Red Exile League

Iran and that bomb

2009-10-01T23:29:00.000-07:00

If I were the leader of Iran, though a member of CND, I would feel obliged to construct a nuclear missile or two - just to fit in with the neighbourhood...and when the expected regime change comes about, the Shah the second will be supplied with all the materials necessary to build a hundred, all courtesy of the International Community n'est pas.

Journalism at its best

2009-09-19T23:50:00.001-07:00

OK, it's only from the Telegraph but the last sentence here is a jewel... "The Royal Household currently receives £15million a year to keep up the royal residences, including Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, but needs about an extra £4million a year for the next decade to cover essential works – a rise of almost 30 per cent.
The request for more money for the palaces is likely to be controversial at time of cutbacks in the public sector."

I wonder how long it took for the writer to work that out?

Fail-outs

2009-09-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

The way the rich have money tied up and sussed out is quite sopmething to behold. For many of us, the lack of money might be felt as something of a personal failure. That somehow all these shody cheap goods I am surrounded by, the old clothes and scuffed worn out shoes are a manifestation of one's own personal lack of fit with the best of all possible worlds in which we are fortunate enough to live and breath...if not participate to an optimal degree.

Occassionally though, and more often of late, reality shatters these delusional modes of self-pitying false consciousness. Yesterday in the Observer, we read of tax breaks for rich people and their pensions. So that's where the money goes! Today we read that the Treasury is going to bail out tax haven 'countries' such as Jersey and the Caman Islands so these countries can carry on assisting people to commit fraus on the British tax payer of 25 BILLION pounds - the entire education budget. So we pay to get ripped off.

This whole money scam alone warrants rioting in the streets before one starts on any of the more gross injustices the bastard system revels in.

Racism in context

2009-09-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

Everyone's heard of the argumentative technique of 'not taking things out of context', 'understand this in its context' and 'no context no understanding' etc. but in the end how much context do you need to understand something, and isn't there, sometimes, an extraordinary amount of context a priori in a situation that the rolling out of the context argument looks like you're apologizing and covering up for the deed in question?

Take Brice Hortefeux, the French Home Secretary, (please do he's a cadaverous creepy bastard you could use as a prop in some amateur dramatic thing) who has sparked off a huge row in France about some racist comments he made at the ruling party' (the UMP's) summer university festival.

The video is quite clear - he says of the gentleman of North African origin, as if the chap isn't there at all, 'This one's ok, it's when there's a lot of them that there's trouble.'
It's as blatant as that. Any form of racism is a punishable offence in France and Hortefeux's job is under threat from this revelation. I say revelation and not 'lapse', because this remark illustrates the crude racial thinking at the centre of the French ruling party. Hortefeux himself is a close friend of Sarkozy (there is no way he could have got so far politically without extensive support) and so far is being backed up by the little posionous bastard. Thus we can legitmately deduce that this 'thinking' is quietly shared, and often overtly applied, by the party itself.

Yet in the media, the context excuse is relied on to support the Interior minister. Usually, one uses this argument to understand an apparently crptic or ambiguous comment by a philosopher say. "What is known is not seen, what is seen is not known." is a strange sounding quote out of its context. If one says , "It's from The Republic." the phrase becomes less 'alien' and one can begin to say things about it. This Hortefeux remark - well, it's happening right now on screen - there is no context fromo which it is being taken and the remark itself is clear - he definitely meant 'Africans' or 'blacks' or some other rancid term that drifts about in the arid stink of his tiny mind.

Sometimes, you have to understand a little less and condemn a lot more with these people. The UMP types, obviously.

Disintegration

2009-09-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

The political terminus in which New Labour is trapped and is slowly rotting away, is the direct summation of all it stood for. The heady days of 1997, which no one really believed in, were a play people joined in with, a collective concealment of what Blairism actuall meant, an unstated anxiety (for those who felt they were on the 'winning side') that nothing was really going to change. The deal Blair struck with the party - I'll win you power, you accept what I say - was always a fool's bargain. By 97 anyone would have defeated the Tories - even Kinnock - and the time since has been a vast wasted opportunity. Maybe that was the point - to show that even after the dreadful Major years that political optimism must be recrushed. That nothing must disturb the 1979 settlement, even when its political dynamic closes down, as it did 12 years ago, and even now, as its economic underpinnings fall apart.
The 2010 general election is already a pointless foregone conclusion. The system will be fortunate to emerge from the debacle looking just hopelessly out of touch with the British electorate. Chances are, the Tories will win a big majority, but with less votes than they received in the 1997 anihilation. How long a political system function in such a context? How long before politics returns...

Relapse

2009-08-27T15:32:00.000-07:00

News that the 'recovery' is an illusion got relegated pretty quick.

Is the Guardian a secret admirer of the BNP?

2009-08-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

"Two people have been charged with leaking the names and details of the entire British National party membership.
The list, which identified thousands of people linked to the far-right party, was posted on the web in November 2008. Information included addresses and other contact information such as mobile phone numbers and the names and ages of children in a family membership.
Dyfed-Powys police said a 27-year-old man and 30-year-old woman were charged under the Data Protection Act after a joint investigation with the Information Commissioner's Office. The pair lived in the Nottingham area at the time of the leak.
The fallout included the outing of police, lawyers, teachers and church figures as BNP members, with some complaining the leak exposed them to the risk of dismissal or disciplinary action. Some included on the list, which ran to 13,000 names, complained they had been mistakenly included after only asking for information on the party. Others said they were no longer members.
In one entry of a woman believed to be a serving police officer from Wirral was the note "Discretion required re employment concerns – police officer", along with the names and ages of her children.
The BNP leader, Nick Griffin, claimed at the time to know the identity of a person who had leaked the information, calling them a hardline senior employee who disagreed with the direction of the party and left the party in 2007. The party called in the police and obtained a high court injunction to stop the list being published but was forced to admit it was relying on the Human Rights Act, which it opposes, to protect members' privacy.
The party said the leak was "malevolent and spiteful" but the list was not up to date and only included names of members up to 2007.
The BNP goes to considerable lengths to conceal the identities of members, including dividing lists between different people and encrypting and password-protecting email attachments.
The two people charged are due to appear in Nottingham magistrates court on 1 September."

It's not just me - this report is too sympathetic to the boneheads. Take the bit about the list not being up to date. It's as if the writer wants to illict feelings of sympathy for the goons on the list. It's been like a lot of other reports from the paper that treat the organisation as if it deserves being treated seriously.

BNP give them a name

2009-08-04T03:56:00.000-07:00

Should we call BNP members 'scum' 'boneheads' and '[fill in your own insult here]'? On the whole we at REL think that "Yes you should." and not only that. You should also dream up further insulting descriptions lest one forget that you are dealing with (in however an abstract and remote way) the absolute pits of the political universe.
Over at the Tomb, Lenin highlights a piece in the increasingly wobbly Guardian that ends with a quote from a BNP goat fucker, at the end of the article, that gives the impression that the left is somehow responsible for the increase in right wing violence against anti-fascists. One must be clear, the only way to deal with nazism is by total brute force. Alas, working class people turn fascist as well since our political culture is so corrupt. You can reach out and try to turn them away, but face it, they are part of a violent extremist tradition with its roots on the glass strewn streets of 1920's and 30's Germany. If they raise their shrunken heads, then they must be treated as legitmate targets. They have to be crushed with bats, sticks and whatever comes to hand - it's pointless to try to be an anti-fascist and a pacifist.
Thankfully, the BNP are merely a tic crawling over the surface of things and there are far more important things to worry about. Buggering No-mark Party. They'll perish.

UK values

2009-08-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

The Home Office is pondering the idea that immigrants (not 'ex-pats' as retiree Brits living abroad call themsleves) who protest against the war or at homecoming parades of soldiers should face visa and passport penalties. The specific UK value here, presumably, being the unqualified and open ended support for 'Our Boys' in far away butchery of foreign nationals.
One does not even have to resort to the 'slippery slope thin end of the wedge' type argument here - this is straight forward police state tactics. In the name of spreading democracy abroad 'we' must supress it at home.
In the context of the BNP getting a broader press, this idea (one that for the Tories does not go far enough...) will give the nazis confidence that their ideas are becoming mainstream, thus a further pox on this dying government for dredging this putrid idea into the daylight.

They walked in line

2009-07-12T00:13:00.000-07:00

The current upsurge in imperialist terrorism in Afghanistan has caused the deaths of 15 British soldiers in just under two weeks. Whilst evidence is sketchy, it has to be assumed that the loss of innocent Afghan civilian lives is far higher and that details about the criminal actions of the illegal occupying forces is being deliberately withheld from the wider world, in order to wring as much diversionary potential from these deaths. The work of the nominally liberal press has been stirling as usual with the Observer uncritically vomiting up MoD statements and government propaganda. What is pitiable though is the 'left wing' Labour MP calling for monies to be diverted from Trident to the repression of the Afghan population.
It is reasonable to assume, also, that the increase in occupation offensives is tied to the economic crisis facing the British and American regimes. From a day to day policy objective, the deaths play a (small?) role in emotionally blackmailing and corralling the home populations into quietude about their own social and economic greivances. It cannot be too long before striking public sector workers are maligned for downing tools whilst 'our brave boys and girls are risking their lives for our freedom.' It does, clearly, sound ridiculous, but some mouthpiece for the MoD in the above report stated that costs should not matter since 'we' didn't count the cost when we were fighting Hitler. From wider economic objectives, the war is a way of encircling Iran and ensuring China is hemmed in and prevented from intervening in the resource land of the Middle East in the medium to long term future.
We are warned, chillingly, by the current war criminals Brown and Obama, that there is a long difficult Summer ahead. They are saying, of course, that further losses are expected and as far as they are concerned dearly hoped for.

Genocidal maniac

2009-07-09T02:59:00.000-07:00

British politics continues to go rotten. A small mordant sign of this drifts over our sickened gaze this morning in the wretched Guardian. That microbe Griffin of the Boneheaded Freak Party has called for boats carrying immigrants from Africa TO BE SUNK. Read that again and let the implications sink in. He's calling for the cold blooded murder of desperate people who are so poor they see no other option than to risk their savings and their lives to escape terrible economic and social conditions that ultimately, the west is responsible for.
But one expects that from this speck of human waste, this fleck of ratshit this slimed coward. What is depressing is that the weasely guardian describes his 'proposals' (proposals! - the correct term would be incitements or 'death threats') as "controversial". Controversail, once was attached to ideas like 'tax rises for the rich' or 'supporting secondary picketing' or 'abolishing the monarchy' or to pop stars who shot their mouths off.
Calling for the murder of people is not controversial - its criminally insane. It's clear, though, that the prediction about the BNP once in power making a total shit-fuck of it's time in the limelight is coming true.

Thinking the Unthinkable

2009-07-05T00:03:00.001-07:00

When economies go 'wrong' (in a functional not a moral sense...) the scum at the top demand instant solutions along the lines that everything must be considered and there should be no sacred cows. It's lies and propaganda of course. Here's some insect from some bean counting collective in a report from the increasingly rancid Observer "In a blistering attack, Steve Bundred, chief executive of the Audit Commission, says he has not heard any politician admit that "severe pay restraint" is one of a number of measures necessary to rebalance public finances, which could also include job cuts. "Nothing should be off limits," he warns."

One theing that won't be thought, one sacred cow that won't get sacrificed or be off limits is a serious tax raise for those who have done very nicely out of the last 30 years of neoliberalism. The rise to 50% for top earners was just a sop. The government should - alas by now we should say 'should have' - phased in a progressive tax regime years ago. Now we're going to have to pay for the bank bail-outs and bonuses to keep those snouts in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

In response, the resistance should reinterpret this Bundred wanker's words, nothing should be off limits when it comes to the fightback. If anyone can fucking well rouse themselves......

Business as Usual

2009-07-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

The Iranian turbulence has died down, the middle class 'revolt' has fizzled out and the MSM has moved on. A curse on all the ruling factions in Iran and all power to the working class, says the cleaner here at REL offices. She also notes that the papers have been less active in their coverage of the Honduras coup and the in your face corruption carnival that is the Afghan Presidential election and that she's going to go on strike.

Has somebody died?

2009-06-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

There mut be millions of words being written about Michael Jackson right now. This is the most ridicluous I've read so far. From k-punk, who we can forgive almost anything, but even so : "And if you asked me to choose between Off The Wall and the entire back catalogue of the Sex Pistols and the Beatles, there would be no contest."
!!. The argument being that The Beatles were like passé by the early eighties. And Michael Jackson, the vampire's vampire!

How wrong we were

2009-06-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

We said the Iraq war was mainly about oil. They said WMD and democracy. Here's what the NYT says in an article that appeared on Friday. Under the headline, “Warily Moving Ahead on Oil Contracts,” a Times correspondent reports from Baghdad: “When Iraq puts development rights to some of its largest oilfields up for auction to foreign companies on Monday, the bidding will be a watershed moment, representing the first chance for petroleum giants like ExxonMobil to tap the resources of a country they were kicked out of almost 40 years ago.”

The Iranian diversion

2009-06-25T13:44:00.001-07:00

Anything to take people's minds of the horror perpetuated in our names. Sixty people were obliterated by another drone attack in Pakistan and nobody in the West really gives a flying f*ck, diverted as they are by some stooge rallies in Tehran. What does Zizek have to say I wonder? Not that you'd really bother reading what that fraud has to say!

This is why events unnerve me

2009-06-25T04:53:00.000-07:00

This on youtube - that deathly archive - a video someone took driving through Manchester in the early 1980's interspliced with other evocative shots to New Order's 'Ceremony'. The time that has past since...

Better news

2009-06-25T04:20:00.000-07:00

With current events in Iran only splitting (what's left of) the left further (see the response to Zizek's awful letter on the subject, for instance) it's good to see there is life in the class war in Britain. Seumas Milne's article in The Guardian argues that when workers stand up to their employers, they tend to win and that passivity and inaction lead to wage cuts and redundancies.
He writes "It's now become obvious that only by defying or ignoring the anti-democratic legislation bequeathed by Margaret Thatcher – which outlaws, for example, all solidarity action – will there ever be the political will to ditch or replace it with something more reasonable."

It's about time someone in the MSM said as much.

Meanwhile the war goes on

2009-06-23T01:29:00.000-07:00

Whatever the outcome of the Iranian elections (REL prediction - the story will fizzle out this week) the military encirclement of Iran tightens. The British army has just launched a raid "on a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan." Cheer on those brave troops.

