Environmental contamination

 Afghanistan, Croatia, Iraq, Israel, liberal interventionism, Palestine, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Nov 192012
 

My most recent post describes how we might blame, in part, social media corporations for deliberately fashioning environments which encourage libellous and defamatory conversations to take place:

In the light of encroaching libel actions various, and as a final thought tonight – that is to say, in a Columbo-esque parting shot kind of way! – maybe we should begin to conceptualise the idea of a huge class action against those social media corporations I’ve mentioned: corporations which sold us their social media tools as ephemeral expressions of our least careful thoughts – and yet did so with the ever-present intention to use them quite permanently.  That people can now arguably be accused of libel and defamation is in part – just as arguably – due to these two-faced software environments.  After all, if you deliberately encourage and make it attractive for people to republish or “like” the wildest assertions at the click of button, you are – are you not? – in some way to blame for the consequent behaviours.

Meanwhile, and not totally unrelated, our recent liberal-interventionist history has us invading sovereign nation-states precisely because – in our considered opinion – the sociopolitical and socioeconomic environments they generate fiercely prejudice their citizens, subjects and oppressed various.

We only have to look to the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq to understand how the figure of that inviolable space that once was a nation-state has taken on a completely different air of late.  In fact, the latest example actually involved the British authorities being caught out planning to intervene in the Assange case, holed up as he was – and is – at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

So.

Nation-states are not the fully walled gardens they used to be.  As Facebook breaks down the permeability of the Internet, so international action and thought break up the impermeability of foreign countries.

A simple example: even as a British citizen, born and bred, you are not out of the reach of American copyright instincts.

The responsibility for creating an environment, with deliberation and intentionality, does not only apply however to virtual communities.  I know little about Gaza and the Israeli conflict, but I cannot help think that a certain contamination of environmental sensibilities is operating to the detriment of both parties.

I believe the Israelis argue that it is wrong to equate a nation-state with a terrorist organisation.  On the other hand, in other areas of the world, as already pointed out above, non-state institutions are sometimes supported over state-structured alternatives.  The principle of sovereignty, again as already pointed out, is not enough in itself.

What is true is that Israel is an embedded democracy where the countries surrounding it are not.  Its people have also suffered tremendous wrongs at the hands not only of dictatorships but also alleged democracies – and such wrongs, or at least their antecedents in thought and potentially returning future deed, continue to operate.  The environment, as perceived from within Israel, is surely one of continuing tension: to live a rubber-band life in democracy is a dreadful thing indeed.  One would hope that democracy, in itself, would assign a degree of final peace and calm.  This has clearly not happened.

As it’s not happening here in Britain.

So the Israelis exist in an environment which encourages them to fear their surroundings.  This is immoral – more so where recent history taught the Jews that to appease led to practical extinction.  I can therefore understand, even where I find it difficult to accept, the current bombing of Gaza by the Israeli state.

A human being who’s had all their freedom ripped asunder, all their family gassed, all their history burned, all their books destroyed … well, listen up, how would you react at the slightest provocation?  How would you react at the slightest sign of invasion of your personal space?  How would you react at the slightest disengagement with international law?

The best form of defence, after all, is attack.

*

You’re waiting for a “but”, I can tell.

You’re not going to get one.

Not exactly, anyhow.

The state of Israel is that single sign of hope that followed our collective responsibility as democratic nation-states through the length and breadth of World War II.  Where gas chambers and concentration camps were the terrible location of Jews in times past, a nation-state – of certain impermeability – is now their safe haven.

Even if the aforementioned impermeability is no longer so secure.

Even if the haven is sadly blood-spattered.

Even if other nations’ rights do need attending to.

We cannot forget what we allowed to happen in the name of an easier political life.

Yes.  The Palestine people have an equal right to a safe haven.  Yes.  That they do not have it is yet another shameful episode in human history – as well as yet another shameful example of environmental management.

But the Palestinians must accept, emotionally as well as politically, the absolute requirement for the memory of six million Jews to be enshrined in that haven I talk about above.  Unless and until this happens, unless it comes from the heart, those six million Jews will have lost their terribly dignified battle to peacefully do what is right – and the violent people who currently populate our planet everywhere will have won their battle to do wrong in the name of a wider justice.

“Thank goodness it’s Friday!”

