208. The Cannibal Economy

Syrian refugee children, having escaped the horrors of Apocalypse Syria, are being used in Turkish sweatshops to produce garments for, among others, the UK store Marks & Spencer.

This is just part of the global Cannibal Economy.

I posted a blog a while ago on the Tat Economy (see blog 202.) We also have the Cannibal Economy. Simply put, in the absence of real industry and healthy agriculture, the advantaged feed off the disadvantaged.

Slavery, child pornography and people trafficking, elements of the Cannibal Economy, are in the ascendancy. Social structures implode as short term gain is put before general economic well-being. Here in the UK 1930s style worker exploitation is back in fashion (see blog 174. Zero Hours is not a contract).

Ironic, isn’t it, that the gutter press in Britain spent so little time on the issue of abused refugee children in Turkish sweatshops. Meanwhile they sneer about whether migrant children, belatedly brought here from Calais, are the correct age!

Anyway…

The Cannibal Economy is the dreg end of that thing we grew up with and worship via the TV, now via internet devices, via advertising and which people unconsciously fuel through gambling, multiple cheap holidays abroad that wreck the environment, cars that do the same etc. It is the monster of rampant capitalism.

Out of control capitalism eventually eats itself. In the race to exploit for profit all engines of human existence, all means of production, all natural instincts, there comes a point where the only thing left to devour – economically – is people. Economic Cannibalism.

We should not be surprised that for some, the Syrian Exodus is just another opportunity for personal gain. Just as some people see a vulnerable child and their first thought is their own sexual gratification.

Here in the UK, politicians, like many across the rest of Europe - focus on short term populism because a headline means more to them than the long-term prosperity of the country they are supposed to serve.

Like ‘Sir’ Philip Green (see blog 185. Does Sir Philip Green Kick Disabled Kittens in his spare time?) many running the companies we know on our high-streets do not see age old institutions that employ people. They don’t think of humans like themselves who need to pay bills (or unlike the owners – pay taxes) feed and clothe their families. No. These predators simply see human fodder. People they can feed off. The fact that this may mean trashing the lives of thousands upon thousands of other humans doesn’t enter their equation. They do not care. As long as they get another yacht.

But African farmers growing flowers to be shipped across the globe for western houses when those fields could be used to grow food is also Economic Cannibalism. Ditto tobacco.

Women and children chained to tables in factories with bars on the windows in India to make cheap throw-away items for the West is Economic Cannibalism.

Here in the UK the government is serious about more airport capacity because money is more important than clean air.

Fracking has been given the green (excuse the pun) light because profit is more important than the environment (see blog 194. Beside myself beside the sea)

Pharmaceutical companies making Viagra instead of concentrating on a cure for Malaria is Economic Cannibalism. (see blog 97.)

Zero Hours contracts right here in the UK, allowing employers to by-pass legislation set in place to protect workers’ rights, is Economic Cannibalism.

And so on and so forth.

Counter-intuitively, this barbaric inequality allows the likes of Trump and Farage to flourish. Because when things get desperate, humans have a strange habit of blaming – not the people at the top but folk who – like them – are being exploited. Other struggling families, migrants, black people. Here in the UK many in the Polish community are having a hard time. Anyone who looks or sounds different is a scapegoat. 

But you don’t hear of bankers being abused in the street or being the recipients of nasty comments as I was in the days after the Referendum. And what are the banks doing right now? Decanting out of the UK faster than warm shit off a shovel. Latest figures suggest upcoming 70,000 redundancies as banks exit and that is not counting the related service industry jobs that will also go.

Let’s just remind ourselves – as it’s not such a hot topic as migrants – that the UK treasury bailed out the banks after their criminal activities to the tune of billions of pounds. We were told they were too important to the UK economy to fail. Well now the good times are over they are leaving.

The Cannibal Economy is eating us alive. Vulnerable Syrian refugee children hijacked on their escape from hell, are just the latest manifestation.
*

Do check out My BOOKS thank you.

