Tag: anarchy

Categories
Power Dynamics

Meet the new Universalist Establishment

Corporate Logos

Trendy leftwingers are the new ultra-conformists

Many observers still tend to simplify political analysis on a one-dimensional left / right spectrum. We might use many other scales such as state ownership vs private enterprise, libertarian vs authoritarian, individualism vs collectivism, local vs national, national vs international or environmental friendliness vs economic growth, equality vs meritocracy or cultural diversity versus social cohesiveness, but somehow we still try to place each opinion somewhere on the elusive left-right scale. One could be a libertarian capitalist or an authoritarian environmentalist or even a green advocate of private enterprise or, heaven forbid, a libertarian socialist (namely someone who believes people may one day freely choose to share the fruits of their labour with others). I could go on forever, but I find another key differentiator a much better gauge of political leanings, pro-establishment vs anti-establishment or conformist vs anti-conformist. Rebels just love to exhibit their anti-establishment credentials. But the new-age hipsters who rebelled against the old guard back in the 60s and 70s have become the new conformists. On issue after issue, the radical chic elite are at odds with the more conservative traditional working classes practically everywhere. Most people welcome higher living standards and better working conditions, but they do not necessarily want to redefine culturally entrenched concepts of family and ethno-religious identity. Indeed the most successful way of persuading people to abandon cherished social customs is to lure them away from local communitarian values towards global culture of atomised individual consumers, micro-managed and monitored by a new class of marketers, social workers and supervisors. This transition is beautifully described in Adam Curtis's 3 part documentary The Century of the Self Whenever you consider the merits of any policy, just ask what does the establishment want and why?

Of even greater importance is the real composition of today's power brokers. For some reason the wishful-thinking left clings to the outdated belief the UK establishment still comprises a bunch of White Anglo-Saxon Male Tories, Hereditary Peers and Church of England bishops. They imagine the British establishment would love to turn the clock back to some mythical Victorian golden age when women could not vote, the poor starved and much of the world was subject to racialist colonial rule. Based on this logic all reactionary conservative views are pro-establishment, while enlightened universalist policies are by definition anti-establishment or at least break with the ancien régime. If you measure progress by the demise of the Victorian British establishment and their antiquated values, then we have made huge strides towards a new era of ubiquitous consumer culture.

The spectre of a reactionary nationalist status quo may well have reflected reality at the turn of the 20th century, but today power is very much in the hands of a bunch of global corporations, banks, non-governmental organisations and supranational unions. Organisations as diverse as Tesco, Goldman Sachs, the London Stock Exchange, Microsoft, Google, George Soros's Open Society Foundation, the BBC, CNN, News International, HSBC and the WPP Group (world's largest advertising agency) are all infinitely more powerful that the last remaining British aristocrats and are fully committed to the universalist vision of a new multicoloured borderless world order of happy consumers managed by myriad local agencies. They speak the same politically correct, environmentally aware and culturally inclusive language as the aspirational left. Indeed many former leftists have ended up working for the multifaceted tentacles of our new globalist establishment.

Of the top ten billionaires in the UK, only one descends from the old British aristocracy, The Duke of Westminster at No. 9. Of the other nine, only one other, George G Weston, descends from a British, albeit Anglo-Canadian, family. The other 8 are foreign nationals, recent immigrants or stem from the wider Anglosphere (e.g. the Reuben brothers, Iraqi Jews born in Bombay and migrated to England). Britain's board rooms, media empires and financial institutions are chock-a-block with non-natives, i.e. people whose grandparents did not live in the country before 1945. Now you may welcome this great internationalisation of British society, but it still stands in contrast with most of the resident population, who identify as English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish and whose surnames dominated phone books in the 1950s and 60s. As late as 1997, 75% of the British population could trace their roots to the first settlers of these Isles after the last ice age (as evidenced by Stephen Oppenheimer in the The Myth of British Ancestry) and most of the rest had assimilated almost totally over several generations. Second or third generation Glaswegian Italians or Mancunian Poles have more or less the same outlook on life as their autochthonous neighbours. Naturally most migration before the 1950s occurred within the British Isles, especially since the advent of the industrial revolution. Our elites have always been much more cosmopolitan than their underlings (the Royal family is largely of continental European extraction), but the rapid pace of global convergence has swept aside even the old elites, descended from the Norman French with an admixture of later arrivals from the Huguenots and East European Jews.

Localism vs Globalism

However hard we may try, it is almost impossible to take an absolutist stance on localisation or globalisation, though the direction of travel has accelerated towards the latter. For instance I may argue that we should source food more locally and cut waste, but in many densely populated areas an absolutist interpretation of this policy could mean starvation or having to adapt to a narrow range of staple foods available locally. By contrast if a city were to depend wholly on imports from afar, people could starve within days in the event of a banking collapse or other natural or man-made calamities that may disrupt trade. Both total interdependence and complete isolation have their prices in terms of personal freedom, living standards and happiness.

Anti-Europeanism

The upcoming EU referendum in the UK exposes the growing divide between globalist elites and nativist working classes. In the UK this may manifest itself as oppsosition to the European Union, but elsewhere it is expressed as left or right-branded opposition to neoliberal mercantilism, whether in the guise of the French Front National or the Italian Movimento Cinque Stelle (5 Star Movement led by Beppe Grillo). Universalists claim to stand for progress and lend lip service to ideals such as democracy, womens' rights, sexual freedom and multiculturism, while overseeing the transfer of power away from local institutions to remote organisations that can override any decisions taken locally. Having sold the illusion of democracy to a sceptical public, the cosmopolitan elite now frown upon any expressions of popular opinions as reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic or just plain ill-informed. This is why elitists are keen to give voice to strategic victim groups, whether ethnic minorities, recent immigrants, disability rights' activists, transexuals or careerist women, as long as their aspirations serve a long-term agenda of global convergence with all power vested in a handful of universal corporations. This doesn't mean these perceived victim groups do not have valid grievances, just that the proposed solutions tend to empower remote entities at the expense of traditional institutions. Thus a globalist is more concerned about the rights of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe than those of Muslims in the Middle East or North Africa. If Muslims had viable, stable and largely self-reliant home countries, then they could seek their own path to social betterment. Their culture would evolve in parallel to Western European societies. They could choose which aspects of our culture they wish to adopt and further develop the aspects of their culture that best suit their needs and aspirations. Over a century of Western interference in the Middle East has destabilised the region, leading paradoxically to the emergence of a new more fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, while Christianity in the West has given way to a new atheistic consumer culture devoid of strong family values. The rising cost of parenting in the affluent world has led to a growing demographic divide between the fertile Islamic world and cautious European and East Asian worlds. Mass migration will almost by design create a culture clash that will further empower surveillance bodies. Some believe the end result will be the Islamisation of Europe and indeed in some European cities Muslim children already outnumber those of other religious affiliations. However, I very much doubt the same globalist elite that helped destabilise the Middle East and incessantly promotes fun culture among the world's youth would like to see the transformation of Europe into a new enlarged Caliphate. Rather they trust the immense emotional and technological power of the world's largest media conglomerates to undermine traditional values everywhere and usher in a brave new borderless world of happy consumers and international commuters. Democracy will be little more than petitions asking Starbucks or Apple to pay a little more tax to other global organisations over which we have no real control.

Categories
Power Dynamics

Destabilisation on the eve of WW3

stop bombing

Opinion leaders in the West seem to take four positions on the fast-moving Middle East quagmire:

  1. Some favour more proactive military intervention against our purported enemies and welcome more refugees and economic migrants from the wartorn region allegedly to boost the economy. This group clearly believes not only in the concept of humanitarian wars, but also favour global governance over nation states. It's the classic Blairite position.
  2. Others seem quite gung-ho about bombing the Middle East to smithereens, but are not so keen on accepting refugees to appease popular opinion at home. This is a classic position of rightwing populists. They oppose para-state terrorism with superstate terrorism under the pretext of national security.
  3. Some are keen to welcome as many refugees and economic migrants as possible, but oppose more imperialist intervention. They are keen to do the right thing and blame any social and economic problems on the Western multinationals and US imperialism. However, this faction only ever seems to get its way on migration and despite years of antiwar demonstrations always loses when it comes to support for more military intervention. They claim to oppose destabilisation abroad, but welcome it at home often preferring outsiders to their own reactionary working classes.
  4. A fourth group, with surprisingly large support from pragmatic public opinion, opposes both more military intervention and more mass immigration. Some may characterise this as isolationist and you're certainly a hypocrite if you want to rely on cheap oil from the Middle East. Mind you, many small-c conservatives would also support protected markets, anathema to the largely globalist elites, whether left or right-branded.

Which position is least likely to harm more people and which position is most likely to prevent more terrroists outrages in European cities? Here's another secret: While political elites favour high-risk strategies, often billed as progressive, ordinary people on the ground tend to favour stability. Any policy that's likely to heighten tension, jeopardise job security or cause large population movements tends to meet with popular disapproval. The masses have to be persuaded to support either war or radical socio-environmental change.

If you believe much mainstream propaganda from CNN, Fox News and the BBC and are prepared to forget the details of recent military interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, you may well believe only the enlightened West can save the Middle East from itself. You may be persuaded that this time our leaders support the good guys and will bring about peace and democracy. I think this would be an extremely naive position at odds with mountains of hard evidence, not least the collusion of US, UK and France in arming and funding rival Islamic fundamentalist groups and their massive arms and oil trade with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and UAE.

However, beyond any shred of doubt the infamous Islamic State or Daesh (if you prefer) have committed unspeakable atrocities. We do not know if they are directly linked to the terrorists who killed over 130 innocent people in Paris on 13 November, but we do know large swathes of Europe's Muslim population have lost trust in Western enlightenment and a vast oversupply of cheap labour from migrant communities has exacerbated the deskilling of Europe's native working classes. More important just as the native birth rate has declined in much of Central and Southern Europe, the continent's Muslim population continues to grow both through greater fertility (or rather a greater cultural propensity to go forth and multiply) and through immigration. Whether this phenomenon is good, bad or neutral surely depends on the sustainability of the economic model that has driven such rapid growth worldwide and led so many to move to pastures anew. However, unless we can address the growing sense of helplessness of Europe's disparate parallel communities and keep growing the economy by extracting more resources (by outsourcing production to low wage regions and becoming more reliant on imports), any economic meltdown is bound to see a rise in tensions between rival groups.

