Naked man in bicycle cover stalks Cambridge streets...
12/06/09 22:16 Filed in: England
It’s been a strange day! I’m staying in this posh apartment block overlooking the River Cam. Here it is:
No, I’m not in the penthouse…not yet at least. It’s a great place. I’ve met some of my neighbours who are as charming as they are engaging. Three storeys up, my sitting room-high window is sometimes like sitting in the dress circle of life’s theatre. University rowing teams course the river all day long. Cyclists in abundance try to commit their own form of ritual hara-kiri in front of passing cars. Couples embracing stroll along the riverbanks. For a city location, it’s a little short of idyllic.
Yesterday was a testing day. I’d worked very hard and came home exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to cook and decided on an early night. Normally I rise very early at 5:30. Sleeping in is a luxury although I value that quiet time in the morning, catching up with e-mail, thinking with a clarity that often eludes me late at night. I decided to have an extra hour in bed…at least that was the plan! At just after six, there was banging at my door. I wasn’t amused. I rose, flung on my bathrobe and fastened the security chain lest it was some Siberian mammoth trying to break in.
“Who is it?” I asked feebly.
“Allo,” said a whimpering female voice. “Is Phil in there?”
“No, he isn’t,” I said.
“Go away,” I uttered under my breath.
I was irritated.
I threw on some clothes and decided to abandon the idea of sleep. Then there was an enormous kerfuffle in the hallway. Wishing I had something with which to arm myself, like a cricket bat, I burst through the door. Running along the hallway and disappearing into the stairwell was a red-haired man. He was naked...completely starkers!
‘Was that Phil?” I wondered. At least it made me laugh.
I thought nothing more of it.
Tonight, I got home early. I thought I’d tackle some domestic chores when the fire alarm started to whine. Like a responsible citizen, I left the apartment and made my way to the car park encouraging others I met en route to do the same.
There was billowing smoke from the garage. I abandoned my sense of social responsibility and drove my car from the garage onto the street.
It turned out to be nothing more than an overheated Saab.
I met one of my neighbours, Dave, and recounted my story about my early morning call and a naked man running around the building.
Dave knows everything. He’s like our resident-in-chief here. He’s a good guy too and I seek his advice often.
Later I received an email message from Dave. It read:
“Franco, who has the Black Mercedes was greeted by a naked man in our garage sleeping behind his car wrapped in a plastic bicycle cover at 8:30 in the morning.
He had red hair! I think that (100% certain) it was the same guy.
I suspect the chap went along the back walkway and as the doors into the garage had the digilocks removed going into the garage, he got in there and could not get out.”
The police were called but the man had vanished. They reported, “This is Cambridgeshire police, officers have attended the location..., Cambridge on your behalf to check on a male, when officers attended the male had gone.”
Terse, succinct and to the point as the police always are. A mystery remains. I don’t imagine that there are too many young men walking around the streets of Cambridge stark naked at night. It seems reasonable to suppose that this young man may have actually lost or taken off his clothes in this building…
Where? Who knows? Phil might…
Tomorrow I must check the local news to see if a naked man has been apprehended wearing nothing but a plastic bicycle cover.
Till the next time…
No, I’m not in the penthouse…not yet at least. It’s a great place. I’ve met some of my neighbours who are as charming as they are engaging. Three storeys up, my sitting room-high window is sometimes like sitting in the dress circle of life’s theatre. University rowing teams course the river all day long. Cyclists in abundance try to commit their own form of ritual hara-kiri in front of passing cars. Couples embracing stroll along the riverbanks. For a city location, it’s a little short of idyllic.
Yesterday was a testing day. I’d worked very hard and came home exhausted. I didn’t have the energy to cook and decided on an early night. Normally I rise very early at 5:30. Sleeping in is a luxury although I value that quiet time in the morning, catching up with e-mail, thinking with a clarity that often eludes me late at night. I decided to have an extra hour in bed…at least that was the plan! At just after six, there was banging at my door. I wasn’t amused. I rose, flung on my bathrobe and fastened the security chain lest it was some Siberian mammoth trying to break in.
“Who is it?” I asked feebly.
“Allo,” said a whimpering female voice. “Is Phil in there?”
“No, he isn’t,” I said.
“Go away,” I uttered under my breath.
I was irritated.
I threw on some clothes and decided to abandon the idea of sleep. Then there was an enormous kerfuffle in the hallway. Wishing I had something with which to arm myself, like a cricket bat, I burst through the door. Running along the hallway and disappearing into the stairwell was a red-haired man. He was naked...completely starkers!
‘Was that Phil?” I wondered. At least it made me laugh.
I thought nothing more of it.
Tonight, I got home early. I thought I’d tackle some domestic chores when the fire alarm started to whine. Like a responsible citizen, I left the apartment and made my way to the car park encouraging others I met en route to do the same.
There was billowing smoke from the garage. I abandoned my sense of social responsibility and drove my car from the garage onto the street.
It turned out to be nothing more than an overheated Saab.
I met one of my neighbours, Dave, and recounted my story about my early morning call and a naked man running around the building.
Dave knows everything. He’s like our resident-in-chief here. He’s a good guy too and I seek his advice often.
Later I received an email message from Dave. It read:
“Franco, who has the Black Mercedes was greeted by a naked man in our garage sleeping behind his car wrapped in a plastic bicycle cover at 8:30 in the morning.
He had red hair! I think that (100% certain) it was the same guy.
I suspect the chap went along the back walkway and as the doors into the garage had the digilocks removed going into the garage, he got in there and could not get out.”
The police were called but the man had vanished. They reported, “This is Cambridgeshire police, officers have attended the location..., Cambridge on your behalf to check on a male, when officers attended the male had gone.”
Terse, succinct and to the point as the police always are. A mystery remains. I don’t imagine that there are too many young men walking around the streets of Cambridge stark naked at night. It seems reasonable to suppose that this young man may have actually lost or taken off his clothes in this building…
Where? Who knows? Phil might…
Tomorrow I must check the local news to see if a naked man has been apprehended wearing nothing but a plastic bicycle cover.
Till the next time…
|
Back home in England!
27/04/09 13:23 Filed in: England
I’m back in England – the place I know as home. It occurred to me that out of the last seven years I have spent less time here than overseas in the USA and France. I must admit a special fondness for this place I call home and for the English themselves. Perhaps the UK is a multi-cultural, multi-racial hotch-potch with less sense of national identity but it is, by and large, a kinder and more compassionate place for all that.
There has been change here. There is great economic uncertainty. The British National Party (BNP), a fascist organisation, is starting to achieve unprecedented popularity. There is definitely a swing to the political right that is worrying.
Nonetheless, it’s good to be back. I’m working on contract and living in Cambridge which is one of my favourite UK cities. It’s a wonderful place full of English eccentricities, as well as cyclists with a death-wish. The English always bring a smile to my face. Here are two pictures to show what I mean. This first one is an armoured post box. If you could jump that high it’s got spikes on top to prevent one from sitting on it!
This next one is just as wacky. It’s the "Cambridge bicycle doctor", a bicycle repair shop on a riverboat!
On the work front, I’m working for part of the UK Government in healthcare reform. It might be the oddest job I’ve ever done. Certainly it’s extremely hard work and very demanding. I can say little more than that as I’m bound by at least two confidentiality and secrecy undertakings. It’s by no means a job I’d wish to do for longer than the six-month term of the contract, but this type of work brings with it the benefit of healthy financial rewards and my coffers were badly bruised and in need of replenishment. Most of my reward comes from doing a good job, however, and I’ll do my utmost to make some positive difference here too.
What gives me time to write today is that I’ve been sick. I think I got quite run down with all the change going on in my life and work too. I got flu. It’s not the porcine variety. I’m happy to say I haven’t started going “oink, oink” yet! I’m definitely on the mend as well. I’m starting to feel better today.
Finally, for those of you that keep asking for a picture of me in glorious technicolor (Why on earth?), here I am today:
Bye for now!
There has been change here. There is great economic uncertainty. The British National Party (BNP), a fascist organisation, is starting to achieve unprecedented popularity. There is definitely a swing to the political right that is worrying.
Nonetheless, it’s good to be back. I’m working on contract and living in Cambridge which is one of my favourite UK cities. It’s a wonderful place full of English eccentricities, as well as cyclists with a death-wish. The English always bring a smile to my face. Here are two pictures to show what I mean. This first one is an armoured post box. If you could jump that high it’s got spikes on top to prevent one from sitting on it!
This next one is just as wacky. It’s the "Cambridge bicycle doctor", a bicycle repair shop on a riverboat!
On the work front, I’m working for part of the UK Government in healthcare reform. It might be the oddest job I’ve ever done. Certainly it’s extremely hard work and very demanding. I can say little more than that as I’m bound by at least two confidentiality and secrecy undertakings. It’s by no means a job I’d wish to do for longer than the six-month term of the contract, but this type of work brings with it the benefit of healthy financial rewards and my coffers were badly bruised and in need of replenishment. Most of my reward comes from doing a good job, however, and I’ll do my utmost to make some positive difference here too.
What gives me time to write today is that I’ve been sick. I think I got quite run down with all the change going on in my life and work too. I got flu. It’s not the porcine variety. I’m happy to say I haven’t started going “oink, oink” yet! I’m definitely on the mend as well. I’m starting to feel better today.
Finally, for those of you that keep asking for a picture of me in glorious technicolor (Why on earth?), here I am today:
Bye for now!
Farewell, dear Nallah
13/04/09 21:06 Filed in: Dogs
Much of the last year I spent in France with little by way of human company. My days and nights were spent with a faithful loving Labrador dog called Nallah. In a way, she kept me from wretched loneliness and isolation. Many nights she and I fought for bed space. I left France a month ago to return to work in Cambridge, UK. I learned today that this loving and lovely dog had died. She was almost eleven and a half years old. I loved her dearly. She had boundless energy and would chase me endlessly in circles as I drove the tractor to cut the two acres of grass. We did most things together. She would even hop in the car to visit the local shops. She was never more than ten feet away. When I was writing my book in the cold winter, she would insist on sleeping under my desk on my feet! What an eccentric pair we were. Here she is:
Farewell, dear Nallah. You were a great and loving friend. I shall miss and remember you.
Memories - John Galsworthy
Not the least hard thing to bear when
they go from us, these quiet friends,
is that they carry away with them so
many years of our lives. Yet, if they
find warmth therein, who would
begrudge them those years that they
have so guarded?
And whatever they take,
be sure they have deserved.
Best of British Humour - Spike and Monty!
19/02/09 21:18 Filed in: Humour
I’ve always loved British absurd surreal comedy sketches, a tradition that probably started with “The Goon Show” back in the nineteen fifties. I caught up with the goons much later in my life, and have always loved the man who for me was king of the goons, Spike Milligan. In my view, it’s where this genre began.
In a way, I believe that Monty Python took this comic legacy to a whole new level of craziness. I love it!
I’m sure that some of my American readers will not know Spike. Here he is at his wacky best in the Irish O’Lympics:
And now the first Irish rocket to the moon:
I’m not sure where to start with the men from Python. I know! It’s that dead, expired, deceased, late parrot!
A lot of my serious further education concerned philosophy. I couldn’t always take it that seriously either!
Then there was Michelangelo’s last Supper with 28 disciples, 3 Christs and a kangaroo.
So which Python film? The Holy Grail or the Life of Brian? I love them both but I especially enjoy this altercation between King Arthur and the French in “The Holy Grail”. Now “Fetchez la vache!”
In a way, I believe that Monty Python took this comic legacy to a whole new level of craziness. I love it!
I’m sure that some of my American readers will not know Spike. Here he is at his wacky best in the Irish O’Lympics:
And now the first Irish rocket to the moon:
I’m not sure where to start with the men from Python. I know! It’s that dead, expired, deceased, late parrot!
A lot of my serious further education concerned philosophy. I couldn’t always take it that seriously either!
Then there was Michelangelo’s last Supper with 28 disciples, 3 Christs and a kangaroo.
So which Python film? The Holy Grail or the Life of Brian? I love them both but I especially enjoy this altercation between King Arthur and the French in “The Holy Grail”. Now “Fetchez la vache!”
The eye of the storm
11/02/09 08:38 Filed in: France
On Monday night, dreadful storms hit where I live here in Western France. It was no hurricane, but here in Loire Atlantique the winds reached speeds of up to 100 mph. My heart goes out to those of my friends in the USA who lived through hurricanes last year. Now I have some sense of what this may have been like.
I was in the eye of the storm. The power failed and I was without electricity from Monday evening until lunchtime yesterday. Thankfully, I had candles, a wood burner and a gas cooker. Life here became a grown up version of “scouting for boys”.
The silence and the skies before were the storm were eerie. One could sense the storm approaching.
By candlelight, I scribbled some words about how it felt:
Dusk glows a strange menacing light from the night sea. Eerie silence. No sounds in the street. Darkness falls, clouds race past the moon. Then comes the roar! Boughs cracking, branches flying. Shutters closed tight, rattling loudly. Howling, screaming wind. Fire glowing, burning fast. Flames dancing. Lights flicker. Burning candles. Dog under the table, cat cowering under the chair. It's safer there. Darkness. No sound but the wind; the blasting, crashing storm. Nature is omnipotent once more.
It struck me, how powerless humankind is in the face of nature. Thankfully, this time it seems there were no casualties, unlike the storm that passed to the south of here last month claiming fifteen lives.
The next bail out - a child's view
19/01/09 14:50 Filed in: Economic Crisis
Please help me with my sums.
The total UK personal, business and national debt is £4,000 billion. The size of the UK population is 60 million. So that’s an average debt for every living man, woman and child of £66,667 or let’s do that in US dollars - $100,000 each.
Mmm I do like nice round numbers!
That sounds like an awful lot of debt to me.
The UK banks have been given or guaranteed money of around £600 billion or USD $900 billion by government.
It’s taxpayer’s money so we’ve all given £15,000 or $22,500 to help those poor banks.
But our economy still has bellyache.
It’s not working. The government says the banks should be lending more money. So we, we being the UK taxpayers up to our eyeballs in debt, are going to give those banks more money we don’t have, so they can lend it to businesses and people, who have lots of debt too. Then they can spend it, so our economy gets better?
Mmm...sticks thumb in mouth.
So what is this “economy” and how will it make our lives better?
They’re big businessmen, son, and when they are happy, we all feel better because then our “economy” is well again.
But what about you, me and Mrs Smith down the road, Dad, will we feel better when the economy gets well again?
In a way we will, I might keep my job if I’m very lucky; we might keep our house too. Then we’ll have clothes to wear and food to eat at table as well.
And what about the happy businessman, what will he keep?
He keeps the rest, son. He always keeps the rest as that's what makes him happiest of all. And if he’s happy, we’re all happy so they say. Then the economy gets well again.
Is that fair, Dad?
There’s nothing in this life that’s fair, son. Life is life and it’s hard. They all say that. There ain’t nothing you can do to change it. They even write songs about it. Que sera, sera.
There are old English hymns they sing about it in Church too, so they must be right. You know that famous children’s hymn, “All things Bright and Beautiful”, it goes:
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.”
That was a long time ago, they banned that song in our school...that verse about the rich man anyway.
They may have banned the song, son, but they haven’t changed the tune.
One last thing, Dad. There's you, Mum, me and my sister who owe all this money. That's nearly £270,000 between us. ($400,000) What happens when we have to pay all this money back?
Well, we don't owe it personally, son, but if we did we'd have to go bankrupt.
Maybe, in a way, we're all bankrupt already.
The total UK personal, business and national debt is £4,000 billion. The size of the UK population is 60 million. So that’s an average debt for every living man, woman and child of £66,667 or let’s do that in US dollars - $100,000 each.
Mmm I do like nice round numbers!
That sounds like an awful lot of debt to me.
The UK banks have been given or guaranteed money of around £600 billion or USD $900 billion by government.