Keep Britain wanking

2009-06-23T01:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry, but, well - it really does deserve that -http://www.keepbritainworking.com/supporters.aspx

The website has that Ikea Orwellian feel to it. The TUC, the LibDems and Boris Johnson all say how important the site is to battling the country through the slump. There's even some 'propaganda' [sic] postcards for sale...slogans taken from the second world war. Not 'chilling' just sad, really really sad.

Kissinger lord of darkness

2009-06-23T00:25:00.000-07:00

http://www.infowars.net/articles/june2009/220609Meddling.htm - if you want to get wound up politically. It's the arch Vader himself in usual slippery form not actively openly saying "Send the US troops in now!" but coming down near enough. But my point here is why he uses the word 'crisis'....whatever is going on in Iran, from the actual situation based on political force and regime stability, the Iranian government is not teetering on the brink of collapse. So why use the term - presumably because the US is, as it stands accused of, actively promoting a faux revolution.

Iran

2009-06-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

There are experts out there but a lot of us are pretty much in the same place when it comes to Iran - a foggy situation where things are often not what they seem (the BBC fake footage, the Nada killers), a country about which we do not know a great deal but about which it seems clear that some American plan appears to be being played out.
Three points that stick out -
1. Who to support. You've got to bear the crushingly obvious with repect to this. Over in the comments box at LT for instance there's been an extraordinary amount of traffic and theoretical analysing of who the left should support. But what on earth does 'support' mean here - logistical support, air support or just millions of working class organised into militias? It's academic and theoretical support that is 'at stake' - important enough but let's not think that our posistion towards the tumultuous events in Tehran and throughout the rest of the country actually have any material impact. Secondly - the left is stuck between two unpleasant options - if the idea of support means anything - giving (theoretical etc.) succour to an incumbent regime that, face it, is not ideologically to our tastes, yet enjoys significant working class support in Iran or being accused of 'US stoogism'. Then, there is the religious aspect to this and the anti-semitic nature of the regime (the willful misrepresentation of Ahmadinejad's 'wipe Israel of the map' remarks notwithstanding) which all count against 'us' defending the regime. (Imagine these verbs actually being required of you in a proper material sense - weapons, orders and flinging yourself against hordes of US tanks....do you support the Iranian government now?!) Then again - taking this either/or predicament at face value for the moment - who would want to support the anti-government forces of Mousavi, that butcher of the left and obvious US sock puppet - but someone who has mustered popular support that has taken to the streets and has physicaly confronted a less than wholly democratic government.
The 'a curse on both your houses' approach is a comforting one but bourgeois - in the end one need not support the regime wholeheartedly but one can manifestly oppose the clear and present Western interference in Iranian internal affairs and resolutely stand up against any military option. That has to be opposed and not just with puny million strong days out in London - but this time with active, disruptive and violent measures. A military strike against Iran would signal a declaration of war on all working class people in the world, in the current international economic and political circumstances.
2. The elections - it is far from clear whether there was a significant amount of voter irregularities in the elections. It was certainly less obvious and meaningful than the stolen elections of 2000...in the US. So if in doubt in a conversation about who to support it does well to think of it in those terms - just who is using (cardboard) democracy-ideas to stir up instability when closer to home those same 'cherished' democractic values are flushed away. Another point is that the 'revolt' itself is made up mainly of middle class element "It is no secret that many of the demonstrators come from the upper middle class, for whom the priority is not primarily democracy (and certainly not social justice), but the extension of their social privileges, which are currently restricted by the clerical regime." Further, where was the similar media outrage, forensic coverage and calls for action when bloody Israel was murdering Palestinians?
Finally - 3. Learn from the chaos - it will be visiting you any time soon..........

Chronicle of a cover up in advance

2009-06-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

A pointless Government initiates a pointless enquiry into a pointless war. Grey on grey indeed. No matter, though, the white wash will "[be] designed on a similar basis, he added, to the Franks inquiry into the 1982 Falklands War, and it would aim to identify "lessons learned". " So it will reveal what a good job has been done, then! Obviously, it will all be held in secret and "people could decline to answer questions they weren't happy with.". What is the point?

Another ridiculous thing...

2009-06-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

From the same paper, this time Martin Kettle, "Europe's left is in crisis. The choice is stark: adapt or wilt The big social democratic parties – not least Labour – must learn from Blair's example. Or accept a role on the political margins"

wtf?

A ridiculous thing before breakfast

2009-06-11T23:33:00.000-07:00

You have to read what the opposition thinks every now and then. It keeps your wits sharpened and gives you a good laugh from time to time. Take this, from Dan Roberts in the Grindinglydull "'Don't waste a good crisis." The words of White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel ought to be ringing in our ears this week as we contemplate a possible end to the recession. Unfortunately that is exactly what has happened: we've missed a golden opportunity to remake capitalism on firmer, fairer footings."

Where to start with something as outlandish and funny as that? Well, after some cornflakes or something...

The philosophy of problems

2009-06-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

In an attack on Dawkins in LRB a few years back Eagleton remarks on God that "He is the answer to why there is something rather than nothing. "

But how do we know that, really, that there is nothing rather than something? Maybe the universe has yet to be created.

Underground strike

2009-06-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

It goes without saying that the tube workers strike is to be supported. Their struggle against bastardmangement is a microcosm of how the whole country is run. The elites make off with the money and in the long run, workers' wages and conditions are reduced and their plight vilified in the dreadful right wing MSM. On another, metaphorical, level the strike takes place out of sight in an unseen yet vital distributional organ of the capitalist system. It is repressed and its functioning transfered to other less efficient (strike busting) techniques. The repressed cannot be crushed for ever. The violence inflicted on them will return, magnified, to the surface.

Grim but not as bad

2009-06-10T01:18:00.000-07:00

. . as feared. The BNP election 'success' is fading away rapidly. Their victory depended on a low turn out and a government rapidly disintegrating, but even here their actual vote declined in number. This was not a British, let alone a working class, 'turn to the right' but a unique set of circumstances that allowed the fascists in. That still means the BNP must be confronted, ideologically, politically and physically. The SWP open letter is a good starting point and this conclusion is well worked out too. We should not sit back in despiar and wail on about the 'racist chavs' whilst at the same time whinge on about free speech for the BNP (see comments section on LT) and turn rancid. That's the way fascism wins.
This is a calamity, though, but in terms of the next two years or so, is going to be just one challenge we must take on and defeat. Because even if the Labour party weren't finished, even if they win next year, there are going to be enormous confrontations that we cannot afford to lose at all.
In that vein - hurrah for the tube workers. That struggle is far more significant than some lousy fat fuck winning the right to sit in some neoliberal shitpalace on the strength of some Daily Mail cunts voting for him.
Buck up.

1979

2009-06-09T02:06:00.000-07:00

Paul Blackburn was jailed in 1978 for a crime he did not commit and got out 25 years later. But 1979, as k-punk reiterates, was the turning point at which Britain changed, or started to change, from a (tempered) social democracy to a more neoliberal harsher chillier place. His incarceration spanned the two nodal points, near enough. He was jailed just as Callaghan was capitulating to the uninevitable and was released (without apologies, explanation or compensation) just as the neoloib turn started its dramatic collapse. No wonder he remarks " I can be in whatever nasty area of London at 4am surrounded by drug addicts, crackheads and robbers, it holds no fear for me. I've just been living with them all for 25 years... It was a big Asda, I turned round and walked out again. It's all just too much for me. Too much information, too much choice, too much going on."

Interestingly Blackburn turned to words and writing in order to save himself.

Australia booms

2009-06-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

You'll have read that there are 'green shoots' growing in Australia...unsurprisingly, the GDP growth rate is based on dodgy accounting and the fact that imports have declined. But the government are milking it - the social upshot is that the unions are being well behaved and doing their job of policing the working class - "We are all in this together, and that involves the unions as well, and we are working closely, of course, with the business organisations.” said Rudd the PM.

we're all in this together

fuck off

Perspective

2009-06-08T02:30:00.000-07:00

Some perspective on the BNP fiasco from www.makemyvotecount.org.uk
"BNP gained seats with fewer votes
In Yorkshire and the Humber, the BNP actually polled 6399 fewer votes than in 2004. In the North West, 2865 fewer people voted for the BNP this time than last. However, the BNP still won a seat in each of those regions.
The BNP has not gained many more recruits at all in 5 years, just solidified the ones it had already. Instead, what we saw was a huge drop in turnout and a large drop in support for Labour. These two factors together enabled the BNP to squeak in to win the final seat available in each region.
It was very close though.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, Labour needed its vote to hold up by 10,270 more votes to keep out the BNP. The Greens needed only 15,683 more votes to have come above BNP and get that final seat instead.
In the North West, it was really tight. If UKIP had received another 1200 votes, than they would have taken another seat instead of Nick Griffin. The Greens tactic of saying they were the ones who could beat the BNP in the NW almost worked: they were within 5000 votes of overtaking them and this winning that final seat.
Therefore, even within very large regions, the result can be very close and a few votes here and there really can make a difference. Unfortunately, people do not seem to have got that message: they stayed away rather than vote. They, and the parties who failed to mobilise them, should hopefully get the message from now on that voting in proportional elections is not just important, it can easily effect the whole result, no matter where in the region you live."

For dickheads to prosper, what needs to happen is for good people not to do enough. But then again, we did vote New Labour once and look where it got us. It'll take more than voting. . .

Black edged day

2009-06-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

This poor bugger died on a beach in France fighting it.

These doomed soldiers died along with 25 million of their comrades fighting it.

And these and millions of other 'undesirables'...

So how comes cunts like this get elected to office?The psephology of the BNP vote will be interesting. No data as yet, of course, but our gut reaction here is that it was the low turn out that allowed the fascists in with a strong middle class Daily Mail vote. And the collapse of the Labour Party. That is, it is important we find out how many working class voters switched to the BNP. It is one almighty "fuck off", not only to the ghostly remnants of the Labour government, but to the whole political system. How has this happened? It is an absolute disaster for every type of politics to the left of Gordon Brown and has humiliated the entire country. More importantly, it is a green light for sections of the Tory party to get more right wing and prepare deeper attacks on the working class upon assuming power next May.

The time has come, now, to physically harass the BNP from the streets. Their moment of glory will not last and long term, will have no significance. They are riven by internal divisions and are political inept and, face it, intellectually challenged. Their success will disintegrate in the next few years into resignation, scandal and politicial impotence. But in the short to medium term this is a very sorry fucking outcome. We on the left, in a way, deserve this - we have never even come close to getting our act together. True, though, we are up against a totalitarian system with all the means of education, persuasion and repression at its disposal. But even so, nazis getting elected.....This wailing siren of an alarm call must galvanise people into not just anti-fascist action but revolutionary socialist action. First they came for the muslims - first they came. They are here..........do something

White supremacists

2009-06-06T10:19:00.000-07:00

Police have actually (?) found some terror stuff in a house. But soft...it's not 'Islamofascist extremists' but...some white guys. A big let down for all the MSM - what can they call for, if not rounding muslims up, locking up all the lone white middle aged blokes?....that'd be half their readership behind bars.

Debris sighted

2009-06-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

Wreckage seen floating in the Atlantic earlier this morning has been identified as that of Flight New Labour which was last heard of as it flew through huge turbulence off the coast of a banana republic. It is thought that fighting amongst the cabin crew and navigational failure were to blame for the disaster. There are no survivors.

Twitter

2009-06-05T09:43:00.000-07:00

An article on the new(ish) way to stay in touch. On second thoughts, stick it up your twitter.

unoriginal thoughts no.1457/s4(a)

Success is not an option

2009-06-05T05:59:00.000-07:00

The left loses even when it 'wins' elections.

Labour election meltdown

2009-06-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

It looks like the results are even worse than expected. Labour at a turning point? Well, when you're turning around in circles, everyday's a turning point.

Materialism versus spirits and gods

2009-06-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful morning outside the REL offices. Cool but sunny, clear skies, birds singing cup of perfect temperature tea. Not hungover, us that is, not the birds. The world seems a more hospitable place. We even feel the impetus to thank someone, somebody, something for this unexpected, doubtless fleeting and illusory sensation of meaning and hope. It surely points to a higher purpose for us all. The God impetus.

Nonsense of course.

It's all down to a rare good night's sleep, good food and a place to live. Mudane material things that don't seem to add up to enough mystery for some people. Some people let themselves be prone to seek an irrational explanation for things when the more prosaic explanation exhausts every other possible theory.

Take ouija boards. One stoned night many years ago, an REL memeber tells us, she joined in a session and decided, for a laugh, to push the wine glass they were using, to spell out all sorts of secret messages and histories and played along in schlock astonishment. The believers were delighted. When our REL volunteer finally told them it was she that had enineered it all, they just laughed and dismissed her account. The spirit exists, they told her and you sceptics should just get your head round it. Somehow, for them, the human element, the desire to take the micky, the 'social experiment' or the group dynamics just weren't seen as important or even relevant to the night's proceedings. The spiritual realm had been invoked and that held all truth. All other accounts were heretical and besides the point.

Why this need for other realms of immaterial forces? It's everywhere. We blame Plato for a lot of it - 'What is seen is not known, what is known is not seen' and all that voodoo poison. It's an attractive philosophical drug that bewitches you into believing in forms, souls and Gods. And aliens.

Take crop circles. Now, there's a very interesting (but mundane) explanation for this. Logistically, socially and economically one could construct an impressive story out of its ingredients. Who does what, when and how. But for some, this is too simple. It has to be aliens.

The Plato impetus compels them to dismiss the material, mundane grind of putting these circles together (and they are quite wonderful artistically) prefering to move straight onto their idea, their impetus and their magical nature. It's an elitist snobbish and ultimately boring account of how things get done.

Next time you feel like worshipping something because something is good, fascinating or even magical - look at the work and workers behind it because it is there that the explanation and interest lie. Not in some spaceship or form.

Tautology

2009-06-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Prescott criticising some Labour stooge or other - "Not so much a Blairite as a careerite". wtf?

Justice?

2009-06-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

"It's political correctness gone mad." I wonder if youy've ever heard that phrase? Usually it's to do with social services reportedly making sure their info doesn't say 'he' or 'white' all the time and some Daily Mailer wailer whinges that those plucky soldiers on D-Day didn't die so all this PC nonsense could destroy the very fabric etc. etc. but really, 'politically correct' should apply to the 'normal' way the system operates, politically, economically, and socially. In fact 'Economically Correct' could be a reverse physcology ironic way of describing how inequality get justified...but this story about an entrepeneur who killed his wife on a scuba dive riled the feminist contingent here at REL. You'll have read the story. So the bloke finally confesses. Now in a PC world (a Daily Mail version of PC) - the guy would be debollocked and flung in jail with hardened lesbian criminals for twenty years. In the real PC world, he gets off with five years and four suspended and will be out before the British general election comes round.

