Blog 76. Was Robert Maxwell just ahead of his time?

Could this budget disaster in-waiting make the Mirror pension scandal look like a drop in the ocean?

Not for nothing is this blog called brown girl OUTSIDE the ring – but even I am astonished at feeling so queasy-uneasy about the much lauded pension rule changes announced last week by Giddy Osborne.

Do we still not understand that ‘choice’ is the standard political euphemism for ‘we’re not going to fix the system so it’s everyone for themselves’?

It’s a classic vicious circle. The measure is brought in because annuity returns are crap. Annuities are crap because interest rates are crap. Interest rates are crap because of the financial mess caused by poor regulation of the financial industry. We are not out of the mess yet nor has ineffectual regulation been forced to cowboy up. Liberalism, however, is being applied to pension savings. In other words – we know the man-eating Lake Placid size crocodiles are out there untamed, hungrier than ever but we’re letting the wildebeest loose from their sanctuary anyway. WHAT CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

Do we still pretend not to know that ‘we trust people to make the right decisions’ means ‘we wash our hands of this – and anyway we won’t be in power when the chickens come home to roost (and find they have to live in a hole in the ground)’.

Have we learnt nothing?

Do the government not listen to Money Box on Radio 4? I don’t just mean to the whinings of the Worried Wealthy but the other people; the ones who keep giving their 40 years’ savings to Nigerian princes, Ponsy schemes and non-existent plots of land on the moon?

Let’s just reel back a little.

What this government and previous incumbents have shown us is that they can’t or will not regulate the financial industry effectively. Add to that the voracious need of big ‘C’ capitalism for ever new sources of its life blood – easy money – and you have a subterranean monster eating away at the heart of society, a barely hidden insatiable parasite. We’ve administered some poultices, but it’s there and it’s insatiable.

(I know – the croc morphed into a sort of alien parasite – get over it)

What has choice meant in terms the NHS? We haven’t the will to sort the problems and anyway we are now doubled over with PPI (profit priority indigestion) so we’ll talk about choice – which, as has been said before in this blog – means those with the sharpest elbows can get themselves to where the service still works.

State schools are staggering and stumbling through a maze of half baked schemes – a warren of dead ends from academies to free schools, schools funded by businesses. Schools are demoralised, slated by offsted or overcrowded because they climbed the offsted ladder. Sometimes, it seems, the books are cooked or improvements made by selective offering of exam options. Is it too much to suggest that we simply need good teachers, classrooms that don’t leak and schools with playing fields that haven’t been sold off?

Back to pensions.

As the welfare state wobbles under the weight of ever increasing responsibility, never has there been a time when that precious provision needs to be so carefully tended. We are an old country and getting older. The welfare state was a vehicle meant to transport us from cradle to grave. With the journey getting longer, people who want a smooth ride may need more than one spare tyre.  

And – with a flourish – Giddy Osborne announces that people will be free to spend their private pension pots how they like because people are to be trusted with their own money. No new fiscal safeguards. Tadah! And Westminster plus the majority of the media applaud this. And New Labour agrees. And it’s bollocks.

The answer to the pensions problem (as with banking and insurance and mortgages and investments) has always been to properly regulate the financial industry with real sanctions for misconduct. This announcement is a tacit admission of failure. It is also an admission that the big financial disaster that got us into this mess – where the world of money now revolves round the spenders not the savers - is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

This budget bonkersness is a boon for the con man. It’s Christmas all round all year for the Salmonella cruises and the manufacturers of silly cars. Listening to the commentators extolling the virtues of ‘ordinary working people’ spending their own money, one thing is clear – they have no idea, NO IDEA what it is like to have never had to deal with a serious amount of money. If you’ve always had a nice car and regular holidays it may be easy to see that you would never be tempted to choose that sort of quick fix over longer term comfort. If you have had plenty to do with money advisers throughout your life it’s not easy to see how someone would be conned by a smooth talking arse in a suit. But people are regularly conned and / or persuaded to make stupid decisions with their money. It happens all the time but, until now, not with their pensions.

Blog 75. Lynndie England - a Feminists’ dilemma?

War is very much a feminist issue and not just because of the power gap between the testosterone fuelled madness that leads to war and those caught in the cross fire. Nor is it just an issue for the feminist camp because of the way rape is routinely used as a weapon of war. The increasing involvement of women soldiers on the frontline has opened up dark corners and has possibly pitted feminism against some of its assumed bedfellows – pacifism and small ‘l’ liberalism.