 Iraq, Iraq-ification, on a high, phone-hacking, police, publishing, Rupert Murdoch, social media, social networks, Sun  1 Response »
Sep 142012
 

Yes, I know.  It’s pretty hackneyed to say so.  It’s a cliché – yet, even so, a truth.

Is that why publishing empires like Murdoch’s have grown to such a size?  He has, after all, specialised in giving people what they allegedly want.  And perhaps, for some decades, what people have wanted is precisely not the truth.  The truth consists in the following:

  1. Those in charge will always remain in charge.
  2. Those in charge are not those best suited to rule.
  3. Those in charge will always try and make your life more miserable.
  4. Those in charge are there to win every bloody battle.
  5. Those in charge are there to win every bloodless battle.
  6. Those in charge are bloody, full stop.
  7. Those in charge are greedy and money-grabbing.
  8. Those in charge are always lying.
  9. Those in charge feather their nests at our expense.
  10. Those in charge are permanent cuckoos in the nests of democracy.

Mind you, one truth that Murdoch does sell runs as follows:

  1. Given the chance, we’d all love to be like those in charge.

Or so, at least, I used to believe.  But I do truly think things are changing.  My last post kind of reaches, in a nakedly rambling sort of way, a quite precise conclusion:

I don’t know about the civilisation you live in – but it seems to me that something really dirty is about to unspool out of the civilisation I habitually inhabit.

It’s probably a consequence of all that social media honesty.  If you start doing it for fun in your everyday life, how can you avoid not ending up doing it for real in your work?  We’re all, little by little, acquiring whistleblowing instincts, aren’t we?  Even those people in the middle levels of organisations, who generally find their job is to filter away reality from both the public and workforce’s gaze.

Who said Facebook and Twitter couldn’t conquer the world?  Maybe what’s really happening here is that these environments are actually retraining us all in the twin, unassailable and universal virtues of honesty and good faith!

With truth becoming a natural instinct again, perhaps there really is a chance for hope on the horizon.

Perhaps we are seeing a changing of the guard in the publishing world.  Murdoch’s penchant for avoiding the truth in his papers, that hackneyed clichéd boring truth which no wage slave on a daily basis would be able to survive, is being undermined by the amateur realities we generally honestly transmit in our social media communications.  And even when you avoid your truth in such communications, it’s eventually clear to the gathered audience what you’re really about – as well as where that truth is to be found.  So whether you tell the truth or not, the multi-directional nature of social media makes it impossible to convincingly sustain for any length of time a posture which does not approximate to reality.

Think of the tabloid empires throughout history and how they managed to support establishment inexactitudes.  Think of phonehacking and the police; think of certain MPs’ outrageous privileges; think of Hillsborough and maybe the miners too; think of Iraq and other points of intellectually brutalised conflict, wiped out in a tide of impositional politics.

The age of editing reality – without a productive and immediate comeback from those who might know differently – is coming to an end.

In a sense, therefore, so is traditional newspaper publishing.

The future lies once more in the hackneyed and clichéd realities that fairly paint our world as it actually is – instead of as the powerful would have it be shaped.

Thank goodness it’s Friday, eh?  Thank goodness it’s Friday.

Why can Amazon have a near-monopoly on the web but, in our bodies, the NHS mustn’t?

 Amazon, in a hole, Iraq, Iraq-ification, NHS  No Responses »
May 152012
 

Here’s the tweet which sparked this post off:

YOU IDIOTS. I DON’T WANT TO PICK AND CHOOSE HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TO FIND THE BEST SERVICE. ITS A HEALTH SERVICE NOT F***ING AMAZON. #NHS

The truth of the matter is, however, as the monopoly on health services by the NHS is slowly but surely picked away at by the business equivalents of flesh-eating bacteria of the most voracious kind, companies like Amazon, Apple, Google and Samsung affirm and strengthen their monopolistic holds over the supposedly free-market capitalism we are regularly informed guarantees us transparency and a maximisation of outcomes.

To return to the above tweet, then, whilst the NHS is splintered into many unhappy shards of allegedly beneficial competition, Amazon destroys all those who would plan an alternative to their evermore singular offer.

So why do we allow Amazon to proceed on its merry monopolistic way and yet choose, with respect to something that manifestly delivers true value for money, to destroy a model of economic worth?

