261. Beware the Disconnect

The mainstream media has recently been awash with government statements that the UK economy is doing well – certainly better than expected. Also, Brexit is “not a disaster” (D. Cameron at Davos – well he’d have to start thinking that wouldn’t he – for the sake of his sanity) There are more folk employed than ever in the UK. Everything in fact is going swimmingly. At the same time we hear that working class youngsters are increasingly fearful of attending university because of sky rocketing debt. Deprived areas in the UK are seeing – for the first time – a decline in health and life expectancy. Life expectancy and health have been social positive v negative indicators since the Booth & Rowntree poverty reports of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In my twisted ‘wrong’ world of out here, I see the generation currently under 40 with their faces stuck in their phones (see last week’s blog) economically, socially, environmentally, blighted. And – thanks to the highly regarded BES (British Election Survey) we now know that Corbyn’s youthquake was NOT. Young people did not come out en masse to vote for their future in Theresa May’s disastrous snap general election. And who could blame them, suffocating as they are under the economic mismanagement and careless economics and social selfishness that has become entrenched.

Life crushing debt from the moment they leave the parental home is standard now.

Homelessness – overt and hidden is at epidemic levels in the UK.

Insecure, low paid, future-bleak jobs or worse – zero hours contracts (see blog 174. Zero hours is not a contract) have quickly become accepted norms.

Never being able to buy homes or even have a secure tenancy in a decent property – which was the golden post-war promise to Britain, is the new reality. And this, when our cinema screens are awash with sentimental WWI & WWII films.

And – no pensions.

As company after company slough off their pension responsibilities – whether it’s Sir Philip Green to buy yachts or Tata steel in Wales – because Cameron’s government vetoed French and German attempts to protect EU steel from Chinese over-production or most recently Carillion – the company that enjoyed government contracts long after it was in a mess and has now handed its pension deficit over to the government for the tax payer to pick up (while continuing to pay bonuses and shareholder dividends) or Barclays and any number of other companies – because – well everyone else is doing it.

Save me from my parallel universe and prove me wrong.

PLEASE

The truth of course is always more straightforward than it is presented. It’s not about complicated contradictions. It is the simple old equation that when a tiny minority get into a frenzy of too much wealth and too much power there is not enough left of resources, compassion, care and humanity for the vast majority. In other words everything goes to shit. It has happened before if your memory stretches back that far The Great Depression of the 1930s – if not so then just go back as far as 2008. The thing is we live in a speeded up world and the gaps between these crises will get shorter.

We must deconstruct what is meant by The Economy. When capitalism is as unfettered as it is right now The Economy is not anything to do with wellbeing or fairness or the majority of people doing well. That’s nonsense unless you are a delusional or self-serving quote Rex Tillerson who still buys into the idea of trickle-down economics i.e. if those at the top get richer there will be an economic benefit which will trickle down to us mere mortals. That has NEVER worked.

So it is simply this. There may be more money sloshing about and moving around. There may be more profits being made. There are definitely more profits being skimmed off. There may be more billionaires buying art (see blog 253. Souls for Sale) But the number of folk benefitting from all this sloshing around wealth is tiny. Miniscule. The disconnect and the apparent confusion exists in that huge, ever growing cavern between those who have accumulated more wealth than they could spend in 100 lifetimes and those who cannot get clean water or a secure job or a roof over their heads or medical care for their chilren.

I would – as I often do – point you to other posts on this blog where I’ve outlined this thread of thought but there are far too many to choose from…

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And thanks to The National – one of the newspapers – along with The Guardian, The Independent and The Glasgow Herald that provide me with therapy by regularly printing my letters (see blog 244. A Litter of Letters) thus helping me let off sardonic steam and stay sane. This week they printed a combination of x2 letters I wrote about that wanker Gavin Williamson – our Secretary of State for Defence…

http://www.thenational.scot/news/15903069.Letters

260. This is my phone – and yet I live.

(+ this week’s book offers)

This is my phone –

No apps to tell me what I’ve eaten

No app for algorithms to tell me what music to listen to

No access to facebook (no facebook) to check on the 500 ‘friends’ I don’t know.

No twitter no twaddle

No mainline to my life for targeted advertising from consumer stalkers trying to turn me into a CMo (Consumer Moron)

No map app – so I actually have to look where I am going

No daily recharge

No camera function - so I see the world around me first hand

No cricked neck from permanently looking DOWN

No missing my actual life because of manically checking if the world is ‘liking’ me

No forced upgrades

No shit I didn’t ask for and don’t want.

As society self-harms with abandon; shopping in stores that are aiming to be human-staff-free, banks (ditto) stumbling towards a moronic future where being a moron is encouraged and facilitated by technology because it is so SO good for profits, I feel as if the Matrix is deep and I choked down the reality pill. 