And remember if you like a post to follow/share/tweet/ or whatever you young folk do. THANK you.

207. Brexit means...

Frankly - months after the referendum no one knows - not the  voters, not the leave campaigners and most certainly not this administration. That is why we are stuck with criminally insane policy distractions and meaningless phrases such as 'Brexit means Brexit'.

Let's see if this helps...

Brexit means Brexit
by amanda baker - your brown girl blogger


Brexit  means Brexit trala trala la
Brexit means Brexit trala trala la

Take the truth bend it and flex it
Lots of Brit firms rush to exit
Take the sterling pound and then hex it
Let UKIP go to Brussels and vex it
Cos Brexit means Brexit means Brexit

Maybe Nandos can help and Tex-mex it
Or we could go to Mars and annex it
Or Dinosaurs come back and T-rex it
We could all understand if we were Dyslexic
Brexit would mean that in fact you got Rex-bit (your dog bit you?)

Brexit means Brexit means Brexit
Take common sense twist it and stretch it cos
Brexit means Brexit means Brexit...

And remember if you like a post to follow/share/tweet/ or whatever you young folk do. THANK you.

206. Kristallnacht lite UK?

Following The Home Secretary Amber Rudd’s appalling Tory Party Conference Statement about immigrant workers – I presume the next step is to force non-British-born workers in the UK to wear identifying armbands?

Is this administration on message to sound as racist as possible at all times to maintain popularity? (Let’s face it Trump got the monopoly on misogyny). Certainly she topped even Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s attempts at anti-foreigner gutter populism.

There has been back-pedaling because – fortunately - people with clout in the business community, revolted at the idea. Decent people, generally, were just nauseated.

Sadly, we are not out of the woods. Rudd now claims the information, though collected, will not be made public(!) This reminds me of when the infamous SATs tests for young children were introduced into schools. As a parent of a, then, junior age child, I was told ‘the children won’t even know they are being tested’. SATs quickly became one of the most stressful times in schools for pupils, parents and teachers.

And even if we trust the government on this (and I don’t) do we trust their competence at handling sensitive data?

Do we?

Do you?

I think that’s like trusting a bull in a china shop.

Frankly if this administration is so obsessed with foreigners why don’t they focus on the issue of UK arms sold to Saudi Arabia being used to slaughter Yemeni civilians?

205. Trump - Political Constipation

It’s hard, its impacted, it’s the dump that won’t thump the shit that won’t quit. You’ve got it and so have I. Trump constipation.

And Hillary isn’t turning out to be political syrup of figs…

Now that another US news outlet (USA Today) has broken with tradition and openly slated the Republican candidate we’re really into a raw new era where screaming from the margins at others who are also screaming from their fall-back position is normalising. Once that happens there is no way of moving things through sensibly.

Here I am too, and I’ve tried restraint, I’ve tried to avoid the subject but it keeps just bothering like a scab you’re not supposed to scratch. Each morning I wake up and it’s still there. It’s like going back to my vandalised local park and finding that the play equipment is still burnt. En route trees have branches ripped off for no reason. And it’ll probably be the same tomorrow. For no sensible reason. (Ok – you know I start muddling my metaphors when I get agitated)

To be fare – I’ve not posted about Trump since blog 167. Donald Trump and Katy Hopkins Scientifically Explained.

Trump is one of the best examples out there of just what unearned privilege can do to trash a country. If anyone can give me an argument that he’s not stupid I’d like to hear it. But this man with a string of failed businesses was started on life’s road with significant parental wealth and here he is now, living proof that you can polish a turd.

Entrenched wealth seems to send whole countries down the sewer. Large swathes of the Arab world are run by spoiled brats who squander their country’s resources while infrastructure for ordinary people remains in the dark ages (see blog 183 Is Saudi Arabia the World’s Moral Cesspit?).