It’s taxpayer’s money so we’ve all given £15,000 or $22,500 to help those poor banks.
But our economy still has bellyache.
It’s not working. The government says the banks should be lending more money. So we, we being the UK taxpayers up to our eyeballs in debt, are going to give those banks more money we don’t have, so they can lend it to businesses and people, who have lots of debt too. Then they can spend it, so our economy gets better?
Mmm...sticks thumb in mouth.
So what is this “economy” and how will it make our lives better?
They’re big businessmen, son, and when they are happy, we all feel better because then our “economy” is well again.
But what about you, me and Mrs Smith down the road, Dad, will we feel better when the economy gets well again?
In a way we will, I might keep my job if I’m very lucky; we might keep our house too. Then we’ll have clothes to wear and food to eat at table as well.
And what about the happy businessman, what will he keep?
He keeps the rest, son. He always keeps the rest as that's what makes him happiest of all. And if he’s happy, we’re all happy so they say. Then the economy gets well again.
Is that fair, Dad?
There’s nothing in this life that’s fair, son. Life is life and it’s hard. They all say that. There ain’t nothing you can do to change it. They even write songs about it. Que sera, sera.
There are old English hymns they sing about it in Church too, so they must be right. You know that famous children’s hymn, “All things Bright and Beautiful”, it goes:
“The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.”
That was a long time ago, they banned that song in our school...that verse about the rich man anyway.
They may have banned the song, son, but they haven’t changed the tune.
One last thing, Dad. There's you, Mum, me and my sister who owe all this money. That's nearly £270,000 between us. ($400,000) What happens when we have to pay all this money back?
Well, we don't owe it personally, son, but if we did we'd have to go bankrupt.
Maybe, in a way, we're all bankrupt already.
More news, less views
I came across the Glasgow University Media Group (GUMG) when I was at university the second time round in the late 1970’s. I’ve remained interested in their work since then. The group has written extensively about how the media present content and how their audiences receive and interpret the messages they transmit.
There’s no doubt that the media influences, informs and “conditions” our beliefs about the world we live in.
By the end of 2006, eight international corporations controlled the entirety of the US media industry. They have their own agendas and these are not about presenting critical news content. They are about serving their own business interests, making money as well as promoting the commercial objectives of their advertisers. Here’s a list of those eight media corporations:
* Disney (market value: $72.8 billion)
* AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90.7 billion)
* Viacom (market value: $53.9 billion)
* General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390.6 billion)
* News Corporation (market value: $56.7 billion)
* Yahoo! (market value: $40.1 billion)
* Microsoft (market value: $306.8 billion)
* Google (market value: $154.6 billion)
Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google are newer media companies compared to the other “traditional” 5 players.
That’s the lot! This quotation says it all for me:
“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”
Michael Eisner, CEO, The Walt Disney Co.
Of course, in the UK, we have the state-owned BBC. The BBC is not necessarily the objective voice of reason either. It’s owned by the state, by government that has its own agendas that are largely upheld by the same business and political power interests that control media everywhere. The BBC may be better in supporting social democracy than most mainstream media but its links to government inevitably produces biased reporting in its favour, and of the uncritical support of the status quo.
What brought about this post was that I was trying to remember how I first engaged with GUMG way back when. I came across this piece on the GUMG web-site last night and I wanted to share it here today. In its own way it says it all and does it better than me:
From Greg Philo, Glasgow Media Group.
The article below was originally sent to the Guardian for its comments page. It shows how public debate on political issues is narrowed on the most influential media because of the absence of critical voices – whether the issue is the financial crisis or world conflicts such as in Israel/Palestine.
New polling evidence from YouGov and the GUMG, suggests that this is not at all what the public wants. The article was rejected by the Guardian on the grounds that ‘it would be read as a piece of old lefty whingeing about bias’.
But I think there is more at stake than this.
There is a deep crisis of legitimacy both for politicians and broadcasters, in that many people do not feel properly represented. There is also great public confusion over issues such as the reasons for world conflict and the nature of the present economic crisis.
Until recently there has been very little debate about the consequences of the free market policies which were promoted by political and economic elites. One consequence is that areas of public spending such as education and health are likely to be sacrificed in order to pay for the black holes in the banking system. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the global budget crisis may be used as a rationale for deep cuts in social programmes. At present the Conservative Party is ahead in the polls. But do voters really understand what it would mean ‘to balance the government’s books’ and ‘reduce its debt’? There is little discussion of such issues in broadcast media or of possible alternatives. Re-structuring the ownership of the economy in favour of the mass of the population is apparently off the agenda. Nationalisation has come to mean the privatisation and selling off valuable assets, while losses are socialised. We are offered various forms of the free market discussed mostly by bankers, stockbrokers and the economic experts and politicians who have delivered the crisis. But the closure of debate will only increase public frustration and the sense that broadcasters have abandoned their duty to inform their audience.
More News, Less Views
News is a procession of the powerful.
Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking £20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up £50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back? Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth.
The notion that the people should own the nation’s resources is close to derided on orthodox news. When Northern Rock was nationalised, TV news showed us pictures of British Leyland and the old problem ridden car industry. Never mind that it was actually privately owned when most of the problems occurred and that company policy had been to distribute 95% of profits as dividends to shareholders, rather than to invest in new plant and machinery. This is all lost in the mists of history and what is conveyed is the vague sense that nationalisation is a “bad thing”. We showed how this affects public understanding by asking a sample of 244 young people in higher education (aged 18 –23) about the great spate of privatisations which had taken place in the 1980s. We asked whether the industries involved had in general been profitable or unprofitable. Actually, the major ones of gas, electricity, oil and telecommunications were both profitable and major sources of revenue to the state, but nearly 60% of the sample thought that the industries had been losing money. This is especially poignant now that energy prices are being jacked up and the foreign owners of many of these companies are not interested in passing on their windfall profits to the British people. Countries such as China, Venezuela and even Russia keep key industries very firmly in state hands, but where are the critical voices in broadcasting here, who are given space to raise these arguments? They can be heard in the outer reaches, occasionally on Question Time, Channel 4 News or Newsnight. But is this what the population want? At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another area of great imbalance in the views that are heard. Our study of the main TV news output showed that pro-Israeli speakers were featured about twice as much as Palestinians. This year BBC News covered Israel’s ‘birthday’ of 60 years since the setting up of the state. This was of course also the anniversary of what, from the Palestinian perspective, was the great disaster when they were forced from their homes and land. Israel’s superior public relations machine meant that they set the agenda on broadcast news. The Palestinians were featured, but rather less and as a sort of afterthought. As a presenter on BBC’s Today programme put it, “Today Israel is 60 years old, and all this week we have been hearing from Israelis about what it means to them”. Quite so.
We commissioned YouGov to ask a sample of 2086 UK adults whether they thought that more coverage should be given to the Israeli point of view, or more to the Palestinians, or equal for both. Nearly twice as many people thought that the Palestinians should have the most as compared with the Israelis, but the bulk of the replies (72%) were that both should have the same. Only 5% of the population supported what the broadcasters have actually been doing in the main news output. Politicians and broadcasters say they are worried about a growing lack of interest in politics especially amongst the young. Our work shows there is no lack of interest in lively critical debate. The problem is that a news which largely features the views of two political parties with very similar free market policies at home, and an international agenda which follows America, does not provide this.
Greg Philo
Glasgow University Media Group
September 2008
There’s no doubt that the media influences, informs and “conditions” our beliefs about the world we live in.
By the end of 2006, eight international corporations controlled the entirety of the US media industry. They have their own agendas and these are not about presenting critical news content. They are about serving their own business interests, making money as well as promoting the commercial objectives of their advertisers. Here’s a list of those eight media corporations:
* Disney (market value: $72.8 billion)
* AOL-Time Warner (market value: $90.7 billion)
* Viacom (market value: $53.9 billion)
* General Electric (owner of NBC, market value: $390.6 billion)
* News Corporation (market value: $56.7 billion)
* Yahoo! (market value: $40.1 billion)
* Microsoft (market value: $306.8 billion)
* Google (market value: $154.6 billion)
Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Google are newer media companies compared to the other “traditional” 5 players.
That’s the lot! This quotation says it all for me:
“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”
Michael Eisner, CEO, The Walt Disney Co.
Of course, in the UK, we have the state-owned BBC. The BBC is not necessarily the objective voice of reason either. It’s owned by the state, by government that has its own agendas that are largely upheld by the same business and political power interests that control media everywhere. The BBC may be better in supporting social democracy than most mainstream media but its links to government inevitably produces biased reporting in its favour, and of the uncritical support of the status quo.
What brought about this post was that I was trying to remember how I first engaged with GUMG way back when. I came across this piece on the GUMG web-site last night and I wanted to share it here today. In its own way it says it all and does it better than me:
From Greg Philo, Glasgow Media Group.
The article below was originally sent to the Guardian for its comments page. It shows how public debate on political issues is narrowed on the most influential media because of the absence of critical voices – whether the issue is the financial crisis or world conflicts such as in Israel/Palestine.
New polling evidence from YouGov and the GUMG, suggests that this is not at all what the public wants. The article was rejected by the Guardian on the grounds that ‘it would be read as a piece of old lefty whingeing about bias’.
But I think there is more at stake than this.
There is a deep crisis of legitimacy both for politicians and broadcasters, in that many people do not feel properly represented. There is also great public confusion over issues such as the reasons for world conflict and the nature of the present economic crisis.
Until recently there has been very little debate about the consequences of the free market policies which were promoted by political and economic elites. One consequence is that areas of public spending such as education and health are likely to be sacrificed in order to pay for the black holes in the banking system. As Naomi Klein has pointed out, the global budget crisis may be used as a rationale for deep cuts in social programmes. At present the Conservative Party is ahead in the polls. But do voters really understand what it would mean ‘to balance the government’s books’ and ‘reduce its debt’? There is little discussion of such issues in broadcast media or of possible alternatives. Re-structuring the ownership of the economy in favour of the mass of the population is apparently off the agenda. Nationalisation has come to mean the privatisation and selling off valuable assets, while losses are socialised. We are offered various forms of the free market discussed mostly by bankers, stockbrokers and the economic experts and politicians who have delivered the crisis. But the closure of debate will only increase public frustration and the sense that broadcasters have abandoned their duty to inform their audience.
More News, Less Views
News is a procession of the powerful.
Watch it on TV, listen to the Today programme and marvel at the orthodoxy of views and the lack of critical voices. When the credit crunch hit, we were given a succession of bankers, stockbrokers and even hedge-fund managers to explain and say what should be done. But these were the people who had caused the problem, thinking nothing of taking £20 billion a year in city bonuses. The solution these free market wizards agreed to, was that tax payers should stump up £50 billion (and rising) to fill up the black holes in the banking system. Where were the critical voices to say it would be a better idea to take the bonuses back? Mainstream news has sometimes a social-democratic edge. There are complaints aired about fuel poverty and the state of inner cities. But there are precious few voices making the point that the reason why there are so many poor people is because the rich have taken the bulk of the disposable wealth.
The notion that the people should own the nation’s resources is close to derided on orthodox news. When Northern Rock was nationalised, TV news showed us pictures of British Leyland and the old problem ridden car industry. Never mind that it was actually privately owned when most of the problems occurred and that company policy had been to distribute 95% of profits as dividends to shareholders, rather than to invest in new plant and machinery. This is all lost in the mists of history and what is conveyed is the vague sense that nationalisation is a “bad thing”. We showed how this affects public understanding by asking a sample of 244 young people in higher education (aged 18 –23) about the great spate of privatisations which had taken place in the 1980s. We asked whether the industries involved had in general been profitable or unprofitable. Actually, the major ones of gas, electricity, oil and telecommunications were both profitable and major sources of revenue to the state, but nearly 60% of the sample thought that the industries had been losing money. This is especially poignant now that energy prices are being jacked up and the foreign owners of many of these companies are not interested in passing on their windfall profits to the British people. Countries such as China, Venezuela and even Russia keep key industries very firmly in state hands, but where are the critical voices in broadcasting here, who are given space to raise these arguments? They can be heard in the outer reaches, occasionally on Question Time, Channel 4 News or Newsnight. But is this what the population want? At the start of the Iraq war we had the normal parade of generals and military experts, but in fact, a consistent body of opinion then and since has been completely opposed to it. We asked our sample whether people such as Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Naomi Klein and Michael Moore should be featured routinely on the news as part of a normal range of opinion. Seventy three per cent opted for this rather than wanting them on just occasionally, as at present.
The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is another area of great imbalance in the views that are heard. Our study of the main TV news output showed that pro-Israeli speakers were featured about twice as much as Palestinians. This year BBC News covered Israel’s ‘birthday’ of 60 years since the setting up of the state. This was of course also the anniversary of what, from the Palestinian perspective, was the great disaster when they were forced from their homes and land. Israel’s superior public relations machine meant that they set the agenda on broadcast news. The Palestinians were featured, but rather less and as a sort of afterthought. As a presenter on BBC’s Today programme put it, “Today Israel is 60 years old, and all this week we have been hearing from Israelis about what it means to them”. Quite so.
We commissioned YouGov to ask a sample of 2086 UK adults whether they thought that more coverage should be given to the Israeli point of view, or more to the Palestinians, or equal for both. Nearly twice as many people thought that the Palestinians should have the most as compared with the Israelis, but the bulk of the replies (72%) were that both should have the same. Only 5% of the population supported what the broadcasters have actually been doing in the main news output. Politicians and broadcasters say they are worried about a growing lack of interest in politics especially amongst the young. Our work shows there is no lack of interest in lively critical debate. The problem is that a news which largely features the views of two political parties with very similar free market policies at home, and an international agenda which follows America, does not provide this.
Greg Philo
Glasgow University Media Group
September 2008
Fromage Français - "A kick in the bottom!"
Let’s talk about French food.
I do believe that French gastronomy is among the best and healthiest in the world. It can be very quirky, however. Eating in France is something of a ritual. I love that part. It’s often a time for talking and sharing. Lunches on Sunday can start at one in the afternoon and go on till five. It’s simply a social occasion with food.
Usually there’s the first course, the entrée, cheese, dessert and coffee. There’s always cheese! Usually it’s a vast array, often of cheeses of which I’ve never heard. The cheese department in the local supermarket has a counter and shelves that must extend a hundred feet or so.
I’ve enjoyed finding out about cheese. Picking the odd one of which I’ve never heard and trying it. On Friday I came across this novelty: “Le coup de pied au cul”. It’s called “a kick in the ass”! Who could resist a cheese by that name? Certainly I couldn’t. The French lady operating the supermarket checkout thought it funny too.
They call it a “trou Normand” that translated literally means a “Normandy hole.” Le trou Normand is a gastronomic term for something like a palate cleanser. In Normandy, they might take un trou between courses like a glass of Calvados (cider distilled into apple brandy) or a sorbet. The hole part comes from the idea that one is making a hole for the next course, so as to be able to eat more.
This is a translation of what appears on the label of my “kick in the ass” cheese:
“This real trou Normand will enchant your palate so much. You will know when tasting it, our own aromatic trou (hole).”
So you’ll know their smelly hole when you taste it! Oh dear! It’s a play on words. The French have the oddest sense of humour sometimes.
So what of the cheese. Here it is:
It’s a soft cheese in the style of Camembert, a bit of a stinky cheese in short! Camembert comes from Normandy too. It is pungent, aromatic and rich. I liked it! Did it have a kick? In a manner of speaking, it did.
I do believe that French gastronomy is among the best and healthiest in the world. It can be very quirky, however. Eating in France is something of a ritual. I love that part. It’s often a time for talking and sharing. Lunches on Sunday can start at one in the afternoon and go on till five. It’s simply a social occasion with food.
Usually there’s the first course, the entrée, cheese, dessert and coffee. There’s always cheese! Usually it’s a vast array, often of cheeses of which I’ve never heard. The cheese department in the local supermarket has a counter and shelves that must extend a hundred feet or so.
