Blog 66. New Royal Male Privatisation - funded with Pay Day Loans!

Well – males and females.

Yes – you heard it here first.

Actually, privatising the Royal Family is an idea that I first heard back in the late 80s (and it wasn’t new then) just before young people disappeared under the toxic cloud of low-expectation education, the curse of access-all-areas consumerism and the heavy boot of pre-adult debt; a time when they could still think about the world around them and believe in things and protest. Now that we live in a world of regurgitated ideas and fake reality this is a winning combination. Notions are recycled so quickly you can still see the arse end of them as they are forced down your throat next time around. Ideas are about the only things that get successfully recycled so let’s combine this one with the celebrity obsession, media mediocrity and pungent nostalgia that’s currently clogging our national pores.

What’s not to like?

Everyone can take part. Fortunately our economy is set up so that you don’t have to have money or even any prospect of financial stability to spend like a maniac.

Also – we have nearly run out of things of real value that used to belong to the country that the government can sell off to their mates.

Railways cost tax payers more now than they did when the nation owned them and if your experience is like mine – when a train turns up on time you feel blessed, that’s if you can afford train travel and the train isn’t so crowded that you can actually get on.

As for BT - don’t start me on the shite communications skills of the privatised communications monolith.

Gas and Energy (covered that issue in blogs 56 and 59)

Water (presumably it will be air next) now in French hands

And most recently the scandalous underselling of Royal Mail (blog 55)

We are told that the Windsors are a national treasure, a benefit to the nation. People lucky enough to earn sufficient salary to pay tax but not rich enough to evade it pay for them.

Now – I hear a few nasty cynics screaming that the royals are neither use nor ornament to anyone north of Watford with a pulse – shame on you.

I for one propose, in the interests of inconsistency, to put aside my repulsion of pernicious unfair, dishonest, nationally disastrous practice of privatising anything that is of any use or value and cede my stake in the royal family. I wholeheartedly support them being floated on the stock exchange (or on a leaky barge down the Thames when it has subsided).

Let’s say at the same price per share as Royal Mail.

Depressed folk who watch day time TV could buy shares instead of getting pay day loans at 100,000,000 % per hour to play on-line gambling. Instead of giving away money they don’t have to unknown bastard swindlers hiding behind internet anonymity they could own a bit of Liz. How cool would that be?

Those who believe the crap – sorry – informed view – that the royals are worth every penny can put their delusions where their mouths are and buy all the shares.

There would be a new Royal privatised name – Royals-4U or Monartrica! Perhaps some Russian oligarch who got blindingly rich by inveigling the natural resources of his own country or an Arab prince – ditto – could buy them and use them to offset their tax liabilities.

Or maybe we could swap them for some well staffed hospitals, old people’s homes and schools that teach our kids to read and more humane prisons.

Sorted.

There is a cartoon this week but on the subject of the T.V. abomination that is Benefits Street – in the usual place

Blog 65 Will Nigella be canonised? & Big Mouth Britain!

As we ponder the big questions of 2014 (When will Nigella be canonised? Have you started Christmas shopping yet? Will the BBC ever be able to report on Africa without the producer making the locals sing in the background?) – Britain continues to behave like a loud, deluded, slightly whiffy, bonkers old aunt.

I recall an acquaintance who used to eat in a way that made sitting at table with her a full on horror B movie. The woman was blessed with an impressively large mouth but also seemingly powerful jaws. As she masticated, the orifice would open and close wide each time revealing the increasingly mashed and saliva-slicked contents. Accompanying the gruesome visuals were a selection of smacking and schlomping, slurping and squelching, sucking and smashing noises; the kind of effects you might get if a mixture of cold offal and landfill was placed in a rusty concrete mixer on full power. Occasionally, as the cavernous hole gaped and closed, chomping and gnawing, half or even fully chewed bits of food would escape, sometimes projected by the sheer energy of what was going on in the gob, across the table. It was both sickening and fascinating. One of this woman’s favourite topics of conversation was other people’s table manners.

