American friends tell me the protests seen as the Battle of Brooklyn Bridge are going national. All my political sympathies lie with the protesters, though I never forget the cleft stick police are stuck with. Something has to be done about the loss of our democracy and the looting rich. The facts on this are now clear and anyone mooting the old left-right arguments as out of it in ideological denial.
Briefly, production per hour has trebled since 1980 – wages should have doubled and have, in fact, gone down across the board except for a 15% of ‘high fliers’ and a growing super-rich.
Money (banksters) has routed democratic control and it’s not worth most of us voting for anyone. The vile Blair is the paradigm case of politicians we don’t want. Name me one we do. In the States, each side will spend over a billion USD on the 2012 elections. Politicians have to buy positional power – a bit like Ms May having to put up half-a-million to be Home Secretary.
The bulldung around on ‘the economy’ is as feckless as any ‘new paradigm, empowerment, digitise the penguin, learning lessons, strategic mission’ dross witless managers use. The bankster problem is as big across Europe as the US. We don’t want to believe our politics as corrupt as there but I sense it is. The problem is broadly mass unemployment and that we are prepared to tolerate it and pretend their are educational solutions. There aren’t – 50% of any population won’t benefit from ‘academic’ teaching and we can’t teach ‘smarts’ (though we could do more to prevent damage by ‘parents’).
We need a “New Deal” based in direct work with day-release or sandwich exposure to college. No one is presenting one and the danger is they’ll offer Nulabour drivel and promises on private-sector innovation and all the old chestnuts. Times have changed. We can do all the really necessary work much more efficiently – or could if we could invest in it. The money has instead been going into speculative gambles and property bubbles that leave many without decent housing. Research shows most so-called wealth since 1980 has mostly come in the stuff waiting for a pin-prick.
The Arab revolts have been portrayed as ‘bread riots’ but this isn’t true. Their middle classes have been key, ripped off by stockmarket scams and sick of terror and non-representation. We should all be occupying our streets demanding new politicians and a completely new system at the bottom of guaranteed work.
None of this is going to happen because our politicians are cowardly and more or less bought up by the rich – they talk to the banksters behind closed doors despite supposedly representing us. They are already divided and ruled, scared to break ranks. They deliver inept economics through a gullible ’embedded’ media on an austerity plan that can’t reduce debt as they claim and only make things worse. Freezing council tax equates to about average spending on tinned soup. What we need is a conspiracy of western governments against the banks, making them and their shareholders take bankruptcy in coordination with private (mortgage) debt relief and new 60-80% GDP public debt ceilings.
We will, instead, see street protest. One hopes this will quickly become a mass movement across the US and Europe, but we are now idle, lack solidarity and are apathetic. It’s likely all we’ll see to start with will be on the fringe around public sector strikes. I fear police will be instructed to go in hard against this and the results will be violence and long-lasting distaste as the truth creeps into the public gaze. I firmly believe we should not put our cops in this situation, but we are back in post-WW1 economics and the record from then is shameful. Cops were on the wrong side and we lurched into the worst war of all. Churchill was JP Morgan’s bag man then, as was Blair in the Iraq farce. We don’t give enough thought to who funded the Nazis and what the massive excess of the rich funds now.
I’m glad to be out of what may be coming for our police and the last thing I want is their politicisation – though this is what I see happening by default. The political class know the bricks and injuries won’t be coming their way and police will be left to ‘defend order’. I wish the blue line would give way when the time comes but it’s likely to brave for that. Strangely, much as most cops are decent people, they will not be protecting democracy, but the people who sold it for their own purposes. I would, incidentally, still stand in the ranks myself if fit and take what comes. We can’t have rule by brick. But we shouldn’t have rule by banks and debt either. What a bloody awful situation. An American colleague has just been involved in a foreclosure of a former colleague’s house. He went himself to offer a spare room to the family. God save us and I hope to be proved wrong.
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