In an ideal world we would not need to police borders or even lock our doors at night, but then in such a Shangri-La we would not steal resources from our neighbour's land or fund gang warfare to discredit our rivals. By pursuing a high-risk strategy of more military intervention in a volatile region, our ruling classes have failed in their primary duty to defend their electors. This strategy will only breed more distrust, limit everyone's personal freedom and lead more to escape the inevitable ensuing social mayhem. In a time of so much disinformation and emotive arguments, it takes courage to oppose a double dose of destabilisation.

Winning the War of Minds

Over the last 20 or more or years, one faction has usually won the day, proponents of military interventionism, open borders and global corporatism. Yet some armchair analysts may be forgiven for failing to notice how the media manipulate the traditional left/right divide to win favour with the electorate. Just before the 2003 US/UK occupation of Iraq, two million British people demonstrated against military actions, while public opinion remained steadfastly sceptical of the changing narrative of warmongers. Yet it hardly mattered, once a hardcore of activists had vented their frustration and parliament had staged a token debate with a few cabinet resignations, the then Labour government could rely on the Tory Party to offset any damaged caused by Labour rebels. The US would have gone ahead with or without UK support anyway. Yet within a week of the invasion of Iraq, UK public opinion supported the government again, for evil Saddam Hussein had been toppled. The mainstream left and right often play a game, taking it turn to advocate bold globalising policies and blaming their predecessors for any adverse effects of previous escapades. Thus the Tories blame NewLabour for running an unsustainable deficit and failing to make work pay by offering generous welfare handouts and encourage migrant labourers. Yet in power, the Tories seem just as happy as NewLabour to oversee the transformation of UK Labour market into an international jobs fair. Big business has long considered nation states with protective labour markets obstacles they have to overcome. They also need access to resources to drive economic growth, but are smart enough to appeal to universalism when they want to smash traditional nation state borders and to humanitarianism when they want to topple inconvenient governments in another part of the world.

Right now, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour party doesn't stand a chance in hell of winning the next general election. The Tories rub their hands in glee as the Labour Leader espouses a combination of international welfarism, shortsighted neo-Keynsianism, naive open-borderism and conscientious objection to incessant warmongering. Traditional labour supporters may well support Corbyn on the latter point, but actually care about defending their nation and livelihoods. Cameron has the Tory press and decades of subtle BBC propaganda on his side. He can pose as a responsible defender of Western values, forced to take action against foreign terrorists and despotic regimes. Yet both the Labour Left and the Tory Right have failed to address the primary concerns of most ordinary people, security at home. Your average working class person doesn't care about the details of the Syrian conflcit or whether ISIS/Daesh are a bigger threat to us than Bashar Al-Assad. They care about their neighbourhoods and jobs. If you want to bring terrorism onto the streets of Britain, then a combination of more airstrikes and more open-door immigration could usher in a police state much more authoritarian than anything Augusto Pinochet or Erich Honnecker could have envisaged.

Categories
Computing

The Copy and Paste Design Pattern

copy paste

All good programmers understand the concept of design patterns, creational patterns, structural patterns and behavioural patterns. We apply these patterns in different aspects of our projects. It's good to recognise common patterns so we can generalise routines into reusable functions or objects. I won't bore you with the details because you can learn more from a wealth of other online resources, but two key principles underly all design patterns:

  1. Think strategically about your application architecture
  2. Do not Repeat Yourself, aka, DRY. Organise your code so common routines can be reapplied.

Great, but in my humble experience we should add probably the most common design pattern of them all, though strictly speaking it's an anti-pattern: Adaptive Copy & Paste. The core idea here is if it works for somebody else you can just copy, paste and post-edit their code. Sometimes you can begin with some really good snippets of well-structured and commented code, but all too often online code samples are just formulaic and adapted from textbook boilerplate code. I've seen blocks of code pasted into Javascript files with references to StackOverflow.com complete with source URLs and deployed on high-traffic live sites. Let me show you a simple example:

var GBPExchangeRates = {
    USD: 1.52,
    EUR: 1.38,
    CDN: 1.57,
    SKR: 12.89,
    AUD: 1.45,
    CHF: 1.76
  };
  function convertGBPToEuro(GBPVal) {
    if (typeof GBPVal == 'string') {
        GBPVal = GBPVal.repplace(/[^0-9.]/g,'');
        if (GBPVal.length>0) {
            GBPVal = parseFloat(GBPVal);
        }
    }
        if (typeof GBPVal == 'number') {
        return GBPVal * GBPExchangeRates.EUR
    }
    return 0;
  }
  function convertGBPToUSD(GBPVal) {
    if (typeof GBPVal == 'string') {
        GBPVal = GBPVal.repplace(/[^0-9.]/g,'');
        if (GBPVal.length>0) {
            GBPVal = parseFloat(GBPVal);
        }
    }
    if (typeof GBPVal == 'number') {
        return GBPVal * GBPExchangeRates.USD
    }
    return 0;
  }
  
  var coffeePriceGBP = 1.90;
  
  var teaPriceGBP = 1.10;
  
  var orangeJuicePriceGBP = 1.50;
  
  var coffeePriceEUR = convertGBPToEuro(coffeePriceGBP);
  
  var teaPriceEUR = convertGBPToEuro(teaPriceGBP);
  
  var orangeJuicePriceEUR = convertGBPToEuro(orangeJuicePriceGBP);
  
  var coffeePriceUSD = convertGBPToUSD(coffeePriceGBP);
  
  var teaPriceUSD = convertGBPToUSD(teaPriceGBP);
  
  var orangeJuicePriceUSD = convertGBPToUSD(orangeJuicePriceGBP);

For a beginner, this is honestly not that bad at all. First we set up a simple object of common currencies with their exchange rates. In the real world this may come from some sort of feed. Next we devise a neat function to convert our GBP prices to Euros. Just to make it failsafe, we make sure we can handle strings with a mixture of numerals and currency symbols, which may include commas or other symbols than decimal points. If we only ever had to convert between British pounds and Euros, that would be just fine, though we may convert all prices via some sort of loop rather than make separate calls for each price. Here for just three prices and three currencies, we need to set nine explicit price variants and six explicit function calls.

However, later an intrepid project manager decides we need to support other currencies and may need to convert other units too, such as measurements or clothes sizes, so a busy code monkey promptly copies, pastes and adapts the first method to USD. Not too bad we only have two functions, but they contain much shared logic. Indeed the only difference lies in the conversion rate. We should break down this logic into steps. First we test if the input is a number (Javascript has a generic Number type that covers both floats and integers). Next we strip any non-numeric characters and cast to a float if the result is not empty. Only then do we apply our conversion rate. The above code could be even worse. We could have opted to hard-code the conversion rate. This may work for constants, such inches to centimetres, but it doesn't work for variables like exchange rates. What we need a generic method to convert number-like strings to true floats and another generic method to apply conversion rates from simple key/value objects.
Javascript makes it very easy for us to apply the decorator pattern by extending an object's prototype. This allows us to chain methods in a very self-descriptive way.

String.prototype.numeralsOnly = function() {
    return this.replace(/[^0-9.]/g,'');
}
String.prototype.toFloat = function() {
    var self = this.numeralsOnly();
    if (self.length < 1) {
        self = 0;
    }
    return  parseFloat(self);
}
Number.prototype.toFloat = function() {
    return parseFloat(this);
}
Object.prototype.matchFloat = function(key) {
var obj = this, val;
    if (obj instanceof Object) {
        if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
            val = obj[key];
            if (val) {
                return val.toFloat();
            }
        }
    }
    return 0;
}
Number.prototype.convert = function(fromUnit,toUnit,units) {
    if (units instanceof Object) {
        return this * (
        units.matchFloat(toUnit) / units.matchFloat(fromUnit)
        );
    }
}

We then apply a simple conversion table:

  var rates = {
    GBP: 1,
    USD: 1.53,
    EUR: 1.37,
    YEN: 132.2,
    RUB: 12.7
  };

Then if we were to allow users to convert to the currency of their choice, we could simply add prices in the base currency (in this case GBP) via some hidden element and then apply the conversion factor via the Document Object Model (or DOM):

  $('table thead .currencies .option').on('click',function(e){
    var it = $(this),
      tb = it.parent().parent().parent().parent(),
      selEl = it.parent().find('.selected');
    if (selEl.length < 1) {
      selEl = it.parent('em').first();
    }
    var selCurr = selEl.text().trim().toUpperCase(), tgCurr = it.text().trim().toUpperCase();
    tb.find('.price').each(function(i){
      var td = $(this),
      nVl = td.attr('data-gbp').toFloat().convert('GBP',tgCurr,rates);
      td.html(nVl.toFixed(2));
    });
    
  });

This may look like more code, but we now have a solution that works with any currencies and any number of data items to be converted. Moreover, our convert method may be applied to any units. If we wanted to present volumes in either millilitres or fluid ounces we would just include our decorator methods as a library, set up a conversion table and write a short DOM script. 90% of the code would have been tested for other use cases:

var volumeUnits = {
    ml: 1,
    l: 1000,
    floz: 29.5625
}

Good programmers always think out of the box, not just how to solve the current problem as presented by a project manager, but how do I solve other problems like this? More important, we should ask how to make our code more maintainable and easier to test.

Common Mistakes

  1. Placing editorial content in code files that only developers know how to edit: e.g. A senior manager has decided to edit some text on your company's online shop. The only reason she needs to involve you in this editorial change is because your predecessor placed the text in a template or even worse embedded it verbatim on line 1451 of a fat controller file. What should you do? To make your life easy you could just edit the offending line and write a note for future developers that this text is hard-coded in such and such a file. Management will then think that whenever they wish to edit content they need to ask your project manager to ask you to apply some cryptic code change. However, later they will review their IT budget and decide you are too expensive and then outsource the whole project to a low-wage country or replace it with a state-of-the-art content management system that let's them edit any content without any programming knowledge. What you should do is suggest all such content should be editable in a special admin area and all hard-coded text, media or numbers should be replaced with references to editable content.
  2. Quoting one programming language in another: This is surprisingly common. The main reason for doing so is to inject server-side variables into client-side scripts, e.g. using PHP to build a Javascript routine with a few variables generated dynamically by the server. Not only does this make your Javascript very hard to debug, but it inevitably leads to more repetitive and thus slower Javascript. If you want to fetch data from the back-end, you should inject it as hidden attributes that Javascript can read or simply inject some JSON easily converted from native server-side objects or make an asynchronously request with a JSON response. Keep your javascript lean and mean and ideally in separate files, so your browser can cache these resources more efficiently. If you're using backbone.js or jQuery or other framework, these can be loaded from a content delivery network or CDN.
  3. Repeating routines: Whenever you find yourself repeating a routine more than once, you need a new function or at they very least a loop:
    var d = new Date(item.created);
   item.created_date = d.getDate() + '/' + (d.getMonth()+1) + '/' + d.getFullYear();
   
   var d = new Date(item.modified);
   item.modified_date = d.getDate() + '/' + (d.getMonth()+1) + '/' + d.getFullYear();

This is messy. What we need is a generic date conversion function:

var isoDateToEuroDate = function(strDate) {
    var d = new Date(strDate);
     return d.getDate() . zeropad(2) + '/' + (d.getMonth()+1) . zeropad(2) + '/' + d.getFullYear();
}

And if we're doing a lot of date manipulation,we might like to include a date library to make our code simpler. Your bosses may not notice that you are just writing the same code over and over again, but if your code becomes very expensive to maintain, they will either ditch it or outsource your work to some hapless code monkeys on a fraction of your wage.

