The lib lab con, or three unwise monkeys

So the future is upon us. The Lib Dems managed the unthinkable and ended up in government, sort of, making an unholy alliance with the Tories and Nick Clegg is now ‘our’ deputy prime minister to ‘call me Dave’ Cameron.

At first it seemed some of the country welcomed this coalition, as it was painted as a chance to mould the tories into something resembling human and to push through the reversal of some of New Labour’s regressive policies, namely the abolition of university top up fees and maybe even the withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. Notice I’m not going into detail here, since a thousand million other blogs out there have already done that.

One of the rewards of ‘electing’ this lot (though I like to call it ‘settling for’ – people *didn’t* vote for this, Clegg chose to clamber into this swamp) was the Spending Review – in theory a review of the state’s financial spending, in reality an excuse to start a massive slashing of public sector jobs and benefits under the guise that there-is-no-other-way to repair the losses caused by a humongous bail out of the banking system. The left wing press (if you can call it that) have carefully documented the potential (nay logical) effects of all these cuts, and it doesn’t look good for anyone other than the already wealthy. Which is convenient for the coalition, because 18 of the cabinet happen to be millionaires, and let’s face it, MPs are not getting a pay cut any time soon, unlike the rest of us.

I’m not old enough to remember the tories last time round, but considering the battering the welfare state took from Thatcher and then Major, I’m surprised that anyone is surprised. This is what they do. New Labour may have done an ideological 180 after quietly dropping Clause Four but even then the clue was in the name – New Labour were clearly planning to be different from Labour of old. But did everyone else get the same feeling of dread in their stomach I did after realising the Tories were getting back into power, or did they think they had somehow discovered a social conscious in the back of their Bentley? ‘Dave’ may be younger and prettier than Maggie Thatcher, but you know he must have kissed a picture of her before bed as a teen. All he’s ever done is be a Tory. It’s all he’ll ever do.

Perhaps it was the idea of Lib Dems holding back the nastiest streak of Tory ideology of old that comforted – the streak that says that if you’re poor, it’s your fault, if you’re rich you deserve it, and there will always be poor people because let’s face it, the working classes are a different species and should know their place etc. Maybe that held some weight at first. But that only works if you know nothing about the Lib Dems. Unfortunately, they have always been all things to all people. Perhaps a century of the liberals in almost total opposition, making no mark on the ideology of Left vs. Right, makes a political party like that – craving power that is always just out of reach, power becomes the object, even more so than in parties that have had a day or two in the sun and know their time will come again.

Now I’m getting to a point that really worries me – New Labour are now in opposition, and their leader Ed Milliband is scrabbling around to find a space to plant himself back on the political spectrum, having been ousted and replaced by two parties that really have little difference in policies and would have done all the things that people hated about New Labour anyway. Being ousted and replaced by someone who is practically identical to you must be confusing, especially if you now have to go and work out what it will take to get you back in power.

As a result Ed Milliband has just come up with the idea of a ‘peoples party’ – I say come up with, in reality more like just discovered a couple of old Labour party pamphlets in mother’s desk drawer and thought ‘oh, how novel’. He wants to ‘reclaim’ the idea of the Big Society, which is hilarious since Cameron came up with it first and even he doesn’t really know what it means yet. So his big idea is to steal someone elses, therefore becoming even more similar, ad nauseum. This is the credit these people give us.

The real danger is that people will take him seriously. That in a spate of collective amnesia, of the type that got working class people to vote Tory again, people will actually look to the Labour party as some kind of alternative. Again, my age means I can’t tell how often this has happened before, and this is probably normal, but at least in the past people thought they were voting for something fundamentally different. So is the best we can do?

Have we no imagination??

Only in America…Version 1.0 // Stockpilers

God Bless America

Look at all that Kotex! I guess this person has never heard of the menopause...

I suppose this is the logical conclusion of living in one of the richest countries in this insane, unstable world – having immediate access to every consumer product you may ever think you might need to live comfortably, whilst being shitscared that one day it will all disappear overnight.