We’re almost back at Iraq now, aren’t we?

WHY, WHY, WHY?

Craig Murray, Matthew Gould and those lily-white allegiances (or two ambassadors, three countries and one defunct transatlantic charity)

 Adam Werritty, Atlantic Bridge, Craig Murray, in a hole, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Liam Fox, Matthew Gould, WMDs  2 Responses »
Nov 142011
 

I am absolutely swimming in the waters of sheer ignorance here.  Firstly, I am unaware of the ins and outs of arguments surrounding Zionism.  And whilst I have been told I’m a sixteenth part Spanish Jew, this is hardly a declaration of fundamental interest.

Secondly, I am inclined to appreciate that creating a generally democratic state where one is surrounded by hostility (whether warranted or not) cannot be an easy task – either to propose or to sustain.  So I don’t see Israel’s job as an easy one – especially given the history of Western civilisation’s own long-running historical hostility to the Jewish as a people.

Thus it is that I am extremely disconcerted by Craig Murray’s latest post on the subject of alleged Israeli interests at the heart of British government.  I have no yardstick to determine its value – nor political antennae to calibrate the realities of any of the parties concerned.  Yet, if the little I can appreciate has any value whatsoever, there would appear to have been something serious happening at the very centre of our international relations; something which – at the very least – shows absolute disregard for due process and procedure.

Craig’s piece is long and involved but takes us back to the nexus that was the Atlantic Bridge charity – and therefore makes highly pertinent reading.  Whether it is a true reflection of what is going on or not, there I will have to leave you in the hands of others far better qualified than myself for an opinion on these matters.  Where I am inclined to stop and cogitate for a second is around the suppositions contained in a comment to the post under discussion today (you’ll have to scroll down to dig it out – Craig doesn’t currently have permalinks for the comments to his posts):

‘You cannot do this job without being a passionate Zionist.’ — Britain’s new ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, tells the Manchester-based Jewish Telegraph.
.
As a friend of mine remarked when I pointed this out immediately following Fox’s resignation: What if Her Majesty’s Government had appointed a white supremacist as its ambassador to S. Africa? Or a Communist as its ambassador to Moscow?
.


Obviously, for the author of the comment, Zionism – whatever it should exactly mean – is on a par with white supremacy philosophies and Communism itself.  Myself, I really can’t judge for – as I have pointed out throughout this article – I really do not have the critical apparatus to come to a convincing and appropriate judgement.

So I would, instead, just focus on these paragraphs at the end of Craig’s original post:

There is a further question which arises. Ever since the creation of the state of Israel, the UK had a policy of not appointing a jewish Briton as Ambassador, for fear of conflict of interest. As a similar policy of not appointing a catholic Ambassador to the Vatican. New Labour overturned both longstanding policies as discriminatory. Matthew Gould is therefore the first jewish British Ambassador to Israel.

Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described him as “Not just an ambassador who is jewish, but a jewish ambassador”. That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.

It is thus most unfortunate that it is Gould who is the only British Ambassador to have met Fox and Werritty together, who met them six times, and who now stands suspected of long term participation with them in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel. This makes it even more imperative that the FCO answers now the numerous outstanding questions about the Gould/Werritty relationship and the purpose of all those meetings with Fox.

Personally, right now, I don’t think I’m inclined to get involved in the argument over whether Iran should be attacked or not.  I’m not sure it’s a good idea the Iranians in particular should have their own nuclear arsenal – on the other hand, I’m not inclined to believe that anyone’s nuclear arsenals make our planet a better place for coexistence.  Where the grim realities remain, of course, we must do what we must do.  So there I really cannot offer any easy advice.

Even as I just can’t help remembering those WMDs which were never found in Iraq.

Nor properly disregard how we were so damnably and completely manipulated on the subject of their alleged reach and destination.

But where I am of a mind to pursue Craig’s line of reasoning is in this apparent conflict of interests quite at the very heart of British government.  And the covert – that is to say, anti-democratic – way in which these interests appear to have been pursued.

We come back again to the question of acting in the interests of another state before the tighter and more homegrown needs of the United Kingdom itself.  And whilst I’m not legally qualified to know if any of this borders on a treasonable mindset, it certainly doesn’t seem to be a case of lily-white allegiances.