Result: PC 2 Justice 0

Politics bollocktics

2009-06-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

Whilst all this systemic self-indulgent nonsense continues, the election results, the boring boring MP expenses scandal and even the bail-out corruption - all the time the war machine grinds out more destruction and death in our name. Sure, UK troops have pulled out of Iraq, but they are still there in Afghanistan and face it - our political culture is steeped in blood, guilt and shame for the Iraq debacle.

All this current furore should be seen in that perspective. A nothing happening to political nothings and other political emptinesses profiting for their nothing futures. And ours, if we carry on being so disunited, ineffective and nothing too.

Our decimation cannot wait

2009-06-04T23:25:00.000-07:00

Labour is over. We will be some 15 years older when some other bright new dawn May Day heralds another Labour government. Meanwhile the disintegration is proceeding normally. "Purnell, a confirmed moderniser, decided, in contrast to Blears, that he would wait until polls closed last night before making his announcement so that he could not be accused of damaging Labour's chances in the elections."

We liked that "...so that he could not be accused of damaging Labour's chances..."

- like, what chances?

Headstone

2009-06-04T02:17:00.000-07:00

Something to write on New Labour's headstone - "The UK’s experience in the 1980s and 1990s showed that the strategy of hoping that growth in living standards at the top would ‘trickle down’ to those at the bottom did not work."

Poverty, for some, is as high now as it was in 1961 - "Poverty for working-age adults without dependent children is now at its highest level since the start of our comparable time series in 1961,” according to the IFS report."

Do you pss on the coffin or wait for it to be buried and dance on its grave?

Deflection

2009-06-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

The MP expense hoohah has claimed another high profile 'victim'. Jacqui Smith has all but resigned over 'immoral' financial claims. Other despised Labour figures are under the same pressure, pleasingly that odious boil-squirt Gef 'Buff' Hoon.
The hatred towards the government is obvious, omniscient and palpable. For example, British visitors to our obscure little village are seething with indignation, the MSM is full of it and the comment section of the Guardian (ok, not a scientific barometer of public opinion) are universally and viruently anti-Labour. The New Labour phase of Late-Capitalism is giving way to a harsher looking 'postcapitalist capitalism'. The Bank bail-out, is the real scandal, of course. But it is being all but air-brushed out of current political discourse, whilst the Telegraph drip by cynical drip feed the rest of the MSM with further tit-bits and fodder for middle England's rage.
Us here at REL are not evidently, going to come to the defence of MP's a la Joan Smith in the Guardian recently, who argued indignantly that her husband and a lot of her friends are MP's and because of all this invective, hey, you know what, they want to give it all up. How high minded and sorrowful they must look - tempered by the consolation that they'll get 30000 quid pay off next year to tide them over - in the face of all this public outrage. Smith actually concludes that it's not the scandal that is causing the defaith in democracy, but the sanctamonious reaction of the public that's doing all the damage. FTW.
Few here at REL even want to adhere to the argument, put forward by some on the left, that even if this current sty of MP's are gobshites, we should defend the institutional aspects of our current system against toff attack, nor even that we should use this situation to advance reforms like PR. (Things have gone a bit too far for that sop now haven't they?).
What this storm in an HP bottle shows is that the establishment and the ruling classes can create PR and media diversions to obscure past deeds and prepare the ground for the next step. This propaganda campaign is no small matter. Somebody leaked all the details to the Telegraph. Howcome there's been no prosecution? The Wretchograph is effectively given a 'Sword of Dameclese' for each grasping MP and has the Governments bollocks in it hands. For how can a regime govern when the political life of its ministers are in this amount of doubt? This little affair has sent the government reeling whilst the bigger crime, the free money for the upper class establishment, has all but effectively dematerialized, and passed by even as a success (I saved the world!) - given what the IMF said of it (see below).
The disproportionate response can only signal that this whole affair has a wider purpose. We cannot be expected to believe that all this accusation has any moral or principled stand behind it. The owners of all the MSM nozzles are tax evading criminal whores. They just don't do ethics. The scandal is just the dirt and ashes thrown over the crime scene we lived through from October to February.
So, in the last three weeks or so, the 'bail-out' has slipped from the headlines to the by-lines in the Business section to the footnotes. When did you last hear the term 'bail-out' 'billion', 'trillion'? Before this current crisis, that's for sure. The government is to blame for this 'caught with the knob in the jam' farce (in so far as it acts independently of course) but the expenses fluff hides a greater responsibility.

The rest is speculation it is speculated.

The wider purpose of the expenses row, essentially quite boring and prosaic, is to discredit, in the eyes of 'significant voters' not only the government, but the entire facade of liberal democracy and the 'consensus'. The lesser purpose is to ideologically flood the political terrain with the debate about cleanling up British politics, PR constitutional change, holidays...and other all too late ideas in order to somehow 'reform' the British system. But it didn't need dodgy accounts about swimming pools, cleaners and porn films to tell some of us that the British system was rotten. It's been rotten as long at least we've been political consciousness. The big wheeze here is that, in the run up to the GE a nice eleven months or so away - plently of time to change people's voting intentions and guarantee a large swing - a new political narrative is to be thrashed out.
The Conservatives, clearly, are going to come out of this mess looking better than the Labour Party. The polls show it and so too will the European results, already written off long ago by Downing Street. Part of the reason for the Tory's long political exile was their association with sleaze, in fact their total immersion in the slimey stuff. Labour was elected, in part, on the 'Breath of Fresh Air', 'Change' 'Things will get better' 'Honest Tony' ticket (when in fact it would have taken some extraordinary mismanagement to have actually lost in 97). This ideological appearance allowed many of these floating voters to rationalise voting Labour despite their instinctual mistrust of any redistribution politics, unions and 'the left'. But all that has now slipped into the unreality of the past. For the reality of their voting Blair was their assurance that, economically, they would continue to benefit from the system. Blair was on their side and extremely relaxed about being filthy rich. It was reassuring stuff. And everyone else was doing it the floaters must have thought. So they played an important role in bequeathing a huge three term sustaining 200 seat majority. Now, the wider economic crisis cannot be allowed to impinge on political debate any longer. In bare knuckle terms, (the fist is clearly visible under the Tory's bony gloved hand), one cannot ask sensitive middle class types to vote for you by saying "We'll make the oiks pay for it all don't worry just vote for us!" It would be more honest, but more vulgar and so risky. Thus this scandal is a heaven sent opportunity (or a plot...) for the Tories to appear the Rent-o-Kill of British politics and come and clean things up. But once the vampire is allowed in, the real cleaning up will get a lot uglier.
The MSM has used this opportunity and served its masters by deflecting attention from the shifted ground beneath our feet. The bankers have had a fright, but they have been given public money to maintain the status quo and are now pretty much in the clear. But someone has to pay. The only way the capitalist system can maintain profit is to squeeze labour costs. That means the likes of us. Our money and stuff. This means the masses making 'sacrificies' and 'tightening belts' and 'putting up with it' and, who knows, even calling on patriotism to muddle us through. Could a Brown government do the 'necessary' measures? If you were a cigar smoking piggy fat cat, you'd be forgiven for having your doubts. At some point, patience within the party and government might snap, a discredited government limping on for another half-term would lose legitimacy and just one more serious economic shock (as the IMF states) and the whole thing might, just might deteriorate.
Brown has proved to be the dunce all expected and a new leader would just look desperate. Winning the floaters over doesn't take much. Again, the opposition are pushing at an open door. but it needs cover, a story a bait that comes before the switch. Brute fact will scare the horses. (Rather than try to blow peoples' coats off, like the wind in the bet with the sun, the media will turn up the heat and make people take their own coats off. Not that the Tories are representatives of the Enlightenment, it's just an allegory). The MSM will continue to feed us the idea that the government and all it has done (the little it has done for us, though) has also been corrupt and that the country needs 'modernizing' (again). Tha, we think here at REL, is the idea.
Ideas do not affect history as such. But the 200 000 swing voters (maybe they are mythical - all the better) were outside and at the end of history in those postmodern Tony Blair days. Their leader was illusory, their Millenium was illusory, their WMD's were illusory, their wealth was illusory and though naturally born conservative political consciousnesses, they were happy enough to see of the miserable corrupt shower of Major's men and even learnt to love Tony. (The rest of us can either grin and bear it and vote Labour anyway, or abstain). It'll take about a year to convince these, now worried, w/hinge voters to return to their natural constituency and put a cross by the blue flame next year. This sliver of political motivation, was a significant factor in determining the voting behaviour of that section of middle England that maitained Labour in power. Now, with the economic argument quietly buried, a more flamboyant rationale for voting for the stupid party is needed. This fake crisis does the trick.
The rest of us, unfloating useless voters can point all we like at the elephant in the room, but its the flea circus that everyone else is interested in. They know the elephant's there, of course, but they are sure that it's not them who's going to have to deal with it. Postcapitalist capitalism will be brutish, next year and the next, when it rampages over us poor list types.

But who knows, things might turn unexpected.

No news day

2009-05-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

"We are doomed," one senior Labour figure told the Guardian."

Why is it all so awful?

2009-05-27T13:57:00.000-07:00

Capitalism, of course. But even then, there should be seething resentment and social unrest, social unrest in our favour. The current quietism is deadening. That is what is so awful. Imagine an eternal capitalism where the elites gradually wore everything and everyone else down into fine, fine dust...

Just press the button

2009-05-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

The worse the better

2009-05-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

"It said an extra 53 million people are at risk of extreme poverty. "

The World Bank fears social unrest. Here's hoping.

North Korea and the bomb

2009-05-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

Most of the people in the REL offices were once in CND. We are that old. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Another successful movement we were part of when young...sigh. There are still thousands of them all poied to destroy the world several times over and are still in the hands of dangerous, unsable meglomaniacs. The latest trmor n the nuclear world, then, of course, is naughty North Korea that has flown in the face of the nuclear free peaceful world and detonated a hiroshima size bomb underground. The response has been predictable. But a quick glance through the history of the stationing of nuclear weapons in the Korean peninsular shows that there were nuclear weapons placed in South Korea from the 50's until 1992 and that today, the US has enough submarines in the area to wipe the north of the map. So given that CND was wasting its (and our) time in the interests of deterrence let the North have its bomb - haven't we all supposed to have learned how to love it and live with it?

Or are our great leaders protesting in the name of peace and a nuclear free world?

Poor List - Information Dump

2009-05-24T13:52:00.000-07:00

Studds nodded at the chairwoman and began,
'The events of 19/11 and its aftermath have changed the country. Before that date, we knew pretty much where we where. [laughter] In the months that have followed, we have to say that Britain, to say the least, has become a different, less hospitable, less secure place. It was the largest and most significant disaster in Britain’s history. The death toll, initially 65, is still rising. The nature of the train’s cargo, the contents of which are still ‘shrouded in mystery’, have elongated the drama. The government and private companies involved have been and remain reluctant to release any information about what freight the 23.50 Birmingham/London express was pulling on that fateful night, citing reasons of national security and ‘prevention of further chaos’. As we are well aware, the public reaction culminated in major disturbances in urban centres as far away as Stoke and Bromich. Disaster management teams, security divisions, state investigators and media are still in the area. Conflicting accounts of the disaster exist. Racially motivated reprisals were reported all over the country and the government, under previously secretly implemented legislation, has introduced a raft of security measures under the all embracing name ‘Sate of Exception’ and called in emergency powers to pacify the effected regions. The transport bombings a few years before have had few real consequences, in comparison. There has been, of course, hundreds of round ups.

The focus of my paper, though, is the interpretation of evidential aspects of the incident. My provsional argument is that the traces of the disaster have a ideologically intensifying effect. But, later. [laughter].
Film of the crash, from the driver’s point of view and from the CCTV from the camera at junction Bm16 shows nothing conclusive to substantiate either the official account or the account sceptical of the official view of the trigger for ‘December occurrences’. The edited footage from the first perspective showed thirty seconds of dimly lit track hurtling under the snout of the specially adapted 47’ diesel. (Other footage, since redacted, showed earlier events inter-weaved with sections from the later offical evidence). The narrative is stark. The tunnel, the cutting then the jolt and the lean to the left, and then a brief final glimpse of slewed track and overhead line as the train ploughs into aggregate, gravel and soil at just over 150mph, and, after a burst of static and colour, the final frozen frame of an estate topped embankment as the train totally derails, all merge into one in an abrupt intensity. Then blankness.
The soundtrack has been just as inconclusive. It is a very postmdern disaster. There are a few dicipherable words the background engine noise and the hiss of the wheels on the track drown out the cabin crew's words. Would we want to hear the last thoughts of a suicide bomber? If that's what it is. We hear the replacemrnt driver, give a time and a speed, figures that corresponded to the CCTV motion drags, and says something that sounds like the final location of the train. Is this piece of phsycogeographical hauntology an insignificant coincidence or luminous clue? After that there are the cries of alarm and panic. The, as I'm sure you don't need reminding, just before the tunnel, is the, that chant. The particular clip has been played and played on thousands of police and public computers, played on hosted sites, web pages, and the like, analysed in syllable fragments and forensically scrubbed, slowed down, and translated but still emerges indiscernible.

It has split the country in two. The biggest man made disaster since Chernobyl.'

He had those academic bastards by their glands.

Money Money Money

2009-05-24T02:53:00.000-07:00

Interesting post . John Quiggin on the credit rating agencies. We didn't know the credit rating people were private firms. If we'd thought about it at all, we'd have guessed they were some university like economic board of boffins looking at mounds of data. Instead, they're a load of private corrupty pigs like the rest of the putrid system...

Back from the dead

2009-05-24T00:59:00.000-07:00

A rare thing...a decent article by Nick Cohen still writing for the Observer. True, it's an easy target - the BNP - but he makes the point that the drubbing the nazis will get in the European elections will stop the political elite from using the excuse that the British public wil only go and vote far-right if one gives them too much democracy. Not sure that even if the BNP didn't exist that the buggers who run the country would 'give' out more democracy, but at least the piece shows that we were right to think Cohen was a good type all those years ago when he was vaguely left wing.....

