Little Red Blogger

Labour Vote takes a Walk.

2009-06-08T16:50:00.001+01:00

Perhaps the most disheartening, yet unsurprising result of the recent Euro elections in the UK is the election of two BNP Euro MP's. Disheartening as their share of the vote increased marginally relative to the collapse in support for the Labour party.

This, not the BNP is the real story of the Euro elections with the New Labour calculus that the great unwashed have nowhere else to go, returning to bite them where it hurts. Labour's party machine has atrophied and their campaign apparently disorganised and ineffective. The traditional Labour vote has unsuprisingly sat on it's hands and stayed at home.

As a libertarian lefty outsider it does seem amazing that Labour high command failed to spot this draining of support and do something about it. Even if you take a base machine politics view of the debacle, the lack of GOTV is puzzling and does not bode well for a general election.

Labour Vote takes a Walk.

2009-06-08T16:50:00.000+01:00

The Politics of Mediocrity: Cameron's Vapid Play for The Centre Ground.

2007-10-03T22:24:00.001+01:00

To any kind of leftist, be it tankie, old skool sectarian trot, trad social democrat or libertarian/anarcho-socialist type Conservative party conferences are very much an exercise in political anthropology. After all althought the labour party has divested itself of most of its social democratic principles, it's form and method of organisation are pretty familiar, even New Labour's vanguardist lenninist take-over was a textbook operation familiar to most leftwing activists. The Labour party still has the sinew and reflexes of a left-of-centre party so it's internal politics can be easily followed.

The Conservatives however have not and will not ever be a socialist party, it is the party of captial, of the petit borgeious businessman, Burkean stick-in-the-muds, the small landowner, the surrogate England party nostalgic for empire absorber of the old classical liberals and patrician neo-aristocratic one nationistas. As the cliche goes the Conservatives are designed to be good at one thing: winning elections which leads quite neatly onto another cliche being that it's no accident they are called 'the stupid party'. The Conservative party is not really interested in ideas, Ideology like their party's leadership is a means to an end. Conservatives being the ultimate pragmatists.

Thatcherism was then an aberration for the Conservative party. The entryism of various libertarian, 'free market' idealists and other radicals into the Conservatives is still causing them severe indigestion even now. Only Thatcher could keep this coalition of eurosceptics, gonzo corporate 'libertarians' and the party's traditional class interests together. The party's ideological schisms and factions were hard to manage lacking. This brings us neatly to Cameron...

Cameron is in many ways a sign of the party returning to its aristocratic blue-blooded roots and to the Conservatives pragmatic power seeking ways. To paraphrase Private Eye the general consensus was that the 'oiks' had had a good enough go at running the party and now it was the toffs turn again. Cameron's orientation is power and he will mouth whatever pieties are needed, politically cross-dress, softsoap and do whatever is needed to get elected. The traditional Conservative position only made strange due to the 17 year old Thatcherite abberation. Cameron is returning the Conservatives to their political roots, be afraid!

The Drums of War Beat Faster

2007-09-26T22:52:00.001+01:00

Iran is being prepared for war, many voices accross the web are warning of the impending catastrophe, From Arthur Silber to Empire Burlesque all are echoing the same theme: War is coming, be ready.

For a UK citizen this then asks the question, how if/when such a terrible event occurs will it affect me, living in a small uninteresting island of the unfashionable end of Europe. Although it is terrible to pose the question in such a self centred way, international geopoltics can seem rather abstract to the ordinary man in the street and for the working class day-to-day survival is paramount.

The bombing of Iran would raise oil prices, increase islamist terrorism and make the world an even unsafer place there is no upside even on the crudest and most amoral of utilitarian calculus. Another question for your average British person is would Brown go along with the attack? This is a hard one to call, every British semi-progressive type hopes that Brown will emulate Harold Wilson and refuse to provide logistical support or troops/planes. On the other hand it is perfectly convincing to see Brown's inherent atlanticism getting the better of him and the mysterious alchemy of the 'special relationship' taking it's toll on his political judgement and therefore troops being committed.

Make no mistake the British antiwar movement must lobby hard, counter neo-imperialist propaganda and mobilise the British public against any involvement in a strike on Iran, otherwise the consequences will be lasting, bloody and protracted

Back once again

2007-05-16T17:10:00.001+01:00

So I return having finally found a decentish bloggin' tool in Ubuntu Linux called Flock, a fancy 'web 0' browser, fully buzzword compliant and up-to-date and more importantly Free as in libre software.nati

Politics has changed as has the international scene, Blair has gone, Brown a shoe-in interesting times ahead...

No better time to blog, more soon.

technorati tags:return, blogging, back

Manufacturing Consent...One School Pupil at a Time.....

2006-07-19T21:45:00.000+01:00

To paraphrase what the Jesuits used to say if you gave them a child when they were 5 yearsold the church would have that child for life, much the same is true of our ever creeping surveillance state with schools being in the front-line of this particular battle between a citizen's privacy andthe states desire to keep tabs on one. The pupils at a north London sixth form are an example of how this friction between individual liberty and the rationalizing technocratic and totalising aspects of the modern state will play itself out over the coming decades. The key bureaucratic innovation for this particular school is to let the 6th form pupils sign themselves in and out of school via their fingerprints, this of course entails that their fingerprints be held on a centralised school database to enable such a system to work properly. From the schools point of view, and the wider idea of bureaucratic rationality the idea of logging pupils makes perfectsense as it is more 'efficient', gives the pupils more 'control' over when they sign in and out and streamlines the administration of the school. As with most of these seemingly administrative measures, what appears innocuous and merely bureaucratic tidying up makes people more tolerant and willing to accept he monitoring tracking of their every day activities. So this biometric fingerprinting scheme by the schools is a straw in the wind, and another means of socialising people towards a total surveillance society.

Unlike some Anarchist/Libertarian types I am not a conspiracy theorist on the whole, the surveillance society is not part of some evil master plan by the ruling classes to control society, in fact it would be an easier menace to combat if it were the case..but I digress, the surveillance state is the logical culmination of many different trends, both technologically and socially. The police, security services and related spooks are hard-wired to want more control and to extend their capabilities from their perspective the desire to use these technologies is unfortunate but understandable. Technologically Moore's law and the explosion of modern telecommunications technology have made the nightmare of total surveillance and monitoring a real possibility. Politically with the so-called War-on-Terror being in full swing it has provided perfect cover embracing and enhancing these technologies without fear of a public backlash. The British are of course one of the most heavily monitored societies in the western world, CCTV cameras, numberplate tracking and other intrusive technologies are quietly accepting with nary a murmer by the public. The old saw of: if you've got nothing to hide then you've got nothing to worry about is all too readily accepted.

These social and technological trends were of course present pre 9-11 madness and 7/7 bombings, but these events have been used by opportunistic politicians and their cunning enablers within the police and security services to further restricit liberty and to pilfer a phrase manufacture consent. Biometrics in schools are the merely the start and if the current insanity in the middle east continues, be more afraid....

2006-07-11T18:36:00.000+01:00

testing testing

2006-07-10T00:23:00.000+01:00

Beowulf's not dead, only sleeping...

A long hiatus..but I'm back as I have finally installed and set-up Ubuntu on my system and intend to blog more frequently... so apologies for my absence and back to bloggin'

Europeans are From Mars, Muslims from Venus: How we Get the Islamic World Wrong part II

2006-03-30T23:47:00.000+01:00

Freedom of speech is presented your typical liberal as a costless, weightless, contextlesss state of being. This particular defined freedom is mans natural state of being that other people and entities suppress. The liberal sees freedom of speech as occurring in a relative vacuum. Circumstance, economic reality the social background in which the speech takes place are completely ignored. Freedom of speech like voting, representative democracy and many other parts of modern living is an artificial construct a convenient shorthand for a variety of different political and philosophical positions.

How then does this relate to the Danish cartoons and the West’s relationship with the Islamic world? From a Muslim perspective westerners exercising their ‘freedom of speech’ are doing so in a state of historical amnesia, as if the last 300 years of colonial domination and expropriation never took place. The Danish cartoonists seemed to have no awareness of the cultural context in which their images would be received. Without thinking they have reproduced many of the same orientalist stereotypes that have recurred many times throughout Europe’s love/hate relationship with Islam. Images of fanaticism, the uncivilised lesser other combined with a long shameful history of anti-Semitism and the Muslim reaction to these images and the fig leaf defence of ‘free speech’ is not only understandable but alas predictable.

When westerners accuse the Islamic world of over-reacting it is merely another demonstration of our historical blindness and inability to face up to our colonial past.The Danish cartoonists are obviously free in a technical sense to publish and say whatever they like, given the easiness of blogging for most westerners there are no real formal restrictions to speaking what’s on your mind. What the cartoonists were not free to do was to orchestrate how people would react to what they actually published. Being of a Libertarian bent free speech is taken as a given, existing it seems to be taken away.
What exactly is meant by the idea of ‘free speech’ is open to(much) debate. I am technically free to publish anything I like on this blog, tho’ if I start posting copyrighted images and text all over the place then various different corporate entities may start taking an interest in my speech and move to curtail this speech. If my blog was in Germany and I for whatever reason used Nazi imagery the long arm of the law would take a keen interest in what was being wrote and who was writing it. Freedom of speech in modern capitalist societies is curtailed in many different ways, try questioning how your workplace is run, answering back to your ‘superiors’ and you will swiftly find out how far the writ of free speech runs in reality.

Europeans are From Mars, Muslims from Venus: How we Get the Islamic World Wrong part I

2006-02-07T23:04:00.000Z

While watching the whole controversy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons evolve the reaction of the various different progressive factions within the western left has been interesting to observe. Aside from the typical internecine spats that the left is so good at one must look at the underlying issues behind the irruption of rage and the resultant counter-reaction by western ‘liberals’, old skool conservatives and the ‘decent’ left(Oliver Kamm and his ilk). What has been extant is the paucity of knowledge displayed by both left and right on Islam and its relation to Prophet Muhammad

The original offence was caused by the Danish paper publishing the cartoon depicting Prophet Muhammad as having a bomb in his turban. Muslims would of course find this offensive and the typical commentariat line taken on this is that it offends Qu’ranic injunctions about making images of the divine along with similar religious taboos. Western commentators do however miss another reason why Muslims would find this cartoon so offensive. Islamic culture has two main traditions for the transmission of religious and theological knowledge that of the Qu’ran and it’s surrounding exegesis and that of the Hadith. The Hadith are the collecting sayings and actions of the Prophet, at first transmitted orally and then written down and checked for their veracity.

The Hadith can in some respects be seen as analogous to the New Testament within Christian tradition. So what I can hear you asking do the Hadith have to do with the flare-up over the Danish Muhammad cartoons? Ordinary Muslims like their Christian counterparts have many different spiritual traditions some esoteric and based on mystical ritual(see the Sufis and Miester Eckhart), others more legalistic/philosophical i.e Augustine and the Islamic practitioners of Kalam. Both the philosophical and mystical sides of these religions tend to be elite projects; the ordinary believer will tend to evolve their own form of piety and relation to the overall mythos, a kind of ‘folk’ spirituality that identifies them with their religious tradition.

This ‘folk’ spirituality can be seen in Catholic devotion to certain saints and in Islam to Muslims focus on the life and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet Muhammad to many Muslims is to adapt a Shi’a phrase an ‘object of emulation’, thus if a Muslim was considering whether to perform a certain action first he may consult the Qu’ran and then the Hadith to see what Prophet Muhammad did in a similar situation. Emulating Prophet Muhammad for the ordinary Muslim is a way of expressing and acting out their spirituality. This perhaps explains why the Danish cartoons provoked such a strong reaction amongst ordinary Muslims. By insulting and caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad it is by implication an insult to the ordinary Muslim believer and the way he or she conducts their life.

The Danish cartoonists evidently did not consider how Muslims would react to these cartoons. They did not think how their depictions would be perceived by ordinary Muslims and had no appreciation of the wider cultural context in which these images would be received. This would seem to point to the Danish cartoonists giving no thought as to how easily images may be spread round the globe these days. Also like many of the liberal commentariat they gave no thought to how the West is perceived in the Islamic world and how this might affect how these cartoons would be received.

In part II of this post I’ll be looking at issues of free speech relating to the publication of the cartoons.

Undemocracy: Why the Glorification of Terrorism Law is a Bad Idea

2006-01-18T16:35:00.000Z

The latest refusal by the Lords to endorse the new offence of ‘glorifying’ acts of terrorism is an example of Blair’s native political cunning in denying the Lords any real political legitimacy. Like many ‘new’ labour reforms the keeping of the Lords as appointed preserves the old style power patronage and ‘modernises’ the process of appointing members to the Lords. So ‘new’ Labour keeps the appearance of having a check on it’s political power while in reality having no legitimate check at all. Still for all this the Lords is trying its best to quash or modify this current piece of very illiberal legislation presented by the ‘new’ Labour government.

The key idea behind this legislation is that if anyone is found to be glorifying the nebulous offence of terrorism then under this new law they can prosecuted and ultimately gaoled for this. This legislation then contravenes the basic right of free speech and could affect anyone in UK who might offer support to national liberation movements, revolutionaries etc.. Indeed it is quite possible if these laws had been brought in during the seventies then UK born supporters of the ANC might have been prosecuted. This exposes a key weakness with the legislation in that no-one can really agree exactly what terrorism; there is really no legally watertight way of defining it. One can objectively describe it as acts of violence that cause terror to a wider civilian population, but that would encompass much of modern warfare and leave governments open to prosecution themselves, a definite challenge to their legitimacy. So this law has at its heart a vaguely defined idea to stop people, maybe possibly being inspired by statements supposedly supporting ‘terrorism’. From the amount of equivocating in the above sentence it’s easy to see how a team of skilled defence lawyers could drive a coach and horses through any attempt to prosecute a person under these laws.

The government is trying to legislate on the idea of preventing probable harm based on some very weak potential causal links between those supporting terrorist actions and those carrying out the actions. The great danger of this law is of course the potential suppression of free speech by any government using this legislation. Posit the following hypothetical scenario: another 7/7 style bombing happens in London, the police comb through the bombers internet records, regular websites he visits. The police find that the bomber regularly read for example Lenin’s Tomb frequently. Lenin is an SWP member and is ardently anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist. The government remembers Lenin’s publishing of the Craig Murray torture documents and uses the above law to prosecute Lenin and shut down his blog. Even if the prosecution was to fall apart the damage done to potential critics of the government could be quite substantial. Bloggers would be very reluctant to post anything controversial that might support say the Palestinians, rebels in Aceh amongst other resistance movements worldwide.

What then will happen when this legislation gets punted back to the Commons? Since Howard’s departure the political calculus within the Common’s has changed. Cameron is tilting the Tories towards a ‘Blue’ Labour vaguely libertarian middle ground in it seems a last throw of the dice to win the next election. Cameron’s instincts may make him oppose the bill, which alongside the Lib Dems opposition and Labour rebels visceral hatred of Blair and principled opposition may defeat the bill or force serious watering down of the putative ‘glorification’ offence itself. Whatever the actual outcome of this legislation Liberals, Libertarians and Libertarian Socialists must fight every attempt by the organisational Leninists of ‘new’ Labour to restrict free speech in this country any further, this means organising across party and ideological lines to stop anymore assaults on our liberty. Remember the government doesn’t give you rights, these rights already exist, the government will try to take these rights away don’t let them do it.

Fear and Loathing in Tehran, Persians Play Politics with the West

2006-01-17T22:14:00.000Z

While watching the news it seems that the public is being pre-prepared for some kind of military action against Iran. The tenor and tone of the news stories are all slanted towards the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons being unthinkable. Iran is being painted as an alien, alienated other all hints of the ordinary Iranians humanity and complexity being leeched from the discussion. Like much of the media coverage of the crisis it does (as ever) serve to obscure the brutal statist realpolitik of the underlying issues behind the current round of brinksmanship.

There are a number of factors pushing towards a military confrontation with Iran, the Israeli insistence that it be the only nuclear power in the Middle East, American calculations concerning security of oil supply and leverage over neighbouring friendly regimes. Russia also has large commercial interests in Iran, alongside large Chinese investments in Iran’s energy supply. Iran brings to the fore major international tensions concerning security of energy supply and the corresponding influence of the great powers over the Middle East. The coming confrontation and strikes on Iran may lead to ever greater and more deadly confrontations in future.

Aside from the wider geopolitical picture there is the question of what kind of response the US will have to Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions. The Iranians having learnt from Iraq’s reactor being bombed in 1981 by the Israeli air force have secreted their nuclear facilities deep underground to guard against easy air strikes and beyond the reach of most conventional weapons. The US has rather conveniently developed a new class of sub-kiloton level nuclear weapons specially designed for penetrating and destroying well hidden targets. In addition to this the majority of US ground forces are tied up next door in Iraq and thus a perceived threat from Iranian nuclear weapons would under new US strategic doctrine compel a pre-emptive strike. The logical endpoint of all these developments is then the use of these newly developed nuclear weapons against the Iranian targets.

This would of course be a horrifying development; the breaking of the international taboo against using nuclear weapons would unleash horrifying new developments with the bar against their use being perilously low. Once one kind of nuclear weapon has been used then it becomes very hard not to justify using them in other circumstances as long as the cost benefit analysis sticks….It is to be hoped that some soft of compromise with the Iranians is cobbled together by those in positions of power and influence otherwise our children may come to regret the dalliance with delusion indulged in by those wishing for a final, deadly reckoning.

The 'Modernisation' of the Lib Dems: Corporatism with a Human Face and Blarism Redux

2005-12-18T12:56:00.000Z

The recent attempted knife welding by ambitious young blades in the Lib Dems is I think an interesting illustration of all that is wrong with British politics and politicians. The lib dems have broadly two wings the so-called economic liberal ‘free’ marketeers producers of the ‘Orange Book’ and the welfare statist Beveridge types. The debate between the two wings of this party is a profoundly depressing illustration of how sterile British political debate has become. The ideological spectrum ranges from authoritarian neo-liberal corporatist (‘new’ Labour) to socially liberal neo-liberal corporatist (Cameron’s Conservatives) with the marginalised warriors of the old post-war consensus sitting on the sidelines (old labour).