Now does it?
____________________

Update to this post: this from the Guardian this evening simply serves to confirm that something is happening behind the scenes – as, indeed, it always undeniably is.  It would be naive of us to believe otherwise.  And that something needs to be done about Iran’s alleged desire to acquire nuclear weapons is probably a given in most parts of the world.  We do have a problem, however, if the objective of those who wish to contain Iran’s ambitions is to kickstart another war on the scale of that which afflicted Iraq – a conflict no Western economy could possibly support in the current economic circumstances.  That, surely, along with the lack of democratic oversight, is the key issue to hand here.

Meanwhile, the stupidities about suggesting that the Olympic Games in London next year will be all about whether to use surface-to-air missiles in their defence or not is a magnificently idiotic distraction.

How Greece is a kind of Iraq for our very own financial times

 a con, copyright, copyright madness, Greece, Iraq, Iraq-ification, liberal interventionism, neo-liberal interventionism  3 Responses »
Nov 032011
 

Iraq was an unhappy case of the excesses of liberal interventionism.  Quite possibly Blair did believe in fighting a war on behalf of the downtrodden Iraqis.  Whether it was the case or not, it wasn’t a happy experience – as events subsequently showed.

Today, in different parliaments and sovereign bodies, at a very different time, with a very different background, and with different leaders at their respective helms, it would appear that Greece is now a parallel case – an Iraq for our very own financial times.  Not a case of the kind of interventionism which afflicted Iraq’s sovereign brutalities in the pursuit of moneyed oil but rather – this time – an example of neo-liberal interventionism where entire national economies are the goal. 

The people count for very little here.  The moneymen and women count for everything.

As the vultures circle Greece and the threats from Germany and France dissuade the half-baked democratic flailings of too many ineffectual politicians, we have on the horizon a conflict as long drawn-out as Iraq ever was – just on a rather different plain. 

It just goes to show that when the interests are structured enough, sovereignty either counts for everything there is or – alternatively – for absolutely nothing.

As, indeed, Greece is now clearly demonstrating.

All you need to know about the dismantling of the Welfare State – in one easy lesson

 a con, Andrew Lansley, Coalition, Iraq, Jonathan Djanogly, Legal Aid, NHS, Tories, Welfare State  No Responses »
Sep 172011
 

This is how it used to be.  As recently as 2007, in fact – at least according to the Guardian newspaper:

The post-war Labour government established the four pillars of our welfare state: the NHS, free education, social security and public housing. Sixty years on, these institutions are rightly cherished and any major attempt to reform them can expect to provoke much public and media controversy.

The same government established the legal aid scheme (sometimes described as the fifth pillar of the welfare state) having recognised that equality of access to justice and the right to representation before the law were as fundamental to the creation of a just society as free healthcare and education. The scheme ensured that everyone who needed a lawyer should have one, regardless of ability to pay.

Now the Tory-led Coalition is in the process of dismantling the Welfare State – and, whilst as with the lead-up to Iraq almost a decade ago, there have been many murmurings, puzzlements, ideological disagreements and political accusations, the real reason would appear to be becoming evermore clearer.

Iraq, in the end, wasn’t about weapons of mass destruction.  It was, so clearly, a combination of assuring necessary supplies of oil to Western consumers whilst at the same time guaranteeing – in a wider sense – that mainly American economic interests could take financial advantage of the situation.

All that stuff about the end of history, the clash of civilisations and that neo-conservative century of newly politicised democratic endeavour was, in the end, I am sadly afraid, just a pile of incomprehensible burblings.

Remember this, at least for the rest of the post: it was all about – and nothing more than a question of – making pots of money.

And so we have, from the Telegraph as long ago as last year, an unhappy thesis in relation to the person now most responsible for engineering the dismantling of the first pillar of the Welfare State – that is to say, the NHS:

Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, is being bankrolled by the head of one of the biggest private health providers to the NHS, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.

Meanwhile, yesterday I posted on a story which came yet again from the Guardian.  In this case, the article seemed to indicate in a fairly convincing manner that the person most responsible for dismantling the fifth pillar of the Welfare State as mentioned above – the Legal Aid system – will be in a position to benefit personally from some of the changes he is looking to push through.

As I said at the top of today’s post: this is all you need to know about the dismantling of the Welfare State – in one easy lesson.