Categories
Power Dynamics

Imagine there’s no countries…

Utopia or dystopia

Reflections on Global Convergence

As an idealist teenager John Lennon's Imagine became my anthem. I yearned for a future devoid of the seemingly pointless nationalist rivalry and imperialism that had fuelled two world wars and enslaved millions in the colonial era. I dreamed innocently of a world where different peoples would learn from each other, share their experiences and cultures altruistically and fairly. Yet as I travelled around Europe, South America, Southern Africa and India, another reality emerged. Far from converging on a new environmentally sustainable and egalitarian world order with genuine cultural exchange, the world was converging rapidly on a new model of hyper-consumerism based on the North American dream. As the increasingly globalised world media, albeit localised in a multitude of idioms, spread awareness of the 2-car suburban family with all mod cons, traditional alternatives lost their appeal. Suddenly everyone wanted a washing machine, fridge, car, TV and holidays in the sun. Anything less might now be viewed as some kind of denial of human rights. If you enjoy these luxuries you may reasonably wonder why you should deny them to those who through no fault of their own were born in a low-wage country, where with a lower purchasing power people may not afford all the gizmos of early 21st century life that many of us take for granted. This begs the question, can we ratchet up global consumption to sustain 8 billion people (the world population is forecast to peak at between 10 and 11 billion sometime mid century) with a Western European lifestyle? That would require 4 billion motor vehicles, millions more miles of multilane highways and high-speed railways, a huge rise in air traffic, and four to five-fold rise in electricity consumption, even taking into account improvements in energy efficiency. Even if we could convert our entire car fleet to electric power, we'd still need billions of tonnes of steel, aluminium and plastics as well as copious supplies of lithium for mission-critical batteries. Yet some wishful thinkers would rather believe the only reason we have not yet refined technology to accommodate 10 billion happy consumers in perfect harmony with our ecosystem is because of a combination of evil capitalism, repressive regimes and remnant border controls that prevent people from escaping third world hell holes.

An apparently well-meaning group of left-branded activists have recently staged protests under the No Borders banner in Calais. As their name suggests they want the complete abolition of border controls. If corporations can operate globally without restrictions, then why can't human beings? Their demands stand in stark contrast to widespread opposition among millions of ordinary Europeans to growing levels of immigration. Then Germany's business-friendly government announced they would accept as many as 800,000 refugees (and other migrants) this year. As migrants continued to flow through Southern and Eastern Europe to reach the more generous welfare states of Sweden, Germany and the UK, incessant media pressure mounted for more countries to take their fair share. The stage is set for the perfect storm in the next phase of globalisation, as ethnically diverse groups of natives and newcomers compete to gain access to higher pay and living standards. Newcomers fail to understand why they cannot enjoy the fruits of what is by any measure a globally integrated economy, while natives all too often remain not just sceptical of the alleged benefits of mass immigration, but see their wages compressed as the practical cost of living keeps rising.

Global Village

For the sake of argument let us just indulge the universalist fantasy, prevalent in much of the allegedly green left, that as we are all human beings in an increasingly interconnected world, we may as well just abolish all borders and let people move freely wherever they see fit.

If your ideal society is some sort of post-modern metrosexual vegetarian hippie commune where everyone shares a worldview broadly based on the 1969 Woodstock festival but with state-of-the-art smartphones and designer-label fashion accessories resembling a typical London advertising agency, borders would be pointless. Everyone would share the same godless politically correct mindset, speak the same language, watch the same movies and worship one or more global brands, a jetsetting, peace-loving generation eager to explore the world. Except they'd all be fairly rich and would only travel to embellish their facebook profile and boost their CV.

I agree borders are a major inconvenience for globetrotters. I've had a few unpleasant exchanges with border guards myself. In 1990 I was refused entry into Argentina on a British passport while my Italian partner was welcome to enter the country visa-free. After waiting 2 hours, I was granted a temporary 10 day visa. In 1999 I had my backpack humiliatingly ransacked (exposing two rolls of film in the process) by a Kalashnikov-wielding Namibian border guard. In the early 80s I can recall being detained by a Dutch border guard because my garishly dyed hair and earring did not match my 2 year-old passport photo. But by far the most awkward border crossings I endured were between West and East Berlin. On one occasion I sported a red SWP fist badge. The East German border guard was not amused as I explained it stood for International Socialism and then discovered a crumpled copy of the magazine of the SWP's tiny West German sister organisation. Just 6 years later jubilant crowds knocked the infamous Berlin Wall down. Later as the Schengen Zone expanded to include Poland and Baltic states, one could travel from Portugal through Spain, France, Germany and Poland without ever having one's documents checked. Just 30 years ago longstanding communities were torn apart by arbitrary borders imposed by superpowers. Now not only is Europe largely borderless, but the ruling elites plan to open the continent's doors to millions of economic migrants and refugees. Many cities and suburbs have already been transformed from mildly cosmopolitan urban districts that still reflected the cultural traditions of their provincial hinterlands to microcosms of a rapidly converging global village of diverse transient communities. Cities have come to resemble airport terminals populated by a motley crew of international commuters frequenting localised variants of the same global brand stores and restaurants.

I should admit a selfish personal interest in maintaining regional cultural diversity. For me part of the joy of visiting another locale is to experience different customs, ways of life, philosophical outlooks, expressions of humanity, belief systems, cuisines and languages. I admit such differences are not always convenient. I once had trouble ordering a meal with a monoglot Czech waitress in the pre-Internet era before I had a chance to buy a phrase book. During a four week exchange with an Indian family on the outskirts of Delhi my stomach took two weeks to adapt to Uttar Pradesh cooking, bucket showers and squat toilets. I was the only non-Indian in the neighbourhood. Now these differences are either commoditised as regionally branded dishes and fashion accessories available worldwide or are submerged by a global lifestyle. Cultural diversity in Europe's metropolises is just a temporary illusion as different ethnic communities adapt to a bland new superculture, often at odds with most of the world's traditional cultures.

However, many radical universalists view real cultural diversity as an anachronism. We may celebrate our differences and share recipes, but national cultures may soon become mere historical artefacts of interest largely to ethnologists, preserved only in vestigial formats for tourists, a little like Maori Dances of Life performed at New Zealand's All Blacks national rugby team matches or quaint signs in Manx or Cornish, now defunct languages resurrected only by local enthusiasts.

Global Fantasy

So what would happen if all border checks disappeared? 30 years ago most people in Africa, Southern and Eastern Asia would have simply been too poor to take advantage of their new travel freedoms. Even today many would rather stay within their native communities than risk uncertainty in foreign lands. Yet the world today is a radically different place as hundreds of millions have already abandoned their ancestral rural homelands for large conurbations. Moreover, we live in an unprecedented era of instant telecommunication, peak population and, more disturbingly, peak consumption. Never have so many wanted to consume so much and so rapidly. So now with the consumerist genie of out of the proverbial bottle, it seems only logical for millions more young people to migrate to where the best economic opportunities present themselves. I've experienced this myself as an IT contractor. "Would you move to Dubai as an Oracle database administrator", enquires an IT recruiter, "Surely many locals would like such an opportunity" I reply. It seems all countries experience both high youth unemployment and a skills shortage.

As long as migration is controlled, substantial differences can remain in welfare provision, workers' rights, environmental protection, tax regimes and salaries. The UK's population has risen by nearly 7 million in just 15 years, its fastest rate ever since the early 19th century, almost entirely due to record levels of net migration. Yet seven million extra human beings are a mere drop in the ocean compared to 6 billion human beings who do not yet enjoy Western European living standards. Some have argued the free movement of labour enshrined in the 1993 Maastricht Treaty worked well when the EU only had 15 member states with fairly comparable living standards. However, without overriding economic motives, inter-EU migration remained relatively balanced. By contrast when countries have huge differences in wealth, migratory flows tend to become unbalanced. We see that both within countries and internationally. For much of the 20th century the British Isles saw a steady drift of best and brightest from the North of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland to the Southeast of England. Likewise Southern Italians would migrate to the industrial North. However, governments would intervene to redress the imbalance. In the 1990s many Northern Italians grew tired of subsidising the South and supported the Lega Nord, who wanted to secede from the rest of Italy. Little did they know that their taxes would soon not only subsidise Sicily, Campania and Calabria, but much of Eastern Europe and a growing influx of migrants from Africa and Middle East too.

Life as an Emigré

Fed up with life at home, I migrated myself to Italy at a time when just as many Italians were in the UK. I belonged to a tiny minority that felt a little disillusioned with British cultural decadence in the mid 80s and relished the opportunity to learn Italian, a different outlook on life and new ways of doing things. Cultural change catches your attention much more when you return to a place after a lengthy interlude. After 13 years away from the UK, I returned in 1997 feeling rather alienated, but for the first few years I failed to grasp the true scale of cultural change as we moved to the relative backwater of Fife, Scotland, but within easy commuting distance of more cosmopolitan Edinburgh. Only when I moved back down to London in 2006 did I begin to realise that the gradual cultural changes of my youth had given way to a new era of rapid global cultural convergence. Whereas once I would worry that 90% of movies in Italian cinemas were American or continental Europeans unduly worshipped English rockstars, the England that I knew as a child was fast fading into a distant recent past. Its capital city has become a global hub unhinged from its geo-cultural setting. Indeed while I may have once worried that Spanish waiters would reply to my Spanish in English, I would often struggle to make myself understood in the heart of England's capital. What we are witnessing is not, as I previously thought, Anglo-American cultural imperialism (as Robert Phillipson theorised in his seminal book on Linguistic Imperialism), but full-blown Global imperialism. This may sound oxymoronic. How can the world colonise itself, but a global superculture is rapidly superimposing itself on all autochthonous cultures everywhere.

