Is this a dagger I see before me?

The news that poor working class people are stabbing and killing each other in larger numbers than usual would tend to make you think that young people these days need a strong dose of discipline, a week in the stocks or a year in the army if your only source of information was Sky News and the Today programme, that is.

The 'reality' is more complex and ambiguous, of course. In fact, there is no major increase in knife crime.

"According to the British Crime Survey, knife-enabled crime (any crime involving a knife) over the past decade has remained stable at around 6-7% of all crime, comprising 30% of all homicides.
In fact, the most recent crime survey by the Metropolitan police showed that knife crime has actually dropped by 15.7% over the past two years, from 12,122 to 10,220 incidents"

That's no consolation for those affected by the nasty events that can well happen in Britain's towns and estates, but is a distance from the doom mongering in the media. This has all the characterstics of a media scare - perhaps to distract from the ugly economic situation, perhaps to just fill up the air time. Whatever it is, the meeja always fail to give any context to these crimes. There was a brief appearance by Lord Ouseley, the Former Chief Executive of the Commission for Racial Equality in Britain, on Hard Talk on the BBC who dared dared to mention the p word in relation to this problem. For once, the presenter did get 'hard' on a guest and forced Ouseley to back down by saying that even if people existed in alienated, fractured and poverty filled backgrounds this didn't excuse them from personal responsibility. Personal responsibility.

Another feature of the political context of this latest scare is the governance's emphasis on increasing police harassment of young people and minorities. ". . .civil rights campaigners in the capital have urged caution instead of this knee-jerk and heavy-handed response to the recent incidents. They have called attention to the fact that historically the use of “stop and search” has discriminated against black minorities and, more recently, Asian and Middle-Eastern ethnic minorities. Government figures suggest black people are six times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people, while Asians are almost twice as likely."

The wider political context is one of living in a country that has launched an illegal attack on two other countries - using far more dealy weapons than a puny knife in order to rob them - and getting away with it. So what kind of fucking example is that? If we're looking for role models for the UK youth, you wouldn't look for them in Westminster.

And historically, Britain is a very violent place. Everybody loves Shakespeare (yeh) - but have you seen MacBeth? There's a knife crime every ten minutes or so and I imagine some politician somewhere pontificating on the need to tighten up the laws get the government's message out loud and clear and convene a press conference or two, defend the occupation of Iraq, deny the existence of poverty in the UK and then sit through the Scottish gore fest and find it really entertaining.

Poor people's violence is haphazard and tragic - rich people's violence is truly sadistic, planned and psychotic. The former is used in the media to help cover up the latter.

And it's only motor racing

Tanya Gold - a "Jewish princess" - springs to the defence of Maxwell Mosley the sad old bstrd at the centre of the orgy scandal where prostitutes..cleaning..lice...then he said "...." then she ....spank....and spanked he ...then she...ended with a cup of tea. etc.

She reckons that even if Mosley's antics had Nazi connotations it doesn't matter because it was all consensual. What does have Nazi connotations is the genocide in Darfur, she argues, which we are all ignoring because of concentrating on this purile story. And his private life is private. She also has a dig at BMW for their denunciation of Mosley since their major shareholders supported the use of Jewish slave labour.

Our private life is private. It's funny that when upper class arseholes like this get caught with their knob in the jam, the word 'privacy' gets flung about like a piece of shit - but when you are I are unlucky enough to get gripped by rozzer and every orifice lit up and inspected - then it's 'The innocent have nothing to hide'. So fck ff with that bogery - if you're in the public sphere and you're caught troughing it up- you deserve all you get. Sure - everyone's bedrooms their own, like Tan says, but even then - if you invite five paid ladies into your boudoir what the hell do you expect? This guy has got a degree from Oxford - (not that that has much indication of the probity of a chep's character I guess) - so you think he'd have worked it all out. But his crumbly old todger was doing the thinking for him at the time.

Also, it is possible to think that a 68 year old bloke should be helping the deserving of his parish with the fortune and experience he has amassed over a lifetime instead of spunking it all away like this. Sure, it's reassuring to think that sex still figures in the lives of seventy year old and no one likes a prude but to butch this thing out like he has (what with his vote of confidence from his positioned and paid off cronies in his sad little organisation) shows a contempt for all that.

