Our own brand of idolatry

 Our own brand of idolatry

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The description of China and its relationship with Covid and the draconian efforts to eradicate the virus altogether make them totally at odds with what most of the world is doing. In the West we have got used to accepting that there is no way to escape the effects of catching the virus and we must learn to live with it, that a number of casualties are acceptable and must not be overwhelmed by fear.

China on the other hand seem to become paranoid by the danger and has the practice of closing cities with a populations the size of Australia virtually overnight on the evidence of a dozen or so instances of Covid . Given that China’s Wet markets (markets where live animals are sold for consumption) appear to be the initial source of a virus, (unless you believe the virus was deliberately let out from a laboratory) and where it seems to have jumped species from bats to humans, the Chinese  are much more volatile in their actions to minimise It’s contagious effects.

Is there something they know that we don’t, since the economic cost of closure seems to far out weigh the medical cost. Is it simply a case that they do it because they can in an authoritarian State which brooks no dissent.

Out of step with the West in so many ways they now they sidle up to Russia in its war with the Ukrainian, seeming to propose an alliance in an effort to defeat an opponent, the whole of western democracy. This question of opponents and the need to aggressively defeat them is part of man’s strategy throughout history, never has there been total peace, always some conflict somewhere bubbles and breaks to the the surface. Conflict then seems our fallback position. We see it in town planning even the funeral arrangements of our late Queen where a spasmodic outbreak of Republican protest and people disagree feeling  they must make their point of view in public.

Are we nihilists at heart, rejectors of any type of collaboration, incapable of setting aside our differences for the common good and instead rely on sophistry to weave a special brand of  capitalist idolatry.

War has never been the choice of the common man they have too much to lose, their lives !  The general in his bunker the capitalist in his factory or more likely these days holed up on a remote island far away from the action. The spectre of hunger and deprivation, such as in the Ukrainian, are not keeping the protagonists awake at night. Safe in the ideological surety they consult their maps or their business plans without a thought to the destitution they are unleashing. It’s a strange mindset that can propel your own kin towards destruction and penury but of course, like the gambler they only have ‘winning’ in mind. And why are we, the cannon fodder so willing to go along with it all. The gains will not effect us to any appreciable degree the spoils are not ours and yet we queue up to take the Queens shilling. Handed a gun or coopted into a strategic industry, unsuited for our skills or temperament we conform, like animals in a circus forgetting our own ideals to perform a task for others.

Why do we capitulate our own concept of what’s right or wrong, our own rational, for the jingoism of the ring master.  People are still blind to the economic damage inflicted on this country by Brexit, they are still wedded to the gung ho Brexiteers call of independence in a world that is more and more interdependent, where our wish to recall our 1910 independence and its commercial reliance on empire to trade across the globe, to once more assume the white mans burden of independence at any cost. The books of account are starting to reveal what was clear then, that we had been profligate in the years when we could have done what Germany did twice, rebuild industry and train a workforce. We did nothing, we talk the project up but are unwilling to invest. We talk of low skills and poor productivity but do little to amend the situation. The reawakening of a need for skilled apprenticeships has had an abysmal take up in industry partly because industry these days consist of small organisations unwilling to risk their cash flow, or the trice yearly holiday in Marbella, with the national delusion that an apprenticeship in hairdressing is the answer.

The ‘gig industry’ which has blossomed under the Tory’s is nothing more than old fashioned industrial servitude fashioned to exploit labour and offer no security. The proud proclamation that it suited our transient, work shy, work force with an hour or two here and there, with no sick pay or holiday provision but to be on instant call was the mindset of any fly-by-night business but now, as we enter recessionary times, the minimum wage and little or no savings leaves so many people facing  economic purgatory.

We can hardly expect Liz Truss to understand. She is wedded to Milton Friedmans far right, low taxation, trickle down economics in an economy where vast numbers simply don’t earn enough to pay taxes. The great Tory experiment of a disenfranchised sector of society who wouldn’t enter into the mathematical ratios of being counted, even as a sub set and who have been demonised as lazy, is truly Orwellian and I fear for our society.

Hunger and debasement brings out the worst in people and with a slimmed down, much pilloried police force, the bulk of whom are out in London protecting the Establishment,  I hate to think of what happens when mothers and fathers turn to crime en mass  to feed their children. 

The death of Diana

 

Subject: The death of Diana.