I’ve enjoyed finding out about cheese. Picking the odd one of which I’ve never heard and trying it. On Friday I came across this novelty: “Le coup de pied au cul”. It’s called “a kick in the ass”! Who could resist a cheese by that name? Certainly I couldn’t. The French lady operating the supermarket checkout thought it funny too.
They call it a “trou Normand” that translated literally means a “Normandy hole.” Le trou Normand is a gastronomic term for something like a palate cleanser. In Normandy, they might take un trou between courses like a glass of Calvados (cider distilled into apple brandy) or a sorbet. The hole part comes from the idea that one is making a hole for the next course, so as to be able to eat more.
This is a translation of what appears on the label of my “kick in the ass” cheese:
“This real trou Normand will enchant your palate so much. You will know when tasting it, our own aromatic trou (hole).”
So you’ll know their smelly hole when you taste it! Oh dear! It’s a play on words. The French have the oddest sense of humour sometimes.
So what of the cheese. Here it is:
It’s a soft cheese in the style of Camembert, a bit of a stinky cheese in short! Camembert comes from Normandy too. It is pungent, aromatic and rich. I liked it! Did it have a kick? In a manner of speaking, it did.
The misunderestimated President!
09/01/09 08:45 Filed in: Humour
I found this collection of Gee Dubbyah’s lexically challenged moments on the BBC website last night.
I thought it might be a fitting goodbye to George to publish them here today for fun.
ON HIMSELF
"They misunderestimated me."
Bentonville, Arkansas, 6 November, 2000
''I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right."
Rome, 22 July, 2001
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Nashville, Tennessee, 17 September, 2002
"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead."
Washington DC, 11 May, 2001
"I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."
Nashville, Tennessee, 27 May, 2004
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
"For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times."
Tokyo, 18 February, 2002
"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorise himself."
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 29 January, 2003
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington DC, 5 August, 2004
"I think war is a dangerous place."
Washington DC, 7 May, 2003
"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the - the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
Washington DC, 17 September, 2004
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
CBS News, Washington DC, 6 September, 2006
EDUCATION
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
Florence, South Carolina, 11 January, 2000
"Reading is the basics for all learning."
Reston, Virginia, 28 March, 2000
"As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards."
CNN, 30 August, 2000
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''
Townsend, Tennessee, 21 February, 2001
ECONOMICS
"I understand small business growth. I was one."
New York Daily News, 19 February, 2000
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
Reuters, 5 May, 2000
"I do remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine Labour Secretary. From what I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified."
Austin, Texas, 8 January, 2001
"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill."
Washington DC, 19 May, 2003
HEALTHCARE
"I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs."
Orlando, Florida, 12 September, 2000
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September, 2004
TECHNOLOGY
"Will the highways on the internet become more few?"
Concord, New Hampshire, 29 January, 2000
"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber."
Washington DC, 10 April, 2002
"Information is moving. You know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets."
Washington DC, 2 May, 2007
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
Saginaw, Michigan, 29 September, 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 18 October, 2000
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
Tucson, Arizona, 28 November, 2005
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three - three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting?"
Speaking to reporter Kai Diekmann, Washington DC, 5 May, 2006
ON GOVERNING
"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together."
Bartlett, Tennessee, 18 August, 2000
"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."
Washington DC, 18 April, 2006
"And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and [Tony Blair] read it."
On the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, Washington DC, 7 December, 2006
"All I can tell you is when the governor calls, I answer his phone."
San Diego, California, 25 October, 2007
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
Washington DC, 12 May, 2008
I thought it might be a fitting goodbye to George to publish them here today for fun.
ON HIMSELF
"They misunderestimated me."
Bentonville, Arkansas, 6 November, 2000
''I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right."
Rome, 22 July, 2001
"There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on... shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Nashville, Tennessee, 17 September, 2002
"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead."
Washington DC, 11 May, 2001
"I want to thank my friend, Senator Bill Frist, for joining us today. He married a Texas girl, I want you to know. Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me."
Nashville, Tennessee, 27 May, 2004
FOREIGN AFFAIRS
"For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times."
Tokyo, 18 February, 2002
"The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorise himself."
Grand Rapids, Michigan, 29 January, 2003
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Washington DC, 5 August, 2004
"I think war is a dangerous place."
Washington DC, 7 May, 2003
"The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the - the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
Washington DC, 27 October, 2003
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
Washington DC, 17 September, 2004
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."
CBS News, Washington DC, 6 September, 2006
EDUCATION
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"
Florence, South Carolina, 11 January, 2000
"Reading is the basics for all learning."
Reston, Virginia, 28 March, 2000
"As governor of Texas, I have set high standards for our public schools, and I have met those standards."
CNN, 30 August, 2000
"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.''
Townsend, Tennessee, 21 February, 2001
ECONOMICS
"I understand small business growth. I was one."
New York Daily News, 19 February, 2000
"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it."
Reuters, 5 May, 2000
"I do remain confident in Linda. She'll make a fine Labour Secretary. From what I've read in the press accounts, she's perfectly qualified."
Austin, Texas, 8 January, 2001
"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill."
Washington DC, 19 May, 2003
HEALTHCARE
"I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs."
Orlando, Florida, 12 September, 2000
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country."
Poplar Bluff, Missouri, 6 September, 2004
TECHNOLOGY
"Will the highways on the internet become more few?"
Concord, New Hampshire, 29 January, 2000
"It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber."
Washington DC, 10 April, 2002
"Information is moving. You know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets."
Washington DC, 2 May, 2007
OUT OF LEFT FIELD
"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."
Saginaw, Michigan, 29 September, 2000
"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
LaCrosse, Wisconsin, 18 October, 2000
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law."
Tucson, Arizona, 28 November, 2005
"That's George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three - three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting?"
Speaking to reporter Kai Diekmann, Washington DC, 5 May, 2006
ON GOVERNING
"I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together."
Bartlett, Tennessee, 18 August, 2000
"I'm the decider, and I decide what is best."
Washington DC, 18 April, 2006
"And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and [Tony Blair] read it."
On the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, Washington DC, 7 December, 2006
"All I can tell you is when the governor calls, I answer his phone."
San Diego, California, 25 October, 2007
"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office."
Washington DC, 12 May, 2008
"Big Brother" by stealth - update
09/01/09 07:23 Filed in: Society
The title of this post is something of a misnoma. There's no stealth about it! As of 15 March this year, all e-mail information must be retained by UK ISP's and made available to any one of 600 UK Government agencies on request.
Want that? Did you hear anyone ask if you wanted it? No? Me neither. So that's how democracy works.
Under the new laws, ISPs will be required to keep e-mail information for a year. With the planned communications database, this information will be retained indefinitely. How long will it be before Government requires details of all our conversations on MSN Messenger or AOL to be monitored and recorded? It's probably in the next phase of their surveillance plans.
There's one solution, perhaps. Do as I have done and if you are British, move your ISP account offshore to a non-British company. That may work!
Reading our minds
05/01/09 18:39 Filed in: Society
Today, an American close friend of mine, talked to me about the relationship between feelings and brain patterns and chemistry. She has a somewhat fatalistic and deterministic view of mankind, that we are somehow pre-determined by our biology and have little volition beyond that. It's her view, I happen to differ, in that I believe that mankind has a great range of human possibilities, of choice, self-determination, belief, creativity, inspiration and an infinite mass of unrealised potential totally beyond the comprehension of our biological science.
I have written a lot about mind, emotions and intuition. It's been my position, and one shared by other scientists, that mind functions as a distinct human capability that facilitates our rational (or irrational) understanding of the world. It works by detecting similarities and differences in the world around us, of associations and dissociations too. It's like a pattern recognition engine and as such it operates at a relatively slow speed. I see mind and intellect as a relatively primitive biological survival mechanism.
I’ve written about it at length. I also believe that the unconscious and sub-conscious are related to mind. The unconscious can lead us into addictions, self-destructive behaviour and even murder. Tricks of the unconscious mind can take us into projection whereby we attribute (project) our own unwanted, difficult, shameful or unacceptable thoughts and/or emotions unconsciously onto another person.
Mind does worse than that too. It can detach us from our feelings and our humanity. It can make us instruments of death. The aircraft bombardier does not feel for the human lives he is about to destroy, he simply operates a technology through intellect and sighting mechanisms. His bombs may kill hundreds of people, mothers and babies too. He hides behind technology and presses buttons. That’s what war is now. I wonder how well he might cope if he was confronted by the people he was murdering, if he had to grab women and babies by the throat and murder them outright in cold blood. He wouldn’t do it, of course. We hide behind our technology to do murder, we also hide behind mind: cold-hearted, bloody, murdering rational mind.
No good man or woman can pick up that baby and throttle it to death with their bare hands, their emotions prevent them. But then their decipherable intellect may allow them to operate the same machinery to do so.
My point is that there is a great distance between human emotions, intuition and intellect. Intellect may give us scientific advances if we wish to live in a scientific world. It may also seek to explain our existence in terms of brain chemistry, DNA and genes. I believe we happen to be more than that. Ultimately I suspect it is a question of belief. You believe in science or you don’t. I believe science is a useful tool..sometimes. It’s very limited and one of many ways we can explain our world.
The culture that maintains we may all be understood by machines turns us into machines also. We become machines. And now they can read our minds. No surprise there. And next they will manipulate them by neuro-marketing. I suppose if you want this world, that’s up to you. I’m going to hang on to my emotions and intuition. I’ll survive longer that way.
Finally this is the programme my friend sent me to prove her point of view that they we're all susceptible to and determined by brain chemistry, able to be understood and manipulated by science. She has her view. I’ll differ. I’ll hang onto my own self-determined humanity and my emotional and intuitive self.
Watch CBS Videos Online
I have written a lot about mind, emotions and intuition. It's been my position, and one shared by other scientists, that mind functions as a distinct human capability that facilitates our rational (or irrational) understanding of the world. It works by detecting similarities and differences in the world around us, of associations and dissociations too. It's like a pattern recognition engine and as such it operates at a relatively slow speed. I see mind and intellect as a relatively primitive biological survival mechanism.
I’ve written about it at length. I also believe that the unconscious and sub-conscious are related to mind. The unconscious can lead us into addictions, self-destructive behaviour and even murder. Tricks of the unconscious mind can take us into projection whereby we attribute (project) our own unwanted, difficult, shameful or unacceptable thoughts and/or emotions unconsciously onto another person.
Mind does worse than that too. It can detach us from our feelings and our humanity. It can make us instruments of death. The aircraft bombardier does not feel for the human lives he is about to destroy, he simply operates a technology through intellect and sighting mechanisms. His bombs may kill hundreds of people, mothers and babies too. He hides behind technology and presses buttons. That’s what war is now. I wonder how well he might cope if he was confronted by the people he was murdering, if he had to grab women and babies by the throat and murder them outright in cold blood. He wouldn’t do it, of course. We hide behind our technology to do murder, we also hide behind mind: cold-hearted, bloody, murdering rational mind.
No good man or woman can pick up that baby and throttle it to death with their bare hands, their emotions prevent them. But then their decipherable intellect may allow them to operate the same machinery to do so.
My point is that there is a great distance between human emotions, intuition and intellect. Intellect may give us scientific advances if we wish to live in a scientific world. It may also seek to explain our existence in terms of brain chemistry, DNA and genes. I believe we happen to be more than that. Ultimately I suspect it is a question of belief. You believe in science or you don’t. I believe science is a useful tool..sometimes. It’s very limited and one of many ways we can explain our world.
The culture that maintains we may all be understood by machines turns us into machines also. We become machines. And now they can read our minds. No surprise there. And next they will manipulate them by neuro-marketing. I suppose if you want this world, that’s up to you. I’m going to hang on to my emotions and intuition. I’ll survive longer that way.
Finally this is the programme my friend sent me to prove her point of view that they we're all susceptible to and determined by brain chemistry, able to be understood and manipulated by science. She has her view. I’ll differ. I’ll hang onto my own self-determined humanity and my emotional and intuitive self.
Watch CBS Videos Online
"Big Brother" by stealth
31/12/08 12:16 Filed in: Society
The “Big Brother” state is coming and the UK is leading the way.
There have been some trivial but worrying developments this year in the increase of UK legislative powers. Most of these are vexatious rather than sinister. There was a man given a criminal record and fine for overfilling his wheelie (trash) bin so that its hinged lid elevated by a full four inches. One council now fines residents up to £5,000 ($7,500) for putting out wheelie bins on the wrong day! It’s illegal to display a card in a car windscreen saying it’s for sale. This is petty-fogging bureaucracy compared to what is slowly creeping into being while the UK public sleepwalks its way towards the big brother state.
The UK is moving towards laws for compulsory identity cards holding biometric data on microchips. It already has one of the largest DNA databases in the world and it’s growing fast. An entry on the DNA database is an entry forever, and it’s not confined to those with criminal convictions either. Recently I saw a poster that appeared in UK bus stations claiming that they had their own DNA testing kids that would be used on any person suspected of spitting!
Also I noticed two news articles from the USA, the worst of which was talking about a city’s micro-chip implantation of its homeless in “its fight against crime”! Of course, it follows if one is homeless, one must be a criminal. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of micro-chipped investment bankers soon! Also I suspect that micro-chipping will be marketed to us by stealth, much like everything else. We can track Fido and Pussy with chips so they don’t get lost. How long before we’re sold this same measure as a way of “keeping our children safe”? I notice that they are already tracking schoolchildren in one Rhode Island school district by implanting microchips in their school bags. How long before we implant chips in children’s bodies rather than their school bags? After all, it would be so much more reliable.
But that’s all pie in the sky, conspiracy theory sort of nonsense, isn’t it? Sadly not. It was an article in the UK's broadsheet newspaper, "The Guardian" that sent me down this track today.
It was about the UK’s imminent plans to contract out its GBP £12 billion (USD $18 billion) planned communications database to private industry. The purpose of the database is to monitor all electronic communications activity of every UK citizen that includes telephone and mobile (cell phone) calls, SMS text messages, e-mails and all Internet usage.
It’s causing a stir since the most outspoken protester is the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, who said, "The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."
Maintaining the capacity to intercept suspicious communications was critical in an increasingly complex world, he said. "It is a process which can save lives and bring criminals to justice. But no other country is considering such a drastic step. This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," he said. "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls."
The moment there was a security crisis the temptation for more commonplace access would be irresistible, he said.”
Sir Ken is an establishment figure, hardly a radical subversive. Governments and big business have proven how dishonest and corrupt they are in the pursuit of their own purposes. One need look no further than the Iraq war for evidence of government dishonesty in action.
I’ll vote with Sir Ken. I’m utterly opposed to such a measure. The risks are too great to contemplate. It was bad enough when Google gave up their records in support of a criminal prosecution. This plan is monstrous. So will anyone else have the courage to speak out about it?
Bon Année 2009! Happy new year!
There have been some trivial but worrying developments this year in the increase of UK legislative powers. Most of these are vexatious rather than sinister. There was a man given a criminal record and fine for overfilling his wheelie (trash) bin so that its hinged lid elevated by a full four inches. One council now fines residents up to £5,000 ($7,500) for putting out wheelie bins on the wrong day! It’s illegal to display a card in a car windscreen saying it’s for sale. This is petty-fogging bureaucracy compared to what is slowly creeping into being while the UK public sleepwalks its way towards the big brother state.
The UK is moving towards laws for compulsory identity cards holding biometric data on microchips. It already has one of the largest DNA databases in the world and it’s growing fast. An entry on the DNA database is an entry forever, and it’s not confined to those with criminal convictions either. Recently I saw a poster that appeared in UK bus stations claiming that they had their own DNA testing kids that would be used on any person suspected of spitting!