Like the Thatcherites before them the Lib Dem ‘free’ marketeers and self styled ‘modernisers’ wish to see ‘competition’ introduced to public services, private public partnerships with the full panoply of the reformed corporate state being brought to bear on the problems of British society. People are to be given the choice of services they use, but as per ‘new’ Labour this choice is to be managed, kept within strict boundaries with the old consumer/producer dichotomy maintained and Croslandite ‘new’ class assumptions left unexamined. While portraying themselves as sceptical of the state, it seems the Lib Dem modernisers like ‘new’ Labour seek merely to promote corporatism with a human face. They seek to promote this corporatism in the name of liberty while ignoring or forgetting the great liberal themes of industrial democracy, the co-operative movement and the libertarian socialist currents that have always been present in their tradition.

All of this ideological jockeying is of course motivated by a desire to occupy the centre ground. The ‘free’ marketeers by desiring to occupy this centre ground are implicitly accepting the Blairite consensus and portray any attempt to provide an alternative to this consensus as being unrealistic and out-of-touch. This drive for the centre ground unites both their pragmatic desire for power and their ideological biases providing them with a sense of purpose that their welfare statist opponents lack. Also while being correct in calling the welfare statists out as having some implicitly illiberal and paternalist policies their alternative as detailed above isn’t much better. Indeed the left wing of the Lib Dems has not really articulated any coherent alternative vision with them fighting a rearguard action, hoping to restore the old post war consensus. Ultimately both wings of the party seem to be missing a historical opportunity to present a real libertarian socialist alternative to the mainstream Blairite corporatist consensus. It is frustrating to see a party with the potential to articulate these views being pushed towards being merely another centrist placeholder, the Lib Dems need a transplant of ideological backbone but not the kind that ‘free’ marketeers are proposing!

New Tory New Cameron: The Coronation of a Meeja Prince

2005-12-10T16:27:00.000Z

With a mixture of horror and fascination I’ve been watching the progress of the Tory leadership contest and the steady but relentless progress of Cameron towards the crown, Cameron’s victory has been skilfully achieved and his use of the media almost Blairite in its discipline and cunning if one were particularly paranoid you might think that Alastair Campbell has been advising Cameron on the sly, but aside from such conspiratorial thoughts. Cameron is perhaps the purest expression of all that is wrong with contemporary Britain a perfect fusion of ruling class privilege alongside hypermodern media management techniques. Cameron’s Eton education alongside his experience working as a director at Carlton Communications do seem the perfect schooling for a modern political leader. Not to mention his extensive blue-blooded connections to the royal family and the wider aristocracy, as Private Eye noted the Tories really have decided that ‘oiks’ have had enough turns at the tiller and that the toffs deserved another go.

Cameron has through a friendly media and his own particular skills managed to keep his blue-blooded background out of the leadership contest, indeed very few people seem at all surprised that the leaders of both the Tories and Labour are both well groomed plausible public schoolboys, the more things change the more they remain the same when it comes to our political elites it seems. Cameron’s whole political playbook does seem lifted from Blair’s reshaping of the Labour party as has been evidenced by an extensive ‘rebranding’ exercise conducted by his team after the leadership victory. As in Blair’s presidential approach to leading the Labour party the Tories are to be relabelled ‘Cameron’s Conservatives’ a new more media friendly symbol of two blue squares overlapping has been devised. The Tories are to be reshaped in to Blue Labour, defiantly non-ideological and based on the appeal of Cameron’s personality and vaguely libertarian social mores. Cameron is also trying to put environmental themes back into the core of Tory policy making with the appointment of Zac Goldsmith realising that a Blue/Green coalition is as viable as a Red/Green one, and it provides a means of differentiating the Tories from Labour .

The question is: have the Tories selected a winner? Will Cameron have the ability to best Brown at the next election? I think the answer is a qualified maybe, all depending on how much Blairite ‘modernisation’ the more rabidly rightwing members of the party can take. There is also the question of how long Cameron’s media honeymoon lasts and of course those ever present ‘events’ that plague any politicians career. Cameron is however a big danger and any progressive should monitor his progress very carefully as beneath the media friendly veneer and post-ideological waffle lie the potential for implementing some extremely retrogressive policies. New Cameron New Danger!

Coppers Want More Shooters: Why Arming More Police is a Bad Idea

2005-11-20T22:40:00.000Z

After the recent tragic shooting of a female police officer in Bradford the police are once again pressing for more of their officers to be trained in the use of guns. The general consensus among police officers is that the percentage of armed officers be increased from 5% to 10%. There are also calls to recruit ex-soldiers into the police force to counter the perceived terrorist threat and as a result of this shooting. The police and various unscrupulous politicians are exploiting the current circumstances to press for yet more authoritarian police statuesque measures (see the current anti-terrorist bill with its provision for people being held for 28 days without trial). The media is also cynically egging this on due to the victim’s photogenic nature and easily marketable backstory. As ever events like this reminds one that politics has little to do with morality; keeping and increasing power is the name of game and many players see this incident as another means of doing this…

So why is arming the police a bad idea? Really it comes down to a mirror image of the American gun rights argument: that the government can’t be trusted with sole monopoly over the means of delivering force on it’s population, and of course adhering to the sound revolutionary principle of having the means to kick the current government out of office, using force if necessary. The converse of this point of view is to keep the police unarmed and thus on an equal level to the citizenry that they are recruited from, either everyone’s armed or no-one at all. Any other position is inconsistent and incoherent leaving the general population open to predation of an ever unsatisfied and more illiberal police force. The police like any politically savvy institution recognise that as Mao put it ‘power grows from the barrel of a gun’

There are two fundamental tensions in the history of British policing that of the bottom up localised force organised county by county conflicting with the perceived need from the government to have a nationally organised force to deal with nationally organised crimes. The second tension is that of the centralised. British policing prior to the Bow Street Runners had been generally a bottom-up ad hoc phenomenon, community run and community organised. The general trend over the last 200 years has been to centralise, professionalize and ‘streamline’ the police, separating them further from the population that they originated from, having yet more armed officers and recruiting ex-soldiers militarises the police turning them into an occupying army rather than a community run and organised institution.

Aside from these philosophical objections to an armed police force there are also sound utilitarian reasons for not trusting the police with the use of deadly force on an unarmed population. The recent police assassination of Mendez while getting on the tube is perhaps the clearest example of why arming the police is a very bad idea, after all guns are quite a handy way of getting around all that messy trial stuff and those antiquated notions of being innocent before being proved guilty, all that messy business of actually having to present evidence in a trial and it does circumvent those running dog defence lawyers as well. All in all more guns for the police is a win/win scenario and anyone with any nous can see that the police an institution will press as hard as they can to extend their powers at the expense of other groups in society. In this instance it is in the interests of wider society for politicians and activists to oppose more police being able to use firearms in the course of their daily duties.

A Corporatists Daydream: Tescos Cut Down to Size(or not..)

2005-11-06T14:26:00.000Z

American readers of this blog are obviously familiar with the depredations of Walmart and the company’s manipulation of the US planning laws to fuel its seemingly exponential growth. In the UK the closest equivalent to Walmart is Tesco in terms of its market power, and the leverage they have over both consumers and producers. Tesco has not really innovated to expand, more a case of doing what other supermarkets traditionally do except better, bigger and cheaper. Tesco like Walmart has aggressively expanded taking market share from its traditional competitors and hurting other non-grocery related businesses like M&S as well. While not being a monopoly Tesco does hold a dominant place within the UK supermarket sector with one out of every eight pounds being spent by UK shoppers in Tesco.

Now it’s being reported that the Office of Fair Trading (an oxymoronic title in our current system) seeks to divest Tesco of some of its stores so as to curb its market dominance. The typical vulgar libertarian would throw their hands up in horror at this, for how can the government dare intervene in the sacred workings of the free market thus the kneejerk response by Adam Smith Institutes of this world would be to support Tesco against the government. In fact the whole debate is framed in statist language with both sides accepting the same basic assumptions. The traditional social democrat along with the vulgar libertarian in this instance do not truly look at the material causes of Tesco’s dominance of the market place and both offer no true solution to the problem that Tesco and it’s ilk have become.

The typical social democratic or to be more accurate the liberal reformist approach is to do as the Office of Fair Trading suggests: trim Tesco’s wings slightly by forcing it to sell a few stores. This again is very short-sighted and ignores what (in a terms used by a FSA regulator) the complex monopoly of the Supermarket sector. As I noted above as businesses the supermarkets are pretty much interchangeable as can be observed whenever one supermarket takes over another’s store. The lettering and colouring might change but the way the business works remains pretty much the same. So removing a few stores from Tesco may slow down its expansion or at best stop it completely what it will not do is stop another supermarket chain doing exactly the same thing in an ever so slightly different way. The internal logic of the current state capitalist marketplace coupled with the complex monopoly of the Supermarket chains does tend to produce predictable outcomes….

The vulgar libertarian refuses to recognise the role of the state in subsidising, cosseting and encouraging the growth of the supermarket as a viable business. Supermarkets could not exist without widespread car ownership, a viable road network, biased planning laws, subsidies to the trucking industry among a million other small perks and tweaks provided by the state. Tesco and other supermarket’s large size and consequent economies of scare are only possible within a oligarchic and cartelised state-capitalist marketplace. Take away the artificial supports and the large supermarket chains like Tesco would cease to exist in their present form, who knows what free market alternative would supplant them but it would reasonable to speculate that consumer and producer co-operatives of some variety would localise and decentralise the current supermarket distribution networks in favour of locally manufactured and produced goods.

Tesco’s size, market dominance, political influence and leverage with local councils are as ever a symptom of the dysfunctional nature of modern capitalism rather than a cause. Reformist and pseudo-free market approaches to fixing this problem miss the point and perpetuate the problem, kill the state and kill Tescos anything else is just window dressing.

The New Corporatists and Schooling a Definition of Fascism in New Labour

2005-10-30T13:18:00.000Z

Mussolini was reputed to have said that "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Mussolini like many of the fascists that followed him was an ex-Marxist, merely inverting many Marxist ideas and organising principles and lined up his interests with that of the conservative small businessman and the Church (sound familiar…). Modern Britain is of course very much different from post-World War 1 Italy but similar trends can be observed when it comes to the aligning of corporate and state power. Many trends in ‘New’ Labour thinking from the encouragement of PFI/PPP to the focus on importing private sector ‘talent’ into the civil service seem hell-bent on erasing the difference between the private and public sectors with it’s neo-liberal corporatist approach.

Government agencies are to be routinely sham privatised, leaving the control and command apparatus pretty much the same if a little more exploitative and efficient at screwing the ordinary worker out of any surplus value they might create. True privatisation would of course place the agency in the hands of the workers rather then selling it to the highest paying rentier, but I digress. How does this tie into the governments plan for making schools more independent and thus more control over their own destiny?

As any political cynic will tell you: ‘follow the money’ which means when it comes to school reforms questioning: how will these schools be funded and by whom? Essentially funding is divided into three different categories that of the Academy which is partly funded by private companies or individual, the Foundation school locally funded by the LEA but controlled by the governing board of the school and the Independent ‘Specialist’ school again funded by the LEA but with central government funding for their subject specialist status. This is all to be swept away with the government’s reforms with City Academies becoming the norm every school is to be independent and self governing, yet funded centrally by the government. This would it seems grant Whitehall unprecedented power over these nominally independent schools further reinforcing the government’s centralising and micromanaging tendencies a further problem is in the way that private interests are allowed to dictate the ethos and nature of the schooling. This has been amply demonstrated by Reg Vardy’s creationist interventions in the City Academy he has part-funded in Sunderland. Part of the deal for his£2 Million’s worth of funding has been the promotion of his highly reactionary and anti-scientific Christian fundamentalist views within the classroom, parents and pupils can do nothing about this as they have no say over how the school is run or organised. The usual rejoinder to this is that Blair’s proposals will give parents more choice and therefore the bad schools will shutdown and the good schools grow. Education is to be marketised and hence made more responsive to parent’s wants and needs. All good solid libertarian stuff I can hear you thinking, or is it?

Now any non-authoritarian Socialist or Libertarian is obviously for reduction or marginalising of state control, Blair’s proposals do nothing to enhance either the parents or child’s liberty when choosing or organising and education for themselves. The market for education is again to be highly cartelised with very high start-up costs for parents and an extremely strong regulatory framework controlled by central government essentially the merging of the corporate and governmental state that I alluded to earlier. Parents in this so-called market are to be reduced to passive consumers with corporatised schools responding by expanding and contracting according the demand of parents. Blairite ultras like the Vulgar Libertarians would argue that this will lead to a diversity of schools and hence happier parents/pupils with local councils reduced to commissioners rather than providers of Education services. This ignores how a highly cartelised market in education would distort price signals leading to the schools rather the parents or children being the main beneficiaries of these reforms. Also the very fact that these schools would be centrally funded would tempt any government to intervene, panic or blackmail schools on a whim. Now the previous LEA model of school funding and planning was not brilliant I would agree but it at least allowed more local democratic input for parents than these corporatist proposals. Also these proposals leave the whole idea of what a school is and how it works completely untouched with all the traditional reactionary authoritarian models of education being reinforced rather than challenged. Any hint of allowing children control over their education is dismissed as ‘child centred’ and ‘old’ labour, truly democratic community and parent controlled schools are definitely off the agenda. Those seeking a truly liberal, humanistic education for their child rather than a better run sausage factory will have to turn to home schooling, alternative ‘free’ schools and parent run co-operatives; New Labour has nothing to offer you.

The Glorious Gober Method: How M&S Have Brought a Superior Brand of Snake Oil

2005-10-09T13:51:00.000+01:00

Marks and Spencers have recently invested a large amount of their employees money(according to shop workers union USDAW around £10 million) into a motivational scheme designed to raise sales and address the flagging fortunes of the huge retail group. This scheme is designed and pedalled by the almost stereotypically American Mary Gober with the inevitably trade marked ‘Gober Method’ with its three pronged approach to improving service. This consists of changing the ‘psychology of service’, the ‘language of service’ and the ‘management framework’. In short convert, indoctrinate and wave the big stick…

Lets look at exactly what Mary Gober means when she talks about a ‘psychology of service’ in essence the ordinary worker is to be optimistic and to use that horrible word ‘pro-active’ when speaking to customers, worker self worth and self respect is another aspect of this along with responsive to complaints. So far, so obvious and it seems Gober is cadging the ‘typical New Age decadent neo-hippy tropes’ of ‘self-realisation’, typical touchy feely stuff fed to the poor sap who has to implement this method. Indeed the M&S workers are being sent to huge motivational seminars that resemble Billy Graham’s revival meetings with the gospel of Gober being pounded out at the management pulpit to the expectant and cowed workforce. USDAW to its credit has called the events a gigantic waste of money and I would argue that they’re right for reasons that we’ll look at later. The second part of the ‘Gober Method’ is where the ‘language of service’ is looked at. The workers vocabulary is to be reconstructed according to the ominously named ‘Telephone Compulsory Standards’ and the mind bogglingly named ‘Service Excel Mind-Set’. All this seems to boil down to is ensuring that all Customer Service reps say the same thing at the same time according to what the management perceive the customer actually wants. The third part of Gober’s method is I think the most important and interesting. Her ‘management framework’ this is where her method devolves down to the usual technocratic buzzwords such as ‘change management’ the dreaded ‘team building’ and the blandly named but insidious ‘service delivery process improvement’.

Now it has been remarkably difficult to track down examples of what these buzzwords actually mean, if you look at her website there are testimonials, information about the seminars and the usual self-promotional guff that you would expect you’ll also notice that all the above buzzwords are trademarked. Gober is very protective about her methods it seems which does seem make me think that what she’s selling to these companies is the merely technocratic Taylorism soft-soaped by pseudo-religious new age psychology and motivational tools. What does seem slightly different about this method is the emphasis on indoctrinating employees into its way of thinking with motivational coaches being trained within the organisation to ensure that the ideology is reproduced and strengthened among the staff. Gober has obviously aware of organisation entropy and these coaches have been designed to counter it. It would be interesting to revisit some of these organisations in about five years time to see how closely they’re adhering to the strictures and disciplines of the Method!

As has been observed within capitalist corporations all management techniques can be reduced to Taylorism and the refining of command and control over the frontline worker. The Gober Method is then unsurprisingly old wine in new bottles dedicated to streamlining and making more ‘efficient’ the customer service ends of large corporate organisations. Like most of these methods it does not address the structural problems of these corporations that produce de-motivated staff. The Gober Method sees this is something that can be adjusted by merely changing the mindset of the staff within an organisation, what it deliberately fails to recognise is that workers are quite capable of seeing that they have no control over their own workplace, how their company is run, the stupidity of management and the general pointlessness of their own jobs. The Gober Method seeks to falsely align the interests of the worker with that of senior management all under the excuse of serving the customer better. Interestingly the Gober Method makes no mention of the workers needs and wants and completely ignores any role for unions or other means of representation. This is not surprising due to the top-down technocratic command and control mechanisms that the Gober Method uses to implement its changes. A long-term fix to these problems would of course be the dismantling of these over-large corporate structures and democratic worker self-organisation of whatever remained. Without these changes corporations orientated around customer service and call-centres will keeping buying the same snake oil with a fancy new set of buzzwords slapped on the front each year, pathological structural weaknesses in corporate capitalism makes this predictable as the sun setting. The Gober Method constructs a slightly more comfortable and shiny cage for the average worker and does nothing to address the real problems. Marks and Spencer’s staff have my sympathy.

Government Tries to Ban Anything with the Word 'Terrorist' in it(Well not

2005-09-20T22:24:00.000+01:00

Much has been written over the past few weeks about the governments new anti-terror legislation, the rationale behind it and the civil liberties that the legislation will inevitably curtail. An interesting political aside from this is how the legislation is how it has exposed the political tension between the Home Office and the PM over the legislation.

However this is beside the point when it comes to legislation itself there is one very dubious idea out of a slew of other extremely dubious ideas that stands out. The securocrats and spook groupies have hit upon the idea of outlawing 'incitement and glorification' of terrorist acts. Now despite me not being a lawyer this does seem an extremely broad thing to try to outlaw, and also seems open to abuse...the governnment has tried to limit this glorification clause to 20 years(A sop to the IRA methinks) which is another puzzling inconcistency with the legislation for surely terrorism is terrorism is terrorism? This does perhaps expose the real target of the legislation: so called Islamic 'extremism' and Jihadist ideologies. This also ties in with attempts to crack down on bookshops and distributer of the associated literature. The government seems hellbent on making illegal an ideology. to outlaw a way of thinking even.