It is strange, too, that anyone would want to defend this pathetic man - all that education and money and what do you end up doing ...paying women to have sex with you and dress up in Nazi uniforms. Is prostitution consensual? I doubt it. Does the debate mean people don't talk about Darfur? This type of subject changing tactic is revealing. Why not say 'Oh lovely weather we're having'? Gold's chiding here is disingenuous - I've looked through the archives and she hasn't written about the subject at all herself, she likes to talk about shopaholicism, Carry On films and Big Brother - the more serious stuff.

The Mosley episode, small and tawdry as it is, shows the base corruption of the British social order. Mosley is a corrupt name - his organisation is corrupt, the sport is corrupt and the government he corruptly supported is corrupt. Where does all this corruption come from? The system this grim little worm wriggles about in. So no, its not only motor racing.

Couldn't run a bath

The news that the British government is to allow private companies to manage 'failing' NHS hospitals is no real surprise but it still manages to piss people off. The idea is tediously predictable and perfunctorily announced, "Bringing in commercial companies to run hospitals is one of several options that the Government has drawn up for improving the performance of NHS trusts that fail to meet new standards on quality, finance and care. "

They feel so confident in the idea that they have changed people's behaviour, that they have changed the way we think about social provision, care and politics that the governance can blithely presume we'll swallow the hiving off of the NHS because 'private good public bad'. It is assumed that we will ignore the inconvenient data about the current banking crisis, the swathe of corruption in the city and the stony faced theft, in the shape of huge shareholder dividends, that the former public utilities have inflicted on the public.

No one is convinced by the weasly words of Bradshaw "the NHS will retain control of assets and the staff will still be NHS staff” so it's not really privatisation. Of course it is you lying get. The chairman of the BMA puts it better when he remarks, "They [private companies] would just aim to make a profit rather than the driver being the high-quality care our patients need."

These Bradfoar and Bingley and Northern Cock types really shouldn't be trusted with a tombola at a fête. Let them run the accident and emergency??? Fucking well put them in there more like.

UN food summit and nothin

The world's hungry have more important things to think about than the drone fest drawing to its dismal end in Rome this week. There has been no promises of any aid, "...it's not that type of conference, it's more about bilding momentum for change" we are informed by a breathless BBC hack, no writing off of debt and no change in the programme - only "free markets can solve the crisis".

The sight of the politico luvvies like the odious Berlusconi and the ridiculous Sarkozy preening their way up the red carpet into the hall for the banquet was presented on the TV sans-irony of course. They want us to know they really don't give a shit - this is just airtime for them, a chance to get their mushes in the media and play up their personal political share prices. It looked appalling but so did Cannes and it's all showbiz.



The real debate, when Britain wasn't trying to change the subject by its references to Mugabwe (it was amusing to hear Brown say that the Zimbabwean PM's policies had brought starvation to his own people, after all, starvaing African people is the West's job), was over the role of free market economics in solving the problem of a billion facing starvation. The New Statesman puts it nicely saying,
"This latest food emergency has developed in an incredibly short space of time - essentially over the past 18 months. The reason for food "shortages" is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets. Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials. It's called the "commodities super-cycle" on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.
The rocketing price of wheat, soybeans, sugar, coffee - you name it - is a direct result of debt defaults that have caused financial panic in the west and encouraged investors to seek "stores of value". These range from gold and oil at one end to corn, cocoa and cattle at the other; speculators are even placing bets on water prices." That IS the free market system.

John Hilary makes the obvious point that free market economics have brought about this crisis and that applying more doses of neo-liberalism will exacerbate the problem. Some crank in the coment section replies that 'if only the markets were really free, if only borders were smashed and US and European protectionism were dismantled, then all would be well.'



It is the cry of a true believer - some of them really think that there really is a space where free exchange can take place between equal participants. Under actually existing capitalism, of course, this is impossible. It would mean that the whole massive historical legacy of North against South, the entire unequal infrasctructure, the collosal theft, the hyper-exploitation of and the entire purpose of the system would have to be somehow ignored. And that is even if the capitalists actually wanted a free market. The free market is the ideology, the crushing of expendable African and 'developing' countries is an essentail part of the programme and is the reality.


