ingratiated themselves into Fischer’s reality, hoping to work out the subliminal message that will stick in Fischer’s subconsciousness. The scene and dreamscapes are set for Cobb et al to enter the realms of Fischer’s subconsciousness, what psychological traps and projections will they encounter, coupled with the added complication of Cobb’s dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) who manifests herself in many of his extractions and who represents his own guilt. The scenes jump from one location to another representing the mechanics of dreaming from hotel rooms to heavily guarded snow covered fortresses (representation of Fischer’s subconsciousness).

Reality doesn’t exist in dreamworld such as gravity where the horizontal and the vertical collide (there’s a breathtaking scene where Ariadne and Cobb first meet and where he gives an demonstration of the unreal world dreamscape is….. anything is possible), where projections of the dreamer exist as cyphers. I was reminded of The Matrix where Morpheus explains to Neo the realities of their world, and similar in Inception where Arthur explains to Ariadne the mechanics of dreamscape (there’s a brilliant Escher “Relativity” staircase moment). The special effects compliment the inventive narrative (Nolan seems to have an interest in the complexities of the mind, manipulation and memories, how storytelling doesn’t have to be linear, distorting the end to become the beginning…  Memento is an excellent example and a wonderful film).

The fight scenes, again kinda reminded me of The Matrix, people running up walls, clashing in mid air, as the physical environment in a dream can be dictated by a further dream, a dream in a dream in a dream, i.e. a collapsing van into a river can have the impact of the dreamers falling about, and losing gravity in the next dream sequence. The deeper the dreamers go the more problematic it will be for them to resurface into the realms of reality. Therefore a “kick” is important, music is played (a cheeky nod to Marion Cotillard’s Edith Piaf!!) as a warning and something dramatic for the dreamers to accelerate their need for waking consciousness (falling, a good example, and the viewer kinda relates to that experience). The further the dreamer goes into the subconsciousness  the problems it can create especially if they “die” as it will mean a limbo existence. The film also examines the loss of reality, addiction and obsession with dream states. Yusuf sedates people who feel their reality is precisely their dream world. Mal, Cobb’s wife, loses herself in the realms of dreams, dreams and reality become fused, she can’t differentiate the two. Cobb manages to separate these two worlds, to know which existence he is living in by spinning a top, when it falls over it means he is in reality. The top never falls over in dreams and that has a significance towards the end of the film.

Overall, I think this is a clever cinematic examination of dreams but also an imaginative foray into a visual construction of dreams and cerebral espionage. Flawed and psychological damaged characters (a favourite narrative of Nolan’s), clever script, dialogue and acting. Though my only disappointment and quibble is that Nolan doesn’t utilise the wonderfully talented Ellen Page enough.

In saying all that I still loved it, a wonderful day-dream of Freudian surreal thrills, spills and high octane roller coaster of action and originality!

More holiday pix

Why I won’t vote for Ralph Miliband’s youngest son….(or oldest one either)

As I have been on holiday, away from the politicking of life I have only just had a good look at the interview with Ed Miliband. Lib Con simplifies Ed’s stances in a very useful bite size way:

Key points
- Calls for Northern Rock to be mutualised
- Says 50% of his shadow cabinet would be comprised of women.
- “I am the candidate of change”
- Rules out going back to ID cards.
- “I’ve never hesitated in calling myself English”
- Doesn’t rule out a coalition with the Libdems

Seems to me that Ed the Younger wants to be seen as some left leader but at the same time wants to accommodate himself in the establishment. When you see the name ‘Miliband’ it is synonymous with Ralph. I know you shouldn’t see Ed in the shadow of his father but Ralph was a political heavyweight with analysis, and a Marxist. One of the first books I read when doing “A” Level Sociology was “The State in Capitalist Society”… Unfortunately, Ed isn’t in the same political class nor holds the same incisive Marxist analysis as his dad. Shame that neither one followed their dad instead both abandoned any notion of Socialism (though Ed in one of the hustings had the audacity to use the word, “comrade”… I don’t think so mate!)

When reading the Miliband interview it comes across as vague and opportunistic. He is trying to open up, a modernised version of labourism with a left gloss, a mutualised society that has a strong green agenda. Essentially Miliband has seen a space open up on the left as NL moved so far to the right. Miliband sees himself as reconciling the Labour base but which is amenable to the establishment.  To summarise NL; it was about the marketisation of the state, maintain an electoral base, surfing a property boom (that explains the lack of social housing) that finances social spending, social authoritarianism, and aggressive imperialist wars around a neocon agenda.

But Ed gives no radical alternative. He’s vague and lacks principle (Gay marriage). But then what do you expect from someone who bases his politics on opportunism?

And on the issue of Labour Party democracy…well see for yourself, He side-steps the question. “I think you have to find a way to give members more of a voice, but we don’t necessarily want to go back to the way it used to be.”

So much for a brave new democratic future with Ed M. at the helm. What was so wrong with LP Conference and members being at the heart of deciding policy? I think his negativity exposes control. A top-down control. No change there. On welfare benefits he defends the NL position of demonising and stigmatising the poor. Meaningless drivel is further spouted, “preach responsibility for the rich”.

On war in Iraq, “I don’t claim moral superiority over taking a different stance over Iraq. People made difficult decisions at the time. But we have to learn the lessons and start from that, not let the discussion be about claiming some sense of being right at the time.” So in other words it was a bad idea but wants to “move on”…. Miliband said as well, “I was living in America at the time, but I certainly thought the weapons inspectors should have given more time.”…

Well, there was a vibrant and dynamic anti-war movement in the States, and Miliband involved wouldn’t have been some “random guy” to use Sunny’s phrase in reply to me on Twitter… Also, if he was concerned that the weapons inspectors weren’t ‘given enough time’ then he could have said that in his 2005 election manifesto when he first stood as an MP and certainly, he could have voted for an inquiry into the Iraq War. But didn’t!

So overall not much change, vote for Ed Miliband and get what…..exactly? Empty rhetoric. And let’s not forget that he was part of the NL machine therefore more spin no activism and certainly no principles either.

NB: Please see Madam Miaow’s excellent post on the subject of Ed Miliband as well.

Pretty Flamingo

Just seen these these two posts…one by Sunny and one by Dave… will write something when I am back in London as supposed to be taking a break and all from this politics malarky….

So in the meantime, while you all wait impatiently for my cogent and insightful analysis on the various blog posts, I have been stalking wildlife and came across a collective of squawking but breathtakingly beautiful flamingoes….