There are three reasons why this a bad idea. One : it simply won't work given that it is impossible(I hope) to police and legislate the contents of people's heads. Two: it completely tramples over people's right to free speech and thus contravenes both common law and convention in this country and the more recent human rights convention that we signed up to. Thirdly to give any government these kind of restrictive powers is a hostage to fortune and places far too much faith in human nature not to abuse it. To adapt an old cliche power corrupts and this legislation would corrupt completely.

So why does 'New' Labour want this legislation? I think there are a number of reasons for this. Firstly 'New' Labour's DNA is woven from the blood of ex-Trots, ex-stalinists and hard-left leninist types. One suspects that they've retained their suspiscion of 'liberal' reformist ideologies and retro-fitted it to the reigning ideology. Boiling it down it means many 'New' Labour types have no natural sympathy for liberal or libertarian ideas and this means that their natural reflex is to command and control. to democraticaly centralise is the natural impulse. The recent anti-terror legislation is an example of this. This also dovetails in with 'New' Labour's and Blair's obession with controlling and massaging the message.

Management, Power and the Abuse of Language

2005-09-15T18:59:00.000+01:00

Recently on the Observer’s business pages there has been a debate concerning what’s wrong with current management language, technique and practice. It was an interesting and well written article illuminating how modern managers and their accompanied gurus try and use language to control reality(to which there is an equally interesting reply). Like the French deconstructionists the modern high priests of management theory holds all is text, and that there is no escape from language. To the modern manager every power transaction is mediated and massaged by language and by having control of the language they therefore have control over their relationships with underlings and with the customers of their company. As Baudrillard once tried to deny that the Gulf War ever happened the modern manager tries to deny the last hundred years of union organising ever happened…...

What then are modern examples of management abusing and distorting language to their own ends? Well a short look at any type of ‘customer service’ focused organisation would provide many examples of how to call white black, or to insist that 2 + 2 really does equal 5 and that any attempt to deny this is just the bolshie employee being ‘negative’. A good example of this is how many people’s jobs have had the word manager appended onto them or the rise of the dreaded ‘facilitator’ the preponderance of ‘teams’, workshops and other pseudo-consultative facsimiles of democratic worker participation in their own workplaces. In the world of software people are sold ‘solutions’ and ‘packages’ with the idea that people sell products and services being seen as hopelessly old fashioned (and more to the point unprofitable)

Language, and in a much more strong sense the written word is a techne. A form of technology a means of interacting and defining the world and like history it is organised and defined by those with power. So in one sense the Foucault’s and Derrida’s of this world were entirely correct to focus on how important language is as a tool of constructing and defining the world around them and thus of power relations between different groups in society. So how have the powerful used language to cement their position and freeze out their opponents? One example of this is the idea of ‘Shareholder Value’, this innocuous and oft-used phrase is the excuse for a variety of wrongs done to the ordinary worker and customers of large company.

The idea of ‘Shareholder Value’ is that being the owners of the company the shareholders are therefore entitled to the majority of the profits. Thus working back from this conclusion management theorists recast every action by a manager in terms of how it could increase ‘shareholder value’ this also led to the idea that by granting managers share options you would align their interests with that of the shareholders and hence lead to an increase in share price….needless to say the Enron and Worldcom financial disasters along with other studies have shown how true that theory turned out to be. The idea of ‘Shareholder Value’ recast how language was used and abused throughout an entire organisation. This led to the consultants and theorists talking of ‘releasing’ value. The use of the world ‘release’ is in itself an interesting in that it implies that this so-called value is being held against it’s own will and that once freed it will as return to it’s ‘natural’ home…the ever deserving shareholder rather than that of the worker who generated the value in the first place. All debates within a company were framed in this language everything measured against this over-arching ideology, alterative views and approaches were frozen out.

So language is used to obfuscate and hide the mechanics of power within organisations, who has it and how it’s used. It is used to falsely align the interests of the workers with that of those who own the businesses, to divide and rule and work against any idea of workers acting collectively in their own interests. A recent study by the GMB union noted that the UK had one of the highest numbers of managers as a proportion of the work force in the industrialised world, leading to the all to plausible idea that many jobs are having the word manager shoe-horned in there as a sop to their workers and to make the senior manager feel better about themselves. Technocratic apologists for this state of affairs responded to this report by saying that modern service industries need this level of management to actually function properly which in itself is a highly debateable proposition…

Employees are not stupid and do realise on the whole when management is trying to pull a fast one and many subtly resist the increasingly stupid diktats from above, the ceaseless re-organisations, re-naming, re-engineering and messing around of their own working lives. Large companies are organised on command and control lines akin to how the soviets organised their own industries. Practising a kind of ‘black planning’ they suffer many of the same problems as their Soviet counterparts. Any large organisation relies on feedback loops and quality information being transmitted to the planners, the most efficient means of conveying this information being some kind of market. Due to the size of these organisations markets simply won’t work, consequently means of monitoring and controlling the workers who actually do the job (and have some idea of what they’re doing) are needed. This is done via statistical analysis, neo-Taylorist time and motion studies, and meaningless target setting. As those wonderful hucksters McKinsey’s like to say if it can be measured it can be managed. The wilful and semi-deliberate abuse of language is all part and parcel of how these large organisations actually work, a natural consequence of their dysfunctional over-sized nature. This situation will not stop till workers actually have some democratic control over the companies they work in.

Islam and Secular Medical Ethics

2005-09-03T00:41:00.000+01:00

In the past few days there has been in interesting story concerning a Muslim family and their fight to reverse the doctor’s decision to withdraw life support from ‘Mr A’. What is interesting about the case is how it exposes the different worldviews and approaches to the issue of who lives and who die and how one distinguishes between actively letting someone die and consciously helping another human being die.

Another interesting aspect of this debate is the framework it is conducted in. Secular medical ethics is often conducted in the language of high utilitarianism in which concepts like ‘quality of life’ are bandied about. It is a language of clean measurements and distinctions, with scales for measuring a patient’s well-being. What is interesting about secular medical ethics is that is based around the idea ends rather than means, the value of life in this mode of thinking is not absolute but contingent on other external factors, like for example whether the patients condition will ‘improve’ or assumptions of how they will experience the world.

Indeed the whole enterprise of medical ethics is permeated with ideas of externally measuring a persons worth and this has become the establishment view. Without this backdrop it is impossible to understand why the family of the man known as ‘Mr A’(due to court rules on anonymity) is fighting so hard to put him back on the life support machine. Islam like the main Abrahamic faiths is based fundamentally on the idea of regulating the means not the ends. Its concern is not so much that the actions of believers and their effects on other people, but that their actions are ‘just’ and reflects the will of Allah. Another key difference to secular medical ethics is that all life, in fact everything comes from Allah. Allah is the ultimate power and ultimate arbiter of human affairs. He chooses when people die and when they live. Secular medical ethics starting point is the humanistic post-enlightenment philosophies of John Stuart-Mill, Jeremy Bentham et al. For the medical ethicist man is the measure of all things, god or anything faintly transcendent is scrubbed from the picture an unhelpful irrationality for the medical calculus.

So what the battle of ‘Mr A’s’ life support being switched off demonstrates is a clash of worldviews that would, at first sight seem hard to reconcile. The family and the doctors are speaking mutually exclusive languages. From the family’s perspective it is of no matter as to ‘Mr A’s’ quality of life, it is irrelevant as how he lives just that he lives. In some respects this can be seen as quite a progressive viewpoint as they do not quibble with any of the modern medical interventions that have so far been needed to keep ‘Mr A’ alive. This does conflict with the implied wish of the family for ‘Mr A’ to have a natural death, i.e. a death chosen by Allah rather than man and that the doctors do everything possible to keep him alive. The doctors however see things differently from their perspective they are taking away artificial interventions that are preventing a man from dying from what they would see as a ‘peaceful death’.

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft Review

2005-08-27T20:05:00.000+01:00

This is possibly the best album that the Super Furries have done yet integrating all the wide and varied elements of their sound, and yet again demonstrating their melodic and lyrical gifts to wonderful effect.

As you can tell I’m a long time Super Furries fan having seen them quite a few times over the years it has been a pleasure to follow the anti-Oasis in that they just got better and better over the years growing ever more inventive and ever better song writers with each new album. As a band the Super Furries have seemed at some points unsure as to what direction to take sonically and in terms of their song writing. They combine political awareness and principles with manic off the wall humour and an ability to write a great tune.

The band have always thrived off the playing off of polar opposites when it comes to constructing their songs managing to mutate Country n’ Western into Belgium gabba or dismember a 10cc style love song into a Neu! style krautmetal stomper. This dialectal conversation between differing musical extremes has however become less of a feature of their sound since the excellent Phantom Power with a new influence being introduced into the melange that of sun kissed country rock, taking in Gram Parsons, The Byrds, The Eagles and Crosby Stills n’ Nash into their many influences. One criticism of the band is that they can stray into pastiche or homage of their many influences. As Simon Reynolds once said of The Orb it’s hard to kiss the stars with the tongue in your cheek. The other problem is that sometimes their radical juxtapositions just don’t work. It is a testament to Gruff the lead singer’s song writing ability that the band can pull of their songs at all or even get away with the disparate genre fusions that they do attempt. This is an inherent risk in their approach to making music, but with each album they have got better at synthesising their Techno, R n’ B and dance influences with their core psychedelic 60’s influenced sound. Where the Beta Band failed the Super Furry Animals have gloriously succeeded.

So that leads us to the question is ‘Love Kraft any good? In short the answer has to be yes, ‘Love Kraft’ is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Super Furries albums with nary a weak song. The album starts with the sound of water splashing as a nameless somebody slips into the pool. This sets the tone for the album with relaxed chilled low tempo numbers ruling the roost. ‘Zoom’ arrives on the scene languorously with a lovely Rhodes style melody line meandering its way through the song. Gruff sounding typically laidback secure in the knowledge that he’s written yet another killer hook laden chorus. As the Super Furries have got more experienced as band, and as unit playing together they’ve got better at layering their sound. Zoom demonstrates this in abundance with the relatively Rhodes and guitar line of the beginning being layered with strings, then choral accompaniment….then comes the brass. Few bands would have the sonic nous to get away with this.

‘Atomik Lust’ reprises the country rock influences of Phantom Power with Gruff sounding the plaintive cowboy backed by Beatles style horns. This is a very catchy little number punctuated by Amon Duul II style noise-outs and squelching moogs. This song perhaps demonstrates how skilled the band have got a fusing genre’s and styles into a cohesive whole and what masters they are of the build-up and breakdown within an individual song.

‘The Horn’ makes me think of Neil Young’s ‘After The Goldrush’ with its simple circular melody irresistibly nagging away at you coupled with a waltzing 3/4 time signature create a ramshackle sound. This song evokes watching western’s on a Saturday afternoon, Clint Eastwood and John Wayne.

‘Ohio Beat’ picks up the tempo slightly, not to a large degree but in a way that’s agreeable yet fits in with the rest of the album. Gentle acoustic guitar strums complement Gruff’s voice well giving a smooth sonic backdrop for the song to work it’s magic. Another song that’s defined by the smooth layering and a gradual build-up of lush sonic detail. ‘Ohio Beat’ by it’s sheer intricate construction resembles a kind of perpetual melodic motion machine, cycling but never stopping fooling the listener into thinking it’ll go on forever. Possibly one of the best song’s that the Super Furries have ever written

‘Lazer Beam’ is where the band leaves the beach and hits the club, squelching moogs make a welcome reappearance along with Bee Gees style choruses and Daft Punk style vocoder abuse. Alternately Stevie Wonder and classic disco are brought to mind along with the Super Furries perennial obsession with mid seventies MOR rock a la ELO and 10cc. This song will become that most horrible of things an indie disco hit with the student hordes be afraid people!

‘Frequency’ is an excellent song dropping down a gear after the exertions of the previous two songs. Sun kissed Cali-style rock bumps along with rather excellent string backing which has been a constant through-out this album. Another lazy melody and well written chorus top this all off.

‘Psyclone’ is built on dance music’s foundations, looped Timbalandesque cod-eastern R n’ B drum lines bump into jangling honky-tonk pianos and rattling tabla lines. The wonderfully orchestrated strings deployed with a lightness of touch enhance the song no end. The song has a ghost-like quality to it bringing to mind ‘Blue Lines’ era massive attack and fellow Bristolian Tricky.

‘Cloudberries’ show’s the gentle reflective side of the band with Gruff sounding mournful and melodically downcast. Just as you start worrying they’ve turned into Coldplay the song mutates typically into a light bossa-nova number to tap your toe to, then taking a sharp right turn into droning choral style terroritory before stopping. Unlike previous albums this is executed very smoothly and although unexpected does not jar in any way.

This album is very much worth getting one of the best things that the band have ever done, a summation, a synthesis and an apotheosis of their unique sound…go get.

Late Feudal Theme Park Opening in Hanworth Norfolk!(Complete with revolting peasants or your money back!). Contact your nearest Judge for further deta

2005-08-20T18:51:00.000+01:00

Forget contract feudalism who said the old variety was dead. A case in point being the Hon Robert Harbord-Hamond, youngest son of the 11th Baron of Suffield who recently tried to assert some various dubious property rights over a local village green. This distant descendant of William the Conqueror following in fine family tradition by trying to expropriate yet more common land from the peasantry. Like the supposedly extinct coelacanth this land dispute is a living fossil from which it is possible to see the origins of modern land disputes and the nature of statist property rights and how they act as the building blocks upon which modern capitalism rests. While also pointedly reminding us that Britain is very much not a classless society.

The villagers have asserted their right to own this land in common and use it for their own purposes, while the land owner in contrast like many of his ilk before him sees it as a resource to which he has prior claim. Now any good anarchist or libertarian socialist, unlike the vulgar libertarian flacks would see this attempt by the landowner to appropriate yet more land as inherently unfair and exploitative and as a blatant attempt by the landowner to ignore the prior common claims to the land. Like a pathetic reprise of the great enclosures of the 16th century he tried to fence his way round the property, to which the commons committee was not amused. This story unsurprisingly got a small mention in the Guardian and no further comment in the newspaper in a whole, despite what I see as its importance in illustrating how property rights of the past inform the present.

What this interesting and unusual case does is remind us of the origins of the modern distribution of land in the UK and the ancient conflicts and struggles that have shaped this distribution of the land. It also reminds us of how the ownership of land has always been a concern of the powerful and how it continues to animate their concerns. Possession of land like most assets translates into political power and influence, the aristocracy like large companies and governments have not forgotten this fact. After all they’re not making anymore of it, as the ole’ georgists say!

The majority of people in the UK are oblivious the historical iniquities that seem frozen in time around, it’s perfectly natural to accept the layout of the landscape and division of the land as ‘natural’ or as the result of inexorable economic forces over which we have little influence. This would be mistake and any socialist worth his salt would argue that had certain events gone one way or another things might be very different today(the enclosures being a case in point). Being a materialist doesn’t make one a determinist let alone a pessimist.

Land distribution is the result of deliberate decisions and deliberate exploitation of changing circumstances. As Kevin Carson points out in his splendid class analysis of the transition from feudalism to state-capitalism the people who expropriated the land from the peasantry were the usual suspects who used this transition to extend and strengthen their own power. The mechanics of exploitation may change but the kinds of people doing it have remained pretty much the same. The Baron’s son being a beautiful example of this demonstrating how the aristocracy retain old reflexes and habits when it comes to dealing with the ‘rabble’.

Luckily the Norfolk villages faced the baron’s son down and he has stated that he will be not defending the case in the court. Whether the bad publicity got the better of him or he had a sudden attack of conscience it is a good result for villagers and should alert us all to how the past as so often in this country can become the present.

Beowulf Returns

2005-08-14T08:25:00.000+01:00

After acquiring a shiny new laptop I'm back to regular blogging so expect to find a few posts by myself in the next few days.

File-Sharing is Dead, Long Live File-Sharing!

2005-06-28T18:16:00.000+01:00

As usual the mainstream media has got the latest American supreme court decision on file-sharing wrong. British journalists are notoriously technically inept when it comes to technology stories and watching Newsnight last night did nothing to dispel my opinion of that. Kirsty Wark was obviously out of her depth and failed to ask any probing questions of the smug BPI lawyer and just let the Freenet programmer spout his pre-prepared line.

This as well as being extremely annoying, and a waste of good airtime failed to address the real issues behind the court's judgement. Grokster, like Napster is an also-ran it is trying to make money out of an extremely commoditised market, so commoditised that the chief means of sharing ones files is actually free. What mainstream commentators have failed to notice is that the most popular file sharing programs and protocols that exist today are free. They are free, open source and available to anybody through networks like G2, Gnutella, Edonkey et al. Companies like Grokster and Kazaa cannot and will not survive this onslaught of open protocols and open programs, the judgement from the supreme court will hasten their end.

Copyright, like patents are a state imposed and sanctioned monopoly anything that brings their end closer is a good thing. File sharing is dead, long live file-sharing!

Book Tag!

2005-06-11T11:52:00.000+01:00

Ok so I've been book tagged by the estimable Larry Gamborne(tips virtual hat)
Five books that I've read and would reccomend to others:

1) Energy Flash - Simon Reynolds
A fantastic look at UK rave and club culture from the marxoid theorist/journalist Simon Reynolds, with a mix of on the spot reporting and some fantastic speculation Reynolds brilliantly captures the vitality of the mid-nineties rave scene. From Hardcore to Jungle you really get a sense that things were happening and no other journalist has really captured or understood dance music like Reynolds. A history, an analysis and a celebration, this book is a must read.

2) Wall Street - Doug Henwood
Proprieter of the excellent Left Business Observer and top US Marxist bloke. Reynolds deconstructs US State-Capitalism brilliantly laying bare the mechanics of Wall Street and how it has changed since the Keynesian 'Golden Age' of Corporatism in the 1960's. Skewering the pretensions of the bankers and Greenspan's status of monetary demi-god while presenting ideas about possible post-capitalist furtures Wall Street is as good an introduction to Economics as any other text on the shelf, much reccomended.