Also I noticed two news articles from the USA, the worst of which was talking about a city’s micro-chip implantation of its homeless in “its fight against crime”! Of course, it follows if one is homeless, one must be a criminal. I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of micro-chipped investment bankers soon! Also I suspect that micro-chipping will be marketed to us by stealth, much like everything else. We can track Fido and Pussy with chips so they don’t get lost. How long before we’re sold this same measure as a way of “keeping our children safe”? I notice that they are already tracking schoolchildren in one Rhode Island school district by implanting microchips in their school bags. How long before we implant chips in children’s bodies rather than their school bags? After all, it would be so much more reliable.
But that’s all pie in the sky, conspiracy theory sort of nonsense, isn’t it? Sadly not. It was an article in the UK's broadsheet newspaper, "The Guardian" that sent me down this track today.
It was about the UK’s imminent plans to contract out its GBP £12 billion (USD $18 billion) planned communications database to private industry. The purpose of the database is to monitor all electronic communications activity of every UK citizen that includes telephone and mobile (cell phone) calls, SMS text messages, e-mails and all Internet usage.
It’s causing a stir since the most outspoken protester is the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald, who said, "The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people."
Maintaining the capacity to intercept suspicious communications was critical in an increasingly complex world, he said. "It is a process which can save lives and bring criminals to justice. But no other country is considering such a drastic step. This database would be an unimaginable hell-house of personal private information," he said. "It would be a complete readout of every citizen's life in the most intimate and demeaning detail. No government of any colour is to be trusted with such a roadmap to our souls."
The moment there was a security crisis the temptation for more commonplace access would be irresistible, he said.”
Sir Ken is an establishment figure, hardly a radical subversive. Governments and big business have proven how dishonest and corrupt they are in the pursuit of their own purposes. One need look no further than the Iraq war for evidence of government dishonesty in action.
I’ll vote with Sir Ken. I’m utterly opposed to such a measure. The risks are too great to contemplate. It was bad enough when Google gave up their records in support of a criminal prosecution. This plan is monstrous. So will anyone else have the courage to speak out about it?
Bon Année 2009! Happy new year!
Change we can believe in?
It’s almost the end of the year. It’s also the end of an era.
The USA and the UK are suffocating in a blanket of national, corporate and personal debt. The amount of money that has been poured into our failing banking systems is now of the order of $15,000,000,000,000 worldwide or one quarter of the value of everything the world produces in a year.
Homelessness and unemployment are rising.
I have resisted writing about our economic world of late, as I didn’t wish to enter the realm of “Grumpy Old Men.”
Well, happy New Year!
It won’t ever be the same again. BUT capitalism albeit that it’s in crisis is far from finished yet.
Forget the National Debt to GDP ratio. We’re in hock. Both in the USA and the UK, we owe through personal, business and government debts three times more than we make in a year. That’s right our overall debt to GDP ratio is 3:1.
So where did all the money come from? If we’re not making it, how can we owe so much? It’s simple. We borrowed it and now, some of our creditors are asking to be repaid.
The system is unable to produce enough real wealth (value) to maintain profitability (surplus value). It has hidden this difficulty by creating masses of “fictitious capital,” claims on wealth that do not correspond with any real wealth (actual commodities and services). These include mountains of debt, profits made on unproductive labour (such as making missiles and other armaments, which, unlike cars and steel production, do not re-enter the cycle of production, and various forms of speculation, as well as using up the environment without replenishing it (a form of “primitive accumulation” also called “looting the future” ). At some point the bill was sure to come due.
Money is a fictitious commodity. Banks create it. Let’s see how it works. I borrow $250,000 to buy an asset. I grant mortgage rights on my asset to the bank as collateral. Seller deposits my $250,000. Bank retains its 10% reserve as required by US law then lends the balance, $225,000. We’ve started creating money. Now we have $475,000 in circulation against my original asset value of $250,000. So it goes on. My $250,000 asset can create money by way of lending funds equal to more than nine times that amount.
It goes without saying if that money is invested in housing stock in a rapidly falling market, let’s say, house prices fall by 30% that seems reasonable right now and in line with bank predictions, then the loss generated by banks exceeds the value of the original asset deposit by well over 100%. The result, as Mr Micawber might have said, is unhappiness.
It’s going to get worse. The CEO of Barclays Bank, and a fellow economist who I know personally, Roger Bootle at Capital Economics, say house prices in the UK will fall by 30% to 35%. I believe their estimate is conservative and likely to be exceeded by at least 15% to 20% if one includes 2008 price drops. The USA is following the same pattern.
The house price boom was the pursuit of fool’s gold.
No additional value was being created by hiked-up house prices.
It was simply a false and untenable form of asset inflation that fuelled unrealistic levels of credit. The world was awash with property millionaires buoyed up by borrowings. No more, since to use another banking expression, they are all about to take a bath.
It’s a double bubble burst, personal assets and debt crashing at the same time means more and more people will struggle to repay their debts against devalued collateral, and end in foreclosure and homelessness.
It’s going to get a lot worse.
The car companies are only the tip of the iceberg. More big businesses, especially those with high levels of debt, will crash in 2009. Big companies have borrowed too much especially those taken off the market in private equity deals.
Rises in unemployment will further reduce consumer spending that in turn will have an effect on economic output, jobs and income.
There will be bigger gaps between rich and poor, and bigger economic contradictions.
There will be homelessness and unaffordable empty houses.
I noticed this week that in the UK, over 760,000 houses are now empty. So who owns them and what will happen? What happens to empty homes in foreclosures when no one can buy them? Worst still what happens to the people on the street?
That thought bugged me, so I rang the press office of the UK charity, Shelter, which works for the homeless. I gather there may be about 500,000 homeless in Britain. But it’s not official as Government statistics say 72,000.
It doesn’t matter which statistic is right there are enough resources to provide people with homes. That’s the point.
Papers recently leaked from the UK Home Office predict a growth in social unrest leading to higher crime, racism, political extremism and other acts of violence.
Britain is likely to borrow further hundreds of billions of pounds to shore up failing businesses and attempt to create jobs in the public sector.
Can Government really make a difference?
Some of the criticisms of the American Presidency make me laugh. So now George Bush is to blame for all manner of social ills.
Really?
I doubt if that guy has the brains to tie up his shoelaces without supervision! He signs things that are produced elsewhere. The power in American society exists outside the Oval Office. You’d better believe it; else go renew your subscription to Naïveté International!
What tools does government have at its disposal?
It has some influence over the base interest rate that has been lowered dramatically and is still failing to produce any real traction in a depressed economy. There is taxation and public spending. Finally, there is legislation and regulation.
The USA and the UK is investing about two trillion dollars of taxpayer funds in the banking sector. It’s a money sink. It may shore up the private equity interests of major shareholders in banking, however I do not believe it will have any further economic benefit.
“The creation of further credit in an already over indebted economy is like giving someone with liver disease their own supply of whisky to help them recover.”
All the bail-outs will do is compensate the banks for poor lending practice and help make good, bad debts and losses already incurred based on the creation of fictitious capital.
The bail out is also socially misdirected. More and more people will suffer as a result of economic failure.
Personal hardship will be rife.
I would prefer to see my taxpayer funds invested in the good of people in society as a whole rather than some wealthy, powerful minority of bank shareholders.
A new “New Deal”?
It seems we are now rejecting the conservative idea that “the market” should function without government supervision and regulation, not to mention intervention. Instead there is a new programme of state regulation and the subsidy of corporations.
Some people are calling for a new “New Deal,” meaning regulation and bail outs of corporations, plus government-sponsored projects and investment in public works.
Undoubtedly there are many ways in which public works would be beneficial. The national infrastructure could be replaced. Ecological projects are desperately needed. Expanding public services would otherwise help people with medical, educational, and employment needs. Life might become less painful for many.
This is not the same thing, however, as ending a deep recession, let alone another Great Depression. The last Great Depression was not cured by the New Deal. It lasted over a decade and only ended with the Second World War. This points to the limitations of a new “New Deal,” even if one was politically feasible.
In these respects, the same considerations apply to Britain as the USA.
Economists everywhere predict a demise in the US dominance of world economic power, and a transfer of that power to the likes of China and other developing economies. I’m not sure if it will be that simple.
Also I do not necessarily believe that Barack Obama and his newly elected government will make much real difference to our world.
His carefully constructed and hypnotic marketing rhetoric appears to have little substance behind it. I am open to be persuaded by well-reasoned, carefully researched, cogent arguments that demonstrate otherwise. I am not open to second hand oft-repeated media pap that, in my view, frequently insults the intelligence of a ten year old.
How I might feel about what’s on offer is perhaps best summed up in the words of Mark Twain:
“In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
So what of “Change you can Believe in”, and Obama’s messages of “Hope”, “Change” and “Believe”?
What the hell do they mean? Change to what? Hope for what? Believe in what?
They are all potent messages, since anyone confronted by hardship and difficulty, in worrying about their future, their family and whether their home mortgage might be foreclosed, might wish for a change in their personal circumstances, might wish to hope for a better life, might wish to believe in their own future.
Is this what Obama is promising?
The power of his meaningless messages is that you can believe and hope for whatever you want them to mean.
We’ve been here before.
The people of the UK believed that their world would change, that they could hope for a better future, when they elected Tony Blair and his social democratic, centrist New Labour party. Did it change? Did it hell! Look where we are now and wake up!
Blair was bright, charismatic and apparently progressive too. He had a lot of “Obama” appeal. His appeal to the nation was one of reunification following the socially divisive and destructive years of Thatcherite Reaganomics, of years of the fall-out from greed and selfishness caused by the free market economy. He delivered nothing to little, which in its own way might go some way to demonstrate the impotence of governments that are not based on any mass social movement campaigning for change.
Instead Blair joined with Bush and America to go wage the “war against terror” in Iraq.
Both Bush and Blair lied grotesquely to their parliaments and the public in order to go wage war in the Middle East.
So who supplied the WMD to Iraq in the first place?
Here’s a piece from the UK Times newspaper, published on December 31 2002, approximately three months before the US / UK invasion of Iraq.
The Times is not known for taking subversive political positions. Historically, it has been the newspaper of the UK establishment:
“DONALD RUMSFELD, the US Defence Secretary and one of the most strident critics of Saddam Hussein, met the Iraqi President in 1983 to ease the way for US companies to sell Baghdad biological and chemical weapons components, including anthrax and bubonic plague cultures, according to newly declassified US Government documents.”
Got it! So the US sold WMD to Iraq then declared war against the country for owning what it supplied to them. Of course, that makes so much sense.
But by the time of the invasion, there were no WMD.
There were certainly no links between Saddam and Al Qaeda of any note.
Besides, Al Qaeda is a fluid, non-state, global organisation with cells throughout the world. No obvious connections have been established between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Saddam may have been a ruthless, unstable tyrant, but that was not the justification for this invasion, nor is it commensurate with or justified by the enormous loss of life caused by the conflict.
Our governments ruthlessly exploited our fears and paranoia based on the attacks of September 11th, 2001. There is no apparent connection between this reprehensible incident and Iraq.
America and the world grieved for the 3,000 lives lost at 911.
Who grieves for the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, of mothers, children and babies too who have lost their lives in the Iraq war?
No exact casualty figure is known for those Iraqis who have lost their lives in this conflict. There are documented deaths of some 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Others estimate that the total number of Iraqi casualties of war is closer to 1 million with 4 million having been displaced from their homes.
There’s a point here, but before we go on to consider it further, let’s look at a thesis put forward by the former US State Department official, William Blum, who observes that between 1945 and 1999, the US has conducted serious military interventions in over 70 nations to secure the following basic imperatives:
- Making the world safe for American corporations
- Enhancing the financial statements of defence contractors at home…
- Preventing the rise of any successful society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model
- Extending political and economic dominance over as wide an area as possible, as befits “a great power”
Are there any more?
You can make up your own mind where the war against Iraq fits, as it doesn’t fulfil any objectives that were stated by our governments as the basis for engaging in this conflict.
By the way, I am simply reporting Blum’s view, I readily acknowledge that other imperatives might exist, but nevertheless I believe that broadly his view reflects an uncomfortable reality.
I have so many concerns about the so-called “war against terror” not least of which is that the threat of so-called Islamic terrorism is indefinite in its reach and its defeat is indeterminable.
As such it provides a spectre of imminent doom that presents a highly convenient rationale for extending operations worldwide as a basis for extending Anglo-American political and economic dominance and control.
The levels of racism and hatred excited by the “war against terror” against our own Muslim communities, and Islamic nations and communities in general, are such that it would be no surprise to me if they struck back at us.
I do not condone violence; all I would advocate is that we find a way of transforming this latent risk of further conflict before it is too late.
We may have to resolve defence double standards too. If we don’t want other nations to possess nuclear weapons, then we may have to forego them ourselves.
Those who really own the most powerful Weapons of Mass Destruction are frequently those who complain the loudest about others having them too. The combined USA / UK arsenal of WMD is greater than any other one country in the world including Russia that has a massive holding in its nuclear inventory. It doesn’t bring me any peace of mind knowing that fact.
I know so many Americans pin their hopes on Obama to bring peace in our world.
I doubt if any one man can do that. It requires the social masses to bring peace, and frankly most are too complacent, too lazy and too dumbed out by mind-pap media to do that.
I know also that gun sales to white American right-wing rednecks seeking to defend themselves against the onslaught of Obama’s “socialist army” have risen to an uncomfortable level.
Obama is no socialist.
I fear that too many have swallowed the vacuous messages of his massive $0.6 billion marketing campaign too.
Also I fear, and it’s a very uncomfortable thing to say, for attempts on his life. A political assassination might have social consequences too terrible to contemplate, and may be the excuse that the political right wants and needs to seize power and control again, to exploit the same mass hysteria they so ruthlessly exploited in the devastating sadness and aftermath of 911.
We’ve got used to the process of “threat, reaction, solution” that so often equates to little more than mass murder in the pursuit of goals that power groups in our societies pass off as a vehicle for their own interests.
Think about Iraq. Think about the gains and losses there. What gain? Could it be oil and a strategic presence in the Middle East? What loss? Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian Iraqi lives.
It makes me weep sometimes. I feel very concerned for our future.
The USA and the UK are suffocating in a blanket of national, corporate and personal debt. The amount of money that has been poured into our failing banking systems is now of the order of $15,000,000,000,000 worldwide or one quarter of the value of everything the world produces in a year.
Homelessness and unemployment are rising.
I have resisted writing about our economic world of late, as I didn’t wish to enter the realm of “Grumpy Old Men.”
Well, happy New Year!
It won’t ever be the same again. BUT capitalism albeit that it’s in crisis is far from finished yet.
Forget the National Debt to GDP ratio. We’re in hock. Both in the USA and the UK, we owe through personal, business and government debts three times more than we make in a year. That’s right our overall debt to GDP ratio is 3:1.
So where did all the money come from? If we’re not making it, how can we owe so much? It’s simple. We borrowed it and now, some of our creditors are asking to be repaid.
The system is unable to produce enough real wealth (value) to maintain profitability (surplus value). It has hidden this difficulty by creating masses of “fictitious capital,” claims on wealth that do not correspond with any real wealth (actual commodities and services). These include mountains of debt, profits made on unproductive labour (such as making missiles and other armaments, which, unlike cars and steel production, do not re-enter the cycle of production, and various forms of speculation, as well as using up the environment without replenishing it (a form of “primitive accumulation” also called “looting the future” ). At some point the bill was sure to come due.
Money is a fictitious commodity. Banks create it. Let’s see how it works. I borrow $250,000 to buy an asset. I grant mortgage rights on my asset to the bank as collateral. Seller deposits my $250,000. Bank retains its 10% reserve as required by US law then lends the balance, $225,000. We’ve started creating money. Now we have $475,000 in circulation against my original asset value of $250,000. So it goes on. My $250,000 asset can create money by way of lending funds equal to more than nine times that amount.