Flight

2009-05-22T05:51:00.000-07:00

The economy plane commenced its decent. "But Daddy Daddy, the people really look like ants," the child said and pulled on his mother's sleeve. He smiled and nodded to the hostess and fastened the little boy's seatbelt. The cabin crew announced that the weather would be hot and that local time was half past six. The little boy started to cry. "Toby. Don't cry. Look it's because we're so high up in the sky that the people look so small."
"It's not Mummy. They're ants!" shouts the boy "They really are..."
A woman in a seat in front of them turned round and smiled a sympathetic smile. They felt the decompression in their ears. The plane shuddered and rolled slightly from side to side. The ice slwoly melted on the outside of the window as they flew through the light cloud cover. The boy started to cry. The the ground rushed up to meet them. They landed with slight jolt and there was an atempted cheer from some people at the front. They taxied towards the terminal. The captain's calm atuomated sounding voice thanked them over the intercom. The boy had started to scream.
"Toby be quiet."
Tired from their journey, the passengers around them ignored the noise and got their bags down from the luggage spaces. They queued obediently in the aisle as the steward tried to phone through to terminal control. She shrugged and held her hand over the mouthpiece. There was an impatient hiatus. Another child was screaming somewhere behind them. Another attendant said "Yes. Just open the door." She frowned at the screaming boy.
"Is everything ok Sir, Madam?"
"Yes yes thank you. He's just tired."
The door opened with a rush of compressed air. The small boy struggled to stay in the plane. They half pushed half lifted him out into the packed tunnel. They felt the heat. The boy screamed louder and tried to push his way back into the plane. Angry now the man dragged the boy by his arm round the corner and started up the slope to passport control. The woman shouted something. Passers-by looked blankly at them and pushed past. The clicking and rustling sound grew louder. The boy was flailing in his mother's arms now. Someone at the front of the crowd stopped and looked quizzically at his companion. Then others stopped too. The look on their faces registered no surprise as the enormous ravenous dark coloured ants filling the long dark tunnel hurtled towards them.

Bankers

2009-05-22T05:07:00.000-07:00

A bank in New Zealand makes an error and credits a bank account with four million pounds. The, hitherto, broke account holders disappear with the windfall. Consternation! Interpol are revved up and the bank spokescock are morally outraged that anyone could expect to get money for free. These dishonest peope!! MSM duly reports the story with ironic smiles and yet stern tonality, for, after all, this is a crime against money.

You have forgotten that the banks have stolen trillions from the people. Everything is as it was. Money, the real money belongs to us. This is a reminder to forget.

Brief statement of the obvious

2009-05-21T01:40:00.001-07:00

"The big lie about capitalism is that everyone can be rich. That's impossible. Capitalism works only if the vast majority of the population are kept poor enough to never quit working, are kept poor enough to accept distasteful jobs society cannot function without. If everyone were a millionaire, who would empty the trash or repair the sewers? It follows that the poorer the general population is made, the greater the worth of the money held by the wealthy, in terms of the lives which may be bought and sold with it." -- Michael Rivero

Dark humour

2009-05-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

Alistair Darling, the British Economic Minister, issued a statement on the economy on Monday saying that the recession, "...will be over by Christmas." Perhaps he was being blithely sincere and perhaps even correct. It would take a leap of faith to believe it, though, given the fact that the Labour Party is jammed with people who are constantly 'economical with the truth' and more often than not wrong. But Darling's words must have been chosen with knowledge that the phrase "It'll be over by Christmas," was used by Generals in World War One to justify tactics and offensives and it was a saying that was meant to draw a line under present difficulties, they wil come to an end, and associate a religious element to their policies, for like the Messiah, the fruits of our decisions are on their way. During the Great War, the phrase became a joke, a rightly cynical popular response to the latest suicidal offensive on the front. (In 1914, the Generals should have added "...1918." to the end of the phrase). Perhaps Darling is ignorant of the provenance of the saying. But surely in that case some civil servant would have told him how unfortunate his words sounded. Because REL's prefered interpretation of Darling's words is that he knows full well that the current slump won't be over by December 2009 but that, like the First World War, this recession won't be over for a long time.
He's just taking the piss.

Contradiction

2009-05-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

There is a surface contradiction in the IMF's advice to the British Government. The main poit is that "[t]he sharp increase in public sector borrowing and contingent government liabilities, together with continued financial sector fragility, are significant vulnerabilities. In these circumstances, a severe shock has the potential to disrupt domestic and external stability." Meaning, of course, that the UK is practically broke and one more tihng could really do for us.
The causes of this financial turbulance are known well enough - neo-liberalism of the last 30yrs., general tendency of recessions inherent in capitalism etc. - but the government decided to spend its way out of this current down-turn in giving money to the banks thus increasing the financial difficulties that are now apparent. Thus, it is curious that further on in the report "The Fund praised the government for its "bold and wide ranging" response to the recession and the global financial crisis, noting that "aggressive actions" had averted a systemic breakdown."

What you did was good, well done but it increased in the chances of not surviving any future knock and that's bad.

What the capitalist class will do to dissolve this contradiction, naturally, is to make sure public services are cut and not that taxes for the rich will increase. They say, kindly that "it is up to the government to decide whether the emphasis should be on tax increases or spending cuts to reduce the deficit, it privately believes that action to cut public spending is a more effective and durable method of bringing the state's finances back to health," [my emphasis] as if New Labour (the current pathetic tax hike of the last budget notwithstanding) needed any encouragement there.

When will revenge happen?

Poor List excerpt

2009-05-20T09:46:00.000-07:00

The Doctor took her glasses off and tilted her head to one side. "It's not good news Mr. Glover," she said soflty. "The results show..."
"How long have I got?"
"About six months."
"Oh. Well, I didn't have much planned."

Poor List Ch.11 - Press Ganged

2009-05-16T14:19:00.000-07:00

McCabe heard it first as an absence of something. Instead of the city’s subterranean throb there was a lightness where engine noise and traffic seethe should have been. They could hear the crackled voices on the radio. McCabe had slowly moved his hand down towards the seatbelt mechanism by his haunch. Further along the street, they heard percussion and music and a repeated megaphoned noise that gathered into echoing shouted phrases. Then actual voices, raw in the near suspended rain. How could this be happening? They slowed behind some matt black Trooper, its rear window reflecting shifting sunlight into their faces. The seat belt came undone quietly.
“The fuck’s this?” Tony says.
Up ahead some fluorescent and light-stripped jackets of herded police shine and glint. They had driven and plunged through London’s steeped narrow streets towards the river, past Georgian fronts, shame shaded hotel back entrances and boarded up shops and bars, revved past most of the city’s landmarks and splashed through grand, yet too small, streets. McCabe, had half slumped between the two Government Agents and stares from the back seat through the rear passenger window as they slow down. The suspension of freedoms happen in little ways.

He looks around, relaxes and picks at a morsel of dried cement on his jeans, coughs, grimaces, looks around. A radio is tuned in. He lunges clumsily over the woman to try to get to the inside passenger door handle. With a swift trained action, though, she leans forward catching McCabe’s face with a heavy shoulder blow to the left side of his chin and before he even gets within arm’s reach of escape, punches him hard in the groin. McCabe cries out in surprise and pain. Three mounted police canter by at odd angles and hooves clatter.
“…some semblance of order into this stricken country…”
Tony winces and McCabe tries to say something. Lisa turns to him then to Dermott,
“Sorry about that. Some march or other?” She says and scratches the slightly enflamed orbit of her nose stud.
A helicopter clatters overhead and McCabestares at swing swaying in a playground over the way.
They pull up behind the Trooper. Boyd the Driver reaches over to the radio and a procession of static, voices and music pass by.
“I did warn you. Mister McCabe.” Dermott says and, frowning, looks at his watch. “We’re going to be late. There must be another way round Boydy?”
“Might be. Sav a look on the satnav.”
Whistling the chorus of an Irish polka, the driver reaches over to the device on the windscreen front and pushes buttons with his thick set fingers.
“Time for a pick me up. Everyone?” Tony, the man on McCabe’s right, says.
He snaps open a seat compartment and extracts a small cloth bag. A flare amidst the march ahead of them shines incandescent green and smoke pours over the road.

"Long way round either way," the driver says.
“Take the flyover by Thodsby roundabout." He helps himself to Tony's illegal substance. "So Mister McCabe,” Dermott says sniffing over his shoulder, “How does it feel to be, back on the team again?”
The windscreen wipers whine a rubbery snigger. The man on McCabe’s right breathes in a line of twinkling dust in one smooth rasp.
“Painful. Actually.”
Dermott assesses at the figure in the back seat for a moment and raises his eye brows slightly.

"Try some of this."

There's a calll on his pda and then in a space in the conversation says,
“Look. Everyone has to do their bit in times like these though don’t you think, Lisa?”
“…in connection with the attacks…” the voice on the radio was saying. The engine gunned and a siren wailed from a side street behind them. Tony snorted in derision.
“Absolutely sir. Music Boydy. Music.” the woman says.
McCabe sits up from his crouch and leans slowly back into his seat.
“Be careful.” Says Dermott to them trying to catch their eye in the rear view mirror of the sun shield.
“Yes. We're onto it Ma'am.”He replies into the phone. The cars move forward and McCabe watches up at the glinting towers of glass and metal ten blocks away as they drift by.
“He’s no going to throw up is he Tony?”
“…Regrettably, this involved involuntary human terrain and resource depletion, but ultim…”
“Lisa. Get me the rozzer in charge of this carnival." He hands Boyd the paraphernalia. "Hello. These two’ll do here now,” Dermott says.
“Right.”
“Er, hold on.”
Tony stretches himself and puts the little red bag in his pocket as Lisa presses a button on the car door. The window glides down and McCabe shouts for help. Lisa calls to the pair of police walking towards the demonstration. One of them turns and stops, looking annoyed. McCabe continues to shout. Lisa reaches into her coat and takes out her ID and holds up her cards to them. The other officer fishes out his ID-scan from its holder.
“What’s the hold up here?”
“A march, Madam. What seems to be the trouble?” KG 1654 asks walking over to the window.
There is a bright yellow padded jacket over his uniform and suppression devices hang from his belt and shoulder harness.
“How long is it going to take?”
“Be about an hour I should think. Difficult to say. What seems to be the problem here?”
Static voices crackle from their radios.
“But traffic can get through?”
Lisa turns to the struggling Tony and McCabe and whispers something loudly.
“I’m afraid not.”
The other officer leans towards the car and rests his arm on the roof.
“Look, we’re in a hurry here and we need to get across it?
“I’m Afraid not madam." He frowns. "Regulations. You’ll have to go back the way you came. Is everything ok in here then?” the taller officer says.
“But this is a one way street.”
“Indeed it is madam.”
KG 1653 pulls a face at the struggle going on in the back seat.
“So we can’t. And look…hold on. Sir, this copper reckons we’ll be here in an hour or so.”
Dermott stabs a button on his pda and opens his window and says,
“Listen officer. I’m with Inland Security Division at the Home Office. Here’s my ID”.
The square faced police scrutinises the small heavy document opens it and scans the tiny spray of dots..
“The what? Inland Security…? Can’t say I’ve heard of it sir.” says KG 1653 and turns to his colleague. “Have you?”
“Inland Security Division?”
1654 purses his lips and shakes his head.
“New one on me squire.”
“I don’t want. To pull rank, officer, but I could get you sacked,” says Dermott.
“Right. And I could get transport down here and tow your car away for having what, three persons in the back?”
“And kidnapping! Officer I’m being kidnapped here…against my will.” Shouts McCabe.
“What’s that? Well, if you were being kidnapped sir than I suppose it would be against your will, wouldn’t you say Malcolm?” KG 1653 says to KG 1654 leaning in. He glances down at Lisa who stares back.
“I think you may well be right, Reg.”
Dermott is saying,
“He’s a suspect in an on-going operation officer. We’ve got to get him to HQ right away. Ring your chief if you don’t believe me.”
The officer stands back up and waves to other police down the road. Struggling, McCabe says as best he can,
“That’s not true officer.”
There is some more shouting.
“OK. OK. Calm down. Reg get hold of Dutton Street. See if this Inland bollocks actually exists. An’ hurry up.”
He leans into the car window frame again.
“Now then sir. What’s all this commotion?
Then, everyone is talking over everyone else. McCabe shouts that he is being taken, kidnapped and doesn’t know who these people are. Insulator Tony holds McCabe down by his arm and shouts at him to shut it, whilst Dermott and Lisa, the latter restraining and re-assaulting McCabe, convince the police officer that the person in the back is a dangerous suspect.

"Quiet Quiet or I'll have to freeze the lot of you."

The other police puts his radio back in his belt and says,
“Sir? Apparently this Internal Security Division is for real and they’re all accredited.”
1654 sighs deeply. The noise subsides. He checks Dermott’s ID again and hands it him back.

“There you go.”

Dermott looks up at the aged officer,
“Get me through this march, right? Where in a royal hurry here.”
“Well,” the officer sighs and combs his hand through his brushed back wood coloured rug, “the thing is it might be a bit tricky. Hold on.”
He puts his hat back on and talks into his phone. A surge in the noise and chanting of the march drown out McCabe’s muffled pleas.
1654 half shouts, “Apparently, you can get through up there on your right. Watch it though. The way things are..."
They both duck slightly as a mighty firework explodes up ahead somewhere.
“Thank you. You heard the man, Boydy. Let’s go.” He waves briefly at the now wide eyed officer and the windows close."

The two police watch the car speed off.

"You know Reg. Maybe that bloke was being kidnapped."

"What? Nah. Besides too much paperwork."

Boydy shoots the car into the road at an oblique angle and forces a gap in the parallel line of waiting traffic. High up a big plume of red smoke from the firework is swept towards the river. A horn blares then they hit the right hand kerb with a heavy thud. The security measures had seen to it that the last hundred yards of pavement before any march’s route are cleared of parked vehicles and so Boydy is able to speed the tilting car along the glistening pavement. Shop fronts and leaning pedestrians flash past. Boyd laughs,
“City Death Race three.”
“Lamp post Boydy.”
“… me out of this fucking car,” McCabe shouts
“Now, where was I?” Tony says and picks up his little bag from the floor. The muscles in Lisa’s jaw clench and turn rigid. Then hisses to McCabe,
“If you don’t shut it, McDuff or whatever your fucking name is, I’m going to really own you. I mean really. Fucking. Own you. Do you know what that means?
“Kind of.”
“It means I’ll punch you harder than that in your ugly pugly face and you’ll be waking up tomorrow fucking morning even uglier than you are now.”
She takes the small mirror off Tony. A cop on a horse by the junction raises his hand. They brake fifty metres behind some ragged police line.
“Fuck,” Lisa says “Fuck”. McCabe rubs his bruised thigh. To their left riot police run down the side of the road in tight formation.
“Mister McCabe.” Dermott leans back towards them. “You were well warned. Now if you utter one more word in front of his majesty’s finest up here about kidnapping, being detained or other such nonsense, I will authorise Lisa to turn distinctly Guantanamo on your sorry arse. Crystal?”
“Here.” Lisa says to McCabe and offers him the mirror. But he only replies,
“Erh."