For some reason the revolting image above crashes to the forefront of my mind when I hear/read more media hysteria on subjects such as East Europeans coming to Britain to fling themselves into the waiting arms of our welfare system. Many of them – if you believe the hysterical  headlines – criminals who are just waiting for the rules to change so they can make their way to our shores (yes there is a ridiculous contradiction in that last sentence).

I listen confounded to news readers with that us-&-them tone underpinning items of international news. Just as in one of my favourite performance poetry pieces African Journalist in England – I wonder what reporters from other continents and countries make of this little island’s arrogance and self deception.

Do the people of Portugal and Spain run long bitter reports on their news channels about the ex-pats turning vast swathes of their country into a kind of outdoor old people’s home-cum-golf course? Does Thailand consider everyone in Britain to be a potential paedophile because they see so many western men using their country for sex tourism? Do people on the large beautiful much abused continent of Africa despair as yet another generation of privileged western travellers use their land as a white man’s playground – from hug-an-orphan safaris to the white’s only clubs that are now implied rather than legal in many more developed areas and where indigenous people are turned into servants in their own homeland. Do the people of the Philippines laugh or cry when they hear boasts of the millions of pounds in aid that we in Britain  congratulate ourselves on raising to support the thousands up on thousands of victims of ever increasingly extreme weather devastation? Do they think about how wealthy western nations are disproportionately contributing to the very climate change that makes their lives more fragile? Do they compare the few millions in aid to the multi-multi millions they have to pay in debt to the World Bank after western governments leant freely to the corrupt Marcos regime? Do they?

What do struggling nations make of a country where the wealthy live in a land of more than plenty but still feel the need to contrive to dodge tax, secreting enough in off-shore accounts to make Midas blush.

And so young ambitious people continue to migrate to Britain, as they do to all developed countries. The stats tell us unequivocally that the vast majority work and are driven to achieve and be successful – those that are not escaping conflict and who deserve nothing but our sympathy and help. The working immigrants far outweigh the so-called benefit tourists and not only that – with an aging and poorly educated (by western standards) population – many of those immigrants – through their taxes – support our own unemployed and sick.

Granted we can be proud of marmalade and David Attenborough but really it’s time for crabby old Aunty Britannia to shut the F up.

Happy 2014 and here is a list of

Most popular blogs of 2013

Blog 23What is Love – (philosophy of Wil-e-coyote)

Blog 31 Oh Shut Up

Blog 39 What is the point of Newcastle City Council?

Blog 53 I suffer from PANTS syndrome

Blog 58 Chri£tma$ - we who are about to buy salute you!

Most popular blog of 2012

Blog10 My One Night Stand with the ghost of Bill Farrell

Most popular cartoon 2013 (based on sales of prints at the Love Libraries events last autumn)

Posted in the usual place – click on the orange Amanda Baker in the right hand column to view.

Blog 64. the George Osborne Delusion plus – the new seasonal hit ‘Jingle Bells – Downwind of Westminster’

Christmas credit CARNAGE, the horror of household debt, zombie consumerism – these are the rotten limbs holding the current financial body together.

This week isn’t going to be another morbid musing on the disaster which is the modern Mammon-made, merry yuletide madness (see blog 58 for that). I'm simply highlighting – in reference to Osborne’s line that we are ‘moving forward’ and breaking out of the economic doldrums - that this is unreliably fuelled by household debt and hammering the most vulnerable in society. If there is an upturn (and clearly that depends on which stats you decide to read) it’s over a massive black hole which is the hidden domestic fiscal fiasco of households responding to ad-land delirium of buy-now-pay-never. And this year – if the state of the nation’s economy private and public is anything to judge by - will be the all time Christmas credit carnage.