3) Alas, Poor Darwin - Various
This book is an excellent collection of essays by key thinkers in psychology, biology and zoo-ology. The theme of this book is the mistakes and assumption of Evolutionary Psychology and the lazy way the mainstream media has made it the 'received wisdom'. A much needed antidote to right wing neo-darwinist class warriors...

4)Niesztche - Genealogy of Morals
I may not agree with him, well some of the time, but even in translation a fantastic writer and philosopher to read. Left wing, Right wing who knows... but this essay is required reading for any serious political, ethical or social thinker. Niesztche takes no prisoners and challenges every day assumptions with his call to invent a new morality. Hugely influential and hugely misunderstood go get!

5) Blake - Songs of Innocence and Experience
Blake: mad neo-protestant messianic revolutionary, artist and artisan, this however is an essential work of literature and art. With a hotline to his subconscious and tapping in to deep supressed revolutionary impulses in the English body politic Blake has produced a work of genius. So good I gave my copy away to a friend to read.

The Politics of Fatherhood, A Mutualist Meditates: Part 1

2005-06-11T11:43:00.000+01:00

As many of my former readers would have noticed, I have not been posting very much lately, so my apologies. I have a fairly legitimate excuse, fatherhood and a new job...but these experiences have led me to think about how society is structured(or not) around childcare and how the modern nuclear family reconciles the demands of looking after young children.

Looking at how childcare duties are handed out can reveal alot of cultural assumptions behind women and men's roles and can tell us exactly how far Feminism has succeeded in what Germain Greer would term 'liberating' women. Looking at the reality of the situation does not make for a pretty sight with women still baring the large majority of childcare roles. This then leads to the question of why?, why do women 'a' put up with the status quo and 'b' what do men get out of it. A full answer to this question would require lots of multi-disciplinary research across economics, sociology, anthropology and cultural theory, but I would like to sketch out a few ideas briefly about why the current situation as is it is.

Firstly, and I think most importantly men gain hugely from the current situation, women by taking on these childcare roles, largely unpaid and uncompensated save men a fortune. Studies have been done showing the value of all the uncompensated labour carried out by women and it would comprise a large part of the economy if recognised. The second effect of women taking on childcare roles is that private corporations and government retain their hierarchical, dictatorial nature and co-opt the worst aspects of the male need to maintain status in the rat race. There has been some superficial changes to accommodate women who have children, but essentially the 'commanding heights' of the economy remain a male preserve. The modern corporation talks a good game about being decentralised while maintaining the iron disciplines of total surveillance and neo-taylorist time and motion management. Women stand even less of a chance in this environment than men, with corporations exploiting their sub-ordinate status to pay less than men.

The cost of producing new workers then becomes an externalities subsidised by the state and buttressed by the state and private schooling system. To the modern streamlined corporation women baring children is an 'irrationality' that has to managed but never addressed properly by changing the fundamentals of how they are organised and arranged

Baby is born! :-)

2005-05-17T15:32:00.000+01:00

At 4:15pm on the afternoon of May 16th Seity was born, a healthy 9 pound 7 baby girl. Dad is very proud of his new daughter and mum's doing fine.

I'm Back(Lots of re-locating gubbins!)

2005-04-24T17:23:00.000+01:00

Due to relocating to sunny Bournemouth my blogging activities have somewhat interrupted but having located an internet connection I'm back!

The general election campaign has been continuing apace and the issues have been ever narrowing, Crosby has perhaps set the pace for this campaign with his very astute news management. Blair and 'New' Labour has been forced to state and restate their policy on immigration, asylum etc...

So in general the election campaign has been a big turn off, it has failed to engage with the man-in-street, tho' to be fair tactical voting seems to have made a comeback with David Davis' seat being under threat among others. So a tedious campaign with perhaps an interesting few results is the best we can hope for.

The big ideas and the big problems have been avoided, global warming, intellectual property rights, transport gridlock, industrial democracy. This is the downside of modern advertising driven and poll tested techniques in that they relentlessly narrow and focus the politics of this campaign on what politicians perceive as 'important' to potential voters. Add in the the lopsided nature of our first past the post electoral system and you the alienated and alienating unegaging election campaign.

I Know How Charles Kennedy Feels...

2005-04-11T21:50:00.000+01:00

Being a prospective first time dad myself I have real empathy for Charles Kennedy and his wife as soon I will be going through the same thing! I do hope however that Kennedy takes more than two days paternity leave, some things take precedence over politics and the birth of your first child should be one of those things. Kennedy being more of human being than most politicians has at least realised this.

The Quiet Death of MG Rover

2005-04-10T21:54:00.000+01:00

And so they went with a whimper not a bang, MG Rover are now in the hands of the receivers(and 'New' Labour lackeys) PriceWaterhouseCoopers with the Chinese playing off the management and the government quite brilliantly getting what they want with juicy deals for key elements of MG Rover's intellectual property falling in their lap. The failure of MG Rover while being a tragedy for the Rover workforce brilliantly illustrates some of the current trends in British state Capitalism and how they've played out in manufacturing.

MG Rover has had a variety of incarnations over the last thirty years, bailed out by the government in the seventies acquired on life support by BMW in the nineties. A mixture of private and public money has kept the show going...until now. So why has MG Rover failed? the popular consensus is that they were too small and produced unattractive cars that failed to sell. As usual the received wisdom is merely a heavily edited subsection of the wider story. MG Rover competed in a heavily rigged market, car production like the commercial aircraft business did not spontaneously arrive out of nowhere.

Across the western world car manufacturers are cosseted, subsidised and kept alive by governments, banking institutions and the wider technocratic infrastructure. MG Rover's treatment therefore is not unusual but the inability of the UK government to keep 'the English patient' alive is unusual amongst industrialised nations. Even in supposed bastions of the 'free market' like the USA car giants like GM and Chrysler have been kept alive and bailed out throughout various times in their history. The car industry like the aircraft industry is deemed 'too big to fail' and is seen as a strategic asset by other countries round the world. The result of a heavily subsidised car market worldwide is of course a glut of vehicles, demand is heavily out of whack with supply forcing the car companies to come up with ever more creative means of selling their product to deflationary minded consumers. China will of course make this problem worse rather than better in the long-term...

So when it comes to the failure of MG Rover I belong to the cock-up rather than conspiracy school of thought. Any government pre-election is not going to actively encourage job losses, but as Meaders pointed out 'New' Labour is trapped by it's own superficial 'free market' ideology when it comes to intervening to save MG Rover. The French on the other hand are more pragmatic when it comes to their own industrial policy and in a similar situation would have(and have done) told the EU to put their competition policy where the sun don't shine. Conservative pundits on the web have of course made this point as well, illustrating some interesting contradictions between nationalist and vulgar libertarian ideologies.

So what then is the solution to MG Rover going bankrupt? As has been pointed out in this post the failure of MG Rover is a result of the UK government's inability to play manufacturing game by the rules of Realpolitik rather than meekly believing that the death of MG Rover was a 'natural' result of the 'free market' winnowing the wheat from the chaff. So if we were going to be traditionally statist and nationalistic about it a government bail-out would be the natural conclusion.

Vulgar libertarians would of course be horrified at this, but like the Trots any potential implementation of their pseudo-libertarian ideas would require a worldwide revolution(which ain't gonna happen..). So we can safely discount the Vulgar Libertarian minarchist solution as both unworkable and ignoring the lessons of history. The social democratic solution would be pretty much identical with Realpolitik and conservative nationalist position, although for different reasons. They would dress it up with language about 'preserving skills', 'human capital' all the usual technocratic human resources style cant deployed to depressing effect, the status quo tweaked in effect. All these conventional solutions profess to be thinking of the welfare of the worker but in the end cleave to the standard capitalistic method of organising things, what then would a Mutualist do to save MG Rover?

Well like the social democrat we would have to be pragmatic, after all as the Wobblies say we have to construct the new society within the shell of the new. So we would have to find a way of saving MG Rover while protecting the workers. This would rule out any rejection of government subsidy/grants, despite our ideological objection to such things generally. First of all we would look at the management structure of the company. Like most large corporations MG Rover is locked into Weber's iron cage of bureaucratic rationality. The typical hierarchical structure of the capitalist corporation has been retained, workers sell their labour to the capitalists as they've done for the past four hundred years. The MG Rovers own neither plant nor equipment or tools though they do have the use of a union(the TGWU).

This then implies that the workers need to own the company that their labour has built. The obvious means of doing this are by transforming MG Rover into some form of Co-Operative ran by the workers democratically. The government, traditional statist unions and private would dismiss this outright but looking at the situation pragmatically it would seem that the traditional solutions are not working. A successful worker run MG Rover would prove an example to be copied and rallying point for the labour movement in general. It's time to try something new, let's start with Rover!

And Lo The Vicar Did Call an Election...

2005-04-05T21:25:00.000+01:00

So the circus begins, with the apathetic general public subject to the blandishments of focus group thinkers masquerading as the height of political debate, idiot pollsters and zombie like party activists will stalk the landscape turning every stone and stomach for that elusive marginal tilting vote. However we are only to be subject to thirty days of shameless political whoring so there are some small mercies. But the general election does have a bad side as well, to paraphrase the good doctor shamelessly.

The poor benighted Lib Dems are of course ignored to a large extent with the BBC plugging its infamous 'swingometer' predicated on the stale assumptions of two party politics, and business as usual. There is an odd mood in the country at the moment people tire of Blair and 'New' Labour yet seem resigned to voting for four more years. Given the quirks of the UK electoral system and the inequities of First Past the Post there is no real hope(thank God) of the Tories winning. The voters know this, as do the politicians and this in combination with the odd mood of the country will be the cause of odd results and unexpected swings.

My prediction? well for what it's worth I think the Labour majority will be slashed to around fifty, the Lib Dems will hit eighty to ninety seats and the Tories will probably hit the high two hundreds. A hung parliament is also a distinct possibilty...

The Pope Dies, Meditations From a Religious Atheist

2005-04-04T22:53:00.000+01:00

So the Pope has finally shuffled off his mortal coil, the Cardinals are gathering with a conclave to be set. Already the crowds are thronging Rome to see his mortal remains to keep him from finally dying. People die twice, once physically and twice in memory. The Pope unlike you or I will have a long half life, will be recorded in history books and the folk memory of the Catholic church.

The Pope's death has perhaps disturbed me in other ways, the treatment given to him, transforming him from man to religious cipher, an Ikon for the faithful to focus on the divine. This type of religious behaviour would seem to be a constant for the faithful of any creed as those witnessing the reaction of Shi'ites to the death of Ayatollah Khomeni would attest. The Pope as an actual living human being has been obscured and ignored his titular role as head of the mother church bleaching his humanity. Like the Shi'ite Ayatollah the Pope becomes an 'object of emulation' for the ordinary believer

For me the structures of the Catholic church tend to mitigate against treating other human beings as equals. The Catholic church in this way reflects its origins in the Roman Empire of late antiquity, authority is top down rather than bottom up, god transmits to the Pope and the Pope then illuminates his Bishops and so on. The hierarchy of the church is to some Catholics a symbolic reflection of the 'natural' hierarchies already extant, the ladder of being from man to God. The late Pope felt at home with these arrangements and exploited the monarchical hierarchy of Roman Catholicism to enforce his conservative theology.

Women, Gay rights and the HIV positive were to suffer most from this medieval intransigence. His latent mediaevalism has however a positive side with the rejection of empty Capitalistic individualism and recognition of the exploitative nature of current corporate arrangements and rights of workers to organise against them. The affinities with socialism are an historical accident of birth rather than an active engagement, Liberation theology was alas too little too late and ignored by the Church and despised by the last Pope.

The Pope then was a contradictory yet consistent religious leader, a fallible human being clothed in the robes of an ancient church, a symbol to the faithful of an order passed and of what might be.

The Baby Eating Bishop of Norwich Makes the Best Argument For The Disestablishment of the Church of England I've Heard in Years....

2005-03-28T01:30:00.000+01:00

Why is the BBC employing the Bishop of Norwich? What purpose does using license payers money to subsidise a parasitical priest placed at the centre of some hideous BBC quango called the Central Religious Advisory Committee. The Bishop's position in this committee is purely down to the UK's fetishisation of the Church of England as the state church. The BBC is compelled via it's charter to have a certain percentage of religious programming in its output.

The Bishop of Norwich is merely part of the Weberian bureaucracy devoted to producing and regulating this religious programming. His latest tirade is against the BBC for not considering 'religious sensibilities' in its latest programming with the inoffensive(if crap) Vicar of Dibley coming in for some stick regarding an episode on midnight mass. What really annoys me is his contention that the BBC has a 'western liberal secular mindset' and his statement that the BBC should engage with religions more. Now what the Bishop is doing here is equating the liberal secular viewpoint with religious viewpoints. If all these viewpoints are equal he is implying then religious viewpoints should get an equal share. The Bishop of Norwich then is echoing shallow vulgar post-modernist doctrine regarding the relativity of beliefs with secular liberalism being just another consumer choice in the 'marketplace'. So what the Bishop of Norwich is objecting to is the liberal secular framework in which his and others beliefs are placed in arguing that they should be presented free of secular bias.

This seems an untenable proposition, even if you agree with his contention(which I do) that there has been a worldwide religious resurgence(see American..Iran et al). The BBC's job is not to proselytise for different religions it is to try and present them truthfully. The BBC will inevitably be biased about this presentation but one could argue a secular bias is better than an outright atheistic bias or the pretence of neutrality. What the Bishop's bleatings do make clear is that position of the Church of England is untenable in modern society. Church and state as in the US should be separate and religious belief should be a private matter. That the Church of England has an input into the state broadcaster is an abomination in itself the fact that it complains about it adds further insult to injury. Disestablish the Church of England scrap the BBC's compulsion to provide religious programming and put the remainder on BBC4 and remove once and for all the inherent conflict of interest that a state church generates.

The Living Death of Schiavo, An Uncomprehending Brit Looks On...

2005-03-27T20:56:00.000+01:00

If ever an event illustrated the huge chasm between US and UK politics this case does. The tragic case of Terri Schiavo to an outsider like myself throws into relief the fault lines running through the US body politic. On one side we have the nascent theocrats of the anti-abortion movement who have occupied the commanding heights of the Republican party. To them the Schiavo case is the perfect combination of 'morality' and expediency.

The Schiavo case is a perfect rallying point for the whole 'culture of life' with its nexus of anti-birth control rhetoric, misogyny and biblically motivated desire for controlling the US government. Schiavo has then become a cipher, a mere insubstantial symbol for the hard Republican Right to motivate their base and demonstrate that they have leverage over the wider party. It becomes for the hardcore activist a win/win scenario if they 'save' Schiavo then they have blown a major hole in the separation of the judiciary and the executive in the US. This would then allow them to advance their other agendas. If they loose it spins perfectly into their narrative of being embattled and oppressed by wider American cultural. Rationalisation and the religious right go together like coffee and cream.

The problem for Republican activists is that it risks turning off the wider American electorate and worse for their wider strategy it might actually motivate the American public to act against the religious right. The whole strategy of the religious right in America is based on manipulating policy through an active Republican party and an acquiescent apathetic public. This has so far been a tremendous success and like a frog being slowly boiled in water the American public hasn't noticed the rising heat.

So the Shiavo case brings to a head two competing currents in American culture, that of the secular post-enlightenment idea of a rational republic built on the idea of a separate church and state. The competing narrative is the evangelical revivalist notion of America as the 'chosen nation', the new Jerusalem a new Israel crowned with a shining city on the hill. America to these people has always been a Christian nation and whole idea of separating church and state has always been an anathema to them(see the Mormons in Utah..). A nation for the poor unchurched masses in the world. This conflict has existed in the USA since its inception with the deistic masons Washington and Adams talking at cross purposes with the evangelical poor and their prophetic preachers.

So due to these inherent tensions in US culture there will be more Schiavos, more anti-abortion protests and more attempts to destroy the separation between church and state in the USA. Given the UK's state church and flimsy back of a fag packet constitution I feel blessed that our religious fanatics got it out of their system with Cromwell. A similar movement here would be hard to stop, but ironically the secular nature of the UK population combined with the dead weight of our state church The Church of England mitigate against this kind of situation happening in the UK.

Howard The Political Alpha Male: The Sacking of Flight....

2005-03-27T13:38:00.000+01:00

So the Tories are yet again in disarray, well that's the superficial impression given from the sacking of Flight for his remarks on government spending. Now Flight has not done anything unexpected here as he is renowned for speaking his mind and being politically honest.

Flight is an unreformed Thatcherite with all the requisite vulgar libertarian cant about 'small' government and rolling back the state being pretty much a given when it comes expounding his views on politics. Howard probably agrees with everything that Flight stands for but it is inconvenient for this political strategy for him to actually say this in public.

The Tories official line is to reduce the growth of public spending not to reduce the total amount of public spending. Flight has paid the price for speaking honestly what alot of Tories are actually thinking. For Howard this sacking has some beneficial effects, firstly it demonstrates that Tory MPs must cleave to the parties message, secondly it shows that Howard will not be crossed and that any deviations from the party strategy will be punished without mercy.

Howard is trying to introduce a strict culture of loyalty and message discipline into the Conservative party, hoping to emulate the 'New' Labour machine of the mid-nineties. I do not think in the long-run that this will be successful the Labour party's mindset has made it conducive to the kind of message discipline propounded by Blair and Campbell and the ex-commies and Trots who created and birthed 'New' Labour are expert in constructing and running movements and cadres. 'Democratic' Centralism comes as second nature to the likes of Reid and Blunkett.

The Conservative Party lacks this organisational culture with MPs being motivated by the twin sticks of fear and greed. The lack of labour movement traditions of solidarity make Tory MPs very hard to corral and organise and being a minority opposition party makes this worse. The only motivational tool left for Howard is that of fear, his implicit bargain with the party is follow me or loose your seat. Flight's sacking is an instructive lesson for those Tory MPs who might rock the boat or who have leadership ambitions of their own...

'New' Labour Just Can't Stop Trying To Lock People Up Without a Trial..