OOOOH the media cry to self-driving cars, like children watching fireworks. Who asked for them? Who debated if they were a good idea? Is the answer to road deaths and bad health and wasting the earth’s resources not already with us? Don’t we call it public transport? (or walking – God forbid) But this is where rampant capitalism is leading us by the credit card.

SO – forget the Zombie analogy as in A. Chakrabortty’s article in The Guardian The Guardian last week

or in this blog last year Empire Zombies

Rampant Capitalism is a super vampire; smart/i phones are its fangs. CMos – the Lucy Westenra of this analogy -  are inured to the tech monster. The seemingly unquenchable desire to spend is its blood-feast. Everything else about us is obsolete. Soon humans will be blood sacks in the back seat of a motorised wheelchair capsule able only to swipe a screen. The vein through which it sucks out your life is your phone.

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For a list of all the other ‘essential’ technology I don’t have - T.V (since last century), car (since 2005) – or have never owned - dishwasher, microwave - check out blog 53. I Suffer from PANTS

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Remember to check out My BOOKS

259. Sundays could actually save us…

Large swathes of the celebrity-stupefied and T.V. anaesthetised population hanker for the good-old-days. What they mean is a Utopia where white people could be racist without fear of criticism and it was ok to grab a woman’s bottom in the office or openly discriminate. As we are learning, many of these things never went away but they were mercifully regarded as unacceptable. However, one thing does not appear on the wish list.

Yup – while some of us feel the gains made in Britain and other parts of Europe since WWII are fragile and fast disappearing like free higher education, social conscience, decent working conditions etc, others don’t see it that way. Fear of globalisation has left some yearning for a sepia tinted faux 1950s era where – apparently – ‘political correctness’ had not “gone mad” and we were not all at the mercy of the dreaded Health and Safety brigade. Yes. Who wants to be protected from dangerous practices and exploitation in the work place?

But there is one thing that should come back. There is one thing that could positively affect social cohesion, mental health, air quality, debt, stress levels, road deaths - and that is the shop-free Sunday. Re-establish a ban on Sunday trading in the real world.

Initially when Sunday trading laws were altered to make Sunday just one more cacophony of commercial consumer hell, many resisted the pull. Folk carried on planning to avoid diving to the shop AGAIN on Sunday and tried to go for walks, avoid traffic and find somewhere quiet. Well – now – unless you go right out of town – and sometimes not even then – it is not possible.

Look at any shopping centre or roadway and there is no discernible difference from a week day. IN fact some places are busier. Some shopping centres are more clogged with miserable grey faces and children being dragged round malls or restrained in buggies – whey faced and dead behind the eyes as adults search for more ways to heat up their credit cards.

Maybe – like the introduction of seatbelt legislation – we now need saving from our own consumerism. Because society is going through the windscreen at 90mph right now while the government blindly swims around in its own slurry.

Debt and obesity are two of the main causes of unhappiness and severe illness in the UK. While shocking statistics in 2017 showed that many folk don’t walk or do any exercise for even half an hour a week – equally people never STOP buying crap they don’t need.

Yes folk can still shop online but they are doing that anyway.

Seven-day trading is one of the biggest signposts that we are consumer slaves; dumb cogs in a monstrous consumer machine.

Shop working is often exploitative and unrewarding. Initially when Sunday trading was legalised we were told that workers would be able to ‘choose’ whether or not to work on that day. What a load of bollocks that turned out to be.

It used to be the case that with the exception of essential staff such as the emergency services – everyone could rely on at least one day a week where they weren’t strapped in to the clanking, headache-inducing, speeding out of control commercial merry-go-round.

Perhaps – if the malls and supermarkets and superstores were closed SOME families might stay home and TALK to each other or go to the park and WALK together. Some people might take the time to cook a real meal rather than microwaving some processed supermarket shit.

Just think – a whole day without the air being so thick with diesel fumes you could slice it.

Sundays could save our health, improve our relationships, reduce domestic debt, improve the quality of the air we breathe and help us keep our sanity.

One of the biggest distractions during the debate about whether to allow Sunday trading (back in the 1990s) was consigning it to a religious argument. At a time when church attendance was waning that was worse than spurious – but we know the media loves a binary fight and the voices of those who wanted a one day break from the zombie march of consumerism were drowned out.

I just don’t get why – when folk are being nostalgic – they don’t think to bring back things that were actually GOOD.

WE don’t even have to call it Sunday, we could rename it Walk and Talk and Breathe and Don’t Buy Shit day!

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NB In light of the New Year news that Carillion - the contractor that runs (ran) Britain – has imploded despite the billions it has mopped up in government contracts over the years, do check out the blog I wrote before Christmas.