Global Justice

As the global juggernaut seems unstoppable, despite our undeniable environmental challenges, let us briefly evaluate the feasibility of this borderless fantasy. If transnational corporations exploit people and resources globally, how can we expect them to subsidise welfare and higher pay only in Europe and North America? Abolishing borders would surely require us to get rid of different tax regimes, salary levels and environmental standards. The European Union is well its on its way to harmonising tax systems and welfare provision across the continent. If a Federalist EU merged with NAFTA, MercoSur and other regional trading blocs, some idealists believe global corporations would pay global taxes to be redistributed fairly to anyone in need wherever they may live. Global justice warriors imagine they can welcome the mass exodus of people from low wage regions and simultaneously defend welfare provision in high-wage regions. They imagine resources are extracted merely to boost corporate profits, but not to meet an insatiable demand for more and more consumer goodies.

Democracy and Human Nature

Lower living standards are not great vote winners, yet as wealthy countries lose their exclusive right to a larger share of global resources, that is precisely what we may soon have to accept.

Should the economies of Northern Europe, North America and Australia (the most popular destinations of the current exodus from developing countries) decline, you can be sure migratory pressure will subside too. However, business elites have found a clever way to grow the economy by promoting a huge oversupply of low-skilled labour servicing the affluent professional classes alongside cheap manufactured goods keeping the consumer classes happy. This growth is both illusory and ultimately counterproductive as it relies on importing more and more waves of compliant workers to replace home-grown workers with higher material expectations. Worse still unbalanced migration in an unequal society tends to erode social cohesion and trust. However much we may pretend to care for the rest of humanity and embrace new cuisines or music, the system induces us act selfishly as self-marketing players in an economic rat race. In this context the prospect of a better paid job in Australia or Norway is simply an opportunity.

Reality Check

Historically, the higher living standards of ordinary workers in wealthier countries like Sweden, Canada, Germany or the UK were built on a high-skilled and dedicated workforce, subservient to a rapacious ruling class eager to gain access to plentiful supplies of raw materials. I very much doubt Britain's industrial revolution would have given the country such a vast technological lead over its main imperialist rivals in the 18th and 19th centuries without immense coal reserves, and shortened lives of hundreds of thousands in miners, powering its shipping and steel industries. Likewise Britain would not have conquered a quarter of the world's landmass without a sizeable navy. UK-based corporations built the nation's subsequent wealth on the back of its mercantile empire with the blood of its native workers and colonial subjects. As industrial automation and outsourcing took hold, people became less aware of the complex processes involved in the production and distribution of their beloved consumer products and began to value them only for their utility and prestige. We take many consumer products for granted and have redefined poverty to mean a relative lack of the kind of devices considered essential for our modern lifestyle. Just 20 years ago, most of us could manage without a mobile phone. Just 60 years ago most Europeans did not have a car. Now anyone unable to afford these technological marvels is considered poor.

Alternative Futures

Global idealists envisage the only way to tackle global inequality is to abolish nation states altogether, so in effect the whole world becomes one country. If we simply enforced a global average on everyone, living standards would plummet in wealthy countries, so global justice warriors believe rapid technological change will enable us to elevate everyone to Scandinavian levels of welfare provision while reducing consumption. They seem to believe solar panel and wind turbine technologies are progressing so fast that massive efficiency gains will enable all 7-8 billion human beings alive today to escape poverty in a nice cuddly tree-hugging eco-friendly way. The problem is while the current phase of intensive globalisation has certainly seen rapid rises in wealth in countries once considered poor and a shift of global power away from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa and South America, it has destabilised whole regions and continued to fuel proxy resource wars. The Euro project, far from creating a level playing field among its member countries, has led to record youth unemployment in much of Southern Europe, unable to compete with cheap imports from the Far East. Meanwhile we see extreme concentrations of profligate wealth in the Middle East, China, India, Africa and Latin America. How can we build a global utopia if Nigerian billionaires squander the proceeds of their country's oil bonanza on Ferraris, private jets and marble palaces? Why should working class Europeans compete with refugees and economic migrants from the Middle East for social housing and healthcare provision, if Arab billionaires build fortress city states that refuse to accept any refugees at all?

I've long argued that mass migration is not the answer, but merely a symptom of a grotesquely unequal world. The only sustainable solution that accords with human nature is to roll back corporate globalisation and build a new multipolar world order of independent countries that live within their means and only trade fairly. We would still pool some sovereignty on global environmental issues and we would still have some balanced migratory exchanges. To me it seems perfectly fair to ban imports reliant on cheap labour or to give preferential treatment to local lads and lasses for local jobs. We must become more aware of global issues, but seek local solutions to our immediate problems.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/2ca5y1qj848

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Categories
Computing Power Dynamics

Surprise: The Big Business Party won

I predicted a hung parliament that would ditch any manifesto promises at the behest of corporate lobbyists. A weak government is arguably more malleable than a strong one, unless the strong government does exactly what its true masters want. I suspect the new Conservative administration will disappoint many traditional small-c conservatives as it pursues a rigorously corporatist agenda while undermining the very United Kingdom it claims to champion.

I seriously expected Labour to do just a bit better and for the SNP wipeout not to be quite as complete (with only three Scottish seats not won by the SNP). How could the English electorate differ so markedly from the Scottish?

Let's take a closer look at what really happened. In percentage terms the polls were not entirely off the mark, Labour gained 2-3% less than expected, while the Conservatives attracted 3% more and SNP 4-5% more. The Liberal Democrats did worse than expected, while UKIP's popular vote was only marginally lower than most opinion polls suggested. We saw three divergent dynamics at play.

  • In Scotland many Labour and Liberal Democrat voters switched to the SNP. In working class provincial England many Labour voters switched to UKIP.
  • In middle class provincial England and much of Wales, Liberal Democrat voters switched to Conservatives, while most affluent Tory voters stayed loyal. In short UKIP took more votes from Labour than from the hated Tories especially in key marginals, where most disaffection went to the one party that had serious proposals to address unbalanced mass migration.
  • In urban areas with large immigrant populations, especially Muslims, Labour did modestly well even gaining a few seats, but mainly from the LibDems, except in posh areas of London with affluent immigrants where the Tories posed as the party of international business.

UKIP gained 3.9 million votes, but just one MP, Douglas Carsewell, whose love of free trade and Gladstonian Liberalism sets him apart from most UKIP voters, who would support not only tougher immigration controls but also import controls to bring back manufacturing to Britain. The offspring of Great British working class are now represented by three parties who look down on them. Labour and the SNP support greater EU integration, free labour movement, greater surveillance and generally more state interference in private lives. UKIP would increase military spending and expand hydraulic fracturing, while promoting free trade and doing little to address fundamental problems of outsourcing and reliance on volatile financial markets. They won support primarily on two issues: immigration and exit from the European Union. Yet millions of workers across the Europe distrust remote transnational entities not because they want an even more deregulated labour market, but because they want to regain the power to regulate their local labour markets to meet the long-term needs of the local population. It clearly makes little sense for millions of young Europeans to move to other countries because free trade deals have caused relatively inefficient local industries to close as production moves to the Pacific Rim or elsewhere. By and large ordinary workers support greater protection, while privileged professional and business classes benefit from a more dynamic globalised economy able to tap into an almost unlimited pool of talent. It's clearly duplicitous to advocate free trade, but not to allow free movement of labour. However, in an unequal world such globalist policies benefit the privileged and well-educated to the detriment of the unskilled poor. To make such a system vaguely fair we would need to extend Western European welfare provision and workers' rights to the whole world and impose a global living wage. This is precisely the kind of fantasy that the Green Party entertains. That would also mean raising everyone to Western European levels of consumption. Alternatively, we'd have to lower consumption in Western Europe to some sort of global average, but this would inevitably prove not only very unpopular but would lead to cutbacks much more severe than current austerity measures, which are by comparative international standards very modest reductions in a welfare system that has grown considerably over the last 40 years.

Labour should stand up for the long-term interests of ordinary working people in its country. Instead it defends the short-term interests of client groups. If you're a low-paid worker, a single mum with a part-time job or a recent immigrant, Labour's policies may seem slightly more appealing than the Conservative alternatives of cutbacks in welfare provision or tougher restrictions on access to welfare for newcomers. But these are only short-term fixes that address the symptoms of unbalanced unsustainable development rather the root causes. More disturbingly, welfarism combined with global free trade promotes dependence on state institutions beholden ultimately to the same multinational corporations that cause so much inequality and misappropriation of resources in the first place. As Noam Chomsky pointed out, neoliberal corporatism means the privatisation of profit and the nationalisation of losses and social deprivation.

SNP Wipeout

Why would Rupert Murdoch's News International support the Conservatives in England and the SNP in Scotland? They appear both rhetorically and ideologically at loggerheads. The English Conservatives have a public image as the party of business, economic stability and fiscal responsibility. Conversely the SNP present themselves as staunchly anti-austerity and to the left of Labour on most issues, e.g. they oppose Trident and have opposed most recent military interventions. Yet such deceptively radical stances are common in the global business community, who see nation states as a thing of the past and much prefer a porous mosaic of interdependent regions subservient to remote transnational organisations like the European Union or NAFTA. As British imperialism is very much a dead duck, international big business does not really care about peripheral British disputes such as Northern Ireland or the jurisdiction of the Falkland Islands. They merely want privileged access to any resources in these territories and to wider global markets. Any concerns about cultural diversity or self-determination are pure political posturing designed to appeal to local sensitivities.