The anniversary of the death of Diana is being broadcast this morning and it's a bit of a shock to be reminded how the influential opinion now in this country, the 25 year olds were born after the event. They didn't have that moving experience of the day of the funeral which effected so many of us. The sea of flowers, the highly critical eulogy given by her brother who was critical of the attitude of the Royal Family towards her. The immensely poignant moment when the applause out, outside the Abby in response to what Earl Spencer had to say. The sound of Elton John singing 'Candle in the Wind' reverberating through the old crusty antiquated tradition seated in stiff rows according to rank and finally, the sight of oceans of emotion as men and women lining the route of the funeral corsage wept openly without any sign of embarrassment. From the well known landmark streets in Whitehall to the more humble streets now strewn with flowers and finally on to the ubiquitous motorway with people standing in silent mourning on the bridges hoping to catch sight of the procession and, in their own way, wished to wave goodby.

I was in Birmingham on that day making ready to drive home from a weeks work when the broadcast started. I too became emotionally riveted watching the television broadcast of events as they unfurled. I too had tears in my eye, not because of Diana but because, for once,  we were seeing people unite in their emotions. It was a rare truly moving sight, it joined  me with the thousands of others, not at a football game which is manipulated emotion by league tables which act as a flag to unite the troops in battle. This fragile young women linked to an emotionally stunted member of a family, itself stunted by protocol who had become the victim of the newspapers in their search for headlines. Her courage to strike out against aids that scourge of the gay community her willingness and ability to place her arms around someone who had AIDS and not be concerned she might catch it was so ironic that it took a beautiful young women to elevate the issue so we could start talking about it.

Where has that emotional moment gone in a society which is now falling apart in some sections of society where young men set  off on a night out, tooled up with weapons. Young kids being stabbed on the street or women being molested as part of some sort of cultural safety valve, it’s all a far cry from that moment we all came together twenty five years ago.

Learning to have perspective

 



Subject: Learning to have perspective.



I’m afraid the appalling combination of the Truss/Kwarteng alliance has taken the wind out of my sails as we start to plot the route of Reagan/Thatcher trickle down economics or Milton Friedmans reliance on Markets and the wholesale dumping of regulatory rules to protect the less well off is coming into full view even as we speak.

Fiscal creativity, where relaxed rules  encourages money making for the few, made easier by promoting investment returns, doesn’t ensure ‘good investment’ only ‘good returns’ which don’t necessarily improve the lot of the bulk of the population. Perhaps in the history of mankind a concern for the bulk of the population never really happened and, like smoke and mirrors, nothing was as it was portrayed.

Of course Liz Truss would counter, why should it, we applauded winners in sport, culture and business but not those minimalistic, basic achievers, why in fact should there be some sort of guaranteed standard of living. Why have minimal standards for the undeserving poor and no fixed reward for people who show initiative. Where did the concept of  'standard morality' come from, the assumption that all people are born equal and have fixed human rights, it isn’t something which has been around forever.  In health care for instance there was a time when many of these human conditions we now hear about were unknown and this blossoming of ailments is truly amazing, and of course costly.  People these days come onto the media with all kinds of self analysed problems, truly believing in their reality and that it should be fixed or at least catered for. They feel they deserve their place in the human pecking order but who, other than Jesus prescribed the human condition or it’s attendant attention.

I have never felt I deserved any sort of special consideration or treatment.  I'v had my fair share of disillusionment, my fair share of financial upheaval and when it arrived I simply put it behind me and got on with what I could control. Control therefore is the  crucial word.

First and foremost, control your spending, control your activities, control your consumption. Don't be persuaded you are someone or something your not, stand up for your values and parade them when you can. Frugal living is more real than binging on the credit card. Doing without can give you perspective and perspective is maybe the most important lesson you learn in life.

We can put the ‘Truss/Kwarteng’ phase in our lives behind us if we take matters into our own hands and stop assuming we deserve better. We often don’t appreciate just how well off we are. There are billions of people much worse off than we are. 

A total lack of hubris

Subject: A total lack of hubris.





Does it take a Gandhi or a Mandela to unite a nation to find a higher purpose and were they born to the circumstances of their respective countries. What was it which made them both iconic, their lack of hubris, that feeling for the common man or their lack of a Harvard business degree.

Both were men of humility, Gandhi with his spinning wheel Mandela with his number 8 jersey when South Africa won the rugby World Cup. Both endured hardship and ridicule from the ruling elite, both suffered the ignominy of being seen second class because of their colour and their origins. The sins of their oppressors were set aside after they had triumphed and malice was missing from their agenda when in power.