Thrashing about for new ways to keep money pumping to the top is nothing new. After the initial heady period of the Industrial Revolution where new products and new markets seemed never ending, the profiteers hit the skid patch where growth slows, markets are saturated and the only way to keep the profits up is to cut wages and conditions, degrading the workforce utterly. We already see an echo of that in the public sector where there is understaffing, pressure to work more for less and with less security and worse conditions. This is coupled with an attack on the weak, the sick, the unemployed while whipping up a fever against Johnny foreigner as per the usual script.

But Osborne has another income tool that his forebears could never have dreamt of – easy personal credit. People without money can still spend. And with the insatiable appetite of that voracious modern beast – Rampant Consumerism – people need little encouragement. We know that personal household debt will not prevent millions tramping the streets or the internet for those must-have items that will be staring up at them all unpaid for and lacking in lustre on Boxing-day. This is what is fanning the faint embers of recovery. It’s a mean fire that won’t keep many people warm.

If anyone is in any doubt as to the disgraceful depths some employers will sink to in order to keep making profits – just look at the recent estimates of the numbers of human beings living and working in what is described as ‘modern slavery’ in Britain today – 10,000

But at least MP’s are being looked after.  IPSA has proposed 11% pay rise that the poor dears can DO NOTHING ABOUT mwoooahL. To commiserate, here is a new version of Jingle Bells – feel free to borrow the lyrics if you are at all musical.

JINGLE BELLS

(Down-wind of Westminster version)

Chorus 1.

Jingle bells, something smells

MPs need more pay

They hope Santa’s bringing

Some money on his sleigh

Verse 1.

IPSA says it’s time

MP’s should be updated

Maybe wages should be

Per-for-mance related

Even Knickers Clegg

That shameless little twit

Gets paid to be in Westminster

And he’s a lying git

Chorus 2.

Jingle bells, something tells

Me they are a herd

Of bovine morons on the take

To pay more is absurd

Verse 2.

Cameron’s a crumbly

Elitist through and through

Can’t say what I think of him

Because it’s all too blue

We need opposition

To work and make a stand

But all we’ve got are stooges

Ed no-balls and Ed Bland

Chorus 3.

Jingle bells, jingle bells

Are we going mad

Mediocrity is king

And we have all been had

Weee – have – aaaaallll – beeeeeeen – haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad!

Season’s Greetings

For this week’s cartoon click on the orange Amanda Baker in the top right hand column of the blog.

Brown girl will be back January 7^th 2014.

Blog 63. Nelson Mandela – If Not a Prophet....

It’s true that if you were fortunate enough to meet Nelson Mandela the experience endured. To look up into that strong handsome face, hear that unmistakable voice and be caught in the radiance of his energy was, for me as for many others, remarkable. I have met many people who think they are important or charismatic. It’s not easy to imagine any of them eliciting the eruption of near hysterical joy that Mr. Mandela caused when he danced spontaneously on an open air stage in Glasgow (blog 44.) But years later, and in the aftermath of his new absence, it is people’s resistance to enlightenment that is puzzling.

From his own mouth Mandela insisted that he was not a prophet but surely that was because he perceived what people saw in him; the statement contains its own dichotomy.

Desmond Tutu is justified and entitled to point to failures and proclaim that Mandela was no saint. I must admit I am not someone who has great use for those strange creatures anyway. Tutu has also the gravitas and track record to be listened to when he points out that the ANC is being undermined by corruption and led by the kind of figure African countries are burdened with all too often.

Makaziwe Mandela spoke movingly of the father who did not, along with many men of his generation, have the emotional language to communicate with those he loved. She is also an important reminder of the horrendous personal toll on the Mandela family and the man himself. It is hard to read in Long Walk to Freedom the account of this famous prisoner being led into a room where he embraced his then wife, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, only to realise it had been 21 years since he had even touched his wife’s hand.

But he is not revered as a saint, nor as a perfect family man but as someone who had a magnificent vision of the possibilities for his country and dedicated his life to encouraging others to believe in that potential.