The SNP leadership could promise increased public spending because it knew it could blame either Red or Blue Tories down south. It could always blame Westminster for any economic woes. If Labour had won, it would demand unsustainable increases in government expenditure way beyond the meagre 2-3 billion saved by scrapping Trident. SNP strategists advocate the kind of radical debt-driven Keynsianism that Labour pursued for two-short years under Gordon Brown in the wake of the 2008 banking collapse. While such quantitative easing boosted the retail and property markets, it failed dismally in stimulating productive growth. The ConDem coalition merely reduced welfare spending to its 2008 levels, while still pumping more money into the economy and deregulating the labour market through zero-hour contracts. For all the emotive talk of slash and burn austerity cuts, total welfare spending continued to rise until 2013 and has only fallen slightly since due to lower unemployment, a by-product of zero-hour contracts and the growth in temporary work contracts. Far from shrink, the beloved UK economy has continued to grow, as has net migration. Yet millions of British residents find it hard to make ends meet. This is largely because the real cost of living, not the fiction portrayed by official retail inflation statistics, has risen astronomically. Property prices in London and much of Southern England exclude a growing section of the workforce. If you do not qualify for housing benefit and are subject to market rates, you could not hope to buy a modest semi-detached house for less than 10 times the average salary or rent a decent two bedroom flat for less than ½ the average the average salary. Moreover, our post-modern way of life requires us both to travel further for work and pleasure and to allocate more of our meagre earnings to communication gadgets and services. Living without an Internet-enabled smartphone, laptop and/or pay-TV package seems increasingly unthinkable. A typical family of four needs not one, but 4 mobile phone contracts at £25-40 each a month plus a broadband/Pay-TV package.

Ultra-conformist SNP activists

While it's easy to dismiss UKIP as a Dad's Army of climate-change-denying xenophobic little Englanders and latter-day Thatcherites, for some inexplicable reason the Scottish National Party has convinced a large cross section of pundits and electors of its radical leftwing credentials. I guess it all depends what you call leftwing. Does it mean empowering the working classes and favouring policies in the long-term interests of ordinary working people or does it mean pursuing a corporate agenda of far-reaching social change whose implications ordinary voters cannot fully comprehend? The latter variant is often known as progressivism, ongoing change towards to a new better tomorrow. Indeed it's surprising just how many politicians on both sides of Atlantic love to talk vacuously of the need for change, without dwelling too long on its definition or on its impact on our everyday lives.

The SNP has a simple rallying cry, Independence from Westminster, a convenient slogan that masks the deep-seated historic animosity and distrust that many Scots feel towards their English neighbours. On two issues I agree wholeheartedly with the SNP: Scrapping the Trident Nuclear missile system a colossal waste of money and devolving power from the UK. I would stop short of full independence because Scotland shares not only an Island with England and Wales with much of its transport infrastructure, but has very close social and family bonds with other regions of the British Isles. In an ideal world I'd probably have a British Isles Federation including the Republic of Ireland. Such a Federation would mark a clear break with the UK's imperial past and would grant its member nations considerable autonomy. It would merely recognise the fact that these Islands have long lived as an extended community and need to work together on many practical logistical issues, from transport to energy, fishing to telecommunications.

Yet for all its talk of independence, the SNP seems very happy to transfer power to a much larger multinational entity, the European Union, which they portray as a progressive force for social justice and environmental protection. This is certainly the outward image that the European Commission would like to convey to younger Europeans. In reality the EU promotes an essentially corporatist vision, in which large transnational companies collude with multitiered state institutions to set rules and regulations in their hegemonic interests. Big businesses find it much easier to comply with new regulations than smaller local enterprises, but if need be they can always outsource nasty low-paid jobs to third parties. Back in the 1990s many on the left saw the EU as a kind of fortress Europe protecting workers against greedy multinationals. 20 years later, an expanded EU looks much more like a microcosm of a new emerging borderless global corporate empire, in which local democratic institutions merely implement policies decided by corporate consultancies. Indeed even today, the UK government has very limited power over a whole range of key issues that affect our daily lives.

Big business does not really need a UK nuclear deterrent, but merely local institutions that collaborate with its favoured multinational military forces, whose main purpose is to ensure access to strategic resources and to open up markets. Even some UK military chiefs oppose Trident. The rationale for its existence belong to a bygone era of superpower rivalry. Besides even if Russia, India and China overtake the EU as economic and military powers, they would be exceedingly unlikely to invade Western Europe militarily. They could simply expand their large property portfolios and buy up more leading enterprises. The SNP leadership focus on Trident because they know its an easy win in any future negotiations over the status of post-UK Scotland.

However, the SNP preaches a mix of extreme Keynsianism and regional advantage. They claim to oppose the UK government's austerity and campaigned in increased spending throughout the UK. Yet if the new Conservative government granted Scotland Full Fiscal Autonomy, they would have to find an additional £8 billion just to keep public spending at its current levels. The price of crude oil would have to rise way above its 2014 level of USD $100 a barrel to make up the difference. Of course, it can be argued that Scotland with many deprived communities and sparsely populated outlying regions needs more per capita funding, but the same would be true of many other regions in the UK from Cornwall to Northeast of England. The SNP hope the EU may be more generous than Westminster, but with vast areas of Eastern and Southern Europe. If the SNP tried to borrow more than the rest of the UK, it would inevitably lower Scotland's credit rating especially as the country has a very high dependency ratio and a large proportion of young people lack practical skills.

Would Rupert Murdoch let the Scottish Sun support the SNP in Scotland while backing the Tories in England, if he seriously thought the SNP would challenge his business interests? I very much doubt it. If you dig deeper, you find that on most important issues that SNP harbour very little debate, other than ranting and raving about Westminster-imposed cutbacks and Trident. They have no power to change the former, while the later will probably be dropped anyway. Indeed they agree with the much maligned BBC and Guardian establishment on virtually everything else.

In the coming EU referendum, the SNP will join forces not just with Labour, Liberal Democrats and mainstream Tories to support continued EU membership, but will be firmly on the side of big business and against those of Scottish fisherman unable to compete with large fishing fleets from other EU regions. Their love of corporate power is reflected in other policies too. For instance the first majority SNP administration of 2011 opted to allocate extra money to fund free prescription charges. As they did not increase taxes or were unable to borrow, this meant diverting funds from other public spending priorities. It can be reasonably argued that some low-paid people who require medication to stay alive should not pay for being sick. Such people are usually entitled to other benefits anyway and the Scottish government could have simply restricted free prescriptions to genuinely worthy cases. However, Scotland suffers from another more prevalent problem: over-medication, especially for subjective conditions such as depression or other mental health conditions. With one of the highest antidepressant prescription rates in Europe, the SNP administration just made it easier for GPs and patients to choose the biochemical route. Inevitably, this policy affected poorer working class Scots more than others. If you're an affluent professional, a mere £6 a month is not going to influence your decision to keep taking antidepressants. But if you're on the breadline and cannot manage your money very well, the availability of free antidepressants will sway the balance in favour of biochemical intervention instead of addressing a hundred and one other potential issues, such as booze, recreational drugs, lifestyle, exercise, employability, relationships etc. Prescription charges served not so much to pay for healthcare as they were subsidised anyway, but to promote wise use of prescription drugs. Do you really need antibiotics for a viral infection which a healthy immune system should defeat in a couple of days anyway? More often than not, patients will demand quick fixes such as antibiotics for minor ailments such as sore throats against the better judgement of independent medical professionals, but writing a quick prescription is often for GPs to easiest way to placate a patient demanding instant remedies rather than advice on lifestyle choices. Naturally, medical professionals have differing opinions on the suitability of prescription drugs, but most would agree while in many cases they are life-savers or life-enablers, in many others they offer only modest short-term alleviation or may actually counter-productive, i.e. have more adverse side-effects than benefits. Worse still, once you start taking many medicines it's hard to wean yourself off them. Current SNP policy clearly benefits the pharmaceutical industry, who now have a captive state-subsidised market, while the underlying social and environmental causes of so many ailments remain. My attempts at reasoned debates with SNP activists prove futile. One may not challenge the need for antidepressants for fear of offending the 1/7 Scots on SSRIs. If one persists in citing the many whistleblowers within psychiatry such as David Healy or Robert Whitaker, one is quickly dismissed as a conspiracy theorist siding with outliers who fail to get their writings peer-reviewed. The same paternalistic attitude is applied to the venerable EU. SNP activists will cite official reports by EU-funded institutions uncritically, while dismissing critiques as the mischievous work of rightwing think tanks. If the Scots may not debate healthcare or the hegemony of transnational organisations over every aspect of our lives without submitting oneself to official experts, one wonders what else we may debate in a post-UK Scotland, controlled by the SNP's corporate backers.

Categories
Power Dynamics

Whoever wins the election it will be business as usual

I wish ballot papers had an extra box titled None of the above for I might very well be tempted to use it. None of the parties have a coherent set of policies that can deal with the fundamental stresses and strains of our overheated economy and overburdened environment, but some have policies I can at least sympathise with.

According to conventional wisdom large companies support the Tory Party, but may I suggest a better barometer to gauge which way the wind is blowing. Over the last 40 years successive governments, Labour, Tory and Coalition, have overseen a transfer of power away from local institutions and small businesses to global corporations and supranational institutions. While the media present a dichotomy between a generous Labour Party and a prudent, but stingy, Conservative Party, both have pursued different aspects of the same basic strategy. It may surprise some to hear Tory leaders defend high levels of net migration, advocate the redefinition of marriage, support EU expansion and favour more childcare subsidies rather than shorter working weeks. These are all policies New Labour fully embrace as do many business leaders. They need government to create the conditions in whch they can prosper and expand their commercial empires. So let's look at key election issues through the eyes of the CEO of a large multinational:

Policy Big Business (Leftwing Tories, LibDems) Faux Left (Labour, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru) Faux Right (Right Tories / UKIP)
Economy More growth, at all costs More growth, but a little more for the poor and platitudes about green growth More growth, but bigger tax breaks for the rich
European Union Love it. Let's Expand the EU to Vladivostok and then join NAFTA Love it. We're all European now. Sceptical
Military We need to secure privileged access to key global resources We may ditch Trident nuclear missiles, but we support a European Defence Force and continued interventions in foreign conflicts. Greens and Left Labour may oppose NATO and some Middle East wars, but still support the concept of interventionism. Let's spend more on killing machines. However, UKIP is sceptcal about recent interventions.
Trident nuclear missile system We should pool our resources with other key global players. Trident belongs to the old US-centred world Left labour, SNP, PL and Green want to ditch Trident. LibDems want to downscale it. We need a nuclear deterrent in a dangerous world. UKIP pretend Trident would somehow be an independent nuclear deterrent.
US-led Military Intervention in trouble zones If it's good for American big business, it's probably good for us, but let's do business with China and India too We may pretend to oppose it. Greens and Left Labour often oppose military intervention, but Labour tends to support it on alleged humanitarian grounds. Ditto. UKIP opposed recent military escapes in Iraq, Libya and Syria, but support NATO.
Energy We need more by all means, conventional, nuclear and renewables. Love renewables, hate pollution. Let's outsource nasty energy sources Climate change and peak oil are false alarms. Let's frack away and get rid of ugly wind turbines.
Immigration Love it. Good for economic growth Wonderful, we are all human beings Let's control immigration, but deregulate trade
Free trade Love it. We need more. Love it, but let's try to regulate multinationals. However, the SNP want to lower corporation taxes to attract inward investment. Love it. Let's have more. Only UKIP claim they would regulate labour mobility and protect some small businesses against global competition.
Public Healhcare We need to grow the health market and sell more medication and services, but we need government to pay for it. Spend, spend, spend until we go broke and blame the Tories for all NHS failings. Spend a bit a less and keep quiet about backdoor privatisation plan, but blame Labour for NHS inefficiency.
Debt Economic growth will pay for it Let's pay off a little Let's pay off a little more
Welfare We need welfare to subsidise mass consumption and regulate social conflicts Let's ask big business to subsidise the poor in rich countries Let's wean people off welfare dependency
More mental healthcare Love it. We need happy and loyal workers and consumers. Love it. We must expand the range of potential victim groups Sceptical
More subsidised childcare We need more female sales supervisors and project managers to drive economic growth and supervise truculent or socially inept male engineers. Let's keep children away from mothers in creches so they can consume our subtle advertising Love it, all for women's rights and blaming working class men for women's problems. Slightly sceptical, but dare not admit it

Now let us briefly consider likely electoral outcomes.