Nowhere is this dilemma more clearly personified than in the figure of Lynndie England. If this name rings unpleasant bells but you can’t quite place it – think of those horrendous pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused, tortured and humiliated in Abu Ghraib during the Iraq invasion. US private Lynndie England is the face of that nightmare. She is the painfully young-looking soldier gurning over the pyramid of naked prisoners and she is the juvenile-looking t-shirted soldier with a naked prisoner on the floor on the end of a leash (and they weren’t the worst pictures).

 

There was little surprise when latterly the general view finally coagulated round the truth that the invasion of Iraq was illegal. It is interesting that, as we mark the centenary of the outbreak of WWI this year, the more politicians try to harness some frisky jingoism – the more the voices of the ordinary soldiers sing out strong from the mass of graves “what a waste”. But whilst the, often illiterate, foot soldiers of that time were duped by their warring masters, Lynndie England was duped at every level. From the system that failed to educate her to a close and senior soldier who clearly had emotional and sexual influence over her to the hawks who peddled the nonsense that justified attack, right up to her president and Commander in Chief who seemed to want to show daddy Bush what a big boy he was – she was conned.

 

To this day she proposes no penitence, sticking to her mantra that they were “the enemy”. Even that, as we now know, was wrong. George W in fact had a pragmatic friendship with Saddam H. In a nutshell Bush Jnr wanted the war to finish unfinished business and Blair wanted to be super buddies with Bush.

 

But why would a humanitarian like me sense an uncomfortable conundrum when it comes to Lynndie England? Firstly, there is a general moral problem in convicting soldiers of war-crimes when the two main and most senior perpetrators remain unpunished. In trying to explain that one an analogy might help. Imagine a couple of burglars – the two top dogs in the hood – decide to break into a house. They enlist a group of children (because the children can get in and they can’t – come on you’ve seen Oliver Twist) and the children have to obey them. During the burglary the children damage things in the house. How would we feel if the children were then captured and punished while the two burglars not only got off scot free but went off to live free and prosperous?

 

Perhaps we should remind ourselves that our own favourite war criminal – Mr. Perma-tan-Tony himself, is not only at liberty but estimated to be now worth around £75million.

 

As a pacifist I find the idea that there are right and wrong ways to slaughter people bizarre (see blog 44. Killing them Softly). But where an invasion is dubious, troops go into the hell pits of conflict with a psychological profile even more warped than usual. And Private Lynndie England was a woman in a mess who was thrown into one of the ugliest messes in our time.

 

Lynndie England, who joined the army in her teens from her trailer-trash background, first became involved with Charles Graner – 14 years her senior in age and senior to her in rank – in 2003.

 

It’s a well circulated idea that the group of soldiers arriving at the crowded Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 were led to believe that the ritual humiliation of prisoners was a technique that was sanctioned by their commanders. It was used as a means of ‘softening up’ prisoners and had been in use long before they arrived. That is not an excuse – it’s just interesting information.

 

Garner (convicted ring-leader of the abuses which came to light) was in the habit of taking explicit pictures of Lynndie when he had sex with her and encouraged her to pose with the prisoners in the manner described above. Graner got Lynndie pregnant (though he disowned her and even initially denied paternity) while also sexually involved with one of her friends and fellow soldiers.

 

There is no way of denying that part of what shocked about these particular abuses, involving Lynndie England, was her gender. There were worse abuses, including the slaughter and rape of women and children by rogue soldiers but we almost expect that in war. If we don’t we should by now. But we cannot deny that – even in war – we expect better behaviour from women. Maybe we have to accept that when a male and female soldier stand side by side – each with a weapon – there remains something unequal about them that requires our questioning.

 

Blog 74. BT v My Bottom - in the County Court!!!

Rant taken down - too much space taken up on my lovely blog with BT crap customer care bother. Normal BGOTR service will be resumed on Tuesday - the BT episode may get boiled down to a cartoon by then - which is all it deserves.
A
x
Monday
cartoon replacements posted - go to usual place for cartoons - click on either the orange 'Amanda Baker' in right hand column or 'view my profile' and it will take you to post lists and cartoons

Blog 73 Wedding Psychosis & Pre-nuptial Agreements

Pre-nuptial agreements and modern wedding psychosis go together like a horse and carriage (as the old saying goes). And it’s most definitely the cart before the horse – nay (neigh!!) it’s the cart without the horse. Or is it a too heavily laden cart and a lame mule or a horse-burger in a shopping cart – or should we stop the analogies there?