Here in the UK we somehow never seem to have shaken off sycophancy and adulation of the rich and powerful – however moronic or dull they may be.

I’ve written many times on this blog about the dangers to society when the upper echelons of rigid hierarchy become clogged with Tim-rich-but-dim. The effects when Trevor-poor-but-clever is not pulled in to freshen up the increasingly stagnant talent pool, can be terminal.

What most of us find hard to fathom is that there are clearly lots of Americans who genuinely think Trump should run America. We hoped he’d be hoist by his own petards (the many many many petards). We hoped that his stupidity, racism, misogyny (did I mention stupidity?) - would do the trick but we just can’t shift him. He’s bulky and thick and stuck.

Many have tried the humour emetic. DT memes must be at a record level – even considering the relatively brief time memes have been a thing. But he’s still there. The whole of America is suffering political anal retention. Where is the laxative of logic when you need it?

Here in the UK we’ve had the lesson of what happens when these turds get their way. (N Farage) They talk crap, mess things up then ride off into the sunset on their delusions leaving the rest of us in the stink.

Furthermore – in terms of any effect the ‘debates’ are having on Trump’s popularity, the results seem to be that they are not. The entrenched Trumpites are just that – entrenched, stuck, blocked, bunged up. As were the Ukippers. The idea that logic or humour or satire or plain obvious facts are going to budge them is dangerous. 

We need something like the political equivalent of a nuclear suppository. Telling folk, pointing out the obvious – the lies, the failed businesses, the racism yada yada yada will not work. It wouldn’t work, any more than telling your teenage daughter that the guy she thinks she’s madly in love with is a druggy, lying shithead with babies sprinkled all over the neighbourhood.

So where can we get the necessary political laxatives to shift this great steaming turd? I mean things are bad here and we didn’t even get a Farage PM he just made the mess and then disappeared like a really badly behaved guest who massacres your toilet then leaves without washing their hands or flushing. Or like those dog walkers who bag up the pooh and then hang it on a bush or fence when no one is looking and walk off.

If you think a nasty little bag of pooh can’t come along and wreck a country with spite and lies, check out Brexit. I don’t wish to seem indelicate but, seriously, when it builds up to this  extent, all that is going to happen if they flush Trump, is he’s going to break the toilet bowel…

204 Mixed-race magic…

There is something so strange going on you’d be forgiven for suspecting the existence of a parallel universe. In America, biracial families are a huge and increasing percentage of the populous but killing and/or abusing people because they are different seems endemic.

Here in the UK, mixed-race is the fastest growing ‘ethnic minority’. However, if you took an educated guess at the reasons for the recent referendum result, you’d conclude that it swung on social division and distrust of humans who are unlike us – whoever ‘us’ is (oh and lies, hysteria, ignorance and bigotry).

There are only two choices in life and we keep making the wrong one.

Humanity or Holocaust

Reconciliation or Rwanda

Simple human decency or Syria

Kindness or the Killing Fields of Cambodia

Intelligent interaction or Iraq

Benevolence or Bosnia

Building bridges or building walls

And if you are lucky enough to be living somewhere without the constant screech of missiles overhead or the fear of your family dying beneath the rubble of your home, think carefully. Had you asked ordinary Rwandans, immediately before the genocide, if they’d be butchering their neighbours in the morning they’d probably have laughed at you. If you had spoken to ordinary Germans pre 1939, they’d have been horrified at the idea they’d turn a blind eye to their Jewish neighbours being dragged off in the night.

Syrians had normal lives prior to the events labelled the ‘Arab Spring’ - 2011. They went about attending school, going to functioning hospitals, walking in parks, riding buses to their jobs. How could they know they’d be living in bloody hell for half a decade (thus far).