It goes without saying if that money is invested in housing stock in a rapidly falling market, let’s say, house prices fall by 30% that seems reasonable right now and in line with bank predictions, then the loss generated by banks exceeds the value of the original asset deposit by well over 100%. The result, as Mr Micawber might have said, is unhappiness.
It’s going to get worse. The CEO of Barclays Bank, and a fellow economist who I know personally, Roger Bootle at Capital Economics, say house prices in the UK will fall by 30% to 35%. I believe their estimate is conservative and likely to be exceeded by at least 15% to 20% if one includes 2008 price drops. The USA is following the same pattern.
The house price boom was the pursuit of fool’s gold.
No additional value was being created by hiked-up house prices.
It was simply a false and untenable form of asset inflation that fuelled unrealistic levels of credit. The world was awash with property millionaires buoyed up by borrowings. No more, since to use another banking expression, they are all about to take a bath.
It’s a double bubble burst, personal assets and debt crashing at the same time means more and more people will struggle to repay their debts against devalued collateral, and end in foreclosure and homelessness.
It’s going to get a lot worse.
The car companies are only the tip of the iceberg. More big businesses, especially those with high levels of debt, will crash in 2009. Big companies have borrowed too much especially those taken off the market in private equity deals.
Rises in unemployment will further reduce consumer spending that in turn will have an effect on economic output, jobs and income.
There will be bigger gaps between rich and poor, and bigger economic contradictions.
There will be homelessness and unaffordable empty houses.
I noticed this week that in the UK, over 760,000 houses are now empty. So who owns them and what will happen? What happens to empty homes in foreclosures when no one can buy them? Worst still what happens to the people on the street?
That thought bugged me, so I rang the press office of the UK charity, Shelter, which works for the homeless. I gather there may be about 500,000 homeless in Britain. But it’s not official as Government statistics say 72,000.
It doesn’t matter which statistic is right there are enough resources to provide people with homes. That’s the point.
Papers recently leaked from the UK Home Office predict a growth in social unrest leading to higher crime, racism, political extremism and other acts of violence.
Britain is likely to borrow further hundreds of billions of pounds to shore up failing businesses and attempt to create jobs in the public sector.
Can Government really make a difference?
Some of the criticisms of the American Presidency make me laugh. So now George Bush is to blame for all manner of social ills.
Really?
I doubt if that guy has the brains to tie up his shoelaces without supervision! He signs things that are produced elsewhere. The power in American society exists outside the Oval Office. You’d better believe it; else go renew your subscription to Naïveté International!
What tools does government have at its disposal?
It has some influence over the base interest rate that has been lowered dramatically and is still failing to produce any real traction in a depressed economy. There is taxation and public spending. Finally, there is legislation and regulation.
The USA and the UK is investing about two trillion dollars of taxpayer funds in the banking sector. It’s a money sink. It may shore up the private equity interests of major shareholders in banking, however I do not believe it will have any further economic benefit.
“The creation of further credit in an already over indebted economy is like giving someone with liver disease their own supply of whisky to help them recover.”
All the bail-outs will do is compensate the banks for poor lending practice and help make good, bad debts and losses already incurred based on the creation of fictitious capital.
The bail out is also socially misdirected. More and more people will suffer as a result of economic failure.
Personal hardship will be rife.
I would prefer to see my taxpayer funds invested in the good of people in society as a whole rather than some wealthy, powerful minority of bank shareholders.
A new “New Deal”?
It seems we are now rejecting the conservative idea that “the market” should function without government supervision and regulation, not to mention intervention. Instead there is a new programme of state regulation and the subsidy of corporations.
Some people are calling for a new “New Deal,” meaning regulation and bail outs of corporations, plus government-sponsored projects and investment in public works.
Undoubtedly there are many ways in which public works would be beneficial. The national infrastructure could be replaced. Ecological projects are desperately needed. Expanding public services would otherwise help people with medical, educational, and employment needs. Life might become less painful for many.
This is not the same thing, however, as ending a deep recession, let alone another Great Depression. The last Great Depression was not cured by the New Deal. It lasted over a decade and only ended with the Second World War. This points to the limitations of a new “New Deal,” even if one was politically feasible.
In these respects, the same considerations apply to Britain as the USA.
Economists everywhere predict a demise in the US dominance of world economic power, and a transfer of that power to the likes of China and other developing economies. I’m not sure if it will be that simple.
Also I do not necessarily believe that Barack Obama and his newly elected government will make much real difference to our world.
His carefully constructed and hypnotic marketing rhetoric appears to have little substance behind it. I am open to be persuaded by well-reasoned, carefully researched, cogent arguments that demonstrate otherwise. I am not open to second hand oft-repeated media pap that, in my view, frequently insults the intelligence of a ten year old.
How I might feel about what’s on offer is perhaps best summed up in the words of Mark Twain:
“In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
So what of “Change you can Believe in”, and Obama’s messages of “Hope”, “Change” and “Believe”?
What the hell do they mean? Change to what? Hope for what? Believe in what?
They are all potent messages, since anyone confronted by hardship and difficulty, in worrying about their future, their family and whether their home mortgage might be foreclosed, might wish for a change in their personal circumstances, might wish to hope for a better life, might wish to believe in their own future.
Is this what Obama is promising?
The power of his meaningless messages is that you can believe and hope for whatever you want them to mean.
We’ve been here before.
The people of the UK believed that their world would change, that they could hope for a better future, when they elected Tony Blair and his social democratic, centrist New Labour party. Did it change? Did it hell! Look where we are now and wake up!
Blair was bright, charismatic and apparently progressive too. He had a lot of “Obama” appeal. His appeal to the nation was one of reunification following the socially divisive and destructive years of Thatcherite Reaganomics, of years of the fall-out from greed and selfishness caused by the free market economy. He delivered nothing to little, which in its own way might go some way to demonstrate the impotence of governments that are not based on any mass social movement campaigning for change.
Instead Blair joined with Bush and America to go wage the “war against terror” in Iraq.
Both Bush and Blair lied grotesquely to their parliaments and the public in order to go wage war in the Middle East.
So who supplied the WMD to Iraq in the first place?
Here’s a piece from the UK Times newspaper, published on December 31 2002, approximately three months before the US / UK invasion of Iraq.
The Times is not known for taking subversive political positions. Historically, it has been the newspaper of the UK establishment:
“DONALD RUMSFELD, the US Defence Secretary and one of the most strident critics of Saddam Hussein, met the Iraqi President in 1983 to ease the way for US companies to sell Baghdad biological and chemical weapons components, including anthrax and bubonic plague cultures, according to newly declassified US Government documents.”
Got it! So the US sold WMD to Iraq then declared war against the country for owning what it supplied to them. Of course, that makes so much sense.
But by the time of the invasion, there were no WMD.
There were certainly no links between Saddam and Al Qaeda of any note.
Besides, Al Qaeda is a fluid, non-state, global organisation with cells throughout the world. No obvious connections have been established between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Saddam may have been a ruthless, unstable tyrant, but that was not the justification for this invasion, nor is it commensurate with or justified by the enormous loss of life caused by the conflict.
Our governments ruthlessly exploited our fears and paranoia based on the attacks of September 11th, 2001. There is no apparent connection between this reprehensible incident and Iraq.
America and the world grieved for the 3,000 lives lost at 911.
Who grieves for the hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, of mothers, children and babies too who have lost their lives in the Iraq war?
No exact casualty figure is known for those Iraqis who have lost their lives in this conflict. There are documented deaths of some 100,000 Iraqi civilians. Others estimate that the total number of Iraqi casualties of war is closer to 1 million with 4 million having been displaced from their homes.
There’s a point here, but before we go on to consider it further, let’s look at a thesis put forward by the former US State Department official, William Blum, who observes that between 1945 and 1999, the US has conducted serious military interventions in over 70 nations to secure the following basic imperatives:
- Making the world safe for American corporations
- Enhancing the financial statements of defence contractors at home…
- Preventing the rise of any successful society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model
- Extending political and economic dominance over as wide an area as possible, as befits “a great power”
Are there any more?
You can make up your own mind where the war against Iraq fits, as it doesn’t fulfil any objectives that were stated by our governments as the basis for engaging in this conflict.
By the way, I am simply reporting Blum’s view, I readily acknowledge that other imperatives might exist, but nevertheless I believe that broadly his view reflects an uncomfortable reality.
I have so many concerns about the so-called “war against terror” not least of which is that the threat of so-called Islamic terrorism is indefinite in its reach and its defeat is indeterminable.
As such it provides a spectre of imminent doom that presents a highly convenient rationale for extending operations worldwide as a basis for extending Anglo-American political and economic dominance and control.
The levels of racism and hatred excited by the “war against terror” against our own Muslim communities, and Islamic nations and communities in general, are such that it would be no surprise to me if they struck back at us.
I do not condone violence; all I would advocate is that we find a way of transforming this latent risk of further conflict before it is too late.
We may have to resolve defence double standards too. If we don’t want other nations to possess nuclear weapons, then we may have to forego them ourselves.
Those who really own the most powerful Weapons of Mass Destruction are frequently those who complain the loudest about others having them too. The combined USA / UK arsenal of WMD is greater than any other one country in the world including Russia that has a massive holding in its nuclear inventory. It doesn’t bring me any peace of mind knowing that fact.
I know so many Americans pin their hopes on Obama to bring peace in our world.
I doubt if any one man can do that. It requires the social masses to bring peace, and frankly most are too complacent, too lazy and too dumbed out by mind-pap media to do that.
I know also that gun sales to white American right-wing rednecks seeking to defend themselves against the onslaught of Obama’s “socialist army” have risen to an uncomfortable level.
Obama is no socialist.
I fear that too many have swallowed the vacuous messages of his massive $0.6 billion marketing campaign too.
Also I fear, and it’s a very uncomfortable thing to say, for attempts on his life. A political assassination might have social consequences too terrible to contemplate, and may be the excuse that the political right wants and needs to seize power and control again, to exploit the same mass hysteria they so ruthlessly exploited in the devastating sadness and aftermath of 911.
We’ve got used to the process of “threat, reaction, solution” that so often equates to little more than mass murder in the pursuit of goals that power groups in our societies pass off as a vehicle for their own interests.
Think about Iraq. Think about the gains and losses there. What gain? Could it be oil and a strategic presence in the Middle East? What loss? Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian Iraqi lives.
It makes me weep sometimes. I feel very concerned for our future.
The end of a story - Part 2 - Love's Passage
It’s difficult to believe that next week will be six months from when I announced to the world that I’d finished my first novel.
It’s moved on perhaps ten drafts since then. I cannot believe how many hundreds of hours I’ve spent working on it now. I’ve changed, reorganised and reordered the plot a number of times. I’m half happy with the result now, still I don’t know if it’s really any good. After months of editing it's finally moving towards completion.
I’ve had a stalwart English academic friend, a professor of English no less, helping me, who rang me this morning complaining of sleep deprivation! My good friend had read into the small hours of this morning to help me move to the completion of what has seemed to me to be an almost unending project.
I had to add another sub-plot to provide more context to what is essentially a complex love story between a man and a woman of mature years. My word count crept up and up. At one point it crashed above 120,000 words and that was after another editing marathon. Its length is now around the one hundred thousand word mark that I set as a maximum target. There are still a couple of areas that may need more work, and that might bring the word count down further.
Editing is a tricky business. Goodness knows how many times I've read and reread this work. I go word blind to errors after a while. I feel so much gratitude to my small team of editing helpers who are able to see what I miss in my blindness.
I’ve sent it out to a group of good friends to read, both men and women. They are drawn from different social backgrounds across three countries and two continents. It’s a tense moment for me. Is what I’ve written any good or is it simply a mess of stuff I wanted to get out of my system? My honest answer is that I simply don’t know.
Finally I’ve decided on the title. It’s called “Love’s Passage” like my blog here. I love the title and I’ve also been able to register the domain, lovespassage.com. Magic! I have a very talented young French graphic designer working on a cover design for me. Thankfully she speaks great English but nevertheless we’ve had to work on translating a chapter or two of the book into French so she gets a real sense of it. I’ll get to see her work in a couple of days and that’s an exciting prospect.
What else to say? If I’m convinced that my story is a marketable proposition and I’m still feeling positive, then I may try and publish a parallel work that contains some of my thoughts about love rewritten from my “Love’s Passage” blog here: Nothing too portentous, simply a collection of essays. I’ll need to do a lot of rewriting, but my blog seems to have spoken to so many people. Sometimes I struggle to keep pace with all the messages and e-mails I get from there.
Both my blog and my story are very far from an abstract or theoretical account of love and life.
My story is simply a work of fiction, nothing more, though in parts it echoes some of the struggles I have had with love.
My blog that may look like a treatise on psychology is far from that too. It’s not that grand either. It's little more than a series of snapshots on my feelings about love as I’ve travelled my journey in life over the past year or so. Both my story and my blog aspire to the realisation of true living love.
True living love might seem like a lofty and often unachievable aspiration in this sometimes cold, rational, analytical world of ours, but I believe it to be possible. Yet, I'm still uncertain as to whether I’ll ever realise the loving goals of what I write. I simply don’t know.
I have no answers. They’re not in my blog, my book nor me. I only describe love’s journey. There is no destination, only “Love’s Passage”. This is the point of my story, in life as well as in this work of fiction.
PS About copyright: I’ve noticed that my Love’s Passage blog is being ripped off here, there and everywhere, especially in the Far East. My words are being used in some Google AdWords money making scam. I can’t seem to do much to stop it, yet I try. If you have any tips on dealing with blog piracy then let me know.
I’ve been much more cautious with my story. I’ve registered it with an international copyright service, the UK copyright service. I deposit copies there so as to show development and ownership of intellectual property over time.
It’s moved on perhaps ten drafts since then. I cannot believe how many hundreds of hours I’ve spent working on it now. I’ve changed, reorganised and reordered the plot a number of times. I’m half happy with the result now, still I don’t know if it’s really any good. After months of editing it's finally moving towards completion.
I’ve had a stalwart English academic friend, a professor of English no less, helping me, who rang me this morning complaining of sleep deprivation! My good friend had read into the small hours of this morning to help me move to the completion of what has seemed to me to be an almost unending project.
I had to add another sub-plot to provide more context to what is essentially a complex love story between a man and a woman of mature years. My word count crept up and up. At one point it crashed above 120,000 words and that was after another editing marathon. Its length is now around the one hundred thousand word mark that I set as a maximum target. There are still a couple of areas that may need more work, and that might bring the word count down further.
Editing is a tricky business. Goodness knows how many times I've read and reread this work. I go word blind to errors after a while. I feel so much gratitude to my small team of editing helpers who are able to see what I miss in my blindness.
I’ve sent it out to a group of good friends to read, both men and women. They are drawn from different social backgrounds across three countries and two continents. It’s a tense moment for me. Is what I’ve written any good or is it simply a mess of stuff I wanted to get out of my system? My honest answer is that I simply don’t know.
Finally I’ve decided on the title. It’s called “Love’s Passage” like my blog here. I love the title and I’ve also been able to register the domain, lovespassage.com. Magic! I have a very talented young French graphic designer working on a cover design for me. Thankfully she speaks great English but nevertheless we’ve had to work on translating a chapter or two of the book into French so she gets a real sense of it. I’ll get to see her work in a couple of days and that’s an exciting prospect.
What else to say? If I’m convinced that my story is a marketable proposition and I’m still feeling positive, then I may try and publish a parallel work that contains some of my thoughts about love rewritten from my “Love’s Passage” blog here: Nothing too portentous, simply a collection of essays. I’ll need to do a lot of rewriting, but my blog seems to have spoken to so many people. Sometimes I struggle to keep pace with all the messages and e-mails I get from there.
Both my blog and my story are very far from an abstract or theoretical account of love and life.