Having been through the dreadful ‘D’ myself I would still suggest that if you think you need a pre-nup what you really need is not to get married.

It’s not about being unrealistic concerning relationships but expectation is a powerful thing. Once you boil it down to worries about who gets to keep the dog or the new oven, marriage – which some would argue is a strange archaic concept in any case - is pretty much in the knackers’ yard.

Couple that with the current wedding psychosis, evident at all levels of society, fuelled by women’s mags and the big soap opera which is celebrity life in the 21^st century, and you are on a hiding to nothing – going through the desert on a horse with no name.

According to one bridal magazine I had a quick shufty through while waiting for the dentist, the expected cost of a wedding is now around £24k. Having once been to a wedding fare, I still can’t work out how that figure is reached. Before you criticise - everyone should go at least once wedding fare in their life even if there is no one you know getting married. The sense of relief when you leave is worth every second spent inside.

Worse again is that young folk of less than ordinary fiscal means seem to feel they have to do it in the prescribed way. A young acquaintance of mine spent much of last year attending hen do’s (we’ll go into that horror another time) and then weddings. Usually the couples were from ordinary backgrounds with fragile incomes and already burdened with student debt but still there were the stately homes in the background, the ridiculous dresses, the chocolate fountains, sumptuous receptions, jewellery, wedding cakes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Disney cartoon. Whatever happened to funky weddings? Whatever happened to make-your own dress? Granny made the wedding cake? Friends did the flowers and we all just had a good time?

We’ll leave themed weddings because I feel a migraine brewing.

When I look around my mature married friends there is absolutely no correlation between the amount spent on a wedding and the longevity of the marriage or the quality of the relationship. Though on reflection there may be an inverse relationship!  In fact three of the longest married couples I know with solid relationships that have weathered the storms, eschewed the whole financial meltdown, shop-front, meringue dress, six tier monstrosity events completely. Is that possibly because they were always more focused on the relationship?

My uncle’s in-laws had the distinction a few years back at the ripe old ages of 106 – to have been (then) the longest married couple in Britain – marrying in their late teens. Obviously I did not attend the wedding but I’m pretty sure they managed without a chocolate fountain.

Leaving multi-million dollar celebrity circus weddings to one side (at least they can afford it I suppose and no one expects them to last) this mania for showcase nuptials feels suspiciously like national psychosis? We supposedly know that money doesn’t equate to love so what is going on here? Young people have to get into debt to get educated, to buy a house, even now to get employed as the trend for internships (unpaid work to you and me) seeps in along with zero hours contracts and other work inequities. But getting into debt to get hitched? What is that about?

Tack onto the other end of that scenario the idea of pre-nuptial agreements and doesn’t marriage become ultimately pointless? Pre-nups are legal in America and in their defence, have provided much media entertainment over time. Until now per-nups have been kept at bay here but are now being championed by some law firms.

But if young people are saddled with the idea that they have to get hitched in a blaze of tat with birds of prey flying down the aisle with the rings and flesh spilling out of thousand pound frocks, champagne receptions and manor house settings so that there is nothing of the personality of the families involved but it’s simply a homogenous characterless modern magazine wedding – should pre-nups start with how to divide up the wedding-day debt?

Cartoons are in the usual place and for the people who still can’t find them – for heaven’s sake GO TO THE RIGHT HAND COLUMN AND CLICK ON THE ORANGE ‘Amanda Baker’

 

Blog 72 ‘Miley Cyrus wants your opinion...’

Ok – it’s February and I have a head cold and perhaps should be writing about something either cheery or politically important to justify the thumping on the keyboard which is slightly out of sync with the thumping in my head but I'll just go with the subject that grabs.

‘We value your opinion’

‘Your time is important to us’

‘We’d like to hear your comments’

Companies care about our views the way a cat cares about a mouse it’s about to decapitate. They want your feed-back on their services the way Miley Cyrus wants your opinion on a brushed cotton thermal long-john/vest combo.