  • Outright conservative win: Big business stays in control, but must tame the traditionalist Eurosceptic faction. LibDems may offer demand and supply support in key votes with a large number of Tory rebels. However, barring a huge surge in support away from UKIP and LibDems, the Tories are unlikely to win a majority of seats except by the slimmest of margins.
  • Tory/LibDem Coalition: This remains the most likely outcome if the LibDems can muster at least 20 seats though it may rely on demand and supply support from Ulster's Democratic Unionist Party
  • Tory / UKIP / DUP Pact: Not going to happen. UKIP is unlikely to gain more than 10 seats, but if it did it would do so at the expense of both Tories and Labour and not really affect the likely balance of power. Many pro-EU tories would defect and join forces with other coalition partners and large corporations would be unlikely to support Britain's exit from the EU.
  • Labour / SNP Pact: While this may alienate traditionalist English voters, big business may just support it in the full knowledge that they will be unable to fulfil their ambitious spending promises.
  • Labour / LibDem Coalition: This is a very likely outcome if Labour can win around 35%+ of the popular and Tories fail to get much more than 32%. With Labour just 20 odd seats short of an overall majority according to UK Polling Report and the LibDems still likely to win 20 odd seats. However, they may just rely on external supply and demand support from Plaid Cymru or SDLP should the new coalition fall short of an overall majority by just a few seats. Labour can drop some of its more ambitious spending plans. An interesting outcome would be if a LibLab coalition fell 10-20 or more seats short of majority and had to reach to accommodation with the SNP. A likely concession would be to ditch Trident.
  • ConLab Coalition: This is not as far-fetched as many observers would like to believe. Big business would rather maintain the façade of a democratic choice between caring Labour and entrepreneurial Conservatives. However, if continued membership of European Union and free labour movement remain critical for large multinationals, they may do anything to prevent UKIP or the Greens from gaining any decisive influence over government. A ConLab coalition would probably see the defection of some leftwing Labour MPs to the Greens or alternative far-left groupings, but the gulf between official Labour and pro-EU Tories is minimal. They agree on defence, the EU, migration and economic growth. While the First Past the Post electoral system will probably enable Labour or the Tories to form a government with some combination of the smaller parties, it may very well happen if the SNP continue to make irresponsible public spending demands on a potential miniority Labour administration with a significantly weakened Liberal Democrat presence, or if global economic meltdown (which would adversely the UK more than most countries) forces the government to make some very unpopular decisions.

Ungreen Greens

On the environment, energy and defence, I'd instinctively vote Green. However, short of a world-wide revolution, their 2015 manifesto is not remotely viable. A Green government would simply be powerless to regulate or tax UK-based global corporations much more without effectively biting the hand that feeds them. How could they hope to increase spending on social welfare, health and affordable housing if big businesses simply move their operations abroad significantly reducing their tax base. The Green manifesto is little more than a politically correct wish list. I certainly agree with the Greens on scrapping Trident, banning hydraulic fracturing and phasing out nuclear power, renationalising railways, limiting car usage in busy urban areas and investing more in public transport. I welcome investment in renewable energy and remote working to cut unnecessary travel, but fear without changing our growth-obsessed economic model little will change and wind turbines, solar panels and wave power will fail to allow the continuation of business as usual. All other Green policies, on welfare, migration, taxation, healthcare or education, are based on the assumption of continued economic prosperity enabling us to import the required resources. In ideal world we would not need any immigration controls as a rebalanced world economy would not offer any significant economic motivation for emigration. There would just be a limited and balanced exchange of professionals, academics and tourists. However, in a grotesquely unequal world mass migration is both a symptom and a cause of much socio-economic instability that tends to favour big business much more than ordinary workers. Unlike PC Greens, I'm quite happy to make sacrifices to give my grandchildren a more sustainable future. I want better and fairer healthcare, not more money squandered on mass medication and bureaucracy. I want fairer taxation, but do not want to fund a bloated welfare state on the proceeds of greedy corporations. Indeed I want to tightly regulate big business and promote small local businesses to enable more people to play an active role shaping our technological future. I do not want more retail growth, but would rather pay more for many commodities to ensure fair wages, reduce waste and lengthen the operational lifetime of most goods. None of this can happen while we need to milk banks and global corporations to subsidise welfare dependence while requiring us to import goods from low-wage economies. More important, it will very hard to tackle any of our environmental problems unless we address another consequence of the UK's unsustainable economic growth, namely unsustainable migration-driven population growth. The Greens repeat the oft-recycled claim that immigration drives economic growth, but fail to question whether we need the kind of import-led retail expansion that a greater population in a small country inevitably causes.

Unsustainable economic policies are not only bad for the environment, but also adversely affect the most vulnerable members of society. Let us consider the likely real world consequences of the Green's current manifesto commitments. On the one hand they would impose higher tax on billionaires and large corporations, regulate big business, cut military spending and ban hazardous high-risk energy extraction and generation techniques. Such policies would shrink the economy, which is all well and good, if like me you are more concerned with long-term stability than short-term growth. However, shrinking the economy would require us to cut welfare spending and without strict import controls a downsized would see unemployment soar. Only by relocalising the many industries and services we have outsourced can we achieve full employment, while effectively deflating our economy to a level that we can sustain in the long run.

If the Greens had their way, large corporations would inevitably just transfer their activities to countries with lower taxes, fewer regulations and lower salaries. As a result millions of workers would be jobless at a time when the government would be less able to pay their welfare bill. More important bankers would be less willing to lend money to governments intent on limiting consumer demand and with it corporate profits.

We need to transition away from our reliance on cheap finite fossil fuels and an energy-intensive global economic system towards a more sustainable and regionally localised system. Likewise, if the UK were only concerned with national defence, rather than meddling in other countries' affairs or serving US foreign policy objectives, we could significantly rationalise military spending in line with Japan, Germany, Spain or Italy. Currently, the UK still has the world's fifth highest defence budget (after Saudi Arabia). Yet, we cannot cut energy consumption or scrap the US-controlled Trident nuclear missile system, unless we change our over-reliance on global trade and absurd obsession with economic growth at all costs. The only way a largely service-based economy can grow is to import more resources from the rest of the world. When retail sales fall, growth-obsessed economists start to worry. Services in the form of restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, marketing offices or social work departments consume resources, largely for transport, building maintenance, equipment and catering. The more we consume, the more rubbish we generate. The more we obsess with hygiene, the more effluent we dump in our sewers. All aspects of our post-modern lives from healthcare to holidays, commuting to grocery shopping consume resources. Life has become almost inconceivable without washing machines, power showers, electric cookers, hairdryers, fast transportation and multimedia communication, all of which rely on elaborate infrastructure and cheap energy.

The Greens are unlikely to gain more than 2 to 3 seats (and may well lose their only seat Brighton), but they may just sway the balance of power in some strategic issues, especially if future electoral reform affords small parties more seats. However, given the key importance of economic growth to vested commercial interests, who also happen to control most of the media, very few of the Green's environmental policies will see the light of day, except perhaps some token cycle lanes in congested urban areas. They may just win local referendums on hydraulic fracturing or new nuclear power plants, but one the corporate media explain without such new sources of energy people may have to forgo the convenience of cheap motoring, air travel and affordable winter heating, the Greens may not win over the general public. However, they may sway votes on other contentious issues on immigration, welfare reform and the European Union, where ironically they may be on the same side as big business.

Coalition Record

Five years on, big business seems very much still in control. The same social trends that started under Thatcher and were rebranded under Labour have continued unabated under the Cameron/Clegg partnership. Fewer young adults can afford a house, the rich/poor gap continues to widen, the country's debt keeps rising and its population is rising at the fastest rate since the end of WW2, largely through unsustainable migratory flows. Despite initial scepticism, the government has not lost its appetite for meddling in other countries' affairs with disastrous military interventions in Libya, Syria and Iraq. Yet if we believe the raw numbers, the economy keeps growing. The Tories can blame the LibDems for their failure to bring down net migration, while the LibDems can blame the Tories for their failure to tackle inequality. Whenever anything goes wrong, the government of the day can simply blame either their predecessors or their coalition partners.

After 13 years of New Labour rule and mounting public and private debt following the 2008 financial meltdown, many greeted the new common sense Coalition with a sigh of relief. Maybe they would not commit British armed forces to foreign military intervention we ill-understand. Maybe they would deal with long-term worklessness and enable young people to learn valuable practical skills. Maybe they would regulate big corporations rather than private citizens. However, beyond the rhetoric we were only dreaming. The so-called ConDem coalition brought us more of the same NewLabourite policies. Even their cuts in public sector spending were moderate compared to much tougher reductions in other European countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal or Greece, all with comparable national debts, but much lower household debts. Despite all the empty talk of fiscal responsibility, the government continued with the previous administration's quantitive easing (QE) and reliance on property speculation and service sector for economic growth.

On the ground Labour have lost much of their traditional working class base to the SNP in Scotland and to UKIP in provincial England. Their core vote is now wishful thinking Guardian Readers, ethnic minorities and welfare dependents. However, as Tower Hamlets and Bradford West show, Labour's rainbow coalition is unlikely to withstand the rise of identity politics in Britain's disparate communities.