Here in the UK, albeit on a less dramatic scale, we seem, like elsewhere in the world to be retreating into factions and fractious sub groups. The Labour party – the so-called opposition -  has spent months infighting when it should have been standing up for ordinary people. Plus, they failed spectacularly to energetically support remaining in the EU so that Europe would stand a chance of facing the world’s real problems. Instead we’re faced with petty nonsense and years of uncertainty and procrastination. And after all the misery and infighting they still managed to keep just another identikit white bloke leading the party…

Post referendum, xenophobic vitriol has stirred up tension and meanness and some have already paid the price. On a minor scale I too experienced some post- Brexit verbal racism and unpleasantness in the days following the vote.

Recently our un-elected Prime Minister (probably to divert attention from Brexit) suddenly announced that she wants more selection in education – a more divisive system than we have now. The one we have is already more socially divisive than most of continental Europe.

Everywhere, it seems, folk are scrambling to be with others ‘like themselves’ and to exclude their fellow humans. Why?

You know we all eat, shit and die. We all fail if we are not loved. We all bleed if we are cut.

But humans are very strange creatures indeed. Fortunately. In the face of bigotry, hatred, vile acts of terror and atrocities, some humans are being really weird… Yes - in this world of division, sectarianism, racism and brutality - a lot of people are falling in love and making babies with people who are different to themselves.

When my parents had me, over half a century ago, a mixed-race family was rare here. Now it’s not.

My youngest daughter goes to a school with a wonderfully culturally and ethnically mixed intake (it is a Catholic school though we are not). My daughter’s fellow pupils are Scottish and Polish and Spanish and African and Caribbean and all other sorts. Sadly, I know many parents would and do go out of their way to ensure their children only go to schools with other children ‘like them’. Maybe it is because I am mixed race but I immediately saw this variety as a huge positive. School is not just about educating children academically it is about giving them life skills and experiences. What more important life lesson could anyone have than to understand that someone else – albeit a different colour to you or ethnic or cultural background – can still be your friend. If I had my way I would make it illegal to divide children in school based on parental snobbery or prejudice.

Our capacity for causing our fellow human beings to suffer seems limitless. The conflict and bloodshed, murder, rape kidnapping and mayhem that (please God) may be coming to an end in Colombia, has gone on for over half a century.

Perhaps attending truly mixed schools could mean that, when those children are grown, the one thing they won’t do is violate another human being just because they are different.

*

BRAND NEW

Ella & the Knot Fairies is a tale of mixed race magic for young children. After spending years in piles of papers, it was posted as an online story attracting over 200,000 views in a couple of weeks.

Woven from magic, maternal love, daughters and hair, Ella & the Knot Fairies is a whimsical, fun, picture story in verse.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1537583751

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1537583751

Do please buy a copy – either a real book or an e-book. Supporting my writing through buying any of my books also helps me keep this free blog going.

Thank you.

203. Would you…

… throw yourself off a cliff then start trying to grow wings on the way down?

Would you step blindly into the path of a three lane highway on the basis that you have some headache pills in your pocket?

Would you punch your neighbour because he is smaller than you and has something you want and then be surprised if he takes every opportunity to try to get his own back?

Would you burn down the house you live in because you want heat and light right NOW?

Would you poison all the children in your local park because there is financial gain to be made from the land?

And finally, if the children in the next street were suffering, would you ignore their plight and go shopping for a new handbag?

OK – I know this sounds like one of those warning ads about pirated DVDs but this is exactly how the human race is living right now.

Whether it’s the environment, war and conflict, the global economy or personal health and wellbeing, we are being totally idiotically crazy.

Scientists, commercialists and politicians like rushing forward with plans for how we can ‘manage’ situations, ‘limit’ damage, ‘offset’ (for example) environmental harm. They are indignant when, during wars, one side or another does not play by the rules i.e. killing people in a way not approved by the UN (see blog 43. Killing them Softly). No one in a real position of power is yelling out the unpalatable reality – no one with clout in the mainstream is pointing out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. No one with moral command is speaking truth to power - we have to STOP.