What is odd is that some creep in P.R still thinks we believe this shite. Or maybe they just have to spend their budgets and can’t be bothered to walk down the local high-street and take a good look at all the miserable, tired, depressed, worn-out, living-for-Friday people who’d rather eviscerate themselves in public than give another answer to another survey or tick another box on another form which is never, NEVER, E.V.E.R going to change a single corporate or institutional mind unless it involves more profit for said company or an easier life for the administrators.

Is there anyone left in any organisation who doesn’t understand that generally speaking – we mortals just want to be treated with wee bit of courtesy and not be RIPPED OFF?

Ok – I’ll stop with the upper case now but REALLY...

Often when pleas for feed-back are made, the word ‘you’ is repeated.  It’s about ‘you’; we want to hear what ‘you’ have to say. And there will be some nice smiley people to illustrate just what that means; an old person (not someone who looks like they are cold and alone and can’t afford to go out and who only gets a 10 minute visit from a home help twice a week, obviously). There will be a young person (not someone who looks like they have been searching pointlessly for jobs for over a year, obviously). A black person (not someone who looks like he’s always getting stopped and searched, obviously). They may throw in a regional accent to show that they are really down with the people (not brummie because stats show that on the whole it’s one of the less popular accents – obviously). Scottish is popular because research indicates that we trust that dialect – all the better to rip us off. And hopefully – the little ad man thinks – we will see/hear ourselves reflected in that microcosm of British life and not notice that,

a.       When we ring up we can’t get through to a human being.

b.      When we ring up we can’t get through.

c.       Our bills go up exponentially while the service gets shitter and shitter.

d.      Staff aren’t trained sufficiently and often can’t deal with the most basic issues.

e.       Hospitals and schools, for example, are understaffed.

f.       Banks and government departments, for example, are too often corrupted by cronyism.

g.      Our details will be sold on to others who want to send out junk mail.

Telling people that they can have an opinion when it comes to large corporations or public bodies is in that same fluffy mindset as offering choice. Choice in modern day parlance has become a tacit admission that large portions of the service are failing. Take hospitals. What most of us want is a properly run, safe, well staffed unit in our locality. Giving those with cars and sharp elbows choice is simply a means of offering those most likely to litigate, the opportunity to get to the hospital that’s working.

Choice is now euphemism for – ‘we’re not going to deal with the root causes of failing services’.

‘We value your opinion – fill in this form’ is euphemism for – ‘we need to get on with whatever it is we do (or don’t do) so meanwhile we’ll distract you mutts with an e-form along with anyone else mad enough to spend their time sending their thoughts into cyberspace’.

So next time you try to speak to a human who can help you, or try to complain about a service, or wonder why the trains / buses are expensive and crowded or don’t turn up, or your local school is no good or someone has built a supermarket on the playing field or your bank conned you or planning permission has been given for another gambling shop or burger joint on the school route, just remember,

‘THEY (don’t) VALUE YOUR OPINION’

If anyone wants my opinion – cancel February.

Blog 71. Scotland is a Strawberry Tart!

Open letter to the 'No s' from a No-body.

I’ve resisted so hard, jumping on the bandwagon of commenting on the Scotland / England heave ho – the union v no union debate. No Scottish skirmish or Brit bashing or battle for the border, no Salmond baiting or coalition carpeting on this issue from me (well if you ignore blog 37.which was really about the stagnant state of Westminster politics).

Anyone who has ever expressed an opinion on anything, whether they have expertise or experience or not, eventually gets sucked in. As the mighty whirlwind of claim and counter claim, spite and retribution, cajoling and bullying that accompanies the worst break-ups sucks in, we succumb.

The difference is that if we are going to stick with the tired old divorce analogy (Scotland cast as the wife), I do have form. Apart from having gone through the unpleasant experience once myself, I practiced briefly at the end of last century as a family lawyer. And I would therefore like to address this blog as an open letter from someone who may just have an inkling of the obvious pitfalls – to Cameregg & Milliballs and their various squeaking marionettes.

Dear Sirs

(And there is your first problem – how can you possibly understand this from the woman’s point of view?)

The time has come to be blunt – nay brutal.

As the fat old fart in this relationship your bargaining powers may not be what you think. Your sexy younger wife has grown up and grown apart from you. She is aware of how she has lived in your shadow – a shadow which is dark and dank and blocks out her sunlight. You must see how desperate she is if even Mr Salmond is starting to look attractive?