"Oh. Drug surge." Tony says.
They brake behind the police lines and a constable moves towards them. She motions for the window and then orders them to wait. “This should be interesting.” she tells them. She shouts to a team of police to their right and waves them on. The ISD vehicle edges forward between rows of angry UAC police and into the midst of the crowded kettle of herded protesters.

The appalling silence of the good people.

2009-05-15T01:38:00.000-07:00

[MLK]

Neoliberalism

2009-05-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

The sanctity of the individual is meant to be the centre of neoliberalism - in reality the individual is obliterated and meshed into the system's catastrophe.

Torture photos not that sensational

2009-05-14T23:58:00.000-07:00

We read that Obama, that fraud, has supressed the release of photos showing the torture of people the US dislikes. The reason is that these pictures are not sensational but would endanger US troops. You'd have thought he'd try to be a bit more convincing than that. But when your arse is being heated by the forces from the dark side I guess you say anything to keep your snout well troughed. Still, if the pics aren't that sensational, why would they endanger US troops? The people actually engaged in resisting US oppression in the ME are not going to stop because they don't get to see pictures of their 'fellow travellers' suspended from the ceiling with wire, fckd by dogs, piled naked on top of one another with shit smeared copies of the Koran on fire all about them, being electrocuted, waterboarded, crushed under boards piled with stones, hooded, starved, deprived of sleep, stress positioned, raped and murdered - -
- it's not that sensational.

Move on nothing to see here.

'Torture is not incidental to these wars, nor was it merely the preferred policy of the sadists in the Bush White House. It is integral to such colonial-style counterinsurgency campaigns, in which a major aim is to terrorize and intimidate the population. It was employed by the French in Algeria, the British in Kenya, the Belgians in the Congo and the Portuguese in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. The American military is following in their bloody footsteps.'

Class tensions rise shock!

2009-05-14T23:50:00.001-07:00

It's all no surprises at the moment. This is still excellent though. Steel workers storm ArcelorMittal HQ in Luxembourg. This is the way.

MP's are cheats shock!

2009-05-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Excellent piece by Heather Brooke on the system's attempt to cover up its troughing at the tax payers' expense. These people, especially some twat called Andrew Walker, the head of the House of Commons Fees Office, are the curators of British politics. This pathetic half arsed scandal is the whimper at the end of the whole sorry lying charade of UK plc's ideological public face.

We say again and in all sincerity and gravitas, 'Boil them in shit'.

MP expenses fraud shock

2009-05-14T23:05:00.000-07:00

Like us here at REL, I'm sure you too are reeling after reading about MP's ripping off the tax payer. I mean, who would have thought that a political class seeped in neo-liberal ideological hogwash and bereft of any political philosophy or principle would stoop so low as to engage in practices that would only benefit themselves? How utterly shocking and, a priori, unimaginable.

The thing is, it's all our fault for voting and not undertaking political action ourselves. The turn out in June will be witheringly miniscule and that's a good thing. The model of politics that we have at the moment is disintegrating both at a macro level (its neoliberal 'philosophy' has collapsed, unemployment has increased dramatically, the parasites are getting handouts from the corrupt political elites, inequality has grown...) and at the interrelated micro level, its participants (at least a large proportion of the cnts) are filling their boots in disregard for the people they 'represent'. The BNP will not get the surge it craves but that won't stop the leaders of the failed main parties using it as a diversionary threat to try to scare people into voting for the orthodox bloc. Don't fall for it. Do something constructive instead of voting. Deface election posters with agitprop, ferment further discontent, don't go to work, sabotage a computer network. In the face of your passivity lies further degeneration. Fascism is capitalism disintegrated. This is the first phase of that collapse. We act now or are petrified under their corruption.

Put Parliament out of its misery and organise for real democracy.

Exam cave in

2009-05-12T09:24:00.000-07:00

Everyone remembers their worst exam, well we do here at REL, but these poor kids in Gillingham have had their worst (or best if anyone of them were in the processing of tanking it) when the part of the ceiling fell on them. There's a serious issue of structural neglect here, but the bit that caught our roving explorer's eye runs :
"Everyone reacted in a calm and professional manner. The students were very mature and I'm extremely proud of them."
Curtis Ward, 14, suffered cuts and scratches on his left arm. Speaking with a heavily bandaged arm, he said: "We just started the exam when there was this big banging noise. Everybody stood up and looked up and we could see the pipe falling from the ceiling. Everyone was shouting and crying and running for the doors. Some of the pipe fell on my arm and trapped it. I got scratched pulling my arm away. I saw one girl who had a big piece of the pipe fall right on her back."
Another pupil, Sam Millen, 13, said: "It looked like one boy at the front was crushed under a piece of metal and everyone started panicking and screaming." our emphasis.

Army turns on its self

2009-05-12T06:39:00.001-07:00

The pressures must be great being an American soldier in the criminal actions in Afghanistan. Army life is brutal, America is a brutal place so its troops must have been through a cruel desensitising brutalisation. How else to explain the GI who went on a rampage and killed five other US soldiers in Iraq? The event has been oblitarated in the MSM, with (for them) good reason.

Over at wsws.org - "This outburst of violence was by no means an aberration. Suicide rates among active duty military personnel are at a record high, with 230 killing themselves last year and more US soldiers taking their own lives in January than were killed in combat."

Police check

2009-05-09T10:17:00.001-07:00

It's enough to make you want to riot - but the top cop in London reckons that reluctantly he might have to employ 'harsher European' police tactics to 'control violent demonstrations.' The truth behind this does not need reiterating and, it has to be said, water cannon and the like would be useful in keeping the violence down on the next demo - if they're used ON the police.

Get rich quick!

2009-05-09T01:43:00.000-07:00

An excerpt from a mail sent from the interesting but capitalistbastard "The Daily Reckoning':

"How many people do you know who have lived through a "real bust?" No, I don't mean the dotcom bomb or the Asian currency crisis.
I don't mean the 9-11 recession or the '87 market crash... or even the '74 market meltdown or the late '70s oil crisis.
I mean a full-on social and economic reversal.
Of course we haven't seen anything on that scale since the Great Crash of '29. And many of the witnesses alive to those events are long gone from our lives.
But do you remember... how your parents or maybe your grandparents talked about those times? They never seemed to forget.
How many "Depression survivors," for instance, still save scraps of paper and bits of string... rinse off tin foil... and wouldn't dare toss leftovers?"

Us povvies at REL always have saved scraps of paper, bits of string and wool, even, and always re-use tin foil - and never have enough to eat to get leftovers in the first place. Poor but happy.

Reading further down the missive, it's clear this get rich quick scheme is, in reality, a get poor slowly scheme. But the one we're on atm, is working out just fine.

Bad writing

2009-05-08T04:47:00.000-07:00

A debate about Dan Brown's latest book flares up over at CiF. The usual argument, high art that no one reads pitted against shit that everyone laps up. However, on the evidence, is Brown so bad? I remember reading the Da Vinci Code, but can remember nothing about it, not even if I liked it. Here is an excerpt:

"Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum's Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas."

Assuming it is shit, for the moment, wherein doth its shitness lie? The books on how to write say avoid information dumps. But it can't be just that. Perhaps it's that 'until', that suggests he was trying to pull the painting off the wall, maybe it's that 'heap' that the too long second sentence ends withor the 'heaved' which doesn't seem right at all there The general clunkiness is a given. But then again, the guy's sold 100m copies and really couldn't give a shit.

Is it so much worse than this:

"I SUPPOSE you will be getting away pretty soon, now. Full term is over, Professor," said a person not in the story to the Professor of Ontography, soon after they had sat down next to each other at a feast in the hospitable hall of St. James's College.
The Professor was young, neat, and precise in speech.
"Yes," he said; "my friends have been making me take up golf this term, and I mean to go to the East Coast--in point of fact to Burnstow--(I dare say you know it) for a week or ten days, to improve my game. I hope to get off to-morrow." ?

The start of OH, WHISTLE, AND I'LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD" (1904)

It must be something to with rythmn.

Inequality higher under Labour than under Thatcher

2009-05-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

Hidden in a report on the escalation of income inequality in Britain is the nugget of gloom that Britain was a more equal place under Thatcher than Brown.

Unlike under Thatcher, though, there is no real attempt by the current regime to justify this order of things. The Tories tried to convince us by talking about money and opportunity 'trickling down' - like piss down a bitch's leg - and for some that seemed potentially credible. It was hayek of course, as in total shite, since all the money rises and condenses upwards. Even the working poor have increased in numbers. To be working poor is the ultimate aim of the capitalist system of course - it's the obverse of we're we, ourselves, want to be.
1. Poor and not working - bad but at least you've a degree of freedom -
2. working and well off - well you've not much time but at least you can afford things -
3. rich and not working - capitalist parasite or lottery winner - angry lynch mob or drug fuelled death awaits but speedboats and hotels in the meantime
4. Poor and working - really what is the point?

How true the wise words of one of Britain's most just of leaders,
"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery."--Winston Churchill

(But why shouldn't the misery be equally shared? At least until it's done away with as much as it can be...).

The Poor List Ch.10 (Under construction) - VCS fades into the order of things

2009-05-07T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ms. Roscoe, 15 April PT13
Vegetation Control Solutions (Bus.Reg. pt/1/ref. UK2/3 Clemp.134679) - Nature of Business: Removal of weeds from sunburban areas, general logistics, Import/Export.
Chief Exec. James Carlysle Faddon 'Partner': Nicholas Spencer Glover.
The police trertiary report says "Suspected of transporting part of the second detonator and other material substantial to the case, Sept 15 BT12." VCS is a front company for another business called Broadschern Tender run through a shell organisation with two offices in Luxembourg and one in the Caymon Isles.
The following transcripts might help. The department will forward evidence obtained from VCS computer files at a later date.

Taupe

Literary torture

2009-05-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

"The Kama Sutra of torture still has to be written."

Where's the upsurge?

2009-05-07T01:19:00.000-07:00

A recent 5April 20) Fiancial Tmes editorial notes ", “In no big European country is the main party of the left, in or out of government, surging ahead. The Burson-Marsteller forecast for the European elections in June shows that the centre-right European People’s party will remain the largest group in the European parliament—even if the British Conservatives and the Czech ODS fulfill their aim to leave the EPP.”

There is no direct 'logical' link between the popularity of ideas of a fairer more peaceful world, and capitalist crises. There is an element of relief and condescension in the FT piece. The last thing it's readers and shareholders want to see is angry people on the streets with their anger directed against the likes of themselves.

But these are early days in the playing out of this breakdown in the capitalist order of things and such relief and cheery derision are out of place. What is sufficient for us at the moment, is that the working masses of people on the whole are hostile to the entire political class that is supposed to represent them. That is the starting point for all revolutionary's efforts.

When the upsurge comes it will be at a time when no one expected it over an issue no one thought likely to matter. . .

Thatcher twitches in her grave

2009-05-07T00:09:00.000-07:00

“We are drifting back to the old attitudes of the 1960s and 1970s when the public preferred overall mediocrity rather than letting a minority get rich and increase the nation’s wealth. When we finally have the election, Gordon Brown’s legacy will be a bloated and inefficient state built up over 13 years of misguided thinking that showering government departments with taxpayers’ cash would pay dividends. It is time to invoke the spirit of Maggie.” [Sunday Times]

'and increase the nation's wealth' - it is desperate stuff. The whole 30 year experiment in 'capitalism unbound' is, of course, to blame for the last three decades of chaos and the current fiasco. Yet as of 2009 so far, the zombies seem to be getting away with it.

[Just been informed that Margaret Thatcher, is not infact dead. It was wishful subconscious thinking on behalf of the editor apologies].

Moscow rules

2009-05-06T23:44:00.000-07:00

"In recent months the transatlantic alliance had been trying to re-engage with Moscow. But its efforts have been undermined by last week's spy row and by the Kremlin's strong objection to Nato's decision to hold a military training exercise in Georgia." [Guardian]

We're no fans of the Kremlin (not since 1923 anyway) but this excerpt is politicolinguistically revealing. It's not the military exercises that have undermined re-engagement efforts, but Moscow's objections to them - exercises that will take place right next to Russian territory. So, it's not the provocative war games that are the problem, but the aggressive diplomatic response.

Fish goes mad from the head down

2009-05-06T13:42:00.000-07:00

As far as Brown still is the head of 'what's going on uk' and as far as one can believe the Daily catstrayMail, the pressure is getting the better of the Prime Minister. Some sort of tantrum at a telly interview over the weekend. One would have been forgiven for expecting a more philosophical approach, though. For a chap plunging inexorably to oblivion, he could be showing more ('Scottish'?) stoicism and taking it easy as the ride finishes with him, and just enjoy the view.

A wonderful world

2009-05-06T13:02:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A8D7ABBFFCD799C3&search_query=what+a+wonderful+world

I can't do the flash computer stuff to send you straight to the youtube video, but this news was sinking in and it just came on the radio...Play it and look at the picture.

The horror

2009-05-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

The news (see below) should obliterate any other news story. But the global hype about swine flu, from which seven people died, lasted ten days - and this item will be forgotten in less. The news should take up the whole news, not part of the progam that culminates in a story about the Eurovision song contest. The MSM can only do what the MSM is told to do. Mask the horror, tell people to move on, there's nothing to see here.

Defamiliarisation

2009-05-06T08:37:00.001-07:00

This once was a young healthy human.

The news report says 'dozens' may have died. "US air strikes in Afghanistan on Tuesday killed dozens of civilians including women and children, officials from the Red Cross have said.
Afghan officials in the western province of Farah told the BBC as many as 100 civilians might have died."

Still, no worries the US 'deeply regrets' no sorry 'deeply deeply regrets' the incident. Just one 'deeply' isn't enough - the other covers it nicely.

Drown out

2009-05-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

The (supposed) stabilisng of the economic crisis and its downgrade by the MSM gate keepers and scribblers mustn't hide from us the stark reality of the capitalist class' orchestrated behaviour against its working class betters. The swine-flu, the bomb scares and the hundreds of other petty distractions try to drown out the grinding noise as the two societal forces mesh and range against eachother. Pick any country in the world (like Georgia for example where the Rumplestiltskin president is lashing out in almost comical fashion to save his rancid hide), but here, news from Ireland, whose economic plight is a warning of what is ahead for others, me and maybe even you...