Not just by his near three decades of incarceration but in his manner of dealing with that tribulation, Mandela earned the right to have his words taken at face value.  He cannot be held responsible for whether or not people took heed. Preachers, prophets, leaders and dreamers show us the light. Sometimes the light is so bright we can see the rainbow. But rainbows are less than ephemeral. Before this one faded, a minority was already working out how to grab the pot of gold for themselves.

What is a prophet if not someone who can see the ideal that the rest of us fail to comprehend? What is a prophet if not the visionary and the dreamer who puts those ideals and ideas into words and makes us listen?

Few would argue that Gandhi did not walk in the spiritual shoes of Jesus. The unadulterated words of the prophet Mohamed surely echo true humanity. And in the year that we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the resounding, ground-breaking speech of Dr. Martin Luther King, we have lost the most iconic humanitarian of our time, Nelson Mandela.

As the leaders of the world in its current state, divided, war torn, starving, scuttle into news rooms to have their say, will any of them recall the words of Nelson Mandela, “poverty is manmade”? Will they recall that Dr King dreamt of ultimate equality or Ghandi of religious tolerance and an end to oppression or Jesus and Mohamed of love and respect?

Earlier in the day that ended with the passing of this Robben Island survivor, I listened to a report from a giant penal institution in California USA. I stood frozen in my kitchen as I heard the harrowing, secretly recorded screams of a mentally disturbed man in confinement being repeatedly pepper sprayed by prison guards LEGALLY. His pitiful terrified shrieks for mercy were sickening – in 2013 in the country that regards itself as leader of the free world.

Britain spends many millions more on weapons than on aid and people are dying under collapsed factories in one part of the world so another part can have cheap commodities. Last Thursday, George Osborne announced that Britain was ‘moving again’ – but surely leaving behind those folk in the queues at the food banks, the school leavers who can’t read and those with personal debt that will crush them.

In my head I see a personified figure of God, possibly an image that solidified in my childhood at Sunday school; a large man with an impressive beard upon high. Now he is somewhat bent and tired. He stares out wearily into the middle distance while angels weep for the passing of another of their own.

Meanwhile, downstairs the other fellow laughs heartily.

(no cartoons this week but if you want to look at the collection so far click on the orange 'Amanda Baker' at the top of the right hand column of the blog)

Blog 62. Boris Johnson’s IQ test.

Boris Johnson’s I.Q. is surely now I.n Q.uestion. Any credible academic concluded long ago that the fashion for those socially skewed tests was just another con trick by the ruling elite to justify unfairness. Parents shuffle their kids off to private schools for reasons of social exclusivity and advantage morally protected by the notion that some I.nnate Q.ality of brain justifies this. The only logic about exclusive pay-for education is that it is tax free and prepares the attendees for the rest of their privileged tax- free lives. There the common sense ends.

Boris’s latest attention-seeking blather just shows how fantasies fester in the I.ncestuous Q.quagmire that is the roped-off member’s only club of the British elite. I.neQ.uality has to be constantly justified.

This I.nsipid Q.uixote, this I.gnominious Q.uasimodo (the opposite of a metaphor with his deformity of character) is simply jester in the rotten court of I.neQuity. Would not a true test of intelligence be an indication that a person could utter even one sentence, one scintilla of an idea that is not an obvious and predictable product of their background?

No one, especially the high flyers want their egos dented by the notion that their position is based on un-earned social advantage. Their enduring delusion is that they did it all themselves. They are the deserving rich. Somewhere in their black hearts they know that a decent human being is I.nstinctively Q.ueasy about the startling, unjustifiable unfairness that oozes round us now like poison gas. I.neQ.uality is an ugly I.niQ.uity.

The flip side to the fantasy of deserving rich is, of course, the undeserving poor. It is an equally important lie to maintain.

In a country governed not by a fairly elected group but by a pervasive system of I.n-crowd Q.aungos the lies are easy to perpetrate. Every organisation with power is stuffed full of people who have benefitted from the I.nstitutionalised status Q.uo.