Shifting Alliances

Many observers wrongly assume big business simply wants to ally UK PLC with the USA and NATO. The global balance of power is shifting fast away from North America and Western Europe to China, India, Russia and Brazil. China is now the world's industrial superpower, while India's economy will soon overtake the UK. Both will need resources available in Russia, South America and Africa. Big business has always wanted one thing above all, to expand markets and maximise profits for its share-holders. It will forge alliances with any national or regional state organisation likely to further these aims. It sees the European Union as a microcosm of a future borderless New World Order. If the EU expands potentially to Turkey and Western Ukraine, it will lose its original Eurocentrism and encompass a far wider range of cultures and income levels, which will inevitably transform the welfare state from an essential component of socially cohesive society to a mere enabler of greater labour mobility and faster rates of cultural change.

In the evolving world of the early 21st century, large corporations can no longer afford to place all their eggs in one basket and will push regional trading blocks and military alliances to merge and cooperate. Thus the likes of City of London, BP, Shell, Monsanto, Walmart, Sinopec (China), Volkswagen Group, Samsung, Gazprom (Russia) and even Apple and Microsoft ( see full list ) are actually much keener on facilitating global trade than on siding with the US against Russia or China. That's why the LibDems have already indicated they want a cheaper alternative to Trident, but are very keen on the new European Defence Force (to deploy against rebels denying corporate access to key resources).

Reading between the lines

You might think the Greens care most about the environment, the SNP and Plaid Cymru care most about Scotland and Wales and UKIP care most about autonomy from the European Union, but you may soon be very disappointed for none can win the coming general election. Whoever wins, the same corporate forces will be working behind the scenes to ensure big-business-friendly outcomes in a dynamic globalised economy. Listen carefully and consider what policy decisions these small political lobbies may change one way or another. To Nicola Sturgeon of the SNP and Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru, continued membership of the European Union seems much more important than the nominal independence of their countries. They have openly stated that any future referendum on the UK's membership of the EU must have the consent of a majority of Welsh and Scots too. The Greens see the EU as a vehicle for cultural and environmental change and imagine joining forces with green movements across Europe to challenge corporate power. All three left-of-centre parties welcome increased immigration and deplore calls for stricter controls to restore greater migratory balance. In short, rather than offer a viable alternative to Labour, the three smaller notionally left-leaning parties present a more radically universalist vision at odds with the conservative views of their electorates. They pander to low-income and welfare-dependent voters through vain promises to oppose all cuts, raise the minimum wage or spend more on healthcare, while expecting someone else, whether taxpayers in other parts of the UK or transnational corporations, to fund their social engineering projects. If you believe the SNP, we can save a bundle by scrapping Trident, approx. 3-4 billion year if we take Greenpeace's estimate of 97 billion over the missile system's 30 year lifespan. With a growing population, the UK will need to invest heavily in healthcare, education, new housing and transport infrastructure, while its armed forces are likely to join ranks with NATO and the new European Defence Agency. As a result, a future Labour/LibDem government may well opt for a much cheaper nuclear deterrent or to scrap Trident altogether. Even voices within the Ministry of Defence oppose Trident renewal. The former head of the armed forces, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, the retired Army generals Lord Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach, and Major General Patrick Cordingley signed a letter to The Times that stated:

“Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism. Our independent deterrent has become irrelevant, except in the context of domestic politics.â€

However, scrapping Trident will be a pyrrhic victory if the British Isles remains integrated in a military alliance with the United States and EU in future conflicts such as a potential standoff with Russia over Eastern Ukraine. We could soon see some rapidly shifting alliances as the mainstream Western media up their rhetoric against Russia to swing public opinion in favour of rapid rearmament.

As the debt crisis mounts worldwide, we can soon expect another banking meltdown. This will provide a coalition government with an excellent excuse to scale back some of their spending plans. The NHS may simply become unaffordable. I suspect only a rhetorically leftwing coalition could privatise it, possibly by signing an international treaty for Global Health Insurance system. Expect the rich-poor gap to continue to grow and for larger and larger pockets of the Third World to take root in Western Europe. With the rise of the SNP and Anglo-centric UKIP, the UK will soon become little more than anachronism. A potential left-of-centre LibLabSNP pact may well be short-lived as a precursor to a divided Kingdom integrated with an enlarged EU / NAFTA trading block.

Verdict: The Business Party will win and the electorate will once again be bitterly disappointed as world events eclipse parochial UK politics.

Categories
All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Question Time on Rise of UKIP

How would members of the panel deal with the rise in UKIP support among working class whites?

Dame Penelope Guardian Reader

This may surprise you, but on my mother's side I'm of White English working class extraction myself and have some friends and relatives who still live in white working class communities. A great aunt of mine stills reads the obnoxious Daily Mail and has indeed occasionally raised uninformed concerns about the scale and speed of inward migration to our wonderfully progressive and welcoming island. Like many people in her age group she's prone to mild forms of xenophobia, which can be a very debilitating condition if left untreated.

Recent research by the University of Northwest Tescotown, has shown the same kind of recalcitrant thinking that leads some people of Middle-Eastern descent to sympathise with ISIS may trigger reactionary anti-immigration thoughts in those of white Northwest European descent. In the Enlightened Guardian Readers' Party we believe xenophobia sufferers deserve all the help we can give them. That's why my party is committed to not only increasing spending on mental health, but allocating 20% of the mental health budget to combat the kind of unenlightened thinking that leads people to vote UKIP or join ISIS in the first place. I've heard of a range of therapeutic treatments, including a new generation of Selective Critical Thought Inhibitors and intensive Equality and Diversity Training sessions.

Terry Trendy of UK Uncut
We believe the spread of evil racist views among some sections of our wonderfully diverse community is a direct result of the government's shameful cuts in social welfare and mental health services. We clearly have a massive shortage of qualified and trained multicultural awareness therapists in this country and should relax our absurdly strict immigration controls so we can bring in the right professionals to tackle this endemic disease before it's too late.
Polly Pontificator of Spiked Online
I really don't think we have anything to worry about. The previous two speakers clearly overstate the problem. UKIP support is highest among older indigenous White Anglo-Saxon protestants and is not spreading to the new ethnically diverse and internationally minded younger generations. As long as this dying breed of old-timers is kept amused through repeats of 1970s comedy shows, plenty of booze, bingo and Mediterranean cruises, UKIP will remain a minority sport.
Aaron Aardvark of the Green Monster Raving Loony Party
UKIP supporters are just a bunch of primeval climate-change-denying Jeremy CLarkson fans. We would simply withdraw their driving licences until they pass a mandatory Diversity and Environmental Responsibility Awareness Training test.
Categories
All in the Mind Power Dynamics

Dictatorship by Consent

Apparently, if we believe many opinion leaders, we fought most recent wars to spread freedom and democracy. Allegedly people across the world admire us because of our deep-rooted civic political culture. Never mind any inconvenient conflicts between personal freedom and true democracy, but what do the international ruling elites and their faithful cheerleaders actually mean by this Hellenic word for people power ?

Do they really want an open debate about issues that affect our daily lives? Are there really prepared to explain the inevitable dilemmas that arise from conflicting popular demands? Do they really understand the enormous sense of alienation and psychological inferiority that mass consumerism and an obsession with presentation and body image has created in so many of us? Given the choice, everyone would want higher wages, better working conditions, more leisure time, more green fields, cleaner water, better transport infrastructure, more affordable heating, larger houses, better healthcare, longer lives, more holidays, more fun, more friends and a higher social status. It hardly matters if we cannot have all these wonderful traits at once. However, if the mainstream media can set the agenda, stage-manage debates and isolate inconvenient critics, they can keep alive the illusion of democracy and free speech.

If we did as big business wants, we'd all halve our salaries, double our work load and triple our spending. If numbers don't add up, we can always ask banks or central government to create more money out of thin air, such is the logic of the debt-fuelled consumption-driven economy. Yet the more we are indebted and the more we rely on international trade, the more we transfer our theoretical sovereignty to unaccountable global entities. It often seems we can only debate how to boost the economy, how to attract more inward investment, how to accommodate more international commuters, how to deal with cross-border crime or how to combat terrorism. We do not debate whether any of these measures are necessary, i.e. do we really need to grow our economy?

As mainstream national political institutions become powerless in the face of tentacular transnational remote organisations, political debate is limited either to trivial parochial matters or is reduced to simple negative campaigning, blaming rivals for the collateral damage of policies that would have been implemented anyway. The recent Labour party political video, devised by the US media guru behind Barrack Obama's electoral victory (David Axelrod), may fool a few young angry voters, who'd like to blame a few convenient scapegoats for their misfortunes, but it is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. It perpetuates the myth that in the early 21st century any difference remains between the mainstream parties on any subject of importance. The video focuses on a few safe and simplistic issues, tuition fees, rising heating costs and bedroom tax. It then blames the old guard of British aristocracy. Just because modern CEOs wear jeans, listen to rock music and no longer have posh Etonian accents, does not make their huge financial superiority any less grotesque. Indeed the gap between rich and poor had been steadily rising for over 30 years. According to the top 10% earned just 7.1 times more than the bottom 10% in 1995, by 2008 this ratio had risen to 10.1 times.

It doesn't take long to disentangle any of these claims and see how Labour offers little alternative to the two other orthodox parties. Take, for example, the much-maligned bedroom tax. It is only an issue because housing has become unaffordable without huge government subsidies. Housing benefit effectively subsidises landlords, so why should hardworking low to middle income tax-payers in areas with lower property prices subsidise special categories of people entitled to housing benefit in wealthier areas? New Labour have become the biggest defender of spiralling housing benefits introduced by Thatcher after her government sold off council houses. Moreover, thanks to a rising population, largely driven by immigration, demand for social housing has never been higher, and thus needs to be rationed. Do New Labour plan to build millions more homes and where ? Will they admit the rather obvious environmental costs of more urban sprawl in Europe's most densely populated region? I doubt it. Indeed their stance against bedroom tax is just an exercise in political point scoring. In 13 years in government they abysmally failed to increase the tax burden on international oligarchs, multinational corporations and banks, as they relied on their presence in the UK to artificially boost the economy.