" The worsening situation is deepening class tensions, as companies and institutions seek to offload the crisis onto their workforce.
The first 450 of 1,900 Dell workers losing their jobs at the company’s plant in Raheen, Limerick, received their final pay cheques last week. Dell is moving production to Poland, where wages are €3 an hour.
In April, 130 workers at chip manufacturer Xilnix’s operation in Dublin were told their jobs were being moved to Singapore.
Supermarket giant Tesco threatened to lock out workers in their Douglas, Cork, store until June if a strike against a change in working conditions was implemented. Workers struck indefinitely in response.
Also in Cork, University College Cork (UCC) has demanded 3,000 staff forego one week’s pay to alleviate the university’s deteriorating financial position. Cost-cutting measures are being considered at all of Ireland’s seven universities.
An unofficial walkout at Dublin Bus’s Harristown depot over the introduction of new rosters brought the city’s entire bus fleet to a standstill, as workers at the Summerhill, Conyngham Road and Clontarf depots took action in support of their colleagues.
Nurses at Killarney Community Hospital have voted in favour of a strike against structural changes, while Sligo General Hospital nurses are to ballot for a strike against job losses.
New talks are anticipated between the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and the government to establish whether a formal agreement can be reached with the union bureaucracy on how to impose the cost of the economic collapse on the working class."

But better this willingness to stand up to the snouty ones than subside into a mordant and desperate economism.

Gossip

2009-05-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

Should one avoid gossip? Smile in Olympian detachment at the lives and tribulations of others and move on? Probably. But seeing one of Europe's most worthless politicians (a competitive area obviously) embroiled in a divorce scandal of swine flu size PR proportions does manage to raise the merest of interest, the lightest rubber-kneck frission and a slightest twinge of satisfaction at the public humiliation of Italy's tiny jumping plastic cock of a Head of State.

I'm afraid, I might have to keep following this. . . the story that is, not the tiny jumping plastic cock as metaphor or, indeed, thing.

Laughter in the dark

2009-05-04T03:36:00.000-07:00

Some MP in the bereft government has criticised Gordon Brown. No news there. But the story escalates into talk of a leadership challenge. All denied of course by the 'stalking horse'. Listen to what she says and try to keep a straight face...."'I do not want to be prime minister,' says Brown deputy as party in-fighting continues".

"I do not want to be Prime Minister" - as if Labour are ever again going to be the party in power in the rest of our lifetimes.

The Underground of Feeling

2009-05-03T06:09:00.000-07:00

"She was closer to the brutalized image of animals, of the beasts, of the profane world, of a disgusting cornucopia, the veritable Pandora’s box, the world of the witch and the strange alchemy and potions surrounding childbirth and, yes, artistic creativity."

Transcience

2009-05-02T11:21:00.000-07:00

Poor List Ch.9 - Teabag's first appearance in the order of events

2009-05-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

The door closed behind him and he looked at the car park up front from under the glass roof. The rain was falling steadily but he didn’t have a coat. Two doctors walked past and a man in a wheelchair wheelied down the ramp. A helicopter clattered somewhere above the low cloud. He leant a railing and searched his pockets, took out a plastic bag and some papers and started to roll a cigarette. He lit the bent twig of a thing and looked up and, summoned by the hum of the traffic up outside the hospital wall slouched down the steps and trudged off. Outside the main gate a red Cortina was waiting. Somebody was lowering the driver’s side window.
‘Kieron,’ the man said.
‘Connor?’ He flashed a hideous smile and walked over to the kerb.
The man in the car winced slightly, over the lip of the glass, and took a long drag from a carton of milk. He motioned with his head.
‘Get in.’
‘Thanks.’
Kieron went round the back of the car and jumped in. They sped off down the flat grey unmarked road towards the town.
‘So how are you feeling?’
Keiron threw his rucksack down at his feet. The engine rattled hoarsely.
‘Ok. You know?’
‘Your mum was worried. What with all that happened and that.’
Keiron grunted and stared out of the front passenger side window at the hills and fields as they flitted by. They swung too fast round a bend in the road. He looked up and saw the estate, near the huge embankment, wheel slowly by in the distance.
‘Is she ok?’
‘Oh yes. Don’t you worry about your mum. Everything’s going to be alright now.' His face gave the appearance of a smile. 'There’s a paper down there if you want to catch up on the footie.’
‘Is there any music like?’
‘There’s some CD’s in the glove compartment’, he gestured with his left hand at the space in front of his passenger, ‘and there’s some food and that in the bag down there.’
‘Maybe later.’
They re-accelrated up a steep hill and vivd landscape burst from behind a moor top. The wind blew away some blue smoke that snorted out of the bonnet. Connor managed the gears.

‘Are you sure you’re ok Keiron? You’ve been shaking like a shitting dog.’
‘I’ll be right when I get home.’
'Only don't be blowing your chunks in here or anything.'

They drove on in silence after that. The car crawled through gentle folds in the earth. A huge mass of grey cloud was being buffeted in from over the hills. Over the other side the sunlight made the other clouds look like rock around a flat sea.
Keiron leant back in his seat and closed his eyes. Then as they got into the outskirts,

'Your life Keiron. I mean it can't go on. Can it? What.' He carried on. '...What do you think Keiron?'
‘Feels like we're travelling backward,’ Keiron said.
Connor glanced at the reclining figure and sniffed.
They drove through the half empty streets towards the centre. The rain re-intensified and Connor flicked the control. The wipers’ rubbery wheeze speeded up. At the ring road, Connor took a left towards the gas works. Keiron opened his eyes and blinked. His face registered a quick series of expressions, yawnings and looks of suprise as if trying to find a default face.
‘Where we going?’
‘Oh you’ll see.’
‘But this not the way back like.’
Keiron finally picked up the bag and rummaged through its contents, took something out and bit into it.
'Scenic route.'

'What?'

‘It’s a surprise Keiron.’
‘Don’t like surprises,’ Keiron said, his voice muffled by a piece of sandwich.
‘Holiday time.' Connor was saying. ‘You’re going on holiday, Keiron. Our treat, you’ve, deserved it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. You get to do whatever you want whenever you want. All the money you need, your own place. Magic.’
‘Kidding? Ace. Where?’
‘Not far Keiron, really. Not far at all. Nearly there in fact.’
‘What, seaside like?’ Keiron asked. He scrunched up a paper bag and looked at Connor, jowly and balding. 'Fucking love the seaside.' He threw the paper ball at his feet then started to roll another cigarette. Connor turned the radio on.
‘You’re always smoking Keiron. Either smoking or rolling. You should stop. Especially with that stuff.’
‘So like Scarborough or something? Got a light?' Keiron searched all his pockets and said out the corner of his mouth,

'Nah I'll just use end of this.’
‘Scarborough? No, not quite. Good views though.’
They had started to drive through smaller streets in the gathering gloom. Keiron stared through the window across the valley to the strange stacked oblong lights of the two emmense grey towers below and in front of them. Connor drove faster. They crossed a small humped bridge over shining rail track and then through an industrial estate and up and down row after row of sandy coloured houses, slowly, geologically, dissolving back into the ground.
‘Seriously, are you sure you ok Keiron, only youdon’ look well.’
Keiron frowned and nodded.
‘Yeah I’ll be right.’
The front tyres screeched faintly as they turned into a twisting side road, with vegetation growing as high as the railings, that then plunged down a steep winding slope and round and into a car park.
‘Well. Here we are.’
‘But this…’
They pulled next to some other cars up in front of three enormous steel waste bins at the nearest of two tower blocks. Some children played football nearby.
‘The fuck’s this?’
‘Prince of Wales Towers.’ Connor wiped milk from his mouth with the cuff of his jacket.
‘I fucking know that. Bwhat are we doing here?’
Connor switched the engine off and sighed. He threw the empy milk carton out of the window.

‘When I said “Holiday.” I meant a holiday for your mum, me and the rest of us. From you.’
‘But, where’s the seaside?’
‘Fuck’s sake Keiron,’ Connor sighed taking his seat belt off. He opened the driver’s side door. Car doors slammed further away. Connor twisted himself out and looked back in and down. ‘Come on, out you get.’ he said to Keiron, but whose eyes now had gone glassy. Connor ran round the front of the car and flung open the passenger side door.
‘No you don’t. Out. Don’t puke in the fucking…’
Keiron hunched with a wretching sound and vomited over the dashboard.

Under a flickered light in the lift up to the penultimate floor, Connor tilted his head towards Keiron and said, ‘Slapping his mother about this cunt.’ His voice echoed down the concrete corridor. The other two men each carrying a bin bag full of Keiron’s clothes and clutter, shook their heads. The lift’s mechanisms creaked into life.
‘Twat.’
Keiron stared at the gigantic meticulously sprayed cartoon head with a mobile against its ear that had drawn itself together on the doors. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against a mirrored wall. Unobserved in the corner, the tiny grey camera’s giant eye captured their reflected light.
‘Whose place is it again?’ Connor asked. The taller of the two gentlemen said , ‘Bronny Taylor’s. But he’s . . . away, shall we say?’

The lift lurched and picked up speed.

'He? I thought it was a she.' the other smaller man said.

Keiron carried the suitcase with both hands and wobbled down the dimly lit corridor after the other three men. A woman stood in the doorway at the end of the doored tunnel, in front of a patch of hall light.

Connor shouted over his shoulder at the floundering figure behind him, ‘Come on Keiron, you’ve got fifteen years on me. What’s up with you?.’
‘Cough.’
Connor caught the keys the smaller man had thrown and opened the door. Inside, the curtains were drawn and the lights hadn't come on.
‘Stinks a bit in here,’ one of the men said, putting his bag down next to the sofa chair. They all looked around the main room for a second. Connor opened the curtains.
‘Oh no way. You’re fucking joking aren’t you?’ Keiron said as he put the half-busted suitcase down in the doorway.
‘‘Coily go see if you can get the power on. ' and threw an envelope on the table.

'It’s not the Ritz, Keiron but what the fuck do you expect?’ Connor said and sat down heavily on the green sofa chair and a mushroom cloud of dust, caught in a shank of dusked sunlight, bloomed around him. He ran his hand over the chair's frayed arm. .
‘I want to go back home.’
‘You can’t.’
‘What?’

'You just, can't.'
Connor leant up and took a framed photo from the sideboard and studied it. The lights came on and the telivision fizzed into some sort of life.
‘Thing is, Keiron, there’s an injunction out on you.'

There was a pause.

'Do you know what an injunction is?’
‘It’s a pub up Grome int it?’ Coyly said coming back in, wiping his hands.
‘What?’ Keiron said.
The other man laughed. Connor passed them a tin of Sparks each.
‘Sometimes, Keiron. An injunction means you can’t come near a place or someone for like months. In your case, you can’t come near Dowley estate until August. Or rozzer’ll have you’ Connor said.

‘What?’
The small man leant himself up against the window pane and looked out across the strange expanse. The other man, Coyly, sipped his beer and lifted a plate from the table slightly.
‘Jesus.’
‘Right fucking view though. Is that Molyth tower over there yonder?’ the other man said.
‘Even better when it stops raining,’ Connor said and smiled. ‘If it stops raining.’
‘But this place is shit, Connor. I can’t stay here. Look at it. I want me room back.’
‘Like I said. Not possible I’m afraid.’
‘What?’
Connor opened the can of Spark’s.
‘Look around. You’ve got tables, chairs, bit of carpet, telly - ok a portable one - computer over there though, shithouse, kitchen, bedroom. What more d’you want?’ Connor said.

The other man came back into the room and said,
'Packet pasta, instant soup, Instant Whip and all that in here. Sorted, really.’

‘The wallpaper’s coming off, it reeks of cabbage and you can see the fucking floorboards for fuck’s sake,’

Connor frowned and looked out of the window.
‘Look, stop whingeing Kieron. You’ve got a roof over your swede, haven’t you? More than many a poor fucker has, this day and age. Ah,' he gestured towrds the table. 'Before I forget, there’s a letter there for you over there.’
The taller man ran his finger over marks on the top of the table by the wall . ‘What’s all this writing?’

Keiron slowly shook his head.

'Could be worse fella. You could be in one of them village things,' the smaller man said.

Keiron looked at Connor.

'Well?'
‘You always wanted something like this to happen, Connor didn’t you?’

‘Look don’t raise your voice at me, Keiron. And what d'you mean wanted this? You hit your own bloody mother remember.’

One of the two men looked over.

‘As it happens, and lucky it is for you, this is the way your soft deluded mother wanted it. If I’d have had my way, I’d have just slung you out fucking ages a go. Anyway stand over there, I’ve got to take a picture.’
‘What?’
‘Does this twat never say anything other than “What”?’ Coyly said.
‘Just stand where you where Keiron, before.’
Keiron, look round, took a few steps back and stood, crooked, in the doorway. Connor pointed his mobile at him.
‘But who’s going to cook?’ Keiron said.
‘Smile for fuck’s sake, Keiron. It’s for your mum.’

After they’d gone, he kicked his suitcase and bin bags and the tables and chairs about for a minute or so. Then, while he calmed down, he stood next to the window, arms outstretched, head bowed against the glass. The room had slowly filled with flickering static and thirty nine floors and over two hundred feet of twilight below him, orange pools of light had switched on one by one. He watched a smart black car follow Connor's cortina as it kangarooed up the hill and then the motorway traffic through an extensive spider’s web in the corner. Far away in the distance on the other side of the valley, he could now just make out individual fires.
He opened the window and smoked a cigarette. He flicked the last of it as hard as he could out into the air and watched the tiny red light helter skelter down towards the ground. After, he rooted through the flat. He opened drawers, looked for money then knelt down to see if the fire worked. After a while he got it going the ate some soup. There on the wall by the bookcase, in strange little capitals, just below chair level someone had written “Nothing happens in a world of nothing.” He scratched another hole in the wallpaper. Then he dumped his clothes into the bedroom and collapsed onto the unmade bed. The room was large, the bedside light worked, the bed was springy and the walls weren’t as bad as the other rooms. He picked up the radio alarm that flashed twelve hundred and selected a channel. He frowned, or a thought passed over him. He perched himself up on his side, winced, and reached under the mattress, half crushing his fist as he did so. He rummaged around, but, finding nothing, rolled back onto the bed, wiped some blood from under his nose, swore loudly and stared at the flaked ceiling through freshly bruised eyes.

May day

2009-05-01T03:30:00.001-07:00

Workers all over the world are protesting against the same things against pretty much the same people and for the same ideals. For one day, be less pessimistic eh? yes there's a mighty recession that's hovering over us but that doesn't mean that the fascists are about to take over - history repeates itself? well, in the 1930's Mussolini had been in power for years and the fascists were a serious force. Today they're just a joke - despite what Hain blathers on about - their breakthrough will never come - they're just like an old man trying to have a wnk. They try and try and promise themselves this time something will happen. But it never will.