2005-03-23T23:02:00.000Z

After somehow managing to get its House Arrest laws on the books(albeit with major caveats) 'New' Labour is now trying to curtail liberties in another way. The government's mental health bill contains measure that should worry any proponent of civil liberties. In response to tabloid headlines and the public perception of risky, violent mentally ill people the government proposes to detain and enforce treatment of mentally ill people.

The government as per usual wishes to make laws that appeal to the Daily Mail reader within us all, thus confirming popular prejudice and making the mentally ill even more stigmatized than they already are. The government's argument is that it is protecting us from potential harm. It is hard to see that even if these illiberal and coercive measures were adopted that they would make us any safer. Many violent crimes are committed by people who suffer mental illnesses yet are not patients and the further monstering of those suffering mental illness could make them even less likely to get the help they need. Indeed it is quite possible to posit a scenario where violent crime from mentally ill people increases with these laws.

The other objection is the potential threat to our civil liberties, introducing indefinite detention with trial is something that democratic governments should never do. Power tends to corrupt and provide its own rationalisations for the most despicable of actions. It is not to hard to imagine a potential future when this legislation could be abused as a tool against political and cultural opponents. We of course have a real historical example of how psychiatry can be abused by the state. The Soviet treatment of dissidents and those unable to accept the communist party's rule condemned to the asylum for 'treatment' and 're-education', consensus reality shocked into them via the electrodes of the 'people'. This is not the future I wish to see in Britain and this is not the future that the public should let 'New' Labour unwittingly create.

Howard and Crosby Sink to New Despicable Depths

2005-03-21T22:46:00.000Z

So the poor beknighted Gypsies have become public enemy number one in the Tories eyes. Gypsies like asylum seekers area marginal minority attacking them is politically easy and costs the Tories little political capital. Obviously Crosby has been taking tips from the Goebbels school of news management: select a generally distrusted minority pick a few examples of minority behaving badly and smear the rest of them. So via tapping the brainstem of the average Daily Mail reader Crosby has found another means of wrong-footing the increasingly shambolic 'New' Labour election campaign. As I have noted before tactically the Tories are playing the pre-election build-up very smartly, spinning the news cycle in their direction hence dictating the politcal pace to the government.

Interestingly the economy no longer seems to have the hold that it has in previous elections with the budget falling flat, failing to resonate with the wider electorate. The general public takes prosperity as a given and thus can fixate more on percieved niggles and worries. The Tories have exploited this complacency to good effect time after time and 'New' Labour is on the defensive. It will be instructive to see how they respond to being out-triangulated...

The Invisible Hand of Lynton Crosby: The Tories Puppet Opposition to the Human Rights Act

2005-03-19T12:06:00.000Z

Contemptible, cynical, well all of the above really. The Tories are yet again displaying contemptible, low and cunning tactics when it comes to winning votes. This time their target is the European Covention on Human Rights and all its imagined 'abuses', a clever populist target to be sure and politically it pressures the government and puts it on the defensive when it comes to law and order.

The Tories are also playing to their traditional political strengths here, with the general populace associating Howard with the whole 'lock 'em up and throw away the key' strain of bootboy Conservatism. Also for the Tories it takes account of the strength of the economy and hence Labour's lead on economic issues. To take the Labour party on economically is a mugs game as William Hague discovered at the last election.

So I can see why the Tories are targetting the human rights legislation and it does truly disgust me. Liberties in this country seem under threat from both our major parties and with the Lib Dems supine response to House Arrest bill I'm not left with much hope.

More Meta-Blog Type Nonsense (and further meditations on UK political blogging..)

2005-03-17T22:32:00.000Z

Over on the left side of the US blogosphere a great fuss has been kicked up over a Brookings blog panel and the paucity of ideological balance in the panel itself. The starting point for this mass bout of kvetching was the inclusion of Wonkette on the panel and the contention from many US left-wing bloggers(Digby, Atrios etc..) and commenters that she doesn't represent left-wing bloggers in any shape or form. After perusing her site this would seem to be the case, with it merely being a Washington DC gossip column detailing the comings and goings of the powerful and well-to-do. So the US bloggers would seem to have a strong case that Wonkette is not representing them or their work effectively and thus giving a false impression of the strength of their political opponents.

From a UK perspective it seems quite amazing that bloggers get any kind of airtime or wider respect at all. We are the neglected step-child of political media in this country and due to various cultural and structural reasons don't occupy the same position as the US left-wing bloggers. The election is fortunately stimulating some interest with Radio 4, Newsnight and The Times trawling for political bloggers to chronicle the forthcoming campaign. So the old media in this country is trying to reach out to the nascent political bloggers, the more cynical might say co-opt; but I remain hopeful that if bloggers engage with say the BBC they can retain their unique voice while still being able to reach a larger audience. If traffic rises for the UK political blogs in the coming General election campaign then I think some kind of threshold will have been crossed, then maybe we'll start seeing Bloggerheads, Europhobia et al on Newsnight or on the radio. Well we can all dream....

Brown Tries to Prop up the Housing Pyramid...

2005-03-16T20:56:00.000Z

So another year another budget, Brown has it seems concluded that 'New' Labour's political prospects are tied up with the housing market. The more house prices rise, the more people can release equity from their homes to say pay off a credit card go on holiday, buy a car etc... So to the chancellor a rising housing market lifts all boats and thus is a political positive for 'New' Labour. There is however a problem with this cosy state of affairs house prices are stagnating if not dropping in some areas of the UK. It is not a full blown crash quite yet but some commentators put the risk of a crash happening at one in four. If there is a house price crash a la 1988-89 then all political bets for 'New' Labour are off. A major source of stimulus for the economy would be knocked away with serious consequences for the wider British economy.

Gordon Brown is many things but one of is not stupid he realises that he needs to prop up the property market to prevent such a scenario from happening(well at least on his watch..). A key proposal in the Budget today is the subsidy for first time buyers with the government offering interest free loans to subsidise the purchase of their house. First time buyers have been priced out of the housing market by a steady increase in prices over the last ten years. The treasury is spinning this as a means of helping first time buyers onto the property ladder but neglects to mention it's desire to keep the housing market going for wider economic reasons. Without a fresh supply of firs time buyers the housing market will stagnate and possibly crash. Like any pyramid scheme fresh entrants are needed to buy properties,support the market and ensure steadily rising prices.

This then leads one to ask will these subsidies actually work? My take on this is: yes but for a limited time. These measures will postpone and make the inevitable housing crash even more painful than if it happened of its own accord by its attempts to re-inflate a partially popped bubble. The governments re-inflation of the housing market would then seem to be a short-term measure aimed at getting it re-elected and some positive headlines about 'helping' younger first time buyers. In political terms this proposal works very well for government both in the short and medium term but economically the country could pay the price in the long run.

Maybe All is Not Lost, A Bad Law Gets Challenged

2005-03-15T16:16:00.000Z

Welcome news in the Independent today as lawers for the terrorist suspects placed under house arrest are set to challenge the terms of their confinement. Then men's lawyers are set to challenge the house arrest laws as untenable under European Human Rights law. This is no suprise to anyone with any knowlege of human rights legislation or British law. The 'control orders' clearly contrevene rights to a fair trial and will be challenged in court on this basis. So the government will loose yet again and be forced into a humiliating climbdown. . It is hard then to see what the government will do next if its hastily cobbled together house arrest laws are struck down again as there do not seem to be any viable alternatives(I hope!)

Cromwell Would Have Been Proud....

2005-03-14T23:54:00.000Z

Christians can't live with 'em or err can't live with 'em. The minute legions of the Whitehouse Taliban are gearing themselves for battle and the BBC is firmly in the cross-hairs. The idiocy and cultural philistinism of the fundamentalist Christian types who persist in trying to turn the UK into a giant trailer park with a church attached.

The mental cripples of Christian Voice have alas interpreted 'Jerry Springer' in much the same way as they would interpret the Bible: literally with the tin ear of dogma. Like their reading of the Bible there is no room for metaphor, for simile, for poetry, just a shopping list of demands from the biggest bully of them all. So true to form they reduce 'Jerry Springer' to its component parts, pick out the swearing completely missing its context and thus miss the point of the Opera completely.

They then kvetch about the portrayals of God and Jesus whining about how offended they are, demanding victim status. The absurdity and petty mindedness of these complaints barely needs comment. God does not need idiot human beings to defend him or herself, God really has more important things to do with his or her time than get offended at mere maggots like ourselves passing comment. God in short can take care of himself. The God that these so-called Christians worship is a mere idol and proof of the superficiality of their alleged faith.
Christian Voice will not of course succeed Britain has been too secular for too long to change now and lacks the fertile soil of Calvinism that the US has. Their complaints have no wider cultural resonance and no natural constituency, but they are learning to use the media better and have ready sources of funding so should be kept an eye on.

Jerry Springer(who is most likely smoking an infeasibly large cigar and snorting cocaine delivered by mute Columbian dwarves right now) is probably laughing his very wealthy arse off right now.

Alas, A Budget!

2005-03-14T18:06:00.000Z

If any event in the British political calender reminded one of the symbiosis between big business and big government then the budget does. Favours are done backs are scratched tax breaks given and ordinary citizen is left with crumbs from the technocratic table. 'New' Labour perhaps more than the Conservatives is deeply enmeshed in the welfare-industrial complex with its espousal of PFI, PPP and other corporatist profiteering monstrosities.

The budget will of course reflect this unstated, yet implicitly accepted narrative on the economy, the idea that There Is No Alternative. Neo-liberal ideological assumptions are taken as a given and any uppity lefties who squeak about it have(in the Blairites eyes) not got their pips arranged correctly and are indulging in that most heinous thing to Blair..'pointless protest'. After all Brown is trying to translate the language of European Social Democracy into a pseudo free-marketese Chicago dialect. A heroic enterprise but one doomed to failure in the long run due to still unresolved structural weaknesses in Britain's economy(low productivity, poor vocational skills, a reliance on the housing market for economic stimulus, high personal debt load) along with all the usual problems of over-accumulation and need to recycle those pesky surpluses...

The businessman to 'New' Labour is the epitome of 'modernity' and pragmatism only doing what works and doing so with supreme efficiency. Indeed 'New' Labour's deification of the businessman reaches Soviet heights of hagiography and surely it can be only a matter of time before Blair awards in true Stakhanovite style one of these businessmen the Order of Brown for increases in his productivity quota of 'entrepreneurialism'. Poor public sector workers will then be encouraged to match these daring feats of 'private' sector magic for the party and the greater glory of 'New' Labour. Much like the Italian Futurists worshipped the speed, noise and velocity of warfare for it's aesthetic qualities. 'New' Labour makes a similar mistake to the Futurists concentrating on the epiphenomena of the state capitalist marketplace to the exclusion of the corrupt compromised reality.

The budget itself will be last act of Brown prior to the election so will be structured to win 'New' Labour the election and give the Chancellor a chance to claim the crown himself. While the Tories cannot win the election the number of seats they acquire could set in motion the ambitions of Brown and trigger an early leadership challenge to Blair. As ever economics is politics carried on by other means and the Budget reflects a personal feud, a personal vision and a potential future be careful what you wish for Mr Brown as you might just get it!

A Bad Bill Passes? Beowulf Watches as Parliamentarians Light Their Cigars with the Magna Carta.

2005-03-11T18:57:00.000Z

Well it looks like a deal has been cooked up and the right of British citizens to a fair trial, along with presumption of innocence before guilt have been consigned to the dustbin of history. This abysmal piece of legislation will most probably pass and the game of parliamentary ping pong will come to an end.

Charles Clarke has compromised on the sunset clause instituting it in all but name there by allowing the government to save some measure of face. I do not think this bill will ultimately hold and like its predecessor will face challenges in the courts. It is a bad, flawed and rushed piece of legislation as has been stated by parliamentarians of all parties any number of times, yet the bill will pass as will our liberties..

Insomniac Lords Leap on House Arrest Bill

2005-03-11T12:24:00.000Z

The House of Lords is holding out over the House Arrest Bill, extending it's debate over night. The irony that the undemocratically elected Lords are preserving our ancient liberties, while the democratically elected MPs are selling us down the river has not gone unnoticed. This has led to the craven argument from the government that the Lords must submit to the will of the elected house. The current activities of both houses would lead one to think the reverse with the government submitting some of the weakest arguments in living memory for passing this awful bill.

'New' Labour sees this as a trial of political strength and as a win win situation for them electorally. If they win they get to be seen as 'tough' on the terrorists if they loose they can paint the opposition as supposedly 'weak' on the terrorists. Like everything else that this government has done image trumps substance, rational debate and the production of good laws. What will be interesting to observe is whether 'New' Labour is politically damaged from the shambles surrounding the House Arrest Bill. The current mess does not do it's image of cool calm technocratic confidence any favours at all, but will the electorate pick up on this and if so will it cost Labour any seats? Harold Macmillan said that 'a week is a long time in politics' if so then the next two months are going to last a very long time indeed for the government.

Does Blair Actually Believe Anything he Says Anymore?

2005-03-10T15:40:00.000Z

Ahhh where to start, macho bullshitting politics from the messianic delusions of a security service lackey. Larded with sub-Thatcherite rhetoric as if spoken with the mouth of Bush busy trying to pull a Churchill on the British public. All the cosmic rays he's absorbed while crossing the Atlantic seems to have further interfered with any attempt at rational thinking concerning these terrible authoritarian house arrest laws.

Blair typically refuses to engage with issues casting the whole debacle as a test of his political 'manhood' a pissing contest with the shadowy terrorists who don't give a toss about the laws being passed. Blair is as ever cynically playing politics here, bolstering his image as 'tough' on law and order issues. Perfectly contemptible yet understandable behaviour from a government who have never found a liberty they wouldn't curtail.

Yet again he equates an unpopular and morally wrong policy as being correct. Blair's brain works something like this: find extremely stupid policy, find that general public hate policy, immediately embrace policy as the 'future' then define all those who oppose policy as being 'conservative'. An optional extra to this retarded thought process is a little light moralising topped with some messianic flourishes. This formula has obviously been altered slightly for the House Arrest Bill with sullen Blunkettesque attempts at bullying his opponents mixed with paranoia about unspecified 'threats' fear is such a wonderful political tool...

Blair is wrong in principle, wrong in practice and contemptible in approach this bill must go no further.

'New' Labour Ruminates..If Only I Had a Soul...

2005-03-10T12:14:00.000Z

This news story really does turn the stomach asserting that 'New' Labour needs to learn from Bush's re-election and the so called values rhetoric that went along with it. British leftist types often assert that Brown is the superior 'Real' Labour alternative to Blair seeing him as the more grounded in the Labour movement and as the advocate of more progressive policies than Blair.

What these people seem to forget is Brown's often unabashed endorsement of US economic model and his swallowing of the myth of US productivity increases. He promotes the shibboleths of 'flexibility' and 'enterprise' with all the zeal of a neo-liberal and seems to regard Europe with disdain. That Brown's political allies look to the US for political tips regarding re-election is not then surprising. However political lessons from the US do not often translate that well to the UK, with our largely secular body politic, strong unions and history of social democracy. The idea that 'New' Labour can promote the kind of values rhetoric being shilled in the US is I think misguided. The structural differences between the two countries mitigate against this.

Douglas Alexander in this Guardian article does concede this point. Throughout the article there is a general queasiness with Blair's 'post-ideological' agenda. He seems to be aware that technocratic managerialism does not fire up the the base or get voters out to the polls, hence his call to specious 'values'. This has always been a problem with 'New' Labour it's lack of ideological spine and has always been the deal breaker when it comes to comparisons with the impact of Thatcherism on politics. Blair has not forged a new consensus merely tidied up the old one. Alexander is I think suffering from a case of buyers remorse, he is uneasy with the whole direction the 'New' Labour project has taken bemoaning the brand led strategy of the Blairites and the consequent descent of politics into vacuous consumerist language.

Alexander here is I think speaking for Brown. This article and his comments are a coded message to 'Old' Labourites that they have not been forgotten by the chancellor after all if Brown wants to be Prime Minister he will need this faction's support and this call to 'values' will help him secure it.

Hull Giroscope Housing Co-op versus The Big Boys

2005-03-09T21:22:00.000Z

Excellent although worrying article in the Guardian's usually depressing Society section. The article looks at the Hull based Giroscope Housing Co-operative who have renovated and rented out dilapidated properties since the early 80's. Giroscope has done a good job of putting Mutualist principles into effective practice.

Giroscope are unfortunately in a spot of trouble, but not luckily of their own making. Many of of the houses that they have painstakingly renovated are threatened by a diseased local housing market and the predatory practices of local developers. The area that Giroscope has been operating in has been used a dumping ground for anti-social tenants benefiting the slum landlords. There are also plans to extensively redevelop the area that Giroscope operates in which would involve compulsory purchase orders and levelling of a large number of houses. All of this is in the name of that sacred cow 'development' or as I like to think of it 'enrichment'. Local councils and local developers rigging the local property market and extracting rents from the poorest and most deprived in our society, Capitalism as usual really!

In the article Giroscope openly imply that the local council and the development corporation have no idea what is actually going on the area. It is clear that in Hull we have a clear clash of approaches and mindsets, local planners and corporate types are used to thinking in the language of command and control. There is plan and it must be executed and then profit will be extracted. Giroscope operate in almost the opposite way working in traditional co-op fashion from the ground-up expanding organically and minimising the amount they exploit the local population as they do so. So it is a clash of ideologies and a clash of world views Giroscope seeing themselves as ordinary working people yet cast by the developers in that insipid phrase 'client group'..when the developer is aware they exist at all..

So who will win? being fairly cynical my money is on the local council and it's corporate cronies. The classically capitalist combination of corporate and state support arrayed against local people will crush the co-op unless they get help and support from the outside. Unfortunately they do not have a website or much of a web presence at all. All we can do is wish them luck against the oppressive forces working against them.

Blair Proclaims 'No Surrender' - What Does he Really Mean?