After thirty years or so of this blindingly obvious set up this ideological chimera (of which the vacuous UN summit is just one turdy aspect) you'd have thought people woukd have kept such trash thoughts to themselves.

The most important thing to remember is that there is more than enough food to go round - it's just people can no longer afford it. They'll just have to believe in the free market system. . .


Meanwhile



















“When crop prices are climbing, holding inventory for future sale can yield higher profits than selling to meet current demand, for example. Or if prices diverge in different parts of the world, inventory can be shipped to the more profitable market.”

the smile on a dog

Solipsism is the idea that there is only one mind. My mind (or if you're thinking of the problem and I am er, not) - your mind. Thus either everything around me is the product of my imagination and I am the subject of some vast matrix like illusion (replete with morons like the head of the Independent school people - see below) on behalf of some unknown being (idealist solipsism, say) or I am the only person whose material brain produces "qualia" or some other such nonsense philo-jargon and the 'others' around me are nothing but carbon based robots with nothing going on between their ears and no 'real' feelings at all.

Some days the former seems a certainty other days the latter.

I am in two minds about solipsism.

Six week arbitrary lock up

Six weeks ago it was half way through April, in six weeks time Summer will have passed ints Zenith and Autumn will be on the horizon. Imagine being locked up for that stretch of time without having done anything? That's looking increasingly likely if Brown gets his way and the 42 day detention gets approval from Parliament this week. And you happen to be on the wrong end of the judicial system whilst innocent, of course.

Brown makes a go of justifying this absurd lock-up idea by saying, unconvincingly, that there will be safeguards and that Britain needs these measures given the high terror threat (see below - if there is no threat the governement is winning and so needs more draconian powers to keep winning and if there is an attack Britain needs more draconian powers, otherwise Britain needs more draconian powers because there are thousands of (too secret to mention) plots being hatched and so Britain needs more draconian powers) and the plots that have been uncovered have been of such mind boggling horror that well, more draconian powers are needed. Brown's argument is so pisspoor that he is forced to dredge up Dhiren Barot's name to justify the six week detention order idea. He was the deranged individual who "plotted" to flood the underground back in 2004 and the only evidence the police could find was a few deleted files on his computer - and even they had to admit that the guy was no where near the stage of putting these quarter baked 'plots' into action. Nevertheless he was jailed for life.

With 'evidence' like that why does anyone need 42 days - 42 minutes would do to make some concoction like the case against Barot. So why is the government going ahead with this fearful looking hammer to crack a nut? Wel, since Brown is in conspiracy mode - lets join him. The government knows that the economic situation could get drastic in the coming years and so is girding its armoury of judicial weapons to deal with any civilian rumpus. Convinced? Not quite - then why be convinced by Brown's equal and opposite nonsense?

He's ramming it through Parliament to look hard and to play to the racists in the marginals and to scare them a bit too. Once these bankrupt social democrats realise they've achieved power at the expense of not being able to do any socially real politics - they have to fill their empty lives and careers dreaming up goblins and phantoms to 'fight so as to convince themselves that they're doing something worthwhile. Meanwhile, a world looks down on them and wonder why they're digging such deep graves for themselves.

Nightmare from which I am trying to awake

Francis Fukuyama's idea that history had come to an end was always pure hubris. After the collapse of actuallyt unexisting socialism, the order of things didn't change. Remember all the stuff about peace dividend and a bright classless future? Whilst the symbolic Berlin wall was torn down, more real ones were erected and made of much stronger stuff than bricks and mortar ('nice to see the Israelis keeping up old fashioned traditions though...yeh) - class barriers and the creation of vast unearned/stolen wealth.

And the Cold War was never about ideology - that seems to becoming clearer. It was always about the resource conflict between the US and Russia and its minnions.

It is far from reassuring, but hardly surprising, then that Putin is in Paris firing off "cold war" rhetoric about the US being a 'frightened monster' and urging France to back off from lending the yanks any support. It would be crazy to pick sides here of course....'Neither Washington nor Moscow'.

Sometimes bits of the 'good old days' come round again. . .