Stockpilers take ‘sensible food supply’ to the extreme – some of these people have more food in their garage than most shops in Africa sell in a year.

What to do once you’ve filled your house with crazy? – duh, you get on the internet and show it off of course. This has the dual effect of both normalising such behaviour and encouraging others to compete, thus escalating the crazy to whole new levels.

Check out the rest of the pictures uploaded by who seems to be the King/Queen hoarder of this particular hoarding forum. They are incredible. My local shop doesn’t even come close to holding this amount of stuff. Thousands of jars, packets, boxes and tins of every prepackaged food and household item the capitalist project could ever dream up.

They pay real tribute to one queer aspect of the psyche of Americana – extreme prosperity combined with extreme fear that is dulled only by buying more stuff.

I guess Burroughs was right – the rich man is always afraid. What he didn’t say was that he’d need a second garage to store that fear in…

Stockpilers, I salute you. Just don’t come near me til the armageddon, and then we can be best friends forever.

A Curse For A Nation

Elizabeth Barret Browning

I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said “Write!
Write a Nation’s curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.”

I faltered, taking up the word:
“Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.

“For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.”

“Not so,” I answered. “Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land’s sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:

“For parked-up honors that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:

“For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:

“For an oligarchic parliament,
And bribes well-meant.
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.”

“Not so,” I answered once again.
“To curse, choose men.
For I, a woman, have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Some women weep and curse, I say
(And no one marvels), night and day.

“And thou shalt take their part to-night,
Weep and write.
A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt, and bitter, and good.”

So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed,
What all may read.
And thus, as was enjoined on me,
I send it over the Western Sea.

The Curse

Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation’s height,
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others, — for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.

Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom’s foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time
On writhing bond-slaves, — for this crime
This is the curse. Write.

Because ye prosper in God’s name,
With a claim
To honor in the old world’s sight,
Yet do the fiend’s work perfectly
In strangling martyrs, — for this lie
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people’s smouldering fire,
And, warm for your part,
Shall never dare — O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death;
And only under your breath
Shall favor the cause.
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak;
And, counting the sin for a sin,
Your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.

When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge His elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe
That’s driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.

When wise men give you their praise,
They shall praise in the heat of the phrase,
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.

When fools cast taunts at your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o’er the wall;
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.

Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done,
Go, plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of God’s witnessing Universe
With a curse of yours.
This is the curse. Write.

The emperor is naked, finally – The economy hits 60-year low

So the economy is screwed. Even the government’s money-man, Chancellor Alistair Darling, is finally admitting the crisis is serious, telling the Guardian that the economy is at the lowest it has been in 60 years. The post-war boom is over for good and the crisis sparked by the ‘credit crunch’ is spreading economic chaos throughout the system. It’s predicted there will be 2 million unemployed in the UK by Christmas, while company closures rise, banks (like Northern Rock) are hemorrhaging money and taking handouts from tax payers, the cost of living is rising as food bills go up, and 6.8 million people in the UK are in debt to fuel companies which are hiking up prices, expecting customers to pick up the bill despite making a record £3billion in profit. Meanwhile house prices are decreasing dramatically, by up to £150 per day. In the US, where the mortgage industry first hit the rocks, house repossessions are up 121 per cent, while repossession are expected rise by 65 per cent in the UK this year. Millions are heading towards poverty.

So how did we end up in this mess?

This particular crisis has its roots in the sub-prime mortgage industry which gave birth to the ‘credit crunch’ last year. The lending of money to people to buy houses is nothing new, but the way banks work has changed. Once, people would go to their bank manager and ask for a loan based on their earnings and the deposit they had saved. Houses were cheaper and banks were thorough in checking out the good credit rating of those they lent money to. But as banking became more competitive, and house prices rose, more people who would not otherwise qualify for a mortgage began to be given bigger loans and required to provide less and less deposit. A ‘sub-prime’ loan is literally a loan offered to someone with a bad – or no – credit history. They are also known as ‘Ninja loans’ – for people with No Income, No Job or Assets.