251. Politicians have unemployed themselves - http://browngirloutsidethering.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/251-politicians-have-unemployed.html

And if you caught the ‘news’ re the deeply entrenched discriminatory practices of the BBC, review some of the comments I made many months ago re the unrepresentative and elitist/racist make-up of this public funded broadcaster

e.g. 117. Get those Darkies back in their box -http://browngirloutsidethering.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/blog-117-get-those-darkies-back-in.html

Or check out my letter from July last year published in national newspapers including The Guardian

As well as informing the UK public that in 2017 only a third of top earners at the BBC are women, would Tony Hall (director of the BBC) also do a breakdown on how many non-white, non-privileged persons are in the top percentage of wage earners there?
Amanda Baker
Edinburgh

258. BREXIT is Corbyn’s Iraq and massively outweighs Haringey’s flirtation with democracy.

As Theresa May’s government is involved in one political car crash after another the big question has to be why the Labour opposition vehicle is not in better shape.

Will 2018 be the year the Labour party gives British politics some much needed Opposition? Might Labour find a leader who - a. can lead b. is not soiled by Iraq c. is not scared of Brexit or tainted by not campaigning to Remain in Europe?

Jeremy Corbyn does not realise that his catastrophic dithering over Brexit is already his legacy just as Iraq (plus global terrorism, private sector infiltration of schools and hospitals and generation-obliterating tuition debt) is Blair’s.

NOT actively campaigning for (or even declaring a sentient position on) Brexit, left the Remain campaign with no engine. Brexit was not won. No one was paying attention so the conmen were able to yell into the electorate’s bad ear as EU membership slipped out of Britain's arthritic fingers.

As I’ve written many times on this little blog and in letters published by newspapers including The Guardian, The Independent, The National and others - everything from 23^rd June 2016 onwards has been about damage limitation. Britain is fighting over which bits of the socio-economic corpse can be used in political organ donation.

Even Corbyn’s blanking of Brexit at the 2017 Labour Party Conference mattered little although it showed he was capable of being politically grubby. It showed he had one skill; despite his faux revolutionary, misguided out-of-touch social sentiment and his snail pace intellect, Corbyn can look the other way when the big issues of the day are screaming for attention. You have to envy him the ability to calmly and genuinely – for example – flag wave for the NHS having done nothing to keep EU workers, on whom the institution now relies, IN BRITAIN. That is a sort of skill. Like being able to make fart noises with your armpit… mesmerising and useless.

Experiencing Corbyn’s end-of-2017 announcement it occurred to me he must be the only ‘leader’ in history who could say “We are a government in waiting” and sound as if he just said ‘does anyone want that last digestive biscuit’.

And for those getting exorcised about the recent activities in Haringey, the London borough where sitting councillors have complained about being replaced by others who intend to campaign against an unpopular local development – chill - that is actually how democracy is supposed to work. The irony is that any benefit gained by Momentum – the group that formed to support Corbyn’s leadership – will be so outweighed by the harm to the British working class by Brexit that they may as well have handed Haringey council to G4S.

For people whose memory lasts longer than an episode of a soap opera – Blair will forever be the little shit who went against overwhelming public opinion, common sense, intelligence and history and illegally invaded Iraq. Corbyn will be the knacker who failed to go in, political guns blazing, righteous indignation to the fore and fight to prevent a plainly foreseeable catastrophe; a catastrophe driven purely and simply by Cameron’s inability to deal with the dough-boy fascists in the ‘nastier party’. Cameron played Russian roulette with Britain’s future with all the chambers full, the barrel pointing at Britain’s foot. Corbyn was unable to make political capital because he was still pointing his blunderbuss at Thatcher’s ghost.

While Farage (with his EU pension) and Boris Johnson (rewarded with a front bench position in government) and Gove (who derided ‘experts’ during the EU referendum and is now Secretary of state for the Environment) all lied and lied and lied and lied and were not challenged – Corbyn hunkered down and did a big grey nothing.

Yes I know it’s becoming increasingly unpopular to say all this. Shut up and get on with it, is the popular mantra. Discombobulated MPs have taken refuge behind the British public, bleating on about respecting Democracy as if the referendum – won on prattle and xenophobia – had anything at all to do with real democracy. History will point to the EU referendum not just as the tipping point when Britain lost its seat at the top table in the world,  it will also be the focus of much debate concerning the end of real democracy in the so-called oldest democracy.

Currently MPs are enjoying some welcome relief from blame, pointing the finger at Google, facebook and other online social media platforms over issues of ‘fake news’ and information manipulation. However, there is a deafening silence regarding the older media whose favour they slavishly court. The BBC, infamously unrepresentative of ethnic minorities or the working class majority who pay its licence fee, continually platformed Farage. The tabloid newspapers fed a celebrity-T.V.-anaesthetised public a diet of bigotry and jingoism and anti-EU nonsense for DECADES – from the plague of straight bananas to the idea that we are all being oppressed by Health and Safety legislation from Brussels – well – tell that to the victims of Grenfell Tower.

Iraq was Blair’s Vietnam – except the effects are global not national. Corbyn’s dull, dull mediocre, grey, pathetic, didn’t-need-to-happen ‘Iraq’ is Brexit…