My story is simply a work of fiction, nothing more, though in parts it echoes some of the struggles I have had with love.
My blog that may look like a treatise on psychology is far from that too. It’s not that grand either. It's little more than a series of snapshots on my feelings about love as I’ve travelled my journey in life over the past year or so. Both my story and my blog aspire to the realisation of true living love.
True living love might seem like a lofty and often unachievable aspiration in this sometimes cold, rational, analytical world of ours, but I believe it to be possible. Yet, I'm still uncertain as to whether I’ll ever realise the loving goals of what I write. I simply don’t know.
I have no answers. They’re not in my blog, my book nor me. I only describe love’s journey. There is no destination, only “Love’s Passage”. This is the point of my story, in life as well as in this work of fiction.
PS About copyright: I’ve noticed that my Love’s Passage blog is being ripped off here, there and everywhere, especially in the Far East. My words are being used in some Google AdWords money making scam. I can’t seem to do much to stop it, yet I try. If you have any tips on dealing with blog piracy then let me know.
I’ve been much more cautious with my story. I’ve registered it with an international copyright service, the UK copyright service. I deposit copies there so as to show development and ownership of intellectual property over time.
British humour - Victoria Wood
14/11/08 14:06 Filed in: Humour
Victoria Wood is one of my favourite British female comedy artists. Here she is doing what she does best and being totally irreverent.
This post might be mainly for the benefit of my American readers, but a word of warning to those who aspire to political correctness: I’m English and you won’t find political correctness here!
Here she is singing two songs both of which have me in stitches of laughter:
This post might be mainly for the benefit of my American readers, but a word of warning to those who aspire to political correctness: I’m English and you won’t find political correctness here!
Here she is singing two songs both of which have me in stitches of laughter:
How do we get out of this mess?
24/10/08 13:17 Filed in: Economic Crisis
I find all the numbers about the economy that are being banded around now to be mind-boggling. There are two big numbers that stick in my mind and that is the size of the bank bailouts in the UK and the USA. In the UK, the cost of the bailout plan is estimated to be around $1 trillion and in the USA, $700 billion.
The USA is the largest economy in the world with an annual Gross Domestic Product of $13.8 trillion, that represents about 25% of the world’s total economic output. The UK is the fifth largest economy with a GDP of $2.8 trillion. Ranking at positions of 2, 3, and 4 are Japan, Germany and China. China’s economic importance is growing fast but the size of its economic output is a little over 25% of that of the USA.
These are a lot of numbers I know. I wanted to write them down so I got some perspective on what it is we are talking about.
The size of the UK bank-bail out if it was looked at on the scale of national economies would rank at 13th in the international GDP table. The amount of money that the UK is making available to its banks is greater than the GDP of some 166 other countries.
With the cost of the bailout, the size of the national debt of USA and UK has soared during 2008. Under the Bush administration, the size of the national debt as a proportion of GDP has risen from 60% to around 115%. In the UK, the national debt may reach 100% of GDP or more this year.
Another alarming statistic (Source: BBC Business news 24 October 24, 2008) is that the UK aggregate of national debt, corporate and personal borrowing is three times that of the country’s annual economic output.
So what’s happening now? We’ve had runs on banks and international markets. Now there’s a new game on the streets. We’re having runs on national economies. Banks, hedge funds and mutual funds are demanding repayment from economies that they perceive to be at risk, either because of their reliance on foreign borrowings or because they are net importers of goods and services or both.
The UK pound has fallen 20% against the dollar in the past three months. South Korea’s currency, the won, has fallen by 29%. There are some obvious candidates like Hungary, Ukraine and Iceland lining up in the financial emergency room too.
The South Korean problem is complex and again, whilst the issues are in the banking systems, they have nothing to do with mortgages, housing or sub-prime loans but wholesale capital withdrawals resulting from imprudent deals struck by banks in currency hedges (Currency hedges are intended to offset risk through the simultaneous sale and purchase of forward currency contracts).
South Korea is a strong exporter. Its trading performance and its balance of trade is healthier than UK’s and probably the USA’s too albeit on a smaller scale. It ranks thirteenth in the world in terms of economic output.
Other countries suffering substantial capital withdrawals are South Africa and Argentina.
It’s expected that the UK will announce economic contraction today or “negative economic growth” as the city boys like to call it. It will get worse, possibly much worse as the UK has moved out of manufacturing industries to an economy where its mainstay is the fast contracting financial services sector. The financial services sector in the UK while it only accounts for 4% of total employment represents 30% of the UK’s GDP.
As Mr. Bush Sr. said, “It looks like we’re in deep doo doo now.”
It’s not only about the sub-prime issue anymore. When markets start dealing in national economies, it affects us all. Historically, national instability on a wide scale has tended to result in conflict and wars. Let’s hope we’ve learned some lessons from the past.
I’ve heard lots of arguments about reducing taxation and the bailout bringing benefits from the “trickle down” effect. Trick or treat more like! The treat is that the wealthy benefit, and the trick is that the poor suffer. Trickle down has been argued since Hoover in the twenties. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now. There is nothing to support the argument that it has ever worked.
In principle, I am strongly opposed to the bail out now. I have changed my mind about it. I am opposed to it since it is fundamentally undemocratic. To use, Chomsky’s words, “private corporations are tyrannies who account to no one other than themselves.” They are run for their own profit, not the benefit of the world or the public. In short, they are in it for themselves and no one else. If banks want to play Russian roulette with national economies, they’ll do it if they see profit for themselves.
I don’t believe either that the rot in the banking systems is solely to blame for our current economic difficulties. I have never believed that particular story. The turmoil in our financial systems is, I believe, a symptom of underlying economic instability rather than its cause. Banks may play a big part in that system and be central to its functioning but they do not exercise any overall control of the economy itself, but supply a service to it. The service is debt, more normally called credit. The realisation or appreciation of assets, or the prospect of future earnings offsets the credit risk. Credit is at risk, when economies contract, assets depreciate and earnings do not grow or diminish. When credit goes bad, banks make losses.
The so-called sub-prime crisis may not have happened unless the value of homes, of mortgage collateral, was called into question. The asset value of homes fell which meant that banks were unable to realise the security they had taken in return for the credit that they had extended.
My real concern is for the average person on the street. I don’t know a massive number of people, but I have talked to so many who are suffering or have suffered major economic hardship now. They have lost their jobs, their homes and in one case, I know someone who will be facing bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks. He was formerly a capable and successful businessman. I don’t need government to say, “We’re in recession. It’s official!” I know that to be the case as financial difficulties are multiplying around me all the time. I can see them with my own eyes. Everyone I know, every single person knows someone who is suffering real hardship now.
So what’s the answer? There are possibly two answers, but both amount to the same thing. It’s not that difficult. The answer is about democracy. In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We need to decide whether democracy is what we want and be prepared to do something about it. We have to decide what we want in this world, if it’s public welfare or not. The wellbeing of banks does not and will not necessarily bring about public welfare or alleviate personal financial hardship. They will willingly take taxpayers’ money then spend it in achieving their own ends whether that’s mergers, acquisitions or anything else, so long as it feeds their own self-interest.
The free market ideology was upheld until big businesses started to flounder. Now everyone is talking about increased regulation and control of big business by government. I might ask, in order to achieve what end and for whose benefit?
The political process has become divorced from the people both in the UK and the USA. I do not know anyone who believes they have any real influence over the democratic process. Government is, therefore, no longer democratic or to use Chomsky’s words “there is a democratic deficit”. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, New Labour or Conservative, nothing will change until we recover the essence of Lincoln’s dictum and we assume and take responsibility for public well-being.
Obama will not make a difference unless he works within some overall social organisation that restores democratically representative government. The real power structures within our society have little to do with government, but are capable of being transformed by government if it has the political will to do so. These power structures that are founded on economic self-interest will resist change by using every means at their disposal. It’s no small challenge.
I believe in democracy. I also believe in freedom, personal and social responsibility and self-determination. That’s about all.
I mentioned two options: First. we can pull out of free market economics to an extent and endeavour to restore economic equilibrium through increased government control and regulation. I am not sure it will work. Democratic government represents the will of the people. Business corporations represent their own interests. They are neither the same nor are they necessarily compatible. Our economic systems are failing. It may be that government intervention keeps the market, which is fundamentally unstable and inherently inefficient, on “life support”, but I wonder if the patient will ever recover. This is the first option. It’s about big government and government control. Nevertheless, it requires a fundamental re-alignment of the conduct of government with overall public interest and wider democratic participation.
I’ve had a number of personal crises in my life. They have all been about change and the need to change. I’ve never had a benevolent philanthropist throw money at me so I could carry on living as before. I have had to change. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the Chinese etymology of the word crisis saying that it signifies two words, “danger” and “opportunity”. This is incorrect. In fact the Chinese word crisis is derived from the something closer in meaning to “an incipient moment”, a moment in which something is in the process of becoming. I believe that a crisis is closely connected, not with catastrophe but, with the process of change itself.
My second option is also my preferred one and it involves turning the bailout on its head. It goes like this: We leave the markets and businesses alone to find their own solutions. They may or may not. It matters little. Government provides a safety net to the people and directs its resources entirely for the benefit of the people affected by any systemic economic failure. $700 billion should do it easily, and it would not be a bottomless pit either. In practical terms, this means that it would need to guarantee not the wellbeing of banks, but the safety of people’s money in those banks. It means that it would not legislate massive state initiatives to create jobs like the “new deal”, but support economic initiatives by the people themselves for the benefit and wellbeing of themselves and their own communities. It might even go further and promote work in environmental, health, education and ‘care for the elderly’ initiatives.
The key difference would be one of focus and of catering for people directing their efforts and resources for their own wellbeing, rather than for the benefit of the small minority who control large corporations. Large corporations may or may not survive in such a world. Their survival would be influenced by different factors, not by how much profit they made, but by how well they served a social need or purpose. I would vote for such a world.
It may be that the right solution is a hybrid of these two options. I would not rule out the direct intervention by government in a bank's administration or in facilitating a take-over in order to act in the public interest. My problem is in government using taxpayer's money to buy banks out of a problem that achieves little by way of improving corporate responsibility, and offers no obvious social benefit.
Sadly, I doubt if the answer will come with Barrack Obama, but he does offer the best chance of change. I hope he's not just different icing on the same old cake. There isn’t a hope in hell of getting out of this mess with McCain and Palin.
In conclusion, here’s today’s economic update from Europe. Shares in Europe’s main markets are down between 7% and 8% this morning.
The Bank of England deputy governor, Charles Bean said, "This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
The price of gold, typically, the place people put money in times of crisis has fallen by five per cent.
The USA is the largest economy in the world with an annual Gross Domestic Product of $13.8 trillion, that represents about 25% of the world’s total economic output. The UK is the fifth largest economy with a GDP of $2.8 trillion. Ranking at positions of 2, 3, and 4 are Japan, Germany and China. China’s economic importance is growing fast but the size of its economic output is a little over 25% of that of the USA.
These are a lot of numbers I know. I wanted to write them down so I got some perspective on what it is we are talking about.
The size of the UK bank-bail out if it was looked at on the scale of national economies would rank at 13th in the international GDP table. The amount of money that the UK is making available to its banks is greater than the GDP of some 166 other countries.
With the cost of the bailout, the size of the national debt of USA and UK has soared during 2008. Under the Bush administration, the size of the national debt as a proportion of GDP has risen from 60% to around 115%. In the UK, the national debt may reach 100% of GDP or more this year.
Another alarming statistic (Source: BBC Business news 24 October 24, 2008) is that the UK aggregate of national debt, corporate and personal borrowing is three times that of the country’s annual economic output.
So what’s happening now? We’ve had runs on banks and international markets. Now there’s a new game on the streets. We’re having runs on national economies. Banks, hedge funds and mutual funds are demanding repayment from economies that they perceive to be at risk, either because of their reliance on foreign borrowings or because they are net importers of goods and services or both.
The UK pound has fallen 20% against the dollar in the past three months. South Korea’s currency, the won, has fallen by 29%. There are some obvious candidates like Hungary, Ukraine and Iceland lining up in the financial emergency room too.
The South Korean problem is complex and again, whilst the issues are in the banking systems, they have nothing to do with mortgages, housing or sub-prime loans but wholesale capital withdrawals resulting from imprudent deals struck by banks in currency hedges (Currency hedges are intended to offset risk through the simultaneous sale and purchase of forward currency contracts).
South Korea is a strong exporter. Its trading performance and its balance of trade is healthier than UK’s and probably the USA’s too albeit on a smaller scale. It ranks thirteenth in the world in terms of economic output.
Other countries suffering substantial capital withdrawals are South Africa and Argentina.
It’s expected that the UK will announce economic contraction today or “negative economic growth” as the city boys like to call it. It will get worse, possibly much worse as the UK has moved out of manufacturing industries to an economy where its mainstay is the fast contracting financial services sector. The financial services sector in the UK while it only accounts for 4% of total employment represents 30% of the UK’s GDP.
As Mr. Bush Sr. said, “It looks like we’re in deep doo doo now.”
It’s not only about the sub-prime issue anymore. When markets start dealing in national economies, it affects us all. Historically, national instability on a wide scale has tended to result in conflict and wars. Let’s hope we’ve learned some lessons from the past.
I’ve heard lots of arguments about reducing taxation and the bailout bringing benefits from the “trickle down” effect. Trick or treat more like! The treat is that the wealthy benefit, and the trick is that the poor suffer. Trickle down has been argued since Hoover in the twenties. It didn’t work then, it doesn’t work now. There is nothing to support the argument that it has ever worked.
In principle, I am strongly opposed to the bail out now. I have changed my mind about it. I am opposed to it since it is fundamentally undemocratic. To use, Chomsky’s words, “private corporations are tyrannies who account to no one other than themselves.” They are run for their own profit, not the benefit of the world or the public. In short, they are in it for themselves and no one else. If banks want to play Russian roulette with national economies, they’ll do it if they see profit for themselves.
I don’t believe either that the rot in the banking systems is solely to blame for our current economic difficulties. I have never believed that particular story. The turmoil in our financial systems is, I believe, a symptom of underlying economic instability rather than its cause. Banks may play a big part in that system and be central to its functioning but they do not exercise any overall control of the economy itself, but supply a service to it. The service is debt, more normally called credit. The realisation or appreciation of assets, or the prospect of future earnings offsets the credit risk. Credit is at risk, when economies contract, assets depreciate and earnings do not grow or diminish. When credit goes bad, banks make losses.
The so-called sub-prime crisis may not have happened unless the value of homes, of mortgage collateral, was called into question. The asset value of homes fell which meant that banks were unable to realise the security they had taken in return for the credit that they had extended.
My real concern is for the average person on the street. I don’t know a massive number of people, but I have talked to so many who are suffering or have suffered major economic hardship now. They have lost their jobs, their homes and in one case, I know someone who will be facing bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks. He was formerly a capable and successful businessman. I don’t need government to say, “We’re in recession. It’s official!” I know that to be the case as financial difficulties are multiplying around me all the time. I can see them with my own eyes. Everyone I know, every single person knows someone who is suffering real hardship now.
So what’s the answer? There are possibly two answers, but both amount to the same thing. It’s not that difficult. The answer is about democracy. In the dictionary definition, democracy "is government by the people in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system." In the phrase of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
We need to decide whether democracy is what we want and be prepared to do something about it. We have to decide what we want in this world, if it’s public welfare or not. The wellbeing of banks does not and will not necessarily bring about public welfare or alleviate personal financial hardship. They will willingly take taxpayers’ money then spend it in achieving their own ends whether that’s mergers, acquisitions or anything else, so long as it feeds their own self-interest.
The free market ideology was upheld until big businesses started to flounder. Now everyone is talking about increased regulation and control of big business by government. I might ask, in order to achieve what end and for whose benefit?