This was clearly a crisis looming for banks and homeowners, and as economic growth in the US slowed, people began defaulting on loans which they couldn’t really afford in the first place. That bit is easy to see in retrospect. But it doesn’t end there. These dodgy debts were actually sold to other companies, broken up and passed on by the mortgage lenders to other banks on the promise that buying up the loans guaranteed lots of nice interest repayments in the future.

So these bad debts have been spread throughout the international financial system, with no one knowing who is saddled with paying them off, causing panic as banks stopped lending, no longer trusting one another in case they never got their money back. Speculation only added to the panic as banks faced losses in the billions.

The corporations, media and governments til now have played down the crisis, even as it spread throughout the global economy, fearing the implications that arise from the loss of faith in the free market, and the capitalist system in general.

But now the Chancellor has finally spelled out exactly how low the economy has plunged. And this is not a blip but a logical result of an unregulated global financial system that has based itself on risky consumer credit (aka debt). Even now, consumers are being encouraged to keep spending because commodities must be bought (i.e demand must stay high) in order to support the companies that make them (the supply). When demand falls, the whole system is in trouble. This is what ostensibly led George Bush to give a tiny rebate (£300/$600) to individual tax payers earlier this year. It was meant to be a ‘bridge’ to bolster the system til interest rates could be cut, something banks are reluctant to do since it pushes up already-high inflation.

On top of this, illustrating the global nature of the crisis, is the fact that the US consumer debt that the system rides on is essentially lent by China. China’s rapid economic growth has allowed it to continue to lend money to the US (already in huge debt), which is then used by banks as loans to consumers with which they buy commodities imported from China. As Martin Wolf of the Financial Times, quoted here, says, the US consumer is the “buyer of last resort for the world economy”.

So is this an isolated problem that can be overcome? The free market ideologues would like to have us think so. Yet when you look at the bigger picture, you see a complex system plagued by crises, that booms and busts in a cyclical pattern, (remember the dot com nightmare? The housing market crash of the 1990s?) and constantly edges up people’s standards of living in the West before plunging them once again into poverty and hardship.

Willem Buiter of the Financial Times, illustrates;

“Capitalist market econ­omies are inherently cyclical. The private credit system is intrinsically prone to alternating bouts of irrational euphoria and unwarranted depression. Busts play an essential role. They clean up the mess created during the boom by inflated expectations, overoptimistic plans and unrealistic ventures. These become embodied in unsustainable household debt, productive capacity with no foreseeable use, excessive corporate and financial sector leverage and enterprises whose only asset is hope. The correction is painful, even brutal: unemployment rises, as do defaults, repossessions and bank­ruptcies. We entered such a cathartic phase around the turn of the year in both the US and the UK. Continental Europe is not far behind.”

So according to the logic of the promoters of free market capitalism, not only should we just get used to the ‘brutal’ effects embedded in the very nature of the system, we should also suffer in the meantime as our leaders use the threat of high inflation to keep down wages, as if you can blame such crises in the system on the demand by ordinary workers for a living wage.

In fact capitalism is a chaotic system that relies on cut-throat competition to work. A few people win and everybody else loses. Workers, who generate the wealth, are the first to suffer in a crisis, losing their jobs and scraping together money to buy essentials as prices rise, while rich shareholders see their losses bailed out with tax payers money (meaning the workers pay again). The bill is always picked up by those who can least afford it. It is interesting, and tragic, to note that while workers face cut backs and unemployment, and 2.5 million people in the UK live in ‘fuel poverty‘ (spending 10% or more of their income on fuel), fuel companies are raking in billions of pounds of profit. The windfall tax that is now being demanded is the very least the fuel giants can do to help stem spiraling prices and stop people freezing to death this winter.

But is this enough? It’s time we faced the fact that capitalism just doesn’t work for the majority of people. This was pointed out by Karl Marx over a hundred and sixty years ago and has continued to be proven correct ever since. Advanced capitalism has created unprecedented wealth juxtaposed with horrific poverty on a global scale that we are only beginning to comprehend now. It is an unstable system that can only promise the ordinary person financial insecurity and impending environmental breakdown while our governments bend over backwards to sell out our interests to multinational corporations.