A transfer of masses and masses of pots of money.

To those who already have plenty …

How to cherish a lost decade on this September 11th, 2011

 9/11, Croatia, in a hole, Iraq, Islamic terrorism, on a high, publishing  No Responses »
Sep 112011
 

Today, whatever the year, will always now be associated with September 11th, 2001.  As Wikipedia describes the events of that day:

The September 11 attacks (called September 11, September 11th or 9/11),[nb 1] were a series of four coordinated suicide attacks upon the United States in New York City and the Washington, D.C. areas on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 terrorists from the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda hijacked four passenger jets.[2][3] The hijackers intentionally crashed two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; both towers collapsed within two hours. Hijackers crashed a third plane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth jet, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania before it could reach its intended target in Washington, D.C. after the passengers attempted to take control. Nearly 3,000 died in the attacks.[4][5][6]

I don’t remember very much of where I was that day.  Not like many others, in fact – who remember with the sharpness of overwhelming pain.  In Spain, for sure; preparing, I think, to set up an online publishing project.  Later would come some involvement in open source, where I learnt a lot about some of its ins and outs – a learning curve which stays with me to this very day.  At the same time, I was studying for my Publishing Master under some of the greats of Spanish publishing.  The world, for me, at the time, for a while, seemed full of possibilities and opportunities.

Not like many others, in fact – who were only able to fear what the future might bring, as a result of the horror of that day.

That is the full terror of terrorism encapsulated.  What it does in its immediate theatre (as dramatic and bloody as it is) is bad enough.  What the fear it generates stops the rest of us from doing as a result is, however, far worse than this.

Afterwards, as Iraq approached, and a mistaken attempt to set up business in Croatia took its toll on my health, things didn’t look as positive as they might have.  As the world has lost its way over the past ten years, so I sort of lost my own.  Unable to fully recover a sense of myself – and seriously damaged by the trauma surrounding the lead-up to Iraq, where my belief in politics and political leaders was furiously undermined by it and their absolute demonstrations of cynicism – I puttered along at half-steam for seven years or so.

Essentially keeping a family afloat whilst negating a certain understanding of self.

So September 11th, 2001 made us lose a decade all round.  For thousands of unhappy people who survived that event, it has meant the loss of nearest and dearest – as well as the loss of personal freedoms, security and peace.  For those who died that day at the hands of the terrorists, meanwhile, it meant the end of all hope. 

As survivors in some way or another, whether cogent witnesses or disorientated souls, it is the responsibility of the rest of us – of all of us – to provide that hope which the dead can no longer summon. 

We shall not lose another decade.

That is my hope.

It’s getting more and more like Iraq, in that process is the real objective here

 Coalition, Coalition U-turns, David Cameron, FibDems, George W Bush, in a hole, Iraq, Iraq-ification, Lib-Con pact, LibDems, process, things, Tony Blair  No Responses »
May 192011
 

Yup.  That’s how I feel today.  I’m scratching my head and wondering exactly what the real aim of the Tory side of the Coalition is.

And I am fiercely dragged back to the time of Iraq when we didn’t know if it was WMDs, oil, democracy or Bush’s presidency which truly was at stake in that terrible lead-up to outright conflict.  So what are they looking to detonate here then?  Woodlands?  The NHS?  The Labour Party itself?

Or is it more a very British way of doing stuff?

Slowly I am beginning to wonder if the latter isn’t the case.  As politicking begins to enter a mire of managed soundbites on the one hand and legal recriminations on the other, it doesn’t half seem as if we’re importing lock, stock and barrel the impasse of anti-consensual politics which – at least from the outside looking in – is what American democracy appears to exemplify.

What if it wasn’t really any of these things I mention which the Tory side of the Coalition government (that is to say, David Cameron and his closest cronies themselves) were interested in pulling apart?  What if, instead, it was process they were actually looking to destroy?

Oh, the irony of it all!  To employ the figure of coalition government – about as anti-Thatcherite in its assumption of the importance of fudge as you could possibly get – in order that the British way of getting things done (often, the essence of fudge) could be dismantled in a period of five short years.