The political process has become divorced from the people both in the UK and the USA. I do not know anyone who believes they have any real influence over the democratic process. Government is, therefore, no longer democratic or to use Chomsky’s words “there is a democratic deficit”. Whether it’s Republican or Democrat, New Labour or Conservative, nothing will change until we recover the essence of Lincoln’s dictum and we assume and take responsibility for public well-being.
Obama will not make a difference unless he works within some overall social organisation that restores democratically representative government. The real power structures within our society have little to do with government, but are capable of being transformed by government if it has the political will to do so. These power structures that are founded on economic self-interest will resist change by using every means at their disposal. It’s no small challenge.
I believe in democracy. I also believe in freedom, personal and social responsibility and self-determination. That’s about all.
I mentioned two options: First. we can pull out of free market economics to an extent and endeavour to restore economic equilibrium through increased government control and regulation. I am not sure it will work. Democratic government represents the will of the people. Business corporations represent their own interests. They are neither the same nor are they necessarily compatible. Our economic systems are failing. It may be that government intervention keeps the market, which is fundamentally unstable and inherently inefficient, on “life support”, but I wonder if the patient will ever recover. This is the first option. It’s about big government and government control. Nevertheless, it requires a fundamental re-alignment of the conduct of government with overall public interest and wider democratic participation.
I’ve had a number of personal crises in my life. They have all been about change and the need to change. I’ve never had a benevolent philanthropist throw money at me so I could carry on living as before. I have had to change. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the Chinese etymology of the word crisis saying that it signifies two words, “danger” and “opportunity”. This is incorrect. In fact the Chinese word crisis is derived from the something closer in meaning to “an incipient moment”, a moment in which something is in the process of becoming. I believe that a crisis is closely connected, not with catastrophe but, with the process of change itself.
My second option is also my preferred one and it involves turning the bailout on its head. It goes like this: We leave the markets and businesses alone to find their own solutions. They may or may not. It matters little. Government provides a safety net to the people and directs its resources entirely for the benefit of the people affected by any systemic economic failure. $700 billion should do it easily, and it would not be a bottomless pit either. In practical terms, this means that it would need to guarantee not the wellbeing of banks, but the safety of people’s money in those banks. It means that it would not legislate massive state initiatives to create jobs like the “new deal”, but support economic initiatives by the people themselves for the benefit and wellbeing of themselves and their own communities. It might even go further and promote work in environmental, health, education and ‘care for the elderly’ initiatives.
The key difference would be one of focus and of catering for people directing their efforts and resources for their own wellbeing, rather than for the benefit of the small minority who control large corporations. Large corporations may or may not survive in such a world. Their survival would be influenced by different factors, not by how much profit they made, but by how well they served a social need or purpose. I would vote for such a world.
It may be that the right solution is a hybrid of these two options. I would not rule out the direct intervention by government in a bank's administration or in facilitating a take-over in order to act in the public interest. My problem is in government using taxpayer's money to buy banks out of a problem that achieves little by way of improving corporate responsibility, and offers no obvious social benefit.
Sadly, I doubt if the answer will come with Barrack Obama, but he does offer the best chance of change. I hope he's not just different icing on the same old cake. There isn’t a hope in hell of getting out of this mess with McCain and Palin.
In conclusion, here’s today’s economic update from Europe. Shares in Europe’s main markets are down between 7% and 8% this morning.
The Bank of England deputy governor, Charles Bean said, "This is a once in a lifetime crisis, and possibly the largest financial crisis of its kind in human history."
The price of gold, typically, the place people put money in times of crisis has fallen by five per cent.
Chomsky on the economy
23/10/08 10:25 Filed in: Economic Crisis
This is an interview with Noam Chomsky that was published in the last two days. It is by no means a comprehensive reflection of his views that I find to be both intelligent and refreshing.
Chomsky comes in for a lot of criticism. From the raving right, he's called a loony leftie, and from the loony left, he's called an establishment reactionary! He has something positive to say about participatory democracy and that in my view makes him someone worth listening to:
Chomsky comes in for a lot of criticism. From the raving right, he's called a loony leftie, and from the loony left, he's called an establishment reactionary! He has something positive to say about participatory democracy and that in my view makes him someone worth listening to:
La cuisine française for English tourists!
23/10/08 09:42 Filed in: Humour
Yesterday, I ate out with a couple of English friends in the seaside town of Pornic very close to where I live in France. I always try and speak French here, especially in shops and restaurants. I may not do so perfectly, but I do always try and find the French are helpful when I make the effort. My friends are a very sweet couple, big hearted, loving cockneys from East London. On my arrival at the restaurant, they had taken copies of the English tourist menu, something I would never do. Too late, that was the menu we got!
If nothing else, the menu made me laugh. In fact, it made me laugh so much I almost peed my pants! The English translation was so bad it made my French look brilliant. I took pen and paper and copied out parts of the menu so I could share it here, it was so funny.
Here are a couple of pictures of beautiful Pornic followed by some extracts from the menu:
Menu
Croutons, worn cheese and rust
Dung of warm goat (coated with breadcrumbs)
Variation of crudenesses
Priest’s profiteroles – Priests of Nantes with caramelised apples
Detail of the butcher and his sauce
Skate country
Greedy salad
Burned out salmon
Small curry of seas
Purse of St Jacques
Burned out duck breast with wipes poivrade
Greedy coffee
I had the dung of warm goat (in breadcrumbs). It was delicious! It was baked goat’s cheese served on croutons (no rust!) with a fresh bed of salad (not too greedy!) that included apples and grapes. Yum! But who would have guessed?
If nothing else, the menu made me laugh. In fact, it made me laugh so much I almost peed my pants! The English translation was so bad it made my French look brilliant. I took pen and paper and copied out parts of the menu so I could share it here, it was so funny.
Here are a couple of pictures of beautiful Pornic followed by some extracts from the menu:
Menu
Croutons, worn cheese and rust
Dung of warm goat (coated with breadcrumbs)
Variation of crudenesses
Priest’s profiteroles – Priests of Nantes with caramelised apples
Detail of the butcher and his sauce
Skate country
Greedy salad
Burned out salmon
Small curry of seas
Purse of St Jacques
Burned out duck breast with wipes poivrade
Greedy coffee
I had the dung of warm goat (in breadcrumbs). It was delicious! It was baked goat’s cheese served on croutons (no rust!) with a fresh bed of salad (not too greedy!) that included apples and grapes. Yum! But who would have guessed?
Husband Crèche
17/10/08 10:43 Filed in: Humour
A blogger's update
16/10/08 21:03 Filed in: Blogs and Blogging
It’s time for a geek’s update of technical progress here. This website was launched in prototype form on April 28th and went live on May 9th. It’s five months old as of last week.
Here’s what’s happening:
1. Daily visitors to the site including feed-burner are about 66 now (Just under 2,000 per month). 33% of these come from BlogCatalog, another 31% come from Google search, about 6% come direct and the rest come from various other referrers including individual web-sites. In all, about 62% of traffic comes from referring sites, 33% comes from search engines and another 5% comes direct.
2. New visitors are the majority at about 52%
3. USA accounts for most visits – 37%, then France – 35% then the UK – 10%. Over the past five months, the site has drawn readers from no less than 55 countries.
4. Most popular content was Geoffrey’s Farrago – 16%, then Love’s Passage 13%, then Falling Forwards 12%
5. Most bizarre search phrases:
- Sexual titillation in social networks
- Underwater pigs in Liverpool
- Consensual autocrats (Eh?)
- Penis, love center of the brain (Is that a "dickhead", as we say in the UK?)
- Sexual love between siblings and foreplay (Enough!)
6. Current rate of growth in number of visitors = 30% to 50% per month over past three months
7. Total number of blog posts = 66
This site is still very new. Overall, I’m happy with progress! Search engine page rankings are not great, but I’ve concluded that, in part, may be a result of how I’ve constructed the site. They are improving at least.
Until the next time…Au revoir
Here’s what’s happening:
1. Daily visitors to the site including feed-burner are about 66 now (Just under 2,000 per month). 33% of these come from BlogCatalog, another 31% come from Google search, about 6% come direct and the rest come from various other referrers including individual web-sites. In all, about 62% of traffic comes from referring sites, 33% comes from search engines and another 5% comes direct.
2. New visitors are the majority at about 52%
3. USA accounts for most visits – 37%, then France – 35% then the UK – 10%. Over the past five months, the site has drawn readers from no less than 55 countries.
4. Most popular content was Geoffrey’s Farrago – 16%, then Love’s Passage 13%, then Falling Forwards 12%
5. Most bizarre search phrases:
- Sexual titillation in social networks
- Underwater pigs in Liverpool
- Consensual autocrats (Eh?)
- Penis, love center of the brain (Is that a "dickhead", as we say in the UK?)
- Sexual love between siblings and foreplay (Enough!)
6. Current rate of growth in number of visitors = 30% to 50% per month over past three months
7. Total number of blog posts = 66
This site is still very new. Overall, I’m happy with progress! Search engine page rankings are not great, but I’ve concluded that, in part, may be a result of how I’ve constructed the site. They are improving at least.
Until the next time…Au revoir
Economic crisis - a reality check
I can’t remember voting for a mixed state / private economy. Can you? One where the state invests taxpayer’s funds in the wellbeing of the banking system…Should I take comfort in the USA’s and UK’s governments desire to protect my money and savings or might I suspect they are protecting someone else’s interests?
I don’t believe there’s any simple way out of this mess. I don't believe that the bank bail-outs that are taking place around the globe will resolve the economic problems of recession. Sadly, I don't believe that there will be any real lessons learned from the current financial meltdown until it's too late.
Our economic systems are wrecking the world we live in. We ignore the damage they inflict on our environment for the sake of expedient profits. Ultimately the damage we are causing to our natural world threatens human survival. In denial like ostriches, we bury our heads in the sand while working towards our own extinction for the sake of making a fast buck.
The American biologist E. O. Wilson estimates that if the entire world consumes at the same rate as the USA, then we would need FOUR PLANET EARTHS to sustain humankind NOW.
We invest our efforts for the profits of the few at the expense of well-being for the world as a whole. We prop up our flagging economies through investment in a massive military murdering machine.
The numbers that we talk about to bail out our banks are astronomical when compared to the sums needed to provide all of humanity with basic needs like water, sanitation, education and health care.
We can forgive the debts of greedy errant bankers, but we are unable to forgive the debts of developing countries. It's time to change!
Let's put these numbers into perspective. The current USA/UK combined bank bail-out exceeds $1.5 trillion. These are the additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:
| Global Priority | $U.S. Billions |
| Basic education for all | 6 |
Water and sanitation for all | 9 |
Reproductive health for all women | 12 |
Basic health and nutrition | 13 |
| Total | 40 |
That’s 40 billion dollars. How does that look against a $1.5 trillion bail out the bankers plan in the UK and USA?
I feel it’s time for a reality check as these amounts don’t make too much sense to me.
Here are some other numbers, a stark and daunting contrast (statistics mainly from UNICEF and the World Bank). They are shocking:
Almost half the world — over three billion people — lives on less than $2.50 a day.
At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.
The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world
According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Based on enrolment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls.
Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.
Water problems affect half of humanity:
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
• Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
• 1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 litres a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 litres day.)
• Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea.
• The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit. The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.
Number of children in the world - 2.2 billion
Number in poverty - 1 billion (every second child)
Shelter, safe water and health
For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:
• 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
• 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
• 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)
Children out of education worldwide - 121 million
Survival for children
Worldwide:
• 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
• 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation
Health of children
Worldwide:
• 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
• 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)
Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with human progress. Urban slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a wide margin.
Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.
In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuel wood, charcoal and animal dung—to meet their energy needs for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.
Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4,000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.
In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%.
The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption.
1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity.
The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
World gross domestic product (world population approximately 6.5 billion) in 2006 was $48.2 trillion in 2006.
• The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76%).
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
• Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%)
• Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion (20.7%).
The world’s low income countries (2.4 billion people) account for just 2.4% of world exports.
The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”
In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004.
For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.
51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.
The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money. An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
* 3 to 1 in 1820
* 11 to 1 in 1913
* 35 to 1 in 1950
* 44 to 1 in 1973
* 72 to 1 in 1992
“Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.”
For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
• Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
• Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
• Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
• Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalisation.
200 multi-national corporations now dominate one quarter of the world’s economic activity.
Here's a quote I found last night that I liked in this context. In 1941, the editor Edward Dowling wrote: "The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."
À la prochaine...till next time...
Not quite the Oscars!
14/10/08 09:23 Filed in: Blogs and Blogging
I have been very slow in passing on awards! Today is the day! It’s Geoffrey’s blog Oscars. Like all Oscar ceremonies, I do expect overlong, sycophantic, tear-filled acceptance speeches from the recipients with votes of thanks to dogs, cats, budgerigars and the odd few glasses of red wine. (If you want to send whole bottles, e-mail me and I’ll give you my mailing address.)
Some of these awards are memes apparently. I do not know exactly what a meme is, only that is pronounced memm and not me! me! According to my dictionary a meme is “a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” That sounds a bit dodgy to me!
I’m going to give some awards to bloggers who I know will not necessarily display them for personal or aesthetic reasons. To me, that’s less important than the act of recognition. It’s the thought that counts, right?
The first award I have to bestow is the Arte Y Pico award.
Thanks to Tamera for this award.
The rules are:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
Okay, so here goes:
For the best blogs EVER, I would like to give this award to:
Timethief’s “This time, this space”
Timethief is one of the seven wonders of the world to me. Her command of subject matter is dauntingly impressive. Her research of subjects is rigorous and comprehensive. Her writing is intelligent, incisive, accessible and clear. What’s more, it’s a darned good read!
I have often wondered what her first name is. I may have even asked her. I know she prefers privacy and anonymity here although I suspect though that she may have one of those names from a past era to which she is reluctant to admit, like Doris, Agnes, Ethel or Gertrude. So what do you think?
Melindaville
This blog is simply amazing. It plots the life journey and brave struggle of Melinda, who now lives on both sides of the American continent and works as a psychology professor. Melinda has in her time suffered massive child abuse and consequent heroin addiction from which she is now fully recovered. She has worked as a rock singer with the evocatively named band, the wild women of Borneo, a high class call girl, an exotic dancer and a Shakespearean actress. Her journey of recovery and success is as impressive as she is. This is a must read blog. Oh! And by the way, I have very good reason to believe that her real name is Melinda, and not Doris!
My third and last, favourite is one of the most inspiring blogs I know:
It’s Robin Easton’s Naked in Eden. So much has been written or said about this amazing woman who currently has two books approaching publication. I have little to add, other than, “Just go there!” and “Robin, let me know when your books are published so I can go buy them!” Simply brilliant!
Two more:
Best newcomer blog
Jackie Smith’s Jack Mandora
Jackie’s place is full of the sounds and life of Jamaica. A teacher by profession, her subjects draw on literature, poetry and life in the Caribbean. What’s more she is a very warm, engaging and interesting person! Great blog, Jackie!
Best art blog
This place I love. It’s Eddie’s photography blog the Cliff Walk. I can’t praise this blog highly enough. Eddie has a fantastic eye for a great shot. His images have humour, human interest, creativity, social commentary; every one has something to say! Based in the Pacific North west, his work reminds me of the famous French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson and that alone is praise enough. He has a really superb eye for the moment that is best summed up in the words of Cartier-Bresson himself, "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oops! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." Eddie frequently captures that creative moment. Well done, Eddie!
Two more awards that were passed onto me by the very funny and entertaining Jane “Mrs T” Turley, crazy housewife from the English Home Counties :
First is the “Honest Blogger Award”. This is not a meme and no special conditions apply. I want it to be special, however, so I am going to limit this award to two blogs only. I am going to award an area that some may think is wildly out of character for me. It’s not really. Who I would like to recognise is two young mothers who I feel are doing an exceptional and outstanding job in motherhood and upholding healthy family life in very difficult times. On reading both their blogs, I had a single overwhelming reaction. It was, “Cor! I would have loved a mum like that…how special these young women are.” Yes, I know. I'm a softie!