It’s important to look at the bigger picture but also to keep fighting day to day for concrete demands such as a decent wage, resistance to cuts in welfare and an end to the housing crisis through the reclaiming of empty homes. The billions being spent of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan must be re-routed into funding public services.

The People Before Profit Charter is designed to unite people around such a campaign from the left, and the number of signatories is growing rapidly. I urge trade unionists, activists and workers to check out the blog and add their names to the list and build a force that can fight back.

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Special mention – If you want to pick over the bones of current capitalism in a clear, accessible way, I recommend starting with Economic Crisis: Capitalism Exposed, an article by Chris Harman written for the Socialist Review.

Medals on, Clothes Off

Not being particularly into sports or flags, for me the Olympics is a time in which I can watch the rest of the world go a bit nuts over something I don’t quite get. But since the coverage is there, I have taken some interest in the bits that seem relevant to me in the wider scope of things.

From what I’ve seen, read and heard lately, in print and online, there is a lot of justified (female) anger over the sexist coverage women athletes are getting in the press and on TV (including this post from Shapely Prose). From skeevy, lingering shots of women’s arses to lurid pronouncements about how ‘fit’ (that’s fit as in sexy, not fit as in fit, I’m afraid – it’s a UK thing) the women competing are, it seems we are backing away from equality in sports and turning women athletes into another bunch of tabloid totty that might as well take off the sports bras, don the lingerie and get back to what all young women should be doing, namely preening, primping and looking desperate for some sexual attention.

And it’s not just sexist commentators and stupid red tops that can take credit for this – it’s a part of Olympic officialdom, with rules governing the smallness of women’s uniforms compared to men. For an overview of what this actually looks like, check out this blog post from Hoydon about Town for a side-by-side pictorial comparison of women’s and men’s uniforms. From the pictures it is clear female athletes are increasingly expected to fulfill a dual role, of sportswoman and sex object.

This is one instance when we can look back to ‘the good ole days’ – this post shows how increasingly skimpier cut, tighter and bikini-like women’s uniforms have become over the last 20 years.

So spare a thought for the women athletes next time you hear they’re preparing in the changing rooms – while the men are stretching, limbering up and focusing their minds, the women are worrying about sunburn in sensitive places and waxing their bikini lines ready for the potentially-pube-bearing outfits they have to wriggle into.

See also –

Sexist Olympic Photos of the Day

Indian beach volleyball players refuse to wear bikinis

Patriarchy to world-class female athletes; Okay you can compete but you have to wear porn outfits

Interestingly, on the flip side we have more female athletes than ever choosing to compete while wearing the hijab, 12 in total from Egypt, Iran, Yemen, UAE, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Like Naomi Alderman, as a proponent of women’s equality I respect these women’s right to cover their heads if they so choose. By publicly coupling their religious beliefs with their sporting ambitions, they are breaking down Western stereotypes about Muslim women whilst inspiring other women in their home countries to get involved in sport. This is the first Olympics that the UAE and Oman have sent women athletes to, while Saudi Arabia and Brunei have yet again refused to allow women to compete. Ironically, and frustratingly, considering the increase in practicing Muslim women at the 2008 games, Bejing have provided a mosque only for men, and none for women.

So it seems if you are from the Middle East, female and hold strong religious convictions you can cover up and be judged on your sporting prowess. If you are secular/atheist, however, you must bare all to be leched over whilst being judged on your ‘bikini body’. This is where all this liberation lark gets a little confusing. So how about we just let women wear whatever they are most comfortable competing in, giving them back the control over their bodies that an athletic competition like the Olympics demands? A radical notion, I think not, but it’s something we’re actually moving further away from.

So maybe in 2012 the women’s beach volleyball team should do a Peaches in protest (you really have to watch the video to get the point – NSFW btw) and prove they have better things to do at the Olympics than wax anything for the cameras. Like PLAY SPORT, for example. If only.