Yes.  Irony is the word.  Whilst the radicals, in the figure of the Tory side of the Coalition, dominate the stage once more in their violent desire to uproot all those cosy ways of solving problems we have been so eccentrically familiar with, we find our only alternative to sitting back and waiting for the many axes to awfully fall is to make use of the headlining tactics of our lawyerly friends so beloved of our American cousins.  We ourselves are participating in the process of turning our constituency-connected MPs into little more than empty mouthpieces, fearful of putting their feet in their mouths.  As Chris points out:

But this is not the debate we’re having. Instead, we’re seeing three ugly aspects of our political culture.
One is a tendency to view all political utterances through the prism of whether or not they are “gaffes” – the effect of which will be to discourage plain speaking, or indeed speaking at all.
A second is an atavistic tribalism, which leads both Ed Miliband and The Sun to demand Clarke’s resignation, both on the grounds that he is not “one of us.”
And this leads to a third aspect – the tendency for politics to be reported in terms of who’s up/down/in/out – terms which are to a large extent uninteresting tittle-tattle.
Meanwhile, the real substance of proper politics is forgotten.

This, then, is the wholesale importation of a political culture which has turned into entertainment the otherwise serious business of improving the lot of men and women.  David Cameron’s goal wasn’t the woodlands – because he seemed to give in quite amicably when he saw the opposition was there.  It’s not even the NHS – except inasmuch as the NHS represents quite symbolically all that good socialism is capable of achieving.  (And in Cameron’s world, remnants of this ilk are hardly the most convenient things to have hanging around -  reminders as they are of the truly possible alternatives to the Darwinism of the extreme right.)

No.  Just as Bush used Iraq to keep his constituencies well onside, and WMDs, oil, democracy and most of the rest of the mix were simply things to keep us distracted in the meantime, so Cameron is using the tangibles which raise our progressive hackles (disability benefit, the NHS, the police, the education service, the woodlands, the Murdochs, playground fees and so on) in order to distract us from the far more pernicious objective that underlies what’s really going on: that is to say, the broader aim of destroying forever the bonds and mediums of exchange which have served to tie together even the most contrary of opposition representatives.

It is the virulent atavism, to use Chris’s phrase, which terrifies me most in all of this.  Cameron and his closest cronies are looking to foment a kind of civil war – just as Bush and his closest cronies looked to do so in post-”shock and awe” Iraq.  They are looking to generate that dynamic which says: you are either with us or against us, but never will you be able to choose to station yourself in the middle.  Most Labourites, if asked, would express pure hatred for everything the Lib Dems represented prior to the forming of the Coalition government in May 2010.  (It is not uncommon to hear them described in Labour circles as Fib Dems.)  And yet, in the light of what has happened since, it seems to me that if Cameron is to the Coalition what Bush was to Iraq, then the Lib Dems are to Cameron what Blair was to Bush.

Bush used Blair.  Whilst Blair believed in right and wrong, Bush believed in saving his own skin.  From the perspective of most involved, at least at grassroots level, the same could be said to be true of Cameron and the Lib Dems.

And as Iraq served to enrich the ruthless amongst us, so Cameron’s Britain will eventually destroy all those beautiful British processes which historically allowed the humble to surface, communicate and survive.

The Shock-Doctrined Iraq-ification of the UK deserves a march like today’s

 a con, David Cameron, Enterprise Zones, Iraq, Iraq-ification, shock and awe  No Responses »
Mar 262011
 

Next Left has a shocking report on how the Tory-led Coalition is dividing the country: single parents and families with children lose out to couples without children.

The Shock Doctrine approach to re-engineering British society has been well documented.  The consequences of such an approach will be analogous to the aftermath of Iraq.  We will expect enterprise and innovation to flower in both a virtual and offline desert of people left entirely to their own devices.  I am not surprised that the government’s version of Enterprise Zones should aim utterly to attract existing businesses and organisations to locate new offices and plants.

It’s far more difficult to set up infrastructures to train up new entrepreneurs in the recognisably viable desire to create an enterprise economy than it is to drag in with bribes and sweeteners corporate money machines which already operate.  It would however be far better for the British economy long-term to create – from scratch – a pool of clever and informed individuals capable of regenerating the SME sector.  This would benefit current unemployment levels and bring new ideas and new minds into the economic cycle.