So here you are, my special awards for happy and healthy motherhood go to:
Julia at MidWest Moms
And Elaine at My Life as a stay at home Mom
Next…!
The “Brillante Weblog 2008 Premio Award, (for which the same conditions apply as for the Arte Y Pico Award) goes to:
Melindaville
Jackie Smith’s Jack Mandora
Henry at SoulMerlin’s reflections
Henry at SoulMerlin’s Almanack
Henry, your blogs are amongst the most peaceful places I know on the net. I love all four of them. It was hard to choose these two!
Jennifer’s Writing to survive
I’m looking forward to your “writing to thrive” days, Jennifer! I know they will be here soon.
I’ve had a lot of awards gathering dust in this cupboard of mine. This next award is not a Meme and again I wish to bestow it with some meaning that is special to me. Thank you to Shirley of Proof Positivity for her butterfly award. “A butterfly goes through a cycle of life. Starting from something that may not be so pretty to something beautiful and majestic. A butterfly is inspirational. It gently glides through the wind as if music plays under its wings.”
Here we go:
I wanted to get this one here in somewhere. I know her website is already so weighed down in awards that I fear another may cause it to sink! Someone who really is a butterfly to me is the very lovely Tamera. What I love most about this site or more particularly about Tamera herself is her boundless warmth, compassion, kindness, positive energy and generosity of spirit. I know she’ll call me an old flatterer or some such thing, but my words are heartfelt. I’m glad that Tamera is in this world.
Ahem! Now I’m not sure I can call these next two butterflies. But in the spirit of bringing something positive into life, they both do it for me. What they bring into the world is laughter and they do it in abundance. Why these blogs are special to me is that I live overseas from my home country and sometimes I feel isolated and long for English humour. If ever I feel down, I visit their sites and generally come away with a smile on my face. They are the two best humour blogs I know:
Jane Turley’s diary of a mad housewife
Master Sy and his dead hamster. It’s bonkers!
That’s it. Thank you all.
Some of these awards are memes apparently. I do not know exactly what a meme is, only that is pronounced memm and not me! me! According to my dictionary a meme is “a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another.” That sounds a bit dodgy to me!
I’m going to give some awards to bloggers who I know will not necessarily display them for personal or aesthetic reasons. To me, that’s less important than the act of recognition. It’s the thought that counts, right?
The first award I have to bestow is the Arte Y Pico award.
Thanks to Tamera for this award.
The rules are:
1. You have to pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language
2. Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3. Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
Okay, so here goes:
For the best blogs EVER, I would like to give this award to:
Timethief’s “This time, this space”
Timethief is one of the seven wonders of the world to me. Her command of subject matter is dauntingly impressive. Her research of subjects is rigorous and comprehensive. Her writing is intelligent, incisive, accessible and clear. What’s more, it’s a darned good read!
I have often wondered what her first name is. I may have even asked her. I know she prefers privacy and anonymity here although I suspect though that she may have one of those names from a past era to which she is reluctant to admit, like Doris, Agnes, Ethel or Gertrude. So what do you think?
Melindaville
This blog is simply amazing. It plots the life journey and brave struggle of Melinda, who now lives on both sides of the American continent and works as a psychology professor. Melinda has in her time suffered massive child abuse and consequent heroin addiction from which she is now fully recovered. She has worked as a rock singer with the evocatively named band, the wild women of Borneo, a high class call girl, an exotic dancer and a Shakespearean actress. Her journey of recovery and success is as impressive as she is. This is a must read blog. Oh! And by the way, I have very good reason to believe that her real name is Melinda, and not Doris!
My third and last, favourite is one of the most inspiring blogs I know:
It’s Robin Easton’s Naked in Eden. So much has been written or said about this amazing woman who currently has two books approaching publication. I have little to add, other than, “Just go there!” and “Robin, let me know when your books are published so I can go buy them!” Simply brilliant!
Two more:
Best newcomer blog
Jackie Smith’s Jack Mandora
Jackie’s place is full of the sounds and life of Jamaica. A teacher by profession, her subjects draw on literature, poetry and life in the Caribbean. What’s more she is a very warm, engaging and interesting person! Great blog, Jackie!
Best art blog
This place I love. It’s Eddie’s photography blog the Cliff Walk. I can’t praise this blog highly enough. Eddie has a fantastic eye for a great shot. His images have humour, human interest, creativity, social commentary; every one has something to say! Based in the Pacific North west, his work reminds me of the famous French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson and that alone is praise enough. He has a really superb eye for the moment that is best summed up in the words of Cartier-Bresson himself, "There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative," he said. "Oops! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." Eddie frequently captures that creative moment. Well done, Eddie!
Two more awards that were passed onto me by the very funny and entertaining Jane “Mrs T” Turley, crazy housewife from the English Home Counties :
First is the “Honest Blogger Award”. This is not a meme and no special conditions apply. I want it to be special, however, so I am going to limit this award to two blogs only. I am going to award an area that some may think is wildly out of character for me. It’s not really. Who I would like to recognise is two young mothers who I feel are doing an exceptional and outstanding job in motherhood and upholding healthy family life in very difficult times. On reading both their blogs, I had a single overwhelming reaction. It was, “Cor! I would have loved a mum like that…how special these young women are.” Yes, I know. I'm a softie!
So here you are, my special awards for happy and healthy motherhood go to:
Julia at MidWest Moms
And Elaine at My Life as a stay at home Mom
Next…!
The “Brillante Weblog 2008 Premio Award, (for which the same conditions apply as for the Arte Y Pico Award) goes to:
Melindaville
Jackie Smith’s Jack Mandora
Henry at SoulMerlin’s reflections
Henry at SoulMerlin’s Almanack
Henry, your blogs are amongst the most peaceful places I know on the net. I love all four of them. It was hard to choose these two!
Jennifer’s Writing to survive
I’m looking forward to your “writing to thrive” days, Jennifer! I know they will be here soon.
I’ve had a lot of awards gathering dust in this cupboard of mine. This next award is not a Meme and again I wish to bestow it with some meaning that is special to me. Thank you to Shirley of Proof Positivity for her butterfly award. “A butterfly goes through a cycle of life. Starting from something that may not be so pretty to something beautiful and majestic. A butterfly is inspirational. It gently glides through the wind as if music plays under its wings.”
Here we go:
I wanted to get this one here in somewhere. I know her website is already so weighed down in awards that I fear another may cause it to sink! Someone who really is a butterfly to me is the very lovely Tamera. What I love most about this site or more particularly about Tamera herself is her boundless warmth, compassion, kindness, positive energy and generosity of spirit. I know she’ll call me an old flatterer or some such thing, but my words are heartfelt. I’m glad that Tamera is in this world.
Ahem! Now I’m not sure I can call these next two butterflies. But in the spirit of bringing something positive into life, they both do it for me. What they bring into the world is laughter and they do it in abundance. Why these blogs are special to me is that I live overseas from my home country and sometimes I feel isolated and long for English humour. If ever I feel down, I visit their sites and generally come away with a smile on my face. They are the two best humour blogs I know:
Jane Turley’s diary of a mad housewife
Master Sy and his dead hamster. It’s bonkers!
That’s it. Thank you all.
Financial crisis humour
10/10/08 13:41 Filed in: Humour | Economic Crisis
Bail-out latest!
08/10/08 17:05 Filed in: Economic Crisis | Economy
This afternoon, the UK government has announced a bank bail-out plan of £500 billion or US $880 billion. Funds are to be made available to banks by way of capital, loans and loan guarantees in return for interest bearing preference share holdings.
The FTSE 100 UK stock exchange index fell by 5% today. The French and German stock exchanges fell by approximately 6%.
Banks throughout the world have co-ordinated a reduction in interest rates to try to stave off the crisis.
Those are the facts. This time, I'm speechless. I predicted a crisis in the financial sector this time last year. This is far beyond anything I had envisaged.
Since writing this short post, that is based on news reports from the state-owned BBC, differing estimates on the size of the UK bail-out have been published. These vary between £400 billion and £500 billion or $692 billion and $880 billion. Whichever it is, it's a very sizeable amount from an economy that is significantly smaller than that of the USA.
UK GDP = $1.93 trillion
USA GDP = $13.13 trillion
(2006 estimates)
Update - Thursday 9th October 2008
There is still some confusion about how big the UK bail-out is. According to my reckoning, it is the higher figure of £500 billion or $880 billion. Here's how it stacks up:
- Up to £50bn of taxpayer money to buy preference shares - £25 billion will be released initially with a further £25 billion at a later date
- An extension of the Special Liquidity Scheme introduced after the collapse of Bear Stearns to allow £200 billion of funds to be made available to banks
- A guarantee of the debt issued by banks of up to £250 billion
As conventional economics goes, it looks like a more intelligent plan than the US bail-out that focused simply on buying "toxic" assets at undermined prices. It seems to address the three main issues of the banks that are capital, funding and liquidity that the US plan fails to do (in my opinion).
I like to get some perspective on these amounts as they are simply fairy tale numbers to me. Here's the bail-out deal compared with UK spending on health and education:
European stock markets in UK, France and Germany fell again today.
The FTSE 100 UK stock exchange index fell by 5% today. The French and German stock exchanges fell by approximately 6%.
Banks throughout the world have co-ordinated a reduction in interest rates to try to stave off the crisis.
Those are the facts. This time, I'm speechless. I predicted a crisis in the financial sector this time last year. This is far beyond anything I had envisaged.
Since writing this short post, that is based on news reports from the state-owned BBC, differing estimates on the size of the UK bail-out have been published. These vary between £400 billion and £500 billion or $692 billion and $880 billion. Whichever it is, it's a very sizeable amount from an economy that is significantly smaller than that of the USA.
UK GDP = $1.93 trillion
USA GDP = $13.13 trillion
(2006 estimates)
Update - Thursday 9th October 2008
There is still some confusion about how big the UK bail-out is. According to my reckoning, it is the higher figure of £500 billion or $880 billion. Here's how it stacks up:
- Up to £50bn of taxpayer money to buy preference shares - £25 billion will be released initially with a further £25 billion at a later date
- An extension of the Special Liquidity Scheme introduced after the collapse of Bear Stearns to allow £200 billion of funds to be made available to banks
- A guarantee of the debt issued by banks of up to £250 billion
As conventional economics goes, it looks like a more intelligent plan than the US bail-out that focused simply on buying "toxic" assets at undermined prices. It seems to address the three main issues of the banks that are capital, funding and liquidity that the US plan fails to do (in my opinion).
I like to get some perspective on these amounts as they are simply fairy tale numbers to me. Here's the bail-out deal compared with UK spending on health and education:
European stock markets in UK, France and Germany fell again today.
Teetering on the edge...
06/10/08 12:41 Filed in: Economic Crisis | Economy
Good morning, America.
Today, the principal European stock markets have fallen by between 7% and 9%. The economy of Iceland looks to be teetering on the edge of collapse. Governments throughout Europe are seeking to bolster up the fortunes of failing financial institutions.
My heart wasn’t in that piece I wrote about the big bank bail out last week. I simply didn’t believe that the US sub-prime mortgage issue was at the root of the problem. I still don’t.
Governments can scramble to bring market turmoil back into some sort of balance. I believe they will fail. And you don’t need a crash course in economics and politics to work out why.
Markets arose from a basic acknowledgement that humans are an interdependent species. They fulfilled the need of intermediating in an exchange of human value. They had their roots in the requirements of humans to live in mutually supportive relations. Notionally, at least, we swapped value via markets that were simply a medium of exchange as was money.
Something else happened, and markets took on the guise, not of exchanging social needs, but accumulating wealth. Their principal function was to generate profit for the few by the many. Markets now create wealth but they fail to distribute that wealth effectively. Markets have become dislocated from our social world.
People are frightened. They fear for their livelihoods, their wellbeing, their jobs and their savings. That is no surprise at all. I share those fears too.
Free market capitalism takes no account of that which it cannot commodify. Basic human needs of respect, safety, love and affection, wellbeing, security and protection have no place in a market economy. Market economics must return to some very basic questions of use value and exchange value. We have to take into account the real value of human effort and work, and that is very different from its market value. Market economics does not value affective or social relationships, the family, the community, the environment or the world we live in, all of which are vital to human wellbeing and survival.
Free market economics has given birth to a monster, one that has no regard for human wellbeing. As hard as governments may try to bring it under control, they will fail. The free market has no social purpose or social conscience.
I will say something that is perhaps deeply unpopular. I believe that the post 9/11 paranoia has been based on something that Jungians call “shadow projection” - seeking an object of blame outside ourselves for that which we cannot deal or cope with in our own reality. Don’t get me wrong, 9/11 was an appalling act of terrorism. I oppose it wholeheartedly. But I believe that the notion of a “Muslim threat of terrorism that undermines our western civilization” (whatever that is) is an ideological distraction from those things going badly wrong closer to home…right under our noses in the free market economy. There may be more terrorism yet. Economic instability in the west is likely to be seen as a terrorist opportunity. Market economics is destabilizing the Middle East too. So is the cause sub-prime mortgages? I would doubt that too, wouldn’t you?
That’s it for now. This blog has no economic value and I must go off and work out how to earn a few pennies. Till the next time… À Bientôt.
Today, the principal European stock markets have fallen by between 7% and 9%. The economy of Iceland looks to be teetering on the edge of collapse. Governments throughout Europe are seeking to bolster up the fortunes of failing financial institutions.
My heart wasn’t in that piece I wrote about the big bank bail out last week. I simply didn’t believe that the US sub-prime mortgage issue was at the root of the problem. I still don’t.
Governments can scramble to bring market turmoil back into some sort of balance. I believe they will fail. And you don’t need a crash course in economics and politics to work out why.
Markets arose from a basic acknowledgement that humans are an interdependent species. They fulfilled the need of intermediating in an exchange of human value. They had their roots in the requirements of humans to live in mutually supportive relations. Notionally, at least, we swapped value via markets that were simply a medium of exchange as was money.
Something else happened, and markets took on the guise, not of exchanging social needs, but accumulating wealth. Their principal function was to generate profit for the few by the many. Markets now create wealth but they fail to distribute that wealth effectively. Markets have become dislocated from our social world.
People are frightened. They fear for their livelihoods, their wellbeing, their jobs and their savings. That is no surprise at all. I share those fears too.
Free market capitalism takes no account of that which it cannot commodify. Basic human needs of respect, safety, love and affection, wellbeing, security and protection have no place in a market economy. Market economics must return to some very basic questions of use value and exchange value. We have to take into account the real value of human effort and work, and that is very different from its market value. Market economics does not value affective or social relationships, the family, the community, the environment or the world we live in, all of which are vital to human wellbeing and survival.
Free market economics has given birth to a monster, one that has no regard for human wellbeing. As hard as governments may try to bring it under control, they will fail. The free market has no social purpose or social conscience.
I will say something that is perhaps deeply unpopular. I believe that the post 9/11 paranoia has been based on something that Jungians call “shadow projection” - seeking an object of blame outside ourselves for that which we cannot deal or cope with in our own reality. Don’t get me wrong, 9/11 was an appalling act of terrorism. I oppose it wholeheartedly. But I believe that the notion of a “Muslim threat of terrorism that undermines our western civilization” (whatever that is) is an ideological distraction from those things going badly wrong closer to home…right under our noses in the free market economy. There may be more terrorism yet. Economic instability in the west is likely to be seen as a terrorist opportunity. Market economics is destabilizing the Middle East too. So is the cause sub-prime mortgages? I would doubt that too, wouldn’t you?
That’s it for now. This blog has no economic value and I must go off and work out how to earn a few pennies. Till the next time… À Bientôt.