But surely it must in the making of their actions, their thoughts at the start of their individual journeys not the recognition at the end of it. Was it they thought small not big they built their humanity from the grains within that humanity in other words it wasn’t a project to aim at but an experience to be within. When Mandela decided to side with his brethren against the might of the Apartheid government his actions, even the bombings in Durban were made poignant by the iniquity of those in power, their blindness to the harm being done to ordinary people. Similarly Gandhis non violent protests and his disinclination to seek reparations, only social justice through the court system made each man remembered as a hero both within the society they represented but in others across the globe. This awareness of the intricacy of society made up of its component parts and how each part was equally valuable had to be protected.

We have come a long way from the humanitarian brotherhood of Gandhi and Mandela to the cruel symbolism of Kwarteng and Truss who’s ideological interpretation of economics makes them prepared to cast huge shoals of their fellow men and women into untold penury to see if ideology works. How do they sleep at night knowing mothers and their children will undoubtably suffer needlessly because of their actions. We know the ills and the errors of Putin (Ukraine) and before him Johnson (Brexit) helped hasten the economic demise in this country but to embark on a right wing stimulatory punt into the dark is perverse. Our country is ill equipped, not only with an inadequately trained workforce but also which a mindset in management equally ill equipped to venture out and change old habits when it comes to risk taking and investment. For decades local investment has been totally inadequate. Whole swathes of our infrastructure has been bought up by foreign capital to the point we have made ourselves vulnerable if investment returns dip as I’m sure they will during the coming recession/depression. Our borrowing profile will require us to go cap in hand to the IMF to act as guarantor otherwise we become a banana republic trying to secure funds on the volatile short term markets. Scary times ahead and all predicated on an egoistic analysis of our strength and not enough attention taken of our weakness’s by people who have too much power through our system of governance and the “first past the post” electoral system.

In the current Parliament there are simply no checks and balances, no way to prevent the assumption of extreme measures to govern. With such a large majority the rest of Parliament is made irrelevant and can’t hope to represent the views of at least 50% of households in the country and even the other 50% must be aghast at what the government are now proposing. Economics is one thing but rights and justice through our courts are also under fire from the zealots. Freedom to protest without arrest and even the hallowed tenants such as the inviolability of the  green belt are trashed by a nodding dog majority. Concept such as protection from the development of land for energy extraction if that extraction provokes reasonable protest based on analysis. Perhaps limiting the drilling to the large county estates of the wealthy might give pause but that’s like asking turkeys to vote for Christmas’s. 

The damage that deference brings

 

Subject: The damage that deference brings

Words are not the same as actions and one of problems we have in our political system is that the craft of a political promises means nothing without a resulting outcome.

Our Prime Minister was questioned this morning as to her program of tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the poor, that the inflation caused by her actions always effects the poor the most. Her project of incentivising business, or at least the leaders of business in the hope that they will be encouraged to be expansive and increase investment in their business is all based on the assumption that the wealthy will play the game and not simply put it all into their Cayman Islands account.  It's a flawed theory given mankind's propensity to covert  themselves first and foremost leaving the rest to fend for themselves. The Indian caste system is more honest than the English class system, at least there's less deceit in the pecking order which is defined at birth.

There is simply so little in common between the poor and the wealthy, the one passes the other as if they didn't exist and the concept of caring is just ridiculous other than in cliche riddled platitudes.

Make no mistake this Truss/Kwarteng combo is a right wing push for more power, an ideological putsch to roll back the gains in civilised commerce for a more Victorian model based on the power of capital. M/S Truss is the plaything of the Adam Smith Institute, she hasn't the intellect to formulate policy herself and relys on the think tanks to do the job for her.

If we were to revert to the poverty of the soup kitchen of men begging for work at the factory gate, if we were to have a workforce without any rights and were to employ people only short term and expect them to reserve their time for when you called, if they had no sick pay or paid holidays, if the conditions of work and the work place were unregulated then you have what we have termed the Gig economy, but wait, we have that now and M/S Truss still thinks the workers of Britain have it too easy. She confuses  productivity with the hours worked and the wages paid, and where as most productive economies have found a respected workforce, trained and continually retrained to do the work entrusted on them, giving them modern equipment and a plan which puts the workforce at the centre of the plan. But none of this is in the psyche of the British manager who, having born the slings and arrows of an antiquated management structure to get where he of she is, often without any such training the inferiority complex vis a vis  fellow workers never allows them to expand the management opportunity to others in their workforce.