The SME sector should be our way forward to developing future corporate behemoths.  Rather than focussing all our efforts on enriching the already deep pockets of organisations which already choose to shrug off thousands of workers on behalf of the interests of their shareholders – even when they run profitable operations and generate billions of pounds in profits – we should, I think, construct Enterprise Zones tailored to the needs of the new entrepreneurs, and those we might manage to convince of the virtues of taking such a path.

We need more entrepreneurs.  But we need incubating environments to help them develop and grow – and attain that virtuous status.  These Enterprise Zones, as currently posited, incubate only those who already know how to run businesses.  Hanging on to the coattails of the considerably wealthy – as this government is clearly doing – is justifiable only in the sense that any politics worth its salt needs to attend to the needs of all its subjects.  In some strangely sad and unambitious way, however, this government has chosen to renege on that responsibility and attend only to the needs of that wealthiest part of the population which brought them to power in the first place.  Pork-barrel politics of the most overt and unhappy kind.

As the corporations benefited so obviously from the Iraq conflict, so Cameron wants the same to take place in the UK.

So today’s march is exactly what we need.  Just as during the Iraq conflict people needed to express their opposition to a piece of social re-engineering of the most naive kind – bomb a country to bits and then expect democracy to flower out of the ashes – so during this UK conflict people need to show the government that it has not done enough to convince them it has a constructive exit strategy from the all-out war it has chosen to declare on most of the country’s subjects.

Yes.  It’s the job of ambitious politicians to attempt to change nation states.  That’s true.  But, equally, it’s the job of subjects and citizens to say “enough is enough” – or, at least, when events prove, for them if not their wealthy landlords, that this just might be the case.

All power to those who are marching today.

We do not approve of the Shock-Doctrined Iraq-ification of the UK.

This is Cameron’s Iraq then – and we can learn from previous experiences.

Incompetence versus conspiracy in the NHS (or whether this is a question of political rape)

 a con, Coalition, Coalition capitalism, David Cameron, Iraq, Iraq-ification, NHS cuts, www.abookandablog.com  No Responses »
Jan 232011
 

I live my life according to one crucially important maxim: unpleasant stuff which happens to us – where it is the consequence of outside agencies – is a result of incompetence and not conspiracy.

There are a couple of reasons why I prefer to see the world in this way: firstly, it makes it a lot easier to sleep at night; secondly, I had some mental ill health problems in a previous life which made thoughts of conspiracy all too homely and easy to sanction; thirdly, I truly do believe that most of what happens in this world is either the result of nothing more than felicitous coincidence where it is a happy circumstance, and unfortunate inability where it is sad.

But I’m afraid my beloved maxim is currently being sorely tested by this Coalition government of “shock doctrine” tactics.  They may be invoking the Blitz spirit on the flood plains of Brisbane at the moment, but here in Blighty itself, it’s British politicians who are taking the decisions to dismantle the very structures of our most intimate lives.

Is this then a question of political rape?  Read on:

The PCTs have already started to dismantle and in London, staff with no future are haemorrhaging in droves, leaving a skeletal operation alone to determine the allocation of billions worth of spending. The Chair of The Royal College of GPs has described the proposed changes as the end of the NHS as we know it. The BMA, the Royal College of Nursing and several of the specialist medical Royal Colleges have spoken out against it. Calls to phase it in and start with a series of gradually building pilots have fallen on deaf ears. No one is sure how it will work or how adversely it will effect patient care. The very people who will be tasked with implementing such rapid change are already utterly perplexed by it.

That is because they are supposed to be. It is an engineered shock.

And this:

This is why unfettered free markets are a bad idea for health care, and why the US experience has led to a hard fought reversal away from marketization. This is also why, if they were asked to vote for it, the public never would. In fact, in the last election they clearly did not. The Conservative manifesto, with its “no major reorganisations” commitment gave exactly the opposite impression. The only way such drastic privatisation can ever be achieved is through a short sharp shock to the system. Nick Boles, the pro Cameron Conservative MP, laid it out starkly, “’Chaotic’ in our vocabulary is a good thing.” Friedman would be proud. As he himself said, “only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change”.

This is clearly not chaos by incompetence. It is chaos by design.

It all reminds me so very much, in fact, of another moment when shock doctrine was used to detonate a society.  Perhaps political rape is not the most appropriate metaphor to use when talking about what the Coalition government have planned for us.  In a sense, it would be more useful to take the example of the Iraq War and its aftermath to understand the mentality of the “shock doctrine” stormtroopers – and how they are so awfully unable to learn the lessons of history.