This union was made when Scotland was a giddy stupid witless young thing, unaware of her charms and potential. You have taken often hideous advantage of her attributes and like many bullies – you seem to forget that others don’t – forget.

The initial pleading and whining was lacking in dignity but the subsequent predictable bullying and scare tactics are utterly revolting.

She is like a little strawberry tart still full of promise and deliciousness and not too many calories that will titillate the taste buds and leave us wanting more. You are like a stale old stodgy suet pudding whose only claim to attention is that it’s what people used to eat.

You are politically flaccid she is frisky and full of energy. Yes, there is always the Viagra of politics – some fiscally induced stamina perhaps?  But if things between the sheets aint that good – who WANTS it to go on and on and on?

The latest scaremongering regarding currency is the lowest kind of desperation and harrying. It’s like telling her she will definitely not be able to keep the dog. Well, my mum has a word for dogs – SHIT MACHINES (sorry that’s two words). Maybe she’d prefer a cat. They clean themselves don’t need walking and bury their mess away from your house.

As for her being hounded out of the EU – be careful. Firstly it’s a flawed argument. If she leaves you she leaves the union but you don’t? Isn’t that like saying when two people legally separate only one of the parties is divorced – surely the state of both parties is altered? And in any case, wouldn’t many on the Right who you are currently trying to keep sweet with verbal assaults on European migrants, look north enviously if that were the case?

You have to get out of the habit of drawing attention to things that you think give you leverage over her and in the end fuel her sense of a need to escape from your cold clammy clinch. The more you rant, the more she hates the sound of your voice. The more you threaten the more she feels caged by your inadequacies, barely hidden over the decades. The more you try terror tactics the more she feels her backbone straighten and the fight grow in her. The more you tell her she can’t do without you the more she sizes up other leaner, sexier, less boring, mentally agile, less money obsessed, more spiritually fulfilled possibilities.

At the moment there may even be some sympathy for you. You are all wet down the bottom end, corrupt and dirty in the middle and just kind of not really with it at the top end. The sympathy will fade. She has her life to lead and is feeling the need to get on with it.

Menacing, as you have recently, that even if she leaves you, you will not actually let her go is a base threat that may well confirm her desire to be rid of you. That is tantamount to saying – if the divorce goes through I will send the boys round anyway to barricade you in.

If you think that will drive her back into your grasping groping hands, I suspect you haven’t understood her at all.

Blog 70. I LOVE YA.

Valentine’s all time low for me was when I realised why my gran sent a valentine card to me each year when I was young. It was not out of some sentimental nostalgia or sense of old-lady-fun or because she had a post-box fetish but because she knew that, otherwise, I wouldn’t get any.

There is no point trying to explain my disconnection as a romantic individual. Instead see blog 26 Library Love or blog 41 Not a Lesbian But – which may cast some light.

Having been much sought after in her youth, my gran may have even been embarrassed for me. The only difference between my pre marriage romance desert and post divorce romance wasteland (with kids) is that I learnt to deal with Valentine’s Day torture.

It began at about the age of 14 when the girlie girls began to be inundated with post on Feb 14^th and the sporty or underdeveloped or bookish or bolshie or sole non-white in the class or tall and threatening (or all of the above) did not. Accepting that it is as much a commercial fest as Christmas – an opportunity for vendors of cheap choc and red ‘n pink stuff to offload the same – was very liberating. I even added to the situation myself in last Friday’s Valentine Presie emergency blog for those on the other side of the nightmare.

But – so that others don’t suffer as I did - I make this proclamation to all BGOTR readers.

Should spiteful friends ask ‘how many did you get’? Or ‘did you get any’? You can answer YES. A big fat YEEEEES.

Let’s face it, in a world where virtual life and so-called reality are increasingly blurred this is a grey area we can happily exploit.

If you click on the orange ‘Amanda Baker’ in the right hand column (where you usually find the cartoons) you will find your valentine card waiting to be downloaded.

I also hereby give you (virtually) some virtual chocolates – guaranteed not to make you fat or rot your teeth or give you diabetes and some virtual flowers guaranteed not to fade or give you hay fever.

Anything else you would wish for V.D.  (!*$@?”£^&*!) i.e. for card-vendors, restaurants decked out with bows and flowers, pink bottles of champagne, couples slurping over each other in public to piss off – I also grant you – virtually.

It’s all from

Guess who?

I LOVE YA