PREVENTION IS THE ONLY CURE.

And we are doing the most fantastic job of fiddling while Rome burns.

The UK is a perfect example of this mentality. At a time when international conflicts are decimating civilian populations, the world is on the tipping point of environmental devastation, economic implosion and catastrophic global health crises are threatening civilisation, we were launched into Brexit.

Brexit is political spaghetti which will muddle the national energy, possibly for decades. And the so-called opposition here are playing at a kind of politics that would embarrass immature 12-year-olds. (Apologies to all 12-year-olds).

Globally it is estimated that 33% of all cancers and childhood diseases are now linked to environmental pollution factors. Here in Britain a report released this year, headed by The Royal College of Physicians estimates that air pollution alone is causing 40,000 premature deaths. And yet hopes for economic recovery are being firmly placed on that most powerful of carcinogens, Consumer Spending – buying crap.

In the UK, as with many developed countries there is an energetic and admirable focus on finding cures for major diseases. And humans are actually great at being brave in the face of adversity. Sadly, they are also great at being deluded, irrational and believing what suits them.

Prevention is kind of boring. Moderation is a real yawn. Stopping something happening – as any Hollywood action movie will demonstrate – is never as exciting or motivating as fighting something that has happened or is about to.

With regard to health, the idea that we can rely entirely on drugs is bonkers. We still haven’t found a cure for the common cold.

It’s also important to remember that drug production – like a lot of everything else in this mixed-up world, is motivated by profit – which is why we have Viagra but no cover-all cure for malaria (see blog 97.) And if you think drugs are going to come along in time to save us from all the illnesses and diseases mankind is brewing through self-destructive behaviour, try blog 54. Glaxo Smith-Kline is not the answer. We Are and get real.

We are told that genetically modified crops are the answer to the world’s food shortage. The fact is that there is currently enough food on the planet for everyone but it is not distributed fairly. So how would more ownership of food production by multi-national companies help? Here’s another idea, what about growing food rather than, for example, tobacco.

We cannot simply medicalise our way out of cancers and diabetes we have to keep people healthy by providing good food not adulterated by manufacturers. We need clean air and water not adulterated by the overuse of diesel and plastics (see blog 194 Beside myself beside the sea) And we have to stop chucking stuff away just so we can replace it with a new shiny thingy.

As I outlined in blog 155 – with the world in the state it is in – spending on a designer handbag (for example) is a sign of failure not success.

What else can I say – wake up and smell the coffee?

*

And on the positive – remembering there are wonderful creative folk in the world - I have permission from my good friend Jo Butler to host this short indie video (No Idea Complete) on which she did composition and piano. Enjoy

https://vimeo.com/151134194

*

I’ll be taking a break next week Tuesday 20^th so help yourself to some posts in the archives. Back again Tuesday 27^th.

And please do remember to check out  My BOOKS  Thank you.

202. The TAT Economy. What is it and should we be scared?

The UK is a Tat Economy. More so than ever since Brexit.

It’s a house with no foundations, a suspension bridge with no suspension. Britannia is running a marathon without a support bra; unsustainable and ultimately sore.

Scanning the headlines of those newspapers whose rich tax-exile owners supported Brexit everything in the UK garden is – apparently – rosy. Scratch a little deeper and the stony, poorly fertilised soil of this supposedly burgeoning economy turns out to be -  consumer spending. Sift through some more mucky statistics and you will note that there are more UK households in HUGE amounts of personal debt than ever before. Many people in the UK are now economic zombies; the financial walking dead.

So – let’s unravel that tantalising, tangled creeper of a phrase ‘consumer spending’ because this is – we are told – the magic that is keeping the economy’s bean stalk in the air.