It's the curse of deference, to be damaged in such a way, that when you have some power you do your upmost to see others are excluded from it.

Who knows

 

Subject: Who knows.



It is in its totality lies the danger of religion, it’s all encompassing commitment and servitude. The function of religion has a clearly demarcated timeline, it has a specific beginning depending on the prophet or person who defined the specific teaching but before that, the faithful have little or no knowledge or interest in what lie before. Were gods children of the pre era simply excluded from the promised salvation.

It’s the all consuming totality of the teaching which absorbs the mental energy so that there’s no place for rational discussion. This unquestioned surety of belief is comforting for the faithful but baffling for those who don’t believe. It’s the placement of Adam and Eve on a specific timeline of an apocryphal story but only as indication that the human species came into being at a time unspecified. The stories within the fabric of the Old Testament, or the Koran formulate an envelope outside which it is pointless to speculate other than if you are not already tied to any specific teaching, the mind is required to cut itself off from any conceivable alternative and in this we do ourselves an injustice.

Imagine the complicated structure of Aztec society, the enormous and much more ancient Hindu system of explanatory supposition, the aboriginal dream world, each with their own surety and each blind to other sureties. Isn’t it best to throw your hands in the air and say I will never know, until death reveals there is probably nothing and we have spent a whole lifetime worrying about it unnecessarily . Perhaps only the Asian ‘self examinatory’ process which deal in self analysis and the examination of our actions amongst our fellow man and always asking searching question of why we behave so.

Of course this has the danger that it puts us right dead centre of all consideration and makes us blind to so much of the rest of the natural world that we become phobic.

The death hypothesis, signals both the end as well as perhaps a new beginning, but beware the comfort gained might evaporate once the curtain is raised.

The history of avoidance

Subject: A history of avoidance.

The great triumph of propaganda  lies in not doing things which need to be done and the doing things which don’t need to be done. Many of our current crisis were foreseen well in advance but the will to attend to them was too hard and instead, put off.

The need to provide for the older generation in their frailty, or the avoidance of a reliance on primary goods from suspect sources such as Russia and the wholesale destruction of our manufacturing industry by opting to have nearly everything produced in China. Only in the financial casino have we kept shuffling the cards like gamblers at the last chance saloon it was easier to bet on a pair of twos than to get up and leave the table.

The hot air that rises from the 'midden' which we call Parliament reeks of promises which were never meant to be fulfilled, the organisational commitment was simply too great for the minister to leave his drink in the bar and spend months prodding and probing the machinery of state.  Dinner at the Guild Hall was suffice acknowledgement. The job after all was all smoke and mirrors, it was about propaganda and toeing the Party line in preparation for the next election, the last one having been won was history as were the promises needed to win it.

The Aussies have a term ‘bludgers’, (lazy people) who prefer pontification rather than to be effective doers.  It’s one of the structural weakness in parliamentary democracy, this lack of action tied to words, there's no accountability, there’s no actual overview no site plan, no bill of materials only hypothesis built on more hypothesis. There's no real personal ministerial cost or price paid, no real downside for getting it wrong, only we the electorate pay.

How can we make the Minister more responsible how can we place on their shoulders the weight of his determinations. In what other area of life are we consequence free.

At least when a determination to embark on a course of action is set in motion the delivery and the direction of travel should be set out in some detail with its attendant downside so we, the paymaster can decide. Too many plans hatched in those great buildings of State are not accountable to us, too many choices are not in the public interest but in the interest of developers and pressure groups. The improvement to the shambolic old aged social services system would probably invoke a ring fenced increase on general taxation but it's never put to the electorate, instead for decades we have dragged our feet and become the poor man of Europe in old age provisions. Those very people making those decisions having gold plated pensions themselves see no urgency to make take care homes back into public ownership and revoke the travesty of years of privatisation with care being charged at ludicrous rates. Old people's care was a municipal responsibility until the 1980s then the Thatcher Government began to "outsource them", along with so much else. Municipal home rentals which provided controlled subsidised rents were amongst another things, swept aside by that dreadful woman in her urge to place Markets at the centre of all decision  making.

No country in Europe has treated its vulnerable people like that but then no country is so fixated on 'class'.