2005-03-09T16:47:00.000Z

So Blair is refusing to compromise on the House Arrest Bill, as ever he believes and trusts the security bureaucrats who have never seen a civil liberty they couldn't subert or abuse. It is hard not to see this as more than a political tactic designed to put the Conservatives and Lib Dems on the back foot. In Blair's quest to be ever more conservative than the Conservatives the anti-terror legislation comes in very useful and in the up and coming election campaign will be a useful stick to beat the Conservatives with. Neither party has actually bothered to oppose the true problem with this bill: it's breaching of the right to a fair trial. I don't if this is a tactial move by the Tories or the Lib Dems being fearful of being seen 'weak' on security and terrorism or a combination of the two.

As a spectator of British politics sitting out in the sticks in Wiltshire it is utterly depressing to see ancient liberties such as the right to a fair trial being bargained away at Westminster. Even more depressing is the apathy in the wider population about it. I think there are understandable reasons for this, British people think that this legislation won't affect them so why bother getting worked up about it; or conversly they with resigned realism assume that they can't affect the outcome of these debates, so why bother . People don't seem to care that they could potentially be locked up without trial while being kept ignorant of the charges made against them.

Mr Raimondo I Tip my Hat to you Sir!

2005-03-08T17:18:00.000Z

Fascinating developments in Lebanon with Hizbullah mobilising it's support for the post-Syrian jostling to power to come. 500 000 supporters in Beirut is an impressive testament to Hizbullah's ability to organise and a telling show of it's political strength. Justin Raimondo at the excellent Antiwar.com has probably the best take I've read on the whole situation being like me sceptically agnostic about the whole alleged 'Cedar' Revolution and its implications for the Middle East.

A Self Facilitating Meeja Node Writes About Nathan Barley(it's well weapon!)

2005-03-08T13:58:00.000Z

'Nathan Barley' is the newish creation of Chris Morris(Day Today, Brasseye) and Charlie Brookner (TV Go Home). Nathan Barley is situated amongst the flora and fauna of meeja London's style magazines and new media focusing on their numerous idiocies and population of no talent hacks. Morris and Brookner narrow down the scope to the barely imaginary 'cutting edge' magazine Sugar Ape and it's population of what pathetically compromised mid-thirties journalist Dan Ashcroft calls the 'idiots'. Nathan Barley is a freelance web designer of Trashbat.co.ck(who does no designing..) and 'self facilitating media node' loathed by Dan Ashcroft yet fully accepted by the 'idiots'.

The Ashcroft labelled 'idiots' are where Chris Morris' wonderfully twisted use of language comes into play with Morris inventing a Clockwork Orange style vocabulary for his charges. Language is dissolved into meaningless clichés and shorthand, the desire to shock detached from any real meaning or intent. Radical political statements and events such as 9/11 are rendered into aesthetic choices for bleeding edge fashionistas. Chris Morris has always played with language from 'The Day Today's' gleeful dismembering of 'Newsnight' style BBC English to 'Brasseye's' full bore attack on tabloid headlines and the emptiness and desperation of the language used by micro-celebrities to fill them.

'Nathan Barley' then is in some way two fingers stuck up towards Chris Morris' traditional audience with Chris Morris doing an 'In Utero' to his loyal fans in the media and all the other 'idiots' who derive their fun from the shock value in his work. Like Kurt Cobain given a crash course on the British meeja and the works of Swift, Chris Morris is biting the hand that feeds him, subverting the very writers who promote and review his work and the magazines that work this particular demographic.

Plutocrats 1 Democrats 0 How the Lords Stopped(for now..) the House Arrest Bill.

2005-03-08T11:31:00.000Z

Yet again the undemocratically appointed Lords attempt to save British democracy from itself. Luckily for British liberties they have voted the governments proposals for house arrest or as they euphemistically call them 'control orders'. As I have noted in previous posts this issue needs to be settled prior to March 14th when the current bill expires. This then places the pressure back on the government to either heavily modify the proposed legislation, drop it or temporarily continue with the current detention without trial.

It will be interesting to see how the government reacts under this pressure, with the Conservatives breathing down their neck about law and order and the Lib Dems hammering them on their left flank about civil liberties.

Cutting Out the Middle Man: A Mutualist Examines Online Loan Exchanges

2005-03-07T17:56:00.000Z

The idea of an online loan exchange is very interesting in that it cuts out the middle man, making banks, credit card companies et al irrelevant. Like the betting exchanges and ebay it puts buyers directly in contact with sellers. Zopa takes a cut from the borrower and the lender can use the service for free. Now mutualists should not get too excited at this scheme as it is corporate funded and backed by Benchmark Capital and also makes use of the same debt collection agencies as the high street banks.

There is also the prospect of debt peonage between individuals, although Zopa does acknowledge that ultimately the lender bears the final risk in cases of default. There is also the fact that it uses standard credit risk arrangements to asses borrowers, dividing them into profitable sheep and miserly goats. So this online loan exchange does have its good points in that it potentially allows ordinary people greater access to capital and minimises the role of exploitative capitalist banks. It is possible to see how this kind of arrangement would work in a mutualist or co-op banking system freed of state control, with local co-ops and small businesses exchanging and borrowing from one another using informal loan exchanges descended from early capitalist examples like Zopa.

Best of British Blogs Round Up

2005-03-06T18:27:00.000Z

Ok the weekly best of British Blogs by Tim Worstall is up. Lots of interesting stuff so go take a look(have helpfully linked for you all up top)

Robert McCartney: The IRA as Defacto State and Monopoliser of Violence amongst Northern Irish Catholics: A Libertarian Socialist Analysis

2005-03-06T12:55:00.000Z

The Sinn Fein and the IRA always present progressives with a dilemma,their cause is just but their techniques are not. Recent events with the murder of Robert McCartney in Belfast have thrown this dissonance between ends and means into sharp relief.

First of all a brief history lesson. The Provisional Irish Republican Army splintered from the Official IRA in 1971/72 to defend Irish Catholic neighbourhoods from Unionist Protestant aggression and intimidation. The starting point for this were the marches by Irish Catholics demanding civil rights and equal treatment before the law. The IRA then developed further into an movement concerned with evicting the British from Northern Ireland and reversing partition.

So the IRA has had a dual role from it's very inception: that of defender of the Catholic community and 'freedom' fighters against the British. To a libertarian socialist the development of the IRA in the absence of the British state in Catholic areas should by analysed and looked at carefully. Libertarians of any stripe wish for the disestablishment of the state, in Catholic neighbourhoods this has actually happened to some extent. What happened next is particularly instructive.

The IRA styles itself a resistance army and although making some concessions to modern guerilla warfare with the cell structure is still very much a command and control organisation.
So by seeing itself as an army the IRA takes on the mindset of command and control. Strategy is decided from the top and disseminated down the ranks. Military discipline is to be enforced ruthlessly and those who disobey orders are to be treated accordingly. The military mentality is that of the collective with the individuals needs and wants subordinated to the 'cause'.

How then does the IRA interact with Catholic communities of Northern Ireland? In many ways it has become the de facto state in parts of Belfast for working class Catholics. Businesses both legal and illegal are forced to pay a tithe to the IRA, mixed with bank robberies and other activities. The IRA in this way holds the monopoly of violence in Catholic communities and people tow the line. The IRA's political wing Sinn Fein also co-operates acting much like Stalin's political commissars enforcing ideological purity and submission to the cause.

The IRA promises freedom and liberation yet it's authoritarian techniques deny that to the population it is allegedly defending. The IRA has rolled back the state and replaced it with something worse: a stateless army who keep their position through violence, intimidation and the tacit resignation of working class Catholics. Libertarians should see the IRA as an example of how power can corrupt and warp an organisation and how the state can reassert itself in many different forms.

The Politics of Scarcity in a Digital Age

2005-03-05T18:57:00.000Z

As anyone vaguely technically minded from the UK will know the BPI has recently started suing people who partake of filesharing services like Grokster, Kazaa, WinMX etc. This legal action is intended to scare and punish those who share copyrighted music files and those who have been sued have been forced to settle to avoid further legal damage.

This type of legal action seems to me and act born of weakness rather then strength by the record industry. Networked computers with large amounts of storage and processing power pose a big threat to the economics of the traditional record industry. This threat is two pronged, firstly people can produce music cheaply and quickly using freely available or very cheap software in many this is particuarly the case for electronic music. Secondly peer to peer distributed networks cut out the middle man artist no longer need sign up to a record company to distribute or sell their work ergo the record company gets no cut. Combine both of these threats together and you can start to see a future where record companies are redundant.

Now turkey's don't vote for Christmans and record companies most definitely don't vote for peer to peer filesharing. Record companies are a classic example of a government backed oliogopoly. Artists are indebted and legally bound vassals of the record company with advances used to discipline and corral them into marketing campaigns and promotional gimmicks. Record companies see the artist as a farmer sees cattle: just another asset to be milked. Artists after costs and expenses see very little profit from each individual CD, roughly 10p per CD in this country.

So if record companies are such a bad deal for the majority of artists why do they continue to occupy such a key position in the music industry? Put simply they monopolise the means of distribution and promotion of new artists in this country, which then explains why they see filesharing as such a big threat.

Being a Mutualist I wish to see a world where the record companies no longer exist and the artist gets fairly compensated for their work. How then can this be reconciled with the reality of file sharing and that old hacker cliche that 'information wants to be free'? The only possible solution that I can see working is some kind of yearly flat flee for file sharers combined with direct payment to the artists concerned. The record companies at present are trying to enforce an artificial scarcity, this has a market distorting effect and prevents new business and legal solutions being found to the reality that is file sharing

Livingstone's Rather Excellent Funny Money

2005-03-04T13:45:00.000Z

Ken Livingstone is known to be iconoclastic when it comes to his policies for London. His latest suggestion is that Londoners should have access to a new form of electronic currency or 'e-money' as he puts it. This currency will unfortunately be backed up by the current banking system and seems to be more of a replacement for small change than a complete local replacement currency. But it is a start and may develop into a proper LETS or an alternative currency.

Now as a Mutualist I am in favour of more rather than less currencies. From a supranational Euro via the Pound to local and regional currencies. so this is an interesting development and Mutualists should encourage it further, as it leads to further economic de-centralisation allowing people greater control over their own lives and partially frees them from the central bankers money monopoly.

Politics Officially Rubbish: Declare All Major Political Parties

2005-03-03T20:54:00.000Z

The 'nice but dim' party appears to have learnt a political trick or two from it's abusive 'New' Labour owners. The whole media campaign around Margaret Dixon's treatment by the NHS brings back memories of Labour's Jennifer's Ear debacle. The Tories have cleverly set the tone for this particular media flap puitting Labour on the defensive, giving John 'oh fuck not health' Reid the political run around.

The Tories like 'New' Labour before them know that most people just read the headlines, or skim the news and trying to have an emotional not intellectual impact on the potential voter. What they are trying to do is create the impression that the NHS has got worse rather than better. Nothing unusual in modern focus grouped advertising driven politics. 'New' Labour has been forced to operate in damage control which is an amusing sight. The Tories unlike previous years seem to have some sort of pre-election plan and for a change the discipline to follow it. The Tories are it seems back in the game and while they may not win the general election they may ressurect their status as a competent opposition party.

Committee to Protect Bloggers: Heads Up!

2005-03-03T16:53:00.000Z

A short post to lend my support to this fine blog. Support free speech and liberty and support this blog.:

Committe To Protect Bloggers

Issues of free-speech in places like Iran, China etc..should concern every blogger. So show your solidarity and pay 'em a visit.

Review: Vitalic - OK Cowboy

2005-03-03T12:56:00.000Z

Finally a music post! am trying to keep this blog balanced but it's hard sometimes, anyway let's get on with this review!

Vitalic are products of the French club scene and like Daft Punk, Motorbass and Cassius before them they are here to do one thing: make you dance. Vitalic unlike say Daft Punk are not disco and chicago house obsessives. Vitalic's touchstones are 80's synthpop, house, classic electro, Moroder and Kraftwerk mixed with late 70's Bowie. Vitalic originated in and around the Electroclash scene, surved it's demise while carrying on in a similar vein.

As Simon Reynolds pointed out in his interview with LCD Soundsystem dance music is currently between 'big things' and like rock music in the 80's looks to combine and re-combine various different elements of dance musics past. To invoke that crusty old literary critic Leavis dance music is in canonical phase with artists like Vitalic trying to innovate knowing the sheer weight of previous music can both inhibit and free them to make better music.

But what of the album itself? It starts off fantastically reminding me very much of prime mid-seventies Kraftwerk with naive analogue synths puttering away making me think of retro futures past backed up by some kind of bizarre teutonic oompah beat. The next track 'Poney part 1' is pure dancefloor funktionalism with sweeping filters, hard jacking teutonic kicks and Vitalic's cracked processed voice jutting through the mix.

The relentless build and breakdown on this track are simple yet very effective and designed to do maximum carnage on the dancefloor. This track and others on the album like 'No Fun' do showcase an interesting side of Vitalic's music, the rock like attack mid-frequency blare and general lack of digital cleanliness to his music. This is made even more explicit in 'My Friend Dario' where Vitalic deploys actual riffing rock guitars along side a programmed rock n' roll back beat. As Silver Dollar says it's interesting to see where scene's end up sometimes..

This sonic dirt and detritus is there even in the most beautiful tracks of the album with overdriven synths all over the shop from 'Wooo's' heavily swung schaeffel beat and child like melodies. 'La Rock no 1' what more can you say, with filtered step sequencers playing off martial electro kicks, utilising that classic noisy Vitalic build-up and breakdown. The first Vitalic track I'd ever heard and a good introduction to his sound.

Vitalic can do more than dancefloor bangers as is evidenced by tracks like 'Trahison' and the beautiful 'The Past' with it's subtle beautiful use of vocoders and retro synth sounds evoking futures that never came to be.

This album is thee essential dance album of the year so far, better than Daft Punk, M.I.A et al, do Vitalic a favour and pick up his album on April 25th.

Best News I've Heard All Day

2005-03-03T11:56:00.000Z

Every cloud has a silver lining it seems, and although I kvetched about Blair rejecting the Tory proposed Sunset Clause on the forthcoming house arrest laws. The possible upside might be that the Bill does not pass at all due to time constraints as the original legislation expires on March 14th.

Blair's argument against the Sunset Clause was particuarlyfallacious his key point being that there was no need for such a clause due to the fact that house arrest orders would be reviewed annually. Blair commits a classic category error confusing the renewal of a house arrest order within the law with the renewal of the law itself. All of which makes me wonder if he actually believes what he's saying, on second thoughts he's a lawyer of course he does!

So fingers crossed this bill will not pass due to the tactical maneuvering by the Tories, rebel Labour MP's and the Lib Dems.

More War on Stupid(with thanks to Bloggerheads): Blair rejects Sunset Clause

2005-03-02T13:09:00.000Z

So the Tories' half-way sensible suggestion for a sunset clause by *shock horror* the Conservatives on 'New' Labour's house arrest anti-terror laws are being rejected by Blair in Prime Minister's questions. Now I am an implacable opponent of this bill, but being a political realist if it must pass then at least include some sort of provision like this. So much bad kneejerk legislation has been passed by Parliament in the last fifteen year..Dangerous Dogs act, the original derogation from the European Human Rights Convention etc....

The problem is that 'New' Labour has an election coming up and is trying to use this bill to shore up its(to use that horrible blank facistic phrase) 'national security' flank. Triangulation as a political strategy never dies it seems, just skulks away like a red headed step-child until needed again...

Did You Hear the One About the BNP Councillor who got on the Racial Equality Committee...err sorry it's real no punchline folks!

2005-03-02T01:57:00.000Z

Just when when you thought satire was dead reality comes along and administers a sharp thwack to it's head just to make sure. I mean what is the point of political commentary when reality does such a damn fine job by itself!

Yet again the 'Stupid Party' live up to their fine traditions of intellectual incompetence and ham-fisted political maneuvering by their appointing of a BNP* counciller to a Racial Equality committee. Now I can see the twisted logic behind this by the Tories as the intellectual pygmies behind this strategy obviously think they can isolate the BNP councillor and cut his support off at the pass by making him look ineffective to his own supporters. This would then protect the Tories right flank...in theory.

Of course the Tories are obviously banking that the BNP Councillor is as thick as two short planks and can't see the poisoned challice that's being handed to him here. The real danger is if the Tories have handed the BNP on this council a chance to look and act as a legitimate party. This is the real act of stupidity on the Tories part and the other parties on Calderdale Council(West Yorkshire) realise this. The Tories will reap as they sow...

Commoners Rights and the Tragedy of the New Forest Becoming a UK National Park

2005-03-01T16:59:00.000Z

The New Forest is one of the few places in the late Capitalist UK where land enclosures were successfully resisted and the tradition of commoners using common land persisted for over a thousand years. It also gives a partial glimpse of how a society could structure itself in a true non-capitalist voluntary free market...

In practice this means that farmers and small holders may allow their ponies and cattle to graze the forest without restriction and commoners have formed a number of different voluntary associations such as the New Forest Commoners Defence Association to represent and defend themselves. So the New Forest is a good example of a society that does not operate according to the accepted rules of either the right or the left. Many vulgar Libertarians find it hard to get their heads round the idea of common but not collectively owned land. Whilst left wingers would tend to see the arrangements in the New Forest as a historical anachronism standing in the way of progress, rural stick in the muds who have yet to arrive in the twentieth century.

However the New Forest is not some Mutualist paradise and the state has intervened many times over the previous thousand years with many parliamentary acts trying to regulate the commoners practices. The latest unfortunate example of this is the making of the New Forest into a national park. The commoners rightly fear that power over the running of their forest will be taken out of their hands and professionalised by local politicians and wider national interests. The commoners, who actually work, live and maintain the forest have of course been ignored and overruled as per the last thousand years the central state has decried something and they've got to lump it or subvert it...

It is easy to see why the New Forest provokes these kinds of attacks as it must appear as an irritating anomaly to the dead hand of statist law and tradition, maybe there is a folk memory of the enclosures that haunts our body politic still...

This Would Explain Alot....

2005-03-01T13:16:00.000Z

BBC NEWS | Health | Many politicians sleep deprived

Say no more....

Concessions are a Sign of Weakness, Now Press the Advantage!

2005-02-28T22:47:00.000Z

The concessions by Clarke on the government's house arrest laws are a good thing in that the government recognises that it must cleave to judicial authority, but they do not go far enough. The government is still fundamentaly wrong when it comes to these proposed laws.