There's just the bosses, and their sock puppets, and the workers. Find a demo throw something at a copper - they've asked for it.

Rejoice - the recession is over

2009-04-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

. . . though not for the little people obviously.

Era of repression

2009-04-30T08:33:00.000-07:00

We are in the midst of a culmulative radicalism. The state, long since aware of the dangers of its own economic system, has built of an armory of repressive measures using whatever comes by as an expedient. The attacks of the early twenty first century on urban centres can be seen as the start of an acceleration of already existing and underlying drift towards the closing down of any non Parliamentary political opposition (the latest 'pre-emptive' arrests of eco-campaigners in Nottingham, increased police infiltration into 'opposition groups', for example), the thorough and systematic suffocation of demonstrations (the violence is nothing new of course) via new police techniques, the legally endorsed infringement of personal communications and the arrests of innocent people on trumped up charges of terrorism. We are aware of all this.

Not so much publicised is the aggressive campaign state forces have been waging on 'no go' areas. In France, the liberal media has bemoaned the Sarkozy inspired withdrawl of 'proximity policing'. This is the idea that saturating quarters with police can prevent disorder. In the UK, the police are intervening more aggressively but without about as much success statistically. We are not interested in crime figures, (but generally they are not good - burgalries up and so on). What is interesting about the latest bit of info from Liberty (no real left wing organisation it has to be said) is that the police not only can turn any area into a virtual prison, but that they have used 'Section 60 powers'. These powers can turn an area into a police search free for all, essentially criminalising everyone who lives in an area that comes under such jurisdiction. T"he figures showed that there were 53,000 section 60 searches in 2007/08 with most of them in London, Birmingham and Liverpool." That's quite a lot of searches. It's more like an active policy.

The point of the report is that police searches of people (which hardly ever result in prosecution let alone conviction) have 'surged' since 2005. (The MSM word 'surge' is interesting. The 'surge' in Iraq was the state's response to increased disobedience in Iraq. The violence is not working agress more, is the message from on high to the grunt on the street). We know that rozzer over here needs little encouragement, (the Facebook quote of a snout drooling about 'bashing some hippys [sic]', as a stray example...) but even so the tripling and doubling of police searches (not very nice to-be-on-the-receiving-end-experiences at all) on black, Pakistani and white working claszs people - the report doesn't say that but is glaringly obvious - is chilling nonetheless.

It shows the state knows where the flash points will be, Liverpool, Birmingham and London, mainly, and who will need closing down and how much the police need the practice in this type of repression. The heading in the MSM has it that the only salinet feature of the report is that there are more searches of black and Asian people than ever. In reality, there are just far more searches in general.

The quickly gathering storm is taking a familiar shape.

Class war update

2009-04-30T04:10:00.000-07:00

We are not winning the class war at the moment. The offensive started 30 years ago, is faltering but the enemy troops still get their supplies and perks. The news is padded out with the qualification that it is £6bn less than last year, but £7bn in bonuses for the few hundred thousand zombie parasites in the city is not going to calm things down any. Even the Lib Dems are sounding angry about it.

Nevertheless, we are glad that Cameron's message that the UK needs an age of austerity is getting through to people at last.

Boil them in shit.

Jet stream

2009-04-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

What the fuck was that jet plane doing crashing low over the centre of New York the other day. Obama wasn't on board, reliable sources inform us. But unreliable crank sources (low truth probability but much more interesting) froth that it was a coup attempt. The two jet fighters were going to shoot airforce one down.

Subtle stuff. Either way, more craziness just when it's needed.

We're not all gonna die

2009-04-29T09:07:00.000-07:00

This swine flu hype is bollocks right left and centre. EEeww 150 people have died in Mexico (well 7 according to a new fresher survey) gaaasp one person has died sort of because of the flu in the US and, er, that's about it. This though puts it into a bit of perspective, ". . . malaria kills 3,000 people EVERY DAY, and it's considered "a health problem"... But of course, there are no fancy vaccines for malaria that can rake in billions of dollars in a short amount of time."

So do something more interesting when you hear the words 'swine flu' on the telly. And in the papers and, er, in the blogiverse....

Another 7/7 success

2009-04-29T04:08:00.000-07:00

The acquittal of three men who supposedly helped the four July 7th bombers rounds off a terrible few weeks for rozzer. This particular investigation cost over a hundred million pounds and came up with nothing. "[A] senior source said the investigating officers were now at a loss where to turn."

Perhaps to their own masters...

Swine flu

2009-04-29T03:36:00.001-07:00

After a week of heated rambling, the hype-flu simmers down and no further action need be taken. After all, it's only people in the 'third world' that are going to die from it. And not from 'it' at all, of course, but from the fact that they are so poor that their immune systems have been compromised. So once the hype is over, they'll be forgotten about and the 1.5 billion dollars Obama has just given to [fill in corrupt company here] will have been given to grateful shareholders.

Yes it is cynical, but we're all shiny eyed idealists here. (Though not philosophical idealists you understand. That wouldn't do at all).

The Poor List Ch. 8 'Moving on up.'

2009-04-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

Transcript 1 - Line-drop mobile/pda no.’s […]1498sec3(i)5/04/p.t.12 23:07:52 length of conversation 1mn 30 sec. Transcript:
[Background noise from A’s pda – heavy traffic/in car radio? (light classical)/woman’s voice, Southampton accent, at 1 min 15, 1 min 25 resp. /pneumatic drill.

Start:
Voice A (unidentified): ‘May is the most merciful of months.’
Voice B (Thought to be that of Warren Green currently henching in the Central Political Unit of the ISD): ‘But the scars of April must leave their mark.’
A: ‘Did the material get through?’
Green: ‘The concert will go ahead as planned.’
A: ‘Good. My people will be pleased. They are expecting a perfect performance. Are all the other pieces in pace?’
Green: ‘There are still some bodies, some players to be found. But we’re not expecting there to be any shortage, any problems…
A: ‘What? Warren, you should have had this all tied up by now.. [indecipherable]…yes…The conductor wants things brought forward. A month maybe more.’
Green: ‘Why?’
A: ‘What’s that?’
Green: ‘I said ‘why’?’
A: Just to make sure, all the instruments made it didn’t they?
Green: ‘There’s been a bit of a delay but…’
[drilling noise over shouting]
A: ‘…wit. Green, you do know who you’re working for here? I mean. Come on.
Green: ‘Look, percussion instruments are delicate things and…’
A: [indecipherable]…take a right here…Don’t fuck with us Green. We know all the fucking games ok?
Green: ‘I. What? Look. Everything’s under control, everything’s cool. Look why are things being moved?’
A: ‘Cool? Green Cool? I don’t want to have to inform the conductor of any delays. This is of utmost importance…
[Woman’s voice]: ‘ECH on the blue line sir.’
A: ‘About bloody time.’
Green: ‘I still need, the, er, notes.’
[Woman’s voice]: ‘Something about Friday…’
A: ‘Just get things sorted out Green.’
Ends.

Studds folded one end of his mauve striped tie round and under the shorter end and frowned.
‘It depends on what you mean by ‘freedom’ of course. At a minimum that would mean the virtual absence of control and domination. But I don’t think you’re going to get that past your editor.’
The interviewer smiled and stroked a stray strand of polished hair behind her ear. ‘You might be right.'

Studds tied a Windsor knot and straightened it.
‘I know I am. John Stretham isn’t it. Your editor I mean?’
She tilted her head and half smiled.
‘It’s for the supplement - limited but very discerning,’ she said.
The Prof laughed and opened one of his desk’s drawers.
‘Just one last question. Something to, you know, round the piece off. Will you be buying any of the shares?’
‘I think you’d write, ‘He refused to be drawn on the issue..’. Anyway, I wouldn’t think your country’s, Financial regulator would let me. I don’t want another,’ he smiled, glanced out of the window at the steady rain and neon tinged crepuscule and closed the drawer, ‘…drama.’ He sighed and looked back at her.
‘Dismal place. Those towers the gas works out there. How do you, you know, keep up your famous spirits?’
‘O, we get by.’
Studds smoothed his linen suit and took his over-coat off the chair .
‘Well, you could accompany me to the ugly academics’ ball if you like. They’re opening up the new quad tonight, official function, Deans, Principal, mayor all the local dignitaries. But there’s free drinks if you’re not wowed by the social side of things…’
Caroline looked at her watch and raised her eyebrows.
‘Why not? Might be a story in it, who knows,’ she sighed and closed her ipad.
‘I doubt it. Get your things together and we’ll drive over there, anyway.’

As she started to put on her jacket she stopped to look again at the print of the Straightway Bank building that took up a large portion of space on the wall between the two bookshelves. The dramatic bottom-up perspective made the immense building loom and fill the sky with its broad gleam. It had been taken at dawn or dusk because the luminous low grey cloud was cut through with blood red light which shone in brilliant reflection all half way down the tower’s length. A large seagull had been caught in mid flight wheeling away over to the building’s right. There was a blurred outline of someone half turning their back from the window some fifteen floors up and the reflection of a jet stream splitting the sky glowed in higher gigantic windows.
Studds put his coat on and moved across the room. There were lesser buildings in the background and, underneath, written in large TNR, “Live for the moment. When you live in the belly of the beast, there’s not much else you can do.”
‘You’re still feel as if you’re in the belly of the beast then?’ she said standing up.
‘I could extend the metaphor…,’ he said and opened the door. ‘…but I think John would put a line through it.’
She leaned towards the picture and squinted.
‘You took the photo?’
‘It’s a hobby. No great skill required.’ They left the office and made their way out of the building.
‘I once nearly bought a photography book. It was called ‘Photography in a Week’ something like that and I thought “What? That long?”. It’s cheap, instantaneous.’ Their steps echoed in the bleached light of the long corridor.
In the car as they drew up into the new old quad’s car-park, ten minutes later, Studds said,
‘Caroline. There’s something…’
Caroline Duffy took Studds’ hand from her knee.‘Let’s not even fly over there, M.’

Conspiracy

2009-04-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

The swine flu thing - it'll all blow over. But in the mean time, there's a lot 'they' can do to stop politics from happening. A few 'cases', a few deaths, quarantine a few places and ban gatherings of more than five people - all for our own good of course - and presto! marches of any sort are forbidden.

Pigs might fly - swine flu. That 'joke' has to have been done already..............

Poor List Ch. 7 pt II

2009-04-26T04:26:00.000-07:00

The shopping precinct right in the middle of town, too small to be called a ‘mall’ to big to be called just a ‘precinct’, had been largely emptied of big brand names in the initial phase of the SGD. It was like hundreds of others I’d seen all over the country. When they were there, before, you hardly noticed them – now they’re lost or turned into ‘Gonemalls’[ Dr. Kilo Endgerety rather ugly neologism in his ‘Retail slowdown in Kansas: The Gone Malls and Empty Precinct in the post-bubble American Landscape: in The New Poor Minus Five Publishing House] you notice them everywhere. It started with an uptick in shop turnover. That Gadget shop had turned into a kitchen ware place. The Cut price DVD joint that used to be a cut price jewellers that used to be some travel agent or something. Who’d notice. Next if you had been keeping tabs on it all, you’d notice the place shut up shop that bit earlier on an evening, the people you might have been observing or meeting with no longer turn up as often as they used to or in smaller numbers or not at all, the bar, where you might have sat, closes with just a note on the drawn metal shutter saying that they’d see you in the upturn. Gather evidence, it was one of the top three tenets.

They sauntered through the narrow streets towards the Silver Castle, agreeing tactics. Danny led the way through shops, arcades and the main precinct. As they came up to a corner nearby the empororiumall Coily said,
‘We split up, Lumpy goes in we wait on the opposite sides of the shop, Sharon and Lisa do their stuff Lumpy’s in and out and gives the stuff to one of us. Usual thing after that. Scar’s then Superdrug. You’re on your own after that. You two got the lists?’
‘Yeh.’
‘Yeh.’
Danny zipped up the wavy styled zip of his purple top and toyed with a bolt just affront his hairline.
‘Sthe matter Dany? Scared or something?’ Coily said smiling, slowing them by the old McDonald’s corner. They stopped. Lumpy bent down as to tie his shoe lace.
Danny said, ‘Scared? Course not. Just feel like shit warmed up today,’ and scowled for a second. He then shrugged and said,
‘I’ll go in the side way right. See ya,’ and was gone.
‘Right I’m off knall. See you later, ‘ Lumpy said, stood and darted into the road narrowly missing a slow moving car. Coily loped after him and the flow of the crowd swallowed them all up.

Then, all the big names go, one way or another. Kilo’s law. But you can’t know everything. Kilo, the crits and the doomers all exaggerated things. The thing was the places still got packed. Sometimes. And though that didn’t mean things had returned to BT it went along with the rinsed eye hopeful mood that collapse had been if not avoided, then delayed enough so you still wouldn’t need to talk about it too much. These are ‘haunted times’ [The Haunted psycho-geography of industrial abandon. Kilo Endgerety ibid] That’s what the crisis had meant. Well, it’s what ‘crisis’ means. That things can go either way. At any time. A patient is in a crisis when an operation or a dose of chemical or electricity will leave it either alive or dead, I guess. Everybody knew it was there.

The three musketeers, as Lumpy thinks of things at the moment, swung into action as and when instructed. Lumpy was wrong, course, because they were a long way from being knights. Their individual standing in the ‘Great Chain of Theft-being’ was, in fact, still only five or six notches above the ‘Type II (a) disorganised opportunist thief’[1]. And this progression had taken time and effort. They were, though, coming to an end of a form of training. They didn’t all know this. And like all training it had had its ups and downs, runs of form, periods of disillusion and, in some of their cases at least, spells in youth offender units. But, in a few moves, they could take a lot of pieces in a very short space of time and were currently on a bull run. They were, however, up against it. The Darwinian struggle between the technology and manpower employed by the retailer and legal enforcement bodies had coalesced, in contemporary historico-psycho-geographical terms, into a eager and rapacious predator of upstart shoplifters, organised gangs and opportunist wannabees. It was Coily who knew that they were running out of air, but the thought of attempting anything more ambitious had never yet occurred to any of them.