Solidified privilege does not just keep down potential talent it elevates mediocrity. Whoever said you couldn’t polish a turd clearly hasn’t looked closely at what is floating round in the gilded cesspool of contemporary British high society.

Bobbing on the surface, for example, are the bankers with their 35% income increases - average take home - £1.6m this year. Meanwhile, the bottom feeders, the vast majority of ordinary people have average household debt of £50K+ but it was their taxes that paid to bail out those bankers just 5 years ago.

Complaint is punished severely, I.nstantly Q.uelled. Take npower (see blog 59). As a warning to anyone complaining about their profiteering they are shifting of 11,000 jobs abroad. There are worse things than being ripped off, they say, loudly and clearly.

Boris Johnson is simply the I.nsuferable moral Q.uisling, an I.nfernal political Q.uack, the pudgy face of the terminal British disease. He is the personification of the illness that is dragging society down. He is the ugly embodiment of unearned privilege.

Rather than the I.nspired Q.uintilian he believes himself to be, Boris Johnson is an I.rritating Q.unt.

for BJ cartoon go to top of right hand column of blog and click on the orange 'Amanda Baker'

Blog 61. Rev. Paul Flowers – My Saviour!

I mean really. It was beginning to feel like some sort of reverse prejudice.

Catholic priests were raping children with the knowledge and collusion of those in power – I mean forever amen. The Church of England is positively glorying in its misogyny and homophobia. Henry VIII must be feeling a little pathetic. Back in the 16^th century all he managed was to chop off a few spousal bonces. Let’s face it, by the standards of the time and for a typical megalomaniac chauvinist, vain, possibly psychotic bloke of the period – nowt to write home about.

The Mormons got polygamy and The Osmonds. Like most of Britain the Jehovas have me cowering below my letter box on many an evening. And so on.

Back in the day, I attended a Seventh Day Adventist church with my great grandmother (see Shirley Temple Jesus http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XblbBrVMuqg&feature=player_embedded#at=23) but was then sent to Methodist Sunday school and have stuck with it ever since – even teaching Sunday school myself for 7 years. Instead of going for the day like I used to when I attended the black church in Birmingham, I slog it out for an hour – job done. And like the white folk, if it feels as if the minister of the morning has forgotten that there is lunch to be got and uncomfortable clothes to get out of, I get fidgety.

In the past I’ve even worried that being mixed race I could find myself in some sort of cosmic debt when the big day comes. Black folk go to church for the day, white folk for an hour (if they feel like it and there are no sales on) but maybe as a mixed race person I should be putting in a whole morning rather than a pathetic 60 minutes. It is something that could be more of a problem than it first appears. As the non-drinking, non-gambling etc kind of Methodist let’s face it I could be here a while. When I finally pop my clogs – perhaps after friends who live more adventurous lives – I sure don’t want to be sent back because I’m heavily in debt for church attendance. Hmm something to consider.

But God bless Paul Flowers. In order to get the Methodists up to scratch he’s been on some sort of deadly sin binge. I mean did he miss any out? Really we should look for some bodies because he’s done such a fab job with other sins. Whilst being gay is not a sin – despite what the Caths would have us believe (don’t they know it was only introduced as a sin in the 13^th century after a bit of advice to the then pope by your man Thomas Aquinas?) but being a big fat hypocrite must be there and if not I nominate it as a newy.

On a more worrying note – I was scanning some headlines last week and was struck horribly by the coincidence of the Door to Hell that exists in Turkmenistan. Geologists would have us believe that those knackers who are so intent on smashing the planet to smithereens before we have finished with it (the fossil fuel maniacs) caused the crater when they were trying to drill for oil and set light to the escaping gases to ‘burn them off’ That was 40 years ago. The burning desert crater is actually called the Door to Hell and it sure looks like it. BUT did anyone stop to think? Did anyone pause and put two and two together and realise - THAT was when Revd Flowers began his Methodist ministry????????????????? I mean for heavens’ sake. Good Lord. Clearly he is YOU KNOW WHO.