The act of arbitrary house arrest can never be justified both under European human rights law and English legal traditions. The reasons being that it contravenes the basic right of having a fair trial before one's peers. It also frees the government to detain anyone potentially under any pretext with the government's sole guarantee of 'trust me'. I and it seems from this comments thread a fair few members of the British public are not and are never prepared to trust the government when it comes to basic liberties like these.

So my message to Labour rebels, Conservatives with conscience and Lib Dems is to hold firm and defeat the bill!

Liberties Cheaply Thrown Away

2005-02-28T12:31:00.000Z

So as Europhobia points out it looks certain that Clarke's ammended anti-terror laws are going to be passed through parliament and that house arrest is going to become a reality in this country. As a Libertarian Socialist this saddens me greatly and shows yet more encroachment by the state on our commonly held freedoms.

This law should not pass...but it will and this is an indicment on our political class and the illiberal Labour party in particular. It also shows one of the dangers of a representative democracy: that of a tyranny of the majority and consequent targetting of minorities. Hopefully this bill will be challenged and stopped in the Lords or in the courts and MP's will get a chance to rethink and hopefully throw out this misguided piece of legislation.

British Banks and the Money Monopoly

2005-02-28T11:24:00.000Z

Oh for a true free market in banking and credit...This of course is not going to happen in our current Capitalist system. Generally excessive profits in a market situation are an example of a lack of competition and of government favour granted to a corporation. In a true free market and not the current Capitalist sham of one we have at the moment profits of £9bn could not and would not exist. The effect of this on your average Joe is that he or she will get exploited and overcharged for use of the banks capital, if they can get access to the capital in the first place...

Banks such as HSBC are an excellent example of this, being private enablers of a government backed private monopoly on money. HSBC could not exist without state intervention and support and have rigged the system to continue this state of affairs into the indefinite future. This demonstrates the wider Mutualist point that Capitalism is a state created and maintained economic system designed to inhibit and pervert a true free market. Free the money monopoly and free the people!

I Love The Smell of 'BBC Bias' in the Morning...It Smells Like Victory!

2005-02-27T22:17:00.000Z

The Conservatives are playing this pre-election climate very cannily alas. The pseudo-populist charges of bias towards the corporation are another example of fantastically cynical electioneering. The charges of bias emanate from a drama called Faith that is set during the miners strike of 1984.

The Tories are trying to take a leaf out of the US Republicans approach to the media by implying that the BBC is a nest of metropolitan lefty pinkos systematically biased against the Conservative Party and the 'common sense' of ordinary Britons. This is quite a clever strategy by the Conservatives, keeping them in the news and throwing a little red meat towards their core supporters.

One possible reason for the attack on the BBC might be that it's designed to provoke the Labour party into some kind of response, to draw them out in some way. It will be interesting to see how this manufactured controversy plays itself out over the next couple of days and especially if the Murdoch press pick it up...

'New' Labour takes a Reality Check...

2005-02-27T18:05:00.000Z

I do sometimes wonder as to the bubble politicians end up living in when they take residence at Westminster. In many ways Westminster resembles some decaying third rate public school(which is actually a private school..for my foreign readers) with all the political obsessives hothoused together giving rise to some very sickly blooms...

So politicians are isolated and in some senses alienated from everyday life due to the nature of their jobs. For they are to be on message and on call twenty four hours a day, isolated from the ordinary rhythm's of everyday life and hence in some ways to everyday concerns. These factors loom ever larger for party leaders with their unique political positions as dominant males(and they are almost always males...) in the pack.

Blair has always lived a very insulated life, protected and promoted by his patrons, cloistered at Oxford very much the traditional career path of an aspiring PM. Blair has never struggled and never suffered financial disadvantage his whole life has been politics of which he has been very good at. However he lacks the raw smarts of Brown and lately has surrounded himself with the 'true believers' the Blairite ultras. This has served to further insulate Blair from wider reality and promote the self-delusion that he is actually politically popular.

Before the Iraq War this might have been true but some basic trust seems to have been breached with the British public and Blair and his inner circle seem befuddled that he is provoking such hostile reactions from ordinary Britons. So the wonks are adjusting their strategy to make Blair seem less 'presidential' and are trying to reel Brown back into the campaign after giving him the kiss off. This seems to me too little too late the public seems to have made up it's mind regarding Blair and his trustworthiness. The Blairite response most amusingly is to feature less Blair in the actual campaign, the paradoxes of politics.....Gould Blair's chief pollster is confident that this is working and that Labour will widen the gap with the newly resurgent Conservatives and who knows he may be right, but as the Chinese used to say we live in interesting times....

The Tension Between Localism and Internationalism in the Left

2005-02-26T15:12:00.000Z

Maxspeak's post I think highlights a key tension in left-wing thought between that of the local and that of the international. He does this through looking at the infamous Walmart and their effects on local and small businesses. The traditional state socialist approach to Walmart is found in Doug Henwood's approach to corporations, he argues that socialists must live up to their name and 'socialise' these corporations. Also Henwood is very sceptical towards the way that small businesses treat their employees in terms of working conditions and union recognition.

The mutualists would disagree with this position seeing the corporation as a state created and state subsidised entity and that consequently the existence of such entities in any post-capitalist society would be untenable. So by rejecting the corporation in its traditional form then you have to reject the current mode of 'globalisation' in its corporate/mercantilist form. However some of the new style localists reject any form of global co-operation what-so-ever. Now I see this as wrong-headed in that any post-capitalist future must be an inherently global project based around global linkages and global co-operation between communes, co-operatives, small businesses etc...

In short Walmart is the wrong type of 'globalisation' based on shakey mercantilist foundations and severe market distortians in favour of larger corporate entities.

Kevin Carson's Excellent Mutualist Take on 'Contract Feudalism'

2005-02-26T12:31:00.000Z

An excellent excellent post by Kevin Carson the original mutualist guru himself on the idea of 'Contract Feudalism' or to look at it another way the lack of democracy in modern workplaces. Having temped around myself in different companies and state institutions his charges against Human Resources departments read very true. Anyway enough wittering from me and get yourself over to that link above!

A Story of Corporate Subsidy and Your Average Working Stiff....

2005-02-26T11:11:00.000Z

Ahhhh the minimum wage where to start... As a mutualist I see the wage as a good thing for ordinary working people and find the bleating of corporate capitalists against any rises offensive.

Ah I can hear you thinking...Beowulf is one of those horrible Libertarian Socialist/Mutualist types who's completely opposed to statist solutions of any kind. Now this is broadly true but I am also a political pragmatist when it comes to legislation that helps ordinary working people. Until employees are in a decent bargaining position with employers vis a vis wages and hours then this kind of statistic intervention will always be needed alas. Also the proposed increase in the minimum wage prevents employers from living off state subsidised wages and externalities the true cost of their business onto the taxpayer.

So 'New' Labour are doing the right thing by increasing the minimum wage. This then leads to the question as to why they are increasing the wage now? As ever for 'New' Labour it is a case of panic induced political calculus. They have seen the polls and they have seen fear, the fear that their core vote won't turn out. Thus this small increase is calculated to get their core vote out on election day. Which leads us onto the question of whether it will actually work or not? I don't really know to be honest and I think the only way that we'll know for sure is at the coming general election sometime in May.

Oh dear...redux

2005-02-25T10:10:00.000Z

The Conservatives are looking confident and their tails are up. I have very mixed feelings about this. On one hand it pressure the Labour party to actually do vaguely progressive things like offer to up the minimum wage to £5 an hour..on the other hand it could make 'New' Labour ever more reactionary in it's policies towards immigrants and asylum seekers among other things.

The Conservatives have used the imported Australian poll guru Lynton Crosby to work their way to this position. However the
Backing Blair campaign will I think be quietly happy about the narrowing of the polls and the pressure on Blair and 'New' Labour...

MRSA, the Bean Counters, the pseudo 'Free Market' and those annoying Externalities

2005-02-24T15:11:00.000Z

This story truly disgusts me and sums up alot of what is wrong with the NHS and contemporary British business practice. Like the PPP/PFI debacle big corporations have been indulged, false economies made and fortunes extorted.

As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson in this story points out the drive to lower costs and meet political targets has resulted in rising infection rates. Cleaners employed at minimum wage cost via private contractors do not have the same loyalty and pride in the NHS that a proper employee would have.

This however was not easily measurable or quantifiable for our bean counters and hence was disregarded. But at the time when private cleaning contractors were introduced into the NHS, pseudo- 'free market' theory was at it's zenith amongst the 'stupid party' thus making the Treasury and the Tory ideologues happy. So the potential externalities and complications of this policy were disregarded or ignored, but hey! it's only the little people dying, so who cares.. thinks our craven political class...

The Nepotism of Pole Greasing Monkeys

2005-02-24T13:24:00.000Z

The secret with this government is always to lower your expectations that way you'll never ever be disappointed. The Current revelations on how the legal advice was cooked up by two of Blair's legal allies is a case in point. Blair who cannot truly tell a lie (as he truly believes the rationales that he sells himself) needed legal cover for his pre-arranged and pre-agreed upcoming war.

So he taps his old political/legal friend Lord Falconer who duly cooks up the evidence needed for Goldsmith's shaky legal backing for the war. To a political cynic like me none of this is particularly surprising, as Blair was operating in his full Niezstchian 'will to power' mode, seasoned with some light muscular Christianity. Like Bush's Neo-conservatives Blair saw himself as one of 'history's actors' and nothing was going to get in his way...

Political relationships between males seem to follow some depressing dynamics, and although I give no credence to Evolutionary Psychology and its simplistic nostrums the hierarchical nature of these arrangements seem to be some kind of human universal, when it comes to male group dynamics. Falconer wished to keep in Blair's favour and scratched his back picking a few irritating fleas off in the process.

I don't pretend to know Falconer's true thinking on the war, but it is not inconceivable that his loyalty to Blair outweighed any moral consideration regarding a war in a far-away place of which most people knew very little.

Will The Real Opposition Please Stand Up....

2005-02-23T18:05:00.000Z

It is heartening to see that the current Anti-Terror bill is being opposed in Parliament effectively and efficiently by the Lib Dems who made an excellent point about 'New' Labour's reflex "reaction of the government is authoritarian". This was in reaction to to the government's proposal that the Home Secretary have the power to issue these detention orders rather than a judge.

The Conservatives really have no moral leg to stand on with regards to these proposals given that it chimes with every political prejudice in their political bodies. The hang 'em flog 'em brigade in the Conservative party probaby sees these proprosals as too 'weak' on the terrorists. Also there is their complicity in previous internment laws in Northern Ireland to consider along with the Diplock courts and extra-judicial killings...

So everyone should be grateful for the Liberal Democrats living up to the first part of their name and not trying to outbid either party with ever more repressive attempts at half-arsed legislation.

A 'Crime of Aggression'...among other things...

2005-02-23T09:47:00.000Z

Ah, yet more evidence of the mendacity of our current business and deep unease within the legal establishment. It is interesting that at some level even the government knew what it was doing was wrong and feared some kind of legal comeback in the ICC and had the lawyers prepped and ready.

The true weakness of the government's position on the Iraq war can be summed up in its refusual to publish the legal advice given to it prior to the war. Which then leads me to assume that while it backed the war in Iraq it was by no means definite backing and had many many caveats. As Lenin noted the establishment is not happy about what has happened and I think we will see further leaks and whispers before this is all over.

The Fall and Rise of Gannon...

2005-02-23T01:52:00.000Z

How very interesting...as a British Blogger and an effective political tourist on this whole affair, it has been fascinating to see the interaction of the American lefty blogs and their news media about this.

That they have manged to get the Democratic Leadership to propose an investigation is very big news indeed... I will be watching this story with renewed interest. Kudos to John Aravosis or breaking and chasing the story.

The New! Safer 100% Better! Internment Recipe from 'New' Labour, Guaranteed 100% Protection from Pesky Human Rights Laws!

2005-02-22T15:10:00.000Z

Charles Clarke has done the semi-decent thing here by watering down the house arrest proposals. The fact that I actually have to applaud him for this is slightly depressing and a telling comment on 'New' Labour's civil authoritarianism. He has recognised that morally and legally he hasn't got much of a leg to stand on...but since when has politics had anything to do with morals!

Consequently Clarke has left himself an escape hatch by keeping the future option of derogating from the European Convention on Human Rights in future. So the beast is not yet fully slain and there remains the prospect of unrestricted house arrest arriving in this country in the near future, we must alas put our fate in the hands of the judges...

Oh dear....

2005-02-22T11:27:00.000Z

Ken Macleod may have a 'tin ear' when it comes to US electoral politics but when it comes to UK politics his worrying about a
UK Conservative revival appears to have some teeth. The news that the Conservative party is closing the gap with Labour is somewhat disturbing.

Being a child of Thatcher, I know precisely how bad a Tory government can be and do not wish to see a repeat. Although I am not a Labour party member and have never voted for them(due to the absurdities of our first past the post system) they do seem to use that tired phrase the 'lesser evil'. However I would like to see a reduced Labour majority and a greater Lib Dem representation in parliament to pressurise 'New' Labour into more progressive policies, but as ever we shall see....

PFI, PPP and the Great Tube Robbery (the story of a very British swindle....)

2005-02-21T19:56:00.000Z

Picture this...you have an ageing, decrepit but working Underground system in London under-invested and over-used. Add to this depressing starting point the oxymoron of a PM who is zealously ideological about his non-ideology and a conniving Chancellor who saw an opportunity to cook the books, plus the construction industry suckling at the public trough and you have a very British swindle indeed...

This then leads to the question: what has allowed the Tube renovation to turn into a corporate dole cheque? Three very simple letters P F I or the Private Finance Initiative. This Tory wheeze has been wholeheartedly endorsed by the Labour Government for all the wrong reasons to Blair it handily presents a 'modern' 'forward' 'New' Labour looking way of involving the private sector in public projects. To his erstwhile rival Brown it allows the government to borrow money of the Public Sector balance sheet. But what is the problem with this I hear you say...

Put simply the government can borrow money at a cheaper rate than the private sector(the joy of a monoply...), which means that any job done using PFI/PPP is inherently more expensive. Ken Livingston repeatedly made this point at the time with his attempts to issue public sector Bonds to fund his Tube modernisation. The effect of imposing PPP on the Tube has been to fragment the command and control of the network compromising safety, raising costs via the enrichment of various fauna of legal and banking parasite.

PPP and PFI are an example of Capitalism at it's absolute worst with all of its mercantile tendencies in full swing. Backs are scratched money is made and the general public is left to pick up the bill that the government has run up on our credit card thirty years later. They don't call it the Great Tube Robbery for nothing...

Hunter S. Thompson RIP

2005-02-21T13:40:00.000Z

Dr Thompson...what else is there to say. A genius writer and journalist, accutely insightful when it came to American politics and his bete noire Richard Milhous Nixon...

He will be missed, and it just seems to me that it was the wrong time for him to go, with a president worse than Nixon in the White House and Gannon knocking on the door Thompson still had work to do.

I'll leave the last words to the good doctor himself...

'As you were, I was. As I am, you will be'
"Hell's Angels", Hunter S. Thompson, In Weird

Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak Of This - Review

2005-02-20T16:59:00.000Z

This album has proved to a real surprise...often it's nice to listen to an album without any preconceptions or expectations. I loaded it up on my Karma I flicked play and let it wash over me.

Nobody appears to have told Out Hud that punk/funk/disco* (delete as per critical prejudice) is 'over'. However Out Hud make a sound that defies easy catergorisation or pre-fitting into scenes. What Out Hud do do is take in an epic sweep of eighties dance influences and use them very well. From sharp chic style guitars to NY style deep house and blondie pop/punk vocals. Out Hud update all these influences with some sparkling modern production and sharp song writing.

This to put it simply is a very very good album with nary a weak track on it and will be well worth picking up on it's release date of March 21st.

Comrade Negroponte and the Bush Commissars

2005-02-19T17:26:00.000Z

The accession of Negroponte to the blood stained throne of intelligence chief is a sign of intent with regards to the Bush administrations attitude to torture and other repressive activities.

Negroponte's involvement in Central America and his tacit and not so tacit endorsement of the death squads no doubt acted as an automatic recomendation to the Neo-Conservative ideologues that infest the Bush administration.

Negroponte is in many ways an excellent expression of Neo-Conservative cognitive dissonance. Superficially the Neo-Conservative ex-trots want to spread a global democratic revolution via the force of US arms. But once you look behind this facade the iron spine of their ideology is about the maintenance of US hegemony. Although they affect to despise Kissinger style realpolitick the Neo-conservatives use many of the same methods(albeit incompetently) to acheive their aims: military coups, subversion..propaganda..etc...

To Negroponte and the Neo-Conservatives the ends will always justify the means which is why for our cousins over the pond they are such a dangerous combination.

A Police State with a Human Face, the Reflex Authoritarianism of 'New' Labour

2005-02-19T12:52:00.000Z

Charles Clarke plans to bring in house arrest laws in this country after the 'New' Labour government failed to uphold it's internment laws in the highest court of the land. Never has the European Convention on Human Rights been more welcome or more needed....despite the government's derrogation from the convention in the first place to implement these repressive laws.

So in reply to this damning judgement the government has proposed house arrest laws for the internees in Belmarsh. Yet again the government has refused to shift it's position that it can intern these these people without trial and throw away the key. All that would really change for the internees under this proposal would be the location of their internment.

House arrest to me makes me thinks of Mynamar, Chinese dissidents, the dirty war against the IRA in the seventies not the UK in the noughties. Any socialist/libertarian/liberal/anarchist will and should be opposed to this unwarranted use of arbitrary government power and invasion of liberty.

Missives from a blog orbiting round Pluto...or that's how it feels being a UK political blogger sometimes..

2005-02-19T00:17:00.000Z

So here I am a UK blogger reading about the Gannon affair, and to be honest feeling a little left out...for it is a truth universally acknowledged that the blogosphere's centre of gravity lies in the USA. This is especially true for political blogs. Which then leads us onto the question of why?

As any good Marxist will tell you: follow the money! If politics is economics by other means then all roads lead to Washington DC the latter day Rome. Politics in the States is being played for much higher stakes. Blogs reflect this reality of US imperial dominance and reach.