What happened to Iraq will happen to the NHS – that is to say, a costly aftermath of chaotic guerilla warfare, as structures are allowed to collapse in the expectation that vacuum will be filled by a flowering of wisdom and sensibility.

Some big expectation.

Unless, of course, enough of us become subversive enough to want to re-establish the original status quo opinion polls seem to affirm we would far rather have.  Even then, there will be no guarantees.  This government has already shown itself capable of laying the blame for generating (what is clearly now) a deliberately disturbing emotional and logistical chaos on a previous Labour regime – a regime which was anything but chaotic, however you choose to look at it.

You can’t have it both ways, can you?  You can’t argue that New Labour was a lumbering example of big government and, at the same time, accuse them of logistical chaos.  Chaos comes out of actions which are fleet of foot.  And certainly in the latter part of that thirteen years of government, you could hardly accuse their leaders of that.

The Iraq-ification of the NHS then?  Absolutely.

Time, I think, to revisit the dirty dirty of Iraq and how it affected us all.  For with this government I fear, only nine months in, that their moment of serious hubris is already on the horizon.

Cameron’s Iraq won’t be a war against a foreign people.  Cameron’s Iraq will, quite intentionally, be a war against his own.
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Further reading: I’ve set up a new creative writing blog which you can find at www.abookandablog.com and which covers the years leading up to and around the Iraq War, on the basis of two documents I wrote at the time – and which I wrote in that other life I mention above.  You can find out how to use this site at the User Manual here.  More background at the About page here.

Comments and feedback, as always, most welcome – either here or there.

On the subject of a political audit trail: "In a democracy are we literally responsible for the decisions our leaders take?"

 consultative democracy, democracy, Iraq, representative democracy, Tony Blair, unclassifiable  No Responses »
Sep 042010
 

I’ve already linked to Anthony Painter’s post on the upsides and downsides of Tony Blair.  He suggested in that post that an acceptance of collective responsibility for the massive mistake which was Iraq was a more sustainable way forward into what would hopefully become a different kind of future than acquiring – or even nurturing – what might end up being a sterile sense of collective guilt.

I wasn’t very happy with that suggestion and expressed myself accordingly.  But further cogitation makes me wonder if he wasn’t actually righter than even he might have thought.

In a democratic state, there is direct connection between the decision-making rights we assign to our public representatives and the decisions they end up making.  That is to say, a political audit trail of sorts if you like – where what they do and say is directly a consequence of what on the ballot paper we have chosen to sanction.  In much the same way as we can all carry out a citizen’s arrest, and thus participate actively in the exertion of a physical and literal defence of the state’s integrity, I do wonder if by not opposing a conflict such as Iraq we are personally opening ourselves up to future actions of legal redress from citizens of other countries invaded by ourselves.

Of course, some of us might be legally protected and have immunity from prosecution as a result of our condition as public representatives.

Under such a circumstance, it would be mighty unreasonable were a citizen of Iraq at some time in the future to decide to sue ordinary British subjects for their complicity in what happened during the Iraq War, simply because other public representatives had an immunity their state did not care to lift.

It’s pretty clear, I suppose, at least for now, that under international law we can’t all be taken to court just because our leaders – with our explicit or implicit agreement – decided to go to war on a legally dubious basis.  It can’t be the case for a very simple reason: if it were, it would already have happened.

But let’s take a future scenario and ponder a little deeper.  Let’s say that in twenty years or so (probably less, but I’m asking you to suspend your disbelief so I shan’t insist) decision-making tools of a politically innovatory nature have become far more widespread, widely used and even welcomed.  Instead of a representative democracy, we have transmuted into a consultative democracy.  In such a new democracy, we don’t have political representatives but political consultants – people who engage us from the start and not only listen to but enable us, so that we can actually lever directly what we think and believe.

With such a direct leverage between decision-making and action, who is to say that at some time in the next twenty years another Iraq mightn’t lead to you or me as ever less distant individuals being taken to court for the actions of what are still our nominally – but not legally – free-willed and all-powerful leaders?

Quite a thought, don’t you think?

To this consultative democracy thing I describe, I would therefore suggest, there are far more upsides and downsides than we might ever have imagined.

Step carefully.