Not only did New Labour introduce tuition fees in 1997 and increased them to £3000 later in 2006, they promoted a huge expansion in higher education that turned universities into businesses competing not just for corporate sponsorship, but in the lucrative international student market. As a result degrees are not only devalued, but reflect the needs of big business rather than of wider society. With so many other spending obligations and financial constraints, no government can now afford to return to the old grant system, where most students from poorer backgrounds received fully subsidised education, but until the 1980s only 15 to 20% went to university. Yet today only a minority of the nearly 50% of 18 to 21 year olds who now attend university attain degrees of any practical worth with social sciences, law, business administration and creative arts among the most popular subjects. Biology is now dominated by the needs of the burgeoning pharmaceutical, biotech, assisted fertilisation and private healthcare (cosmetic surgery) sectors. Only a fraction of medicine-related degrees produce new doctors, most prepare students for life as a pharmaceutical representative, fertility clinic lab technician or psychiatric nurse. Such professions are in greater demand as a growing proportion of the population is on prescription medication, opts to bypass nature through fertility treatment or succumbs to emotional disturbances that we have relabelled as mental health issues.

Most of us shudder at the thought of opening our electricity or gas bills, largely because back in the 1990s they were, by European standards, incredibly low because most gas still came from the North Sea. Now most gas is imported and energy demand has grown. Logically we need to either increase energy production, with all its potential environmental consequences, import more or consume less. Token gestures like unplugging your TV set at night will make little difference. By offering short-term subsidies for heating, New Labour would promote inefficiency and fail to provide a long term solution, i.e. adapting to a low consumption economy, ensuring people can live healthy lives with less waste. If you naively believe they would just tax a few fat cat energy firm bosses, just consider the real reasons behind the 2003 occupation of Iraq.

In reality although some debate still takes place even on contentious issues such as mass immigration, the hands of local, regional and national governments are tied. All they can do is present a narrow set of options and hope big business will work magic to bridge the growing gap between social and environment sustainability and economic expedience. If people really exercised democratic control, you can bet the ruling elite would change strategy, as they often do. Instead every few years we are just given the opportunity to vote for another set of middle managers. Sometime we elect mavericks, who may rant and rave in parliamentary talking shops, but all along big decisions affecting people's jobs, community, housing, transport etc. are decided in remote boardrooms and think tanks.

Categories
Power Dynamics War Crimes

Demagogue sweeps to victory

Many on the left in the UK and elsewhere are celebrating George Galloway's resounding victory in the last Thursday's Bradford West by-election. With a turnout of just over 50%, the former labour stronghold saw a massive swing away from New Labour and the other mainstream parties to the left-leaning Respect coalition. Just ten years ago I would have been over the moon about such a spectacular win for the superficially radical left. Yet beyond his firebrand rhetoric, can Gorgeous George really offer a viable alternative or would his populist policies, if ever implemented, dig our proverbial hole even deeper.In recent parliamentary elections Respect candidates seldom muster more than 2% of the popular vote. Considering the level of public disillusionment with the big three parties (Labour, Liberal Democrats and Conservatives), their mendacity and their indistinguishable policies once in power, protest votes on a scale seen in Bradford should surprise nobody. Bradford has more than its fair share of social problems, high rates of welfare dependency and a large and prolific Pakistani community. To Galloway, such constituents represent an opportunity to rant and rave about the evils of imperialism and proposed cutbacks in the Welfare state. Such demagoguery has its appeals. A leaflet exclaims Bring back our boys from Afghanistan and urges us to bring back industry to Bradford, and stop government cutbacks. Indeed Galloway would like to spend more on child benefit and healthcare while letting more immigrants join the labour force and claim benefits. Galloway is a latter-day cornucopian. He genuinely believes that by redistributing wealth from the grotesquely rich there will be plenty to go around and we can continue to go forth and multiply without a worry in the world. Yet Bradford's social problems are caused largely by the side effects of unsustainable global corporatism that Galloway wants to milk even more.
The stark reality on the ground in Bradford is one of little hope for a large section of the city's youth population, divided into three main groups: Muslims (mainly of Pakistani descent), offspring of single parents wholly dependent on benefits and a shrinking traditional white working class. To these groups, we can add a recent influx of Eastern Europeans who have miraculously taken many of the jobs shunned by the local population. While Mr Galloway may bemoan child labour, sweatshops, temporary contracts, payday loans and betting shops, his constituents depend on them for their shopping and lifestyle. In so many inner-city streets across the UK we see betting shops next door to pawnbrokers, remarketed as Cash Converters. A quick perusal of available vacancies in West Yorkshire reveals some unsettling truths. Most are in care. While superficially this may seem like progress, as all good societies care for their citizens, why is demand so high and why do so many young citizens suffer from mental health problems and learning disabilities? Yet many refuse to admit the bleeding obvious, a mix of benefits dependency, alcoholism, fatherlessness, divided communities and inbreeding combined to produce a new generation that lacked a sense of purpose other than to enjoy themselves or breed the next generation of welfare dependents. Bradford's distinct communities suffer different sets of social problems. In the white section, the two biggest problems are clearly dysfunctional families and lack of initiative, while in the Asian community a high birth rate, inbreeding and sectarianism place huge demands on the rest of the wider national community.
To the likes of Galloway, such observations are both xenophobic or misanthropic, for he would like us to believe more public investment can bring back industry to the North of England. Such a shift would dramatically increase production costs and would, based on recent experience, merely provided more jobs for newcomers willing to get out of bed in the morning. Does Respect plan to quit the European Union and World Trade Organisation so it can impose tough import controls? Does it propose to limit per capita consumption through huge price hikes in consumer goods as we pay workers decent wages? How would Bradford's gadget-addicted youth survive without affordable mobile phones and game consoles?
Of course, countries can be much more self-sufficient and guarantee their people food and job security at a price. Cuba miraculously coped in the 1990s, but its citizens have to make do with ageing infrastructure and its birth rate is stable. More important, Cuba can feed itself, even with horse-drawn ploughs, while the UK, with one of the world's most highly mechanised farming industries, only produces just over half of what it consumes and if Scotland were to declare independence England would rely even more on imports.
True radicals would champion self-empowerment through hard work, community cohesion and economic policies fit for our grandchildren. Instead, Mr Galloway offers only rhetoric, while expecting a morally corrupt system to continue to subsidise idleness and irresponsibility.

Categories
Power Dynamics War Crimes

Branding Cuba

If you want to get away from the adverse effects of mass consumerism, extreme concentration of wealth, social unease and poverty, Cuba is an intriguing destination. Like in many countries your experiences can be filtered both by your cultural prejudices and expectations and by your tour operator. Many tourists just head for the beach resorts of Varadero, Cayo Coco, Guardalavaca, Cayo Largo del Sur or Baconao near Santiago. They see Cuban life on the periphery through the rearview mirror of the rented cars and happy to encounter the charm and friendliness of thousands Cuban hustlers or jineteros, who gather at all popular tourist attractions to offer a multitude of services in exchange for convertible pesos, buy souvenirs and admire revolutionary graffiti replete with portraits of Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos. To many such visitors, mainly educated upper middle class Europeans, South and North Americans, Cuba is ripe for a dose of globalisation, inward investment and democratic reforms.My interest in Cuba was slightly different. I wanted to see how an ostensibly non-capitalist country is faring in a predominantly capitalist world. How could Cubans survive without the benefits of Wall-Mart, Starbucks, international banks, PlayStations, XBoxes and a steady diet of consumer advertising? Were all Cubans eager to hop on the first boat to Miami? Were they crying out for the kind of multi-party elections we purportedly enjoy in the enlightened West. In my late teens and early 20s I had been active in various leftwing Trotskyite grouplets, before growing disillusioned with the prospect of a worldwide revolution driven by a vanguard party and becoming much more concerned with the practical issues facing our species such as the environmental sustainability of the primary economic model of continuous material growth, i.e. before we can begin to distribute resources more fairly and eliminate poverty we need a sustainable model of development so future generations can enjoy the same level of material wellbeing. I had never really had any illusions with the former Soviet Union, having briefly travelled in Erich Honecker's old East Germany, or Maoist China, but the Cuban Revolution was essentially anti-imperialist and its alliance with the Soviet Union more a matter of convenience rather than strict ideology.
If you measure wellbeing by the state of strategic infrastructure such as roads, railways, telephony, electric power, plumbing etc... then Cuba will disappoint you. Just 90 miles or 140km south opulent Miami, Havanna (La Habana) is, with the exception of a few areas of Habana Vieja (old Town), Vedado and Santa Maria, in a state of disrepair, attempting to add new life to infrastructure inherited from pro-US Bautista era with a few additions during the countries 30-year long alliance with the USSR.
Consider your classic high-budget tourist staying a couple of nights at Havanna's immaculately opulent Hotel Parque Central, visiting Habana Vieja before relaxing by the pool of a newly built Varadero hotel complex. To such a traveller Cuba is a mere playground with a Hispanic flavour and rather unique Che Guevara branding. Why not have your picture taken smoking a Habanero cigar, wearing a Che T-Shirt and drinking a Mojito? Since the fall of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a new official enemy of the great North American dream, advertisers in Western Europe have exploited Che as a rebellious sex symbol appealing to a certain faux counter-culture mindset (to understand this concept better, read

The Rebel Sell: How the Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture

by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter

Many observers have wondered whether Raul Castro's cautious reforms will usher in a new era of capitalistic growth with trendy multinationals setting up shop across Cuba. In Centro Habana, I did see one discreet shopping mall, but most shop names were unrecognisable. Over the last 20 years not only have shopping centres become indistinguishable across the UK, but in much of the world from Tokyo to Johannesburg, Toronto to Buenos Aires, but not yet in Cuba. Everything is still very low key, almost like a blast from a recent past, such as err the 1970s when each country had its distinctive commercial flavour. With the US's global economic influence declining and friendlier trading neighbours in nearby Venezuela and Mexico, the relative benefits of succumbing to US demands to open up markets are waning. In 1990s following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, Cuba weathered the storm of international isolation by becoming almost self-sufficient and taking drastic measures to cope with a dearth of imported oil. Cubans still love their cars, but only those who can earn hard currency can afford fuel or maintenance. In Havana, it seemed all car owners had become tax drivers. Outside the main cities, the roads are largely desolate, a few trucks, buses, horse-drawn buggies and rental cars driven by affluent tourists.
Cubans seem very eager to talk with foreigners, but surprisingly at least compared with other countries, few wanted a visa. One guy did complain about not being to travel, but on the whole, Cubans seemed surprisingly aware of life abroad. Not only do many have relatives in the States or Europe, but they can pick up Spanish-medium TV stations from Miami. Yet despite the lure of shiny gadgets and higher wages, most seem content to stay, measuring their welfare not against North America's gated neighbourhoods, but against neighbouring Haiti, the poorest country in the Caribbean and Jamaica with the highest crime rate.