US political decisions have much more effect on my own everyday life in some ways than that of the UK government. So I read and pay close attention to US blogs and hope that they will pay attention to a minor provincial languishing in an imperial backwater, marking time playing the waiting game...

Tales of a 'complex monoply' or how to be a complete banker....

2005-02-18T12:17:00.000Z

Never has the Mutualist/Austrian position on banking been so abley proven than by Cruickshank's report, with Cruickshank coming the conclusion that:

"Sustained [and] very high profitability is an indication that they are operating in a complex monopoly and that on balance this is bad for an economy"

Banks in our current corporatist economy are leeches on the government teat. It is not accident that there are no serious competitors to the current 'big five' UK banks as the current ownership structure of UK banking mitigates against any real Free Market competition. Banks are ependant on government control of the money supply for their priviliged position and then using this to extract unfair and unjust rates of interest from the general public, pricing capital beyond most peoples means.

In this way banks are in an analogous position to landlords in our current economy enforcing an artificial scarcity via an artificial monopoly.

The continued venality of the Conservative party towards immigration

2005-02-15T20:08:00.000Z

Yet again the Tory party sinks to new stygian depths with regards to immigration. The racist subtext of their latest proposal is so blatant and simplistic that even I am amazed by it's brazen nature.

To the desperate cynics at Central Office the equating of immigration to the propogation of disease must have looked like a winner, a veritable machievellian masterstroke, ticking all the right boxes in terms of their estranged base. Linking little Englander fear of the 'foreign' and exploiting British people's love of the NHS by openly saying that immigration might harm it through abuse. All this with the added side benefit of further dehumanising and obscuring the immigrant him or herself.

After all in British politics anything that the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph likes has got to be winner hasn't it? If but it were so for our courageous boys in blue for 'New' Labour has triangulated the poor luckless Conservative party out of the picture when it comes to immigration policy.

England's Dreaming: God save the king...he made you a moron he ain't no human being....

2005-02-14T16:27:00.000Z

Never did that tired old sell-out Johnny Rotten sing a better line...Yet again the prone and abject British media prostrates itself before what Private Eye call 'The Firm'. Once more we are subject to reams of coverage of a marriage that 19% of the British public could care less about.

The whole bread and circuses aspect of how this wedding will be treated fills me with contempt for the whole institution of monarchy. It reinforces social division in this country by topping off our archaic yet functional(for the people at the top...) class system. So for the people who really control things in this country the monarchy does have its uses, as a distraction and an illustration of the 'natural' hierarchy and divisions within British society.

The British public does seem to have some confused attitudes to the monarchy. Many wish to see Charles bypassed in the line of sucession and William to take the throne. This seems a bizzare attitude to me, either you support the hereditary pinciple or you are opposed. The minute one introduces public choice into the monarchy it ceases to be a monarchy and you might as well just elect President Mandelson...

I have no animus towards the poor benighted royals caught up in the monarchy, in fact I would argue that the monarchy represents a unique form of mental tortue for all those involved. It is impossible to see how any normal family life could develop under such circumstances, let the royal family return to their natural sloane ranger state... For the sake of the country and the mental health of those poor unfortunate people at the heart of this charade the monarchy must end and it must end with Elizabeth.

The epic pointlessness of Ellen Macarthur's global circumnavigation

2005-02-09T19:07:00.000Z

I find all the media focus on this event annoying and somewhat tiresome. I can hear you thinking..but why Beowulf? surely this is a magnificent achievement against great odds by one so young... I would agree it is an achievement and salute her skill and dedication but I still see it as a pointless and decadent one of no serious import.

Macarthur's global circumnavigation is a sign of the poverty of western civilisation's ambition with it's hamster like circling of a shrunken globe, for nothing new has been acheived no new frontier conquered just an abstract record changed. Which brings up another issue for me, the context of her voyage was one of sport, not exploration which immediately lessens it's impact, in a 1000 years time people will remember Yuri Gagarin but not Ellen Macarthur.

Political language and the perversion of meaning

2005-02-09T13:05:00.000Z

While reading The Guardian I was struck by how politicians and their media flacks use and abuse the English language. Although this has been analysed before I want to look at two words that have been abused and perverted for political gain.

From a UK perspective the word that has been most abused by 'New' Labour is 'modernisation'. 'New' Labour has used this word in a cunning underhand fashion throughout its political life. To 'New' Labour modern automatically equates with good and that which is not conservative.

But what do 'New' Labour actually mean when they say that X goverment department should 'modernise'? Essentially it boils down to the idea that department X should be more responsive to 'consumers' and parody market based mechanisms to do so via the importing of private sector managers and their techniques.

Of course this is usually glossed with a patina of managementspeak bollocks a la Birt's reign of management consultancy terror at the BBC...So via this incoherent mish mash 'New' Labour defines itself and its opponents.

The genius of this approach is that to be 'modern' implies progress...and what self respecting leftie wants to stand in the way of 'progress', for this would make you *shock horror* a conservative! in 'New' Labour's eyes. It gives 'New' Labour a very useful rhetorical stick to beat it's opponents on both sides of the political spectrum. By redefining and narrowing the use of the word 'modern' while keeping it's original conotations 'New' Labour brilliantly controls the political discourse for it's own ends.

A Eulogy to the Brilliance of 'Shameless'

2005-02-09T01:39:00.000Z

Words cannot capture how good the Channel 4 TV series 'Shameless' is, but I'll have a go. 'Shameless' is not a comedy yet makes me laugh, it's not a 'serious' drama but moves me almost every episode. It's not a Soap opera but makes you identify with the characters, it's not reality TV but feels more real than Big Brother could ever be....

'Shameless' focuses on the life, loves and general goings on of the Mancunian Gallagher clan. Unlike most British TV Shameless just works. Which then leads to the question of how it works..
'Shameless' works because of it's strong loveable yet realistic characters. Simple as that! From Frank the alkie wastrel absent father to Fiona Frank's daughter yet surrogate mother to the clan. Paul Abbot makes you care and feel for the characters by bringing real emotional depth to how the family interact

'Shameless' is one of the few drama programmes on TV that actually makes me forget that it's scripted, the writing is that good and Paul Abbot deserves credit for that.

In short buy/beg/borrow/download/steal 'Shameless' you will not regret it!

Thoughts on Mutualism, Socialism and Capitalism

2005-02-08T21:56:00.000Z

As the byline to my blog indicates I am interested in radical non neo-classical economic theories of both Marx and Mises.

Reading Kevin Carson's thoughts on Mutalist political economy has made me think about the differences between Capitalism and the Free Market, in particular his brilliant de-coupling of the two. Carson's main argument is that Capitalism is a result of state and corporate power combined and that if you remove one the other will collapse.

Carson's main insight is that to generate capital you need monopoly and state support. Without this capital then large corporate entities are impossible to support and the relationship between employer and employee is suddenly much more equal. How though are these monopolies to be broken up? Carson cleverly attacks patents, the idea of corporation as legally defined person

Although Carson draws heavily from the American Libertarian tradition this hostility to capital accumulation places him very much within the Marxist tradition even though he does not share much of their historical analysis. Carson offers a new synthesis of seemingly incompatible ideas through re-defining the Free Market as the free non-coerced exchange of goods and ideas through what ever forms free stateless people choose to make..be they a co-operative, commune, small business etc....

UK Immigration hysteria, or how politicians play on prejudice and exploit the weak for political gain

2005-02-07T23:12:00.000Z

The current political flap on immigration is to me profoundly dispiriting and shows in many ways the craven flint hearted opportunism of the current political class.

No opportunity is spurned to exploit, use and abuse asylum seekers and immigrants for their own and their party's gain. From a politician's perspective the logic is impeccable, asylum seeker's or potential immigrants can't vote, therefore they can be ignored and scapegoated at no cost to themselves politically. Mix this in with some 'War on Terror' grandstanding and you have a poisonous cocktail of intolerance and bigotry leavened with cheap nationalistic sentiment and flag waving.

The Labour party and the Conservatives both have different motivations for using immigration as a political tool. The Tories see it as a way of shoring up their UKIP hard right base and a means of attacking the Labour party to scrounge some votes and to paraphrase the famous expression about Big Blue, no political consultant ever got sacked for plugging a repressive asylum policy... The Labour party seeks to leap frog the conservatives and thus neutralise the potential threat. Whatever the motivations it leads to increased discomfort for asylum seekers and immigrants by demonising them and framing their presence in the country as a problem to be 'solved' rather than as individual human beings with individual problems...

State of the Empire....(A commentary from a Greek in an age of Romans...)

2005-02-03T13:15:00.000Z

With messianic undertones fully in place Bush yet again pushes for global 'democratic' revolution, talking sweetly while implicitly waving the big stick. Syria and Iran are named and shamed and the world is to be remade in the pure Christian image of the 'chosen' nation. The tropes of Trotsky style global revolution and US exceptionalism are dangerously merged in this speech, a more poisonous cocktail of ideologies I cannot think of...

If anything this speech exposes the cultural gap between the States and the UK and the alien tenor of US political discourse; the United States truly is the nation with a 'soul of church'. If anything the State of the Union makes me appreciate the parliamentary system and definitely shows the problems with merging the roles of head of state with head of the executive, elected monarchs are just as bad as the hereditary kind in my book...

Daft Punk - Human After All

2005-02-01T14:53:00.000Z

And...now the culture side of the blog, in a desperate hope to emulate my bloggin' heros a la Simon Reynolds Woebot etc..I present a review of Daft Punk's 'Human After All':

My first impression of the album was good. Human After All seemed a continuation of Discovery's general sound and vibe with vocoders draped over the pleasantly simple rock style drum pattern, with Daft Punk undermining their robot schtick in a Kraftwerkian stylee. 80's influences are ever-present in both programming and the use of rough analog 80's synths and guitars.

Prime Time of Your Life continues the same general style voices vocoded and general hissy home recorded feel to the track. As with the first track it seems to have a sketchy at best relationship with house music only really getting going towards the end of the track. But unlike the first track I felt that it was lacking something and it seemed half finished.

Robot Rock, in short love this track absolute dancefloor killa even if it is based on a Breakwater guitar loop. However Daft Punk use it well remorselessly repeating moving your ass so that your mind will follow. This one will remix well, and appear on a million BBC ads.... So this track raised my hopes again and I eagerly flicked foward to the next track:

Steam Machine: another okish track simple and loop based again . Also like Prime Time of Your Life it felt unfinished more of a sketch than the finished article. Sonically it hinges round the repetition of the title and dissapointingly the same synth sound, which seems to back up the idea that they knocked off this album very quickly compared to Discovery. Drum programming is yet again fairly simple and uses traditional 808 electro style sounds nothing special or particuarly amazing there I'm afraid.

Make Love: This track is truly excellent and shows how Daft Punk manage to make repetition and simple vocal refrain beautiful and moving. It particuarly reminds me of Larry Heard's early material and Deep Dish. Yet another track that you will used and abused by TV producers the world over.

The Brainwasher: This track truly lives up to it's title, a deaf dumb and mute kickdrum pounds away relentlessly as Daft Punk pronounce themselves brainwashers! The main riff kicks in and you really can't argue with them... This track is designed for maximum destructive impact within a dank dark and sweaty club at 3am in the morning, fear this track for it is a DJ weapon aimed directly at your cerebellum!

On/Off: ladeez and gentlemen..the intermission

Television Rules the Nation: Vocoders are firmly back in saddle on this track. One of the more housey numbers of the album with the use of standard 4/4 kick n' clap topped of with the use of AC/DC style filtered guitars. A good track in my opinion solid without being anything extraordinary.

Technologic: Mixed feelings about this track, starts with a nice looped vocal and I love the old skool drum programming that kicks in a few seconds later. However the bass line is a tad dissappointing I really wish they'd managed to find a new preset on their synth by the ninth track.

Emotion: Really this does nothing for me, I don't jknow if Daft Punk were being 'ironic' with the naming of this track but it seems nothing of a nothingness to me. It plods, and that is not what I expect Daft Punk to do even on their slower tracks. Tired sounds matched to a tired beat do not a good ending of an album make!

Generally I felt let down with this album it feels unfinished and I know they are capable of so much more. Daft Punk have made a middling to good album when they are capable of making a great album.

Thoughts on 'New' Labour

2005-01-31T17:30:00.000Z

A million words have been written on the post-modern surface dwelling 'New' Labour movement, mainly detailing the superficial powerplaying of Brown and Blair a kremlinology of the cabinet. I'm more interested in the ideological motivations behind the 'project' and how they play out in the real world. Ruth Kelly's and 'New' Labour's education policy is an interesting prism from which to view the effects of these ideological biases. 'New' Labour consciously rejects 'progressive' educational policy child centred learning is very much out of fashion. Pupils are to be drilled and trained, school is (according to 'New' Labour's chalkface Lenin Chris Woodhead) there to produce compliant productive workers.

Schools are to be 'modernised' and thus subordinate to economic needs of business, every lesson and activity must pass strict utilitarian tests for economic benefits. Now I hear you asking yourself how does the 'New' Labour ensure that schools actually 'modernise'? Carrot and stick...league tables and central funding hence the rise of City Academies, specialist schools, tacit encouragement of selection and grammar schools...and many more wheezes that I don't have time to go into...

It is interesting to note the language of Ruth Kelly in that article echoes the disciplinarian bent of 'New' Labour penal policy, Gordon Brown's presentation of economic policy. 'New' Labour cannot be seen to be weak and the meritocracy must be implemented ruthlessly all must modernise!

Little Red Blogger

Labour Vote takes a Walk.

Labour Vote takes a Walk.

The Politics of Mediocrity: Cameron's Vapid Play for The Centre Ground.

The Drums of War Beat Faster

Back once again

Manufacturing Consent...One School Pupil at a Time.....

Europeans are From Mars, Muslims from Venus: How we Get the Islamic World Wrong part II

Europeans are From Mars, Muslims from Venus: How we Get the Islamic World Wrong part I

Undemocracy: Why the Glorification of Terrorism Law is a Bad Idea

Fear and Loathing in Tehran, Persians Play Politics with the West

The 'Modernisation' of the Lib Dems: Corporatism with a Human Face and Blarism Redux

New Tory New Cameron: The Coronation of a Meeja Prince

Coppers Want More Shooters: Why Arming More Police is a Bad Idea

A Corporatists Daydream: Tescos Cut Down to Size(or not..)

The New Corporatists and Schooling a Definition of Fascism in New Labour

The Glorious Gober Method: How M&S Have Brought a Superior Brand of Snake Oil

Government Tries to Ban Anything with the Word 'Terrorist' in it(Well not

Management, Power and the Abuse of Language

Islam and Secular Medical Ethics

Super Furry Animals - Love Kraft Review

Late Feudal Theme Park Opening in Hanworth Norfolk!(Complete with revolting peasants or your money back!). Contact your nearest Judge for further deta

Beowulf Returns

File-Sharing is Dead, Long Live File-Sharing!

Book Tag!

The Politics of Fatherhood, A Mutualist Meditates: Part 1

Baby is born! :-)

I'm Back(Lots of re-locating gubbins!)

I Know How Charles Kennedy Feels...

The Quiet Death of MG Rover

And Lo The Vicar Did Call an Election...

The Pope Dies, Meditations From a Religious Atheist

More Idiot Posturing Over Immigration(Yay! more police..)

The Baby Eating Bishop of Norwich Makes the Best Argument For The Disestablishment of the Church of England I've Heard in Years....

The Living Death of Schiavo, An Uncomprehending Brit Looks On...

Howard The Political Alpha Male: The Sacking of Flight....

'New' Labour Just Can't Stop Trying To Lock People Up Without a Trial..

Howard and Crosby Sink to New Despicable Depths

The Invisible Hand of Lynton Crosby: The Tories Puppet Opposition to the Human Rights Act

More Meta-Blog Type Nonsense (and further meditations on UK political blogging..)

Brown Tries to Prop up the Housing Pyramid...

Maybe All is Not Lost, A Bad Law Gets Challenged

Cromwell Would Have Been Proud....

Alas, A Budget!

A Bad Bill Passes? Beowulf Watches as Parliamentarians Light Their Cigars with the Magna Carta.

Insomniac Lords Leap on House Arrest Bill

Does Blair Actually Believe Anything he Says Anymore?

'New' Labour Ruminates..If Only I Had a Soul...

Hull Giroscope Housing Co-op versus The Big Boys

Blair Proclaims 'No Surrender' - What Does he Really Mean?

Mr Raimondo I Tip my Hat to you Sir!

A Self Facilitating Meeja Node Writes About Nathan Barley(it's well weapon!)

Plutocrats 1 Democrats 0 How the Lords Stopped(for now..) the House Arrest Bill.

Cutting Out the Middle Man: A Mutualist Examines Online Loan Exchanges

Best of British Blogs Round Up

Robert McCartney: The IRA as Defacto State and Monopoliser of Violence amongst Northern Irish Catholics: A Libertarian Socialist Analysis

The Politics of Scarcity in a Digital Age

Livingstone's Rather Excellent Funny Money

Politics Officially Rubbish: Declare All Major Political Parties

Committee to Protect Bloggers: Heads Up!

Review: Vitalic - OK Cowboy

Best News I've Heard All Day

More War on Stupid(with thanks to Bloggerheads): Blair rejects Sunset Clause

Did You Hear the One About the BNP Councillor who got on the Racial Equality Committee...err sorry it's real no punchline folks!

Commoners Rights and the Tragedy of the New Forest Becoming a UK National Park

This Would Explain Alot....

Concessions are a Sign of Weakness, Now Press the Advantage!

Liberties Cheaply Thrown Away

British Banks and the Money Monopoly

I Love The Smell of 'BBC Bias' in the Morning...It Smells Like Victory!

'New' Labour takes a Reality Check...

The Tension Between Localism and Internationalism in the Left

Kevin Carson's Excellent Mutualist Take on 'Contract Feudalism'

A Story of Corporate Subsidy and Your Average Working Stiff....

Oh dear...redux

MRSA, the Bean Counters, the pseudo 'Free Market' and those annoying Externalities

The Nepotism of Pole Greasing Monkeys

Will The Real Opposition Please Stand Up....

A 'Crime of Aggression'...among other things...

The Fall and Rise of Gannon...