The best thing we could do is to chuck him back down the crater along with the paedo priests and misogynists, racists, bullies, war mongers and homophobes, the general bigots (plus Tony Blair and George Bush) and fill the bloody thing in.

 

(apologies for any confusion - this week's cartoon uploaded in 'view my profile' actually relates to blog 52 - I offer no explanation)

Blog 60. Giving v. Giving Up

Should climate change deniers be treated like holocaust deniers?

Unnaturally extreme Natural devastation in the Philippines has, quite rightly, led to the usual outpouring of sympathy. It will be short-term as it always is. Media focus will move onto more important things soon enough – a celebrity with a new shade of nail varnish. But the immediate givingness is impressive and speaks well of human instinct. What seems almost impossible to achieve is the giving up. Giving up the endless shopping for crap, the  one-person car journeys, the unnecessary short car trips, the overheated house (though that one may be coming to an end – see last week’s blog), the wasting of food, the chucking of chemicals down the sink and toilet, the pollution of the atmosphere by industry feeding our need for cheap products and so on ad infinitum.

The hurricane that decimated much of the Philippine archipelagos was the fastest EVER to make landfall. The usual split between rich survivors and poor victims was not as marked because even the properties of the wealthier inhabitants did not totally withstand the onslaught.

News groups were on the ground almost as fast as the tornado, asking the bereaved and injured ‘how do you feel’ (for heaven’s sake) and launching in with the criticism of aid agencies and governments. The fact is there is no way you can legislate against a hurricane and there is no preparedness for destruction on this scale. My local council can’t keep dog shit off the pavements (or cars) lord knows how they would cope if my house were obliterated by a typhoon. News reports have followed like lightening with disapproval of government corruption and mismanagement, which of course in this civilised democracy we’d know nothing about (unless of course you are thinking of the police / politicians / journalists / banks / planning authorities...).

It is our fault. We are ruining the planet, and not just in ways that result in dramatic headline-grabbing destruction. In many ways that are ongoing and possibly irreversible.

This week ecologists tried to make a headline out of the increasing acidity of the world’s oceans. Crustaceans are unable to form shells, fish are malformed and unable to breed, coral reefs dissolving. Never mind what is going on above sea level – if the oceans are knackered – we are all doomed. The ice caps, vital for global environmental stability are being melting and the forests, vital for the air we breathe, are being hacked away year by year.

I propose that climate change deniers should inhabit the same category as holocaust deniers. Hitler carried out mass slaughter in Europe. Climate change is fundamentally the fault of developed nations and unfairly impacts on poor ones and is killing the entire planet prematurely.

While we are being distracted by rich babies and their dim parents and celebrity break ups and who said what to whom in the media, the planet is groaning. Mother Nature is crippled and screaming for help but going unheard, like the victims of Bhopal (there will be a blog on that).

One thing I did not expand on in last week’s rant about the energy companies was the smoke screen debate about the green levy. AS we know the big 6 energy companies tried to blame the governments’ green levy for their price hikes. The lily-livered government seems to be kowtowing to the tantrum thrown by the energy companies’ share holders, and is going to backslide on even this pathetic fig leaf of a policy.

Meanwhile, before typhoid has even set in, the BBC is debating the question of aid to disaster-struck and poor countries when ‘we’ are suffering austerity. Well some of us are (see blogs 16, 18, 24, 35, 49).

Frankly when I heard that The Moral Maze (let no catastrophe go to waste with the national 6th form debating society) was to question whether disaster prone foreigners should get our tax money I thought they must be referring to HRH Phil the Greek. Sadly, no.

This won’t go away. And you know what? Being less manic in our consumption wouldn’t only benefit poor countries it would do wonders for the physical and mental health of people in the West; improving our waste lines would improve our waist lines as the saying goes.

Thanks for all the funky comments about the cartoons. There are two to accompany this week’s blog post – got o ‘view my profile’ Thanks.