Basically consumer spending means people buying a lot of shit they don’t need and didn’t want until advertisers persuaded them otherwise and they are buying on credit (someone else’s money). It means guys buying gadgets they may play with once and golf equipment they are never going to use. It means women paying to get their nails painted and buying clothes they wear once and shoes they then carry around as they stumble home from boozy nights out with the girls after buying drinks none of them can afford. It is credit card spending at 90 MPH, debt at a depth of 1000 fathoms. It’s fiscal hell on toast.

Gambling in the UK is endemic, a barely concealed quagmire of economic fragility that is sucking many families down. Despite the plague of separate-you-from-your-money advertisements for everything from bingo to online poker, the smiling men and women featured in those brightly coloured fantasy montages, are the biggest lie out there. If Jo Public wasn’t so anaesthetised by having his face forever in one screen or another it would be more convincing to show someone smiling after they’ve just been diagnosed with bowel cancer than when they have just gambled away a year’s rental in ten minutes.

None of it is enhancing people’s lives. And in fact debt is a major source of stress-induced mental ill health.

A huge part of the UK economy is based on buying Tat, rubbish, crap. Promotion and advertising has gone nuclear as a result. You cannot purchase the most innocuous item in a shop without being asked for your email address (usually under the guise of mailing you a receipt). You will then be bombarded with promotions. If, like me, you are unfortunate enough to have an old yahoo account you will know it has become almost unusable due to the sheer volume of advertisements that explode onto the screen whenever you log in.

Continually manipulating people to buy tat they don’t need is an industry in itself. It takes a massive reservoir of resources and money and ingenuity and effort to get folk to eat stuff that is bad for them and watch crap films and buy new clothes every week, buy three pairs of trainers even though they never go to the gym, buy complicated coffee machines – (you can’t just put it through a filtre?) buy things that blend your fruit/veg - because why - your teeth don’t work? In fact, there is an inverse equation that I find helpful. The harder someone has to work to sell you something you didn’t know you needed, the more likely it is to be crap.

Rabid consumerism has been normalised so efficiently. When did a new sofa every few years become the norm or two/three annual holidays abroad?

But – at the end of the day – coffee shops, nail bars, disposable clothes and food-for-entertainment does not make for a sustainable economy. Yes, people are spending, they are spending like crazy – people are addicted to spending. But lots of folk are addicted to smoking and alcohol and drugs – and we know how that pans out.

You know I love my analogies so here comes another one. The economic buoyancy of the Tat Economy is like being kept afloat in stormy water by a cheap, punctured dingy. Right now, the holes just happen to be so clogged with detritus that the air won’t let out. But when it does… Oh boy. No bouy-ancy.

It’s not so long ago that the only hefty personal debt most adults would ever have would be their mortgage. But they were borrowing against something that benefited them on a daily basis and eventually the home would hopefully be mortgage free and worth something. Then having a flashy car became an ‘essential’ even though the vast majority of us live near buses and trains and cycle-ways. A car became another thing people would borrow heavily for albeit that it ruins their health haemorrhages money and devalues from the second it is driven out of the showroom. 

But – and especially since higher education became a lucrative way for the government to keep young people out of the unemployment figures – debt has become the norm. We are training young people to think being in MASSIVE amounts of debt is normal. We have an entire generation that have started life under the hefty yolk of colossal debt that some will never crawl out from under.

And while this may be all fine and dandy for those mopping up the money as it is flushed down the toilet by ordinary people, it is ultimately a social earthquake waiting to happen. The fault line runs through every town village and city. If you think *fracking is going to rock our world just wait and see the cracks that open up as the hidden debt breaks through.

Since the Industrial Revolution strong economies have been based on production and investment in infrastructure. Workers were valued because they could deliver that production. Now – it seems – ordinary citizens are just a way of funnelling money from lenders to profiteers. Tat is the cheap trick by which that alchemy takes place.

But a Tat Economy is a deadly thing. It is a sick thing.

Our Tat Economy is cardboard boat adrift in an acid ocean.

*

Thanks for reading

*Casey & the Surfmen is now available direct from bandcamp

And do check our - My BOOKS