So what had happened to the Silver Castle, like what happened to thousands of them all over, was that, once they were unable to pay councils for rent and even basic up keep , the directorate of the town’s Silver Castle Arcade Project had presided over a gradual decline from high profitable zone, polished chrome, muscle bound suited security, palm trees and cars on stands to frayed but still high P/E ratios plateau with slightly scuffed shiny floors with coloured water fountains, second hand cars on stands, bijou coffee bars and gadget shops and gleaming consumer promise of a place, to a scuffed flooring, empty water featured, one third full car park, roof parts working loose exposing wires, ducts and pipes for weeks on end and it wasn’t tropically warm anymore, empororium. It had happened slowly, though, over that eighteen twenty months, like a scar fixing itself and, in the near-end, the emporium, opened in fanfare that ten years before, had morphed into a sometimes echoey place where functional shops sold tea or scoop food and things for the kitchen. The Castle had entered a littered, continual seeming end-time (an ‘everything must go’ phase that roamers and the likes of Danny had interpreted in a literal sense) ever since I got here. Though I don’t think there was a connection.

The plan was stark but only worked in shops where the changing rooms were in plain view of people in the shop. As it had happened, quite a few. Essentially, the two women would just get changed. But in that accidentally on purpose observable way. In this, they would distract the security guards (in this instance a recently unemployed twenty year old man, nametag ‘Andrew’, who had been sent to Scars’ Clothing (‘Street style at Street Prices!’), very much against his will by the staff at the local Work Fend, with whom they had long since lost patience, and an even larger man who stood wherever he could so as to never see his own reflection) allowing Lump to use the detag to neutralise the magnet alarms and quickly slip each garment into his prized and gilded shopping bag as smart and ironed as Lumpy’s nap cut suit.
The two of them had dubbed it, ‘The Sexing of the Guard’, after trying it out in London on a weekend staying at friends a year or two back.

The big name topplers cleared out first, then the space rented to medium to lower sized firms, the tight margin just in timers like ‘Scar’, ‘Hempel and Forage’ (unofficial slogan ‘Cheap - but Rubbish!’) and the bargain basement electronic/computer conglomerates, all reasoning, wrongly as it turned out, that the upturn had arrived and things could would get back to normal soon, not eventually. All the clichés and media management had got aired, like ‘we must stop talking ourselves into depression’ ‘vicious circles’ and ‘catch 22 situations’ where the shops become less attractive so people don’t go so businesses don’t sell… even blaming the immigrants and I know, I had to collate a lot of it.

It was Sharon who was key to the plan. Lisa, a former cell mate of hers, had more of an apprentice’s role in the gang, and had become an important feature of this whole particular shop-lifting technique, but it was Sharon who played the major part. It wasn’t a very sophisticated way of liberating merchandise but it had worked in the five out of six times they’d tried it and the only time things had gone wrong, it had been Lumpy’s fault and the guards, unexpectedly, had been female.

Danny had half come up with the idea alone in his room, whilst under the effects of ‘K’, a horse tranquilliser, that had left him for a few excruitiating moments but a neuron’s width away from a full blown psychosis, one Sunday afternoon. Whilst trying to keep a grip on things, teeth and fists clenched, sweat pouring down his face, muscles rigid, all the usual, usually wonderful, effects, but this time far far too intense, he had hallucinated a way of dodging the unpleasant aggravation of having to physically assault security staff before they, the unshoppers, felt confident enough to make their way hurriedly out of premises and general area.

The malls were an important part of what had happened.

Their plan came off smooth as cream on a plate. There was no hitch from the moment Sharon caught the guards’ attention to the meet up on the car park’s fourth floor. No one noticed that had stuff gone missing until much later, from the cashier, to the security guards to the CCTV operators and viewers in a Styro office far away in the Indian sub-continent somewhere who, though paid a going rate, were failing in their function as a cost efficient means of alerting homeland staff of imminent and actual thievery taking place in thousands of shops throughout our sector.

I was stood in the pub which wasn’t far from the place. Right at the top of the hill near the ring road about half a mile away. The pub – meaning the Drug and Bottle - in town. The town specialises in off-beat sounding pub names. Course not, Jug and Bottle it’d be. I say half a mile away because the first time I saw Danny I didn’t know who he was yet, of course and he must have run it in less than a minute. If the time stamps were right. I’m sat there waiting for another half of the local lager I’d become partial to since I’d landed. This stuff is a pound a pint. No really. Ok, it tasted like pound coins do, but after half a glass of the stuff, it didn’t seem to matter that much. I thought I’d lost the taste for beer, after all that had happened, but, with things being the way they were, and are I suppose, it worked out economically.
It was a busy Saturday afternoon, it’d be, the place was packed and even though there was a Rozzers’ Den was only thirty second’s dash away, the interior was clogged with fumes of various stripe and saw a lot of trade of one kind and another going on. Real cigarettes from the bar-maid, Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Speed over there, the dope-fiend’s corner that way and, by the book shelf in the other direction, the sex workers of various gender configurations, all warped and wefted into the pub’s swirling throng.

I had made myself invisible. I’d buy some supply and then settle down at a neutral part of the bar shielded by columns or in a corner table below the tv screen where nobody wanted to sit. Just about the time the football finished, this figure bounded in and some of the light stops coming into the pub. I turned casually as I could. No one commented or moved or asked him to leave or left themselves or threw him out or even, really, looked up. Even though he was like a human alarm, he somehow fitted in with the Drug's surroundings. General piercings and tattoos, he had the complete range of accessories, a shaved head and a bag of proletarian shopping crammed under a massive forearm.

He moved through the gaff with grace and easy expansive gesticulation. From over the other side of the wide pub, he moved and traded from table to table to clump of client to solitary drinker in methodical fashion. I lost track, distracted by the music. Once a song of the band’s came onand I was waiting for it to happen again. It never did.

He moved his way round and over to the side of the pub I was in whilst I was away thinking about tunes. Id felt an inertia slowly gather round me and mutate into a something more like a social paralysis. I looked up and realised I was 'trapped'. I remember a brief sensation of being drawn into something. Like hearing a plane flying far away overhead on a quiet Summer’s day. I coughed needlessly but hacked up something anyway.
“Bad cough, fella.” Danny shouted, close and over the juke box din, with a tilted back look.
“Too much choke.” I said, gulped some beer and focused on a neutral point half way between the bar and the bottles of spirits, nodding.
“I can get you some cheap fags. Real ones. Sort that out for ya.” He shouted over the noise.
I nodded.
“Addidas trackies John Fish shirts?” He insisted frowning this time.
“Not my cut. Look….” I just wanted to be left alone to get drunk. He looked like he felt like he’d spotted a mug. I delved into a jammed pocket and hand him a note.
“Sthis?”
He had. I didn’t know. Well it was a twenty, we both knew that. But that’s not what he meant. Obviously. Things like this don’t happen, he meant. No one, but no one gives money away for nothing, especially coin like this, unless there was some conspiracy or other. But there wasn’t any plot at that point. It was just a stupid attempt to parachute out of the situation. I hoped that by giving him a couple of folds, that that would be that. I’d have bailed out. I’d let the money talk and thought it would shield me from unpleasantness. Something against all the programme’s rules. Sorry Studds. Where ever you are. But then again, I don’t blame myself for what happened. They were your rules. I should feel bad? Well, maybe a little. Yes, that river in Egypt.
‘You fucking queerin me up mate?’ he shouted.
I looked incredulous. ‘Nah, nah. Just had a lucky day on the nags - just feeling a bit, generous’ I shouted back, improvising. He looked at the genuine note, then at me, pulled a face turned and walked off shaking his head through the multi-coloured crowd of drunks.

Sometimes Studds’ rules were completely abstract and inapplicable. Like the excracable ‘Random acts of kindness’ - all a bit BT40’s. I’d come to the conclusion that they had been conjured up with the intention that they couldn’t be followed at all times with any degree of consistency or without getting into a stupid looking analysis-paralysis. It almost compelled you, sometimes, to act randomly. ‘ Everything in moderation’, he’d once said, ‘Even moderation.
If I had been lucky that day I’d have ghosted out of the place before I’d set eyes on Danny Quinn. If not Quinn then not Coily if not Coily then not the branch then not, not the rest of it. Day 466 - it was about three weeks since I’d left London.

[1] T.Govern: ‘Towards a Categorisation of post-Depression Urban Crime across the Northern Sector’ in The Philosophy of Poverty: [P. Studds (Ed.): BT8, Richtown Press]

And the upshot of all those 'good' times...

2009-04-23T11:30:00.000-07:00

"It will require two full parliaments of mounting austerity to repair." [Institute for Fiscal Studies].

Of course, not for those in parliament or those who have already done very well out of the long boom and are doing even better out of the bail-outs. It's like being slapped in the mush with a bucket of shit - it really is that black and white. The rich wallow, the poor cop for it.

Soon open rebellion will be called for.

'When are you coming back....?' Grammar clampdown

2009-04-22T23:19:00.000-07:00

"The acting chief financial officer of troubled US mortgage giant Freddie Mac was found dead in an apparent suicide this morning.
David Kellermann, 41, was found dead in his home in Vienna, Virginia on the outskirts of Washington, before dawn. Fairfax county, Virginia police said no foul play was evident and that the cause and manner of death was under investigation by the state medical examiner. CNN reported Kellermann had hung himself, citing a law enforcement source. Police spokeswoman Lucy Caldwell said police responded to the house just before 5am (10am BST). She would not say who called police but said others were in the house." [Guardian]

It's 'hanged' himself for crissakes. If he'd hung himself he'd be in a picture frame and not a box, now.

'Oh Freddy. Freddie Mac when are you comin' back?'

The Poor List Ch.7 - Danny's first appearance in the order of things

2009-04-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

[PL1/40 “Proletarian Shopping”)

Danny threw the door open and stood in the pub’s doorway, goods under his arm cigarette in mouth. His face registered a ‘Where the fuck am I again?’ look, then he smiled a massive grin. The noisy interior was crammed. He strolled in and leered jauntily at two young women he half knew. They sneered in return.
The pub was built into the slope and as people walked by outside all you could see were their legs. It was the type of pub regulars would hammer on the windows to get in of a morning. Danny Quinn wasn’t a drinker but a regular anyway. This morning he had less time than usual. He glanced around and trying to spot familiar punter. Barefoot Karl over in the corner, Hitch, Dover, Trist. They’d do. He sauntered over. Barefoof Karl and the people at his table nodded obliquely to the looming figure. He had to shout over the music and the TV
“Course they’re fucking nicked”, he said to someone next to barefoot Karl “I can get rid of the tags, obviously. Fifteen. Tenner then. Here you go.”
Business was brisk. He moved quickly from table to table with the bag of clothes and other sundries, (men’s and unisex sport’s wear children’s tops, DVD’s, perfume, console games) and took some more orders. By the time the landlord noticed, he’d got through practically all the stuff.
“You again. Fuck off out of it,” the landlord shouted and moving quickly, raised the partition, but he needn’t have bothered. Quinn had taken a gulp of Triste’s lager and had eeled his way back out onto the dusty main street. He dodged smoothly but obtrusively through the cut price crowd up the main route to this weekend’s hq.
He was to meet up with Coily and Lump again back in Spearman’s. They were filling in slips and drinking tea from plastic cups, when he got there. Danny sighed royally and sat beside them, on a stool nailed to the floor, under a bright light that made him squint.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Coily asked Quinn.
“Yeah you took your time.”
“Fuck off. Did you flog all yours?”
“Nah. The underwear thing. I told you it wouldn’t work. Go’ shut o’ the trainers though.”
“Cool. Another run and we should have enough. Keep the frills for your sicko life Lumpy eh. "Where next? We haven’t done the Castle for a while. ”
“Keep your voice down for fuck’s sake,” Lump said.
“Get us a tea Coily.”
Spearman’s betting shop was tucked in between a charity shop and a pub all under the car park next to the Abbey House tower block. This was why it was always dark when you looked out of the window. The place was half full. The clientele was all male and there was an atmosphere of almost reverential silence. Horses were paraded on the screens for the Chepstow twelve fifteen. The commentators’ up market voices, consoling and posh, droned on. The majority of the people listening were from the sharp end of the way things were, though, Coily thought. Apart from the odd copper. Which was why Lump’s advice was well placed.
“Look at all these fucking numbers and shit. What the fuck?” Danny said and frowned at the selection of Racing Post pages pinned to the wall.
“Why call a horse ‘Biter arse’?” Danny said then checked his mobile. He sipped his tea and glanced at the three women clerks behind the plastic screen at counter as they dealt with a pre-race rush of five or six shambling men.
“It says ‘Bitter Harvest’. Twenty to one. Might have a throw at them odds.”
“Wever. Lumpy, Shaz and your slag are meeting us down the precinct in twenty minutes. We’ll do Scars and the Slipped Disc and that Superdrug and that. Reminds me you 'ave got in touch with Posh Dave?”
“Don’t worry. Is sorted.”
“She’s too up market for you Dannyboy”
“Fuck and off Coily you goat fucker.” Coil stared at Danny’s multi-pierced face and extended his middle finger from a grubby fist towards him and turned to the sodden race build-up on the high screens.
Adrian Haze who had for years answered to ‘Lumpy’ from family, friends and enemies stared glumly at a work poster. On it a smiling family stood against a blue background reaching out towards a woman in a suit smiling behind a desk, a man, also smiling, in a white laboratory coat with a clip board and a young black girl in a fork lift truck smiling and giving the thumbs up sign and behind them other officials and workers smiling and beckoning, all in a happy circle.
The design had been amended in blue biro. Pert breasts had been drawn on the female characters as well as some of the male ones. A crudely scrawled elephantine penis coiled its way from the father in the middle of the scene and behind the suited woman who had had her eyes and mouth artistically drawn over into smudgy ecstasy. In a bubble extending from her mouth, the artist had written, “Anytime big boy”. A similar more untidily executed bubble from the technician’s agape mouth exclaimed “Me next.”
The “going forward” part of the poster’s slogan had been modified to read “going down”. There was an email address of sexual content, mirrored swastikas and ‘AWA’ scrawled on the technician’s coat.
“You ever wonder though”, Lump said into the rising volume of shouts and pleas as the race got underway, “What it’d be like to, like, have proper jobs?”
Danny looked at Lump who looked at Coil who looked at Danny and then at Lump. In the background the upper class southern voice droned to a mechanical sounding climax. People grimaced and shouted. A few made towards the door screwing betting slips up and throwing them away in disgust.
They stayed for two more races, which Coil and Lumpy, taken together, came out of just above even.
“Come on, “ finishing his tea, “stuff won’t nick itself.” Coil said later.

Outside, Danny carried out a biological event in the doorway right opposite Spearman’s betting office. Once leaving the doorway step, the stream of warm yellow water picked up dust, chocolate wrapping and, for a short distance, a small tin can, as it flowed its way, with seeming purpose, towards the centre of town.