Of Brexit and a tin-pot Mussolini

This week has seen two election communications land on our door mat. One arrived from one of the country’s two main political parties, unaddressed. The other was specifically addressed to The Other Half. Lucky him.

It was a folded leaflet for The Brexit Party, Nigel Farage’s latest political project.

After failing to persuade more than a few dozen people to march (part of the way) to London in support of Brexit (without him, himself), Farage has somehow found the money needed to launch such a publicity campaign.

Not that he’s saying where that cash has come from – or at least, not the one big donation that has (apparently) been received, even though election rules say such things must be revealed. Maybe he'll let on later. But not now.

The rest is all from individual supporters, all paying small enough amounts that these do not need to be declared. You can’t join The Brexit Party – you can only “register as a supporter”. This is not, in other words, a democratic political organisation. There is no mechanism for any internal democracy to elect any official within it or to decide any policy.

But then again, when you only have one policy, who needs discussion and debate?

And given that situation, what on earth do you fill an expensive election communication with?

The main meat, if you will, is a statement from Farage, dramatically headlined “We must leave the EU”. The key reason given is that, in “June 2016, 17.m voted to leave the EU – the biggest democratic mandate in British history”.

This is arrant nonsense. It would only be the “biggest democratic mandate in British history” if the margin had been the biggest margin in British history. It was not a massive margin. It was a very, very slender margin.

Indeed, it was precisely the margin that, a short while before the referendum, Farage himself told the Mirror that, were the vote to be 52% to 48% in favour of remaining in the EU, he would start campaigning for a re-run.

Not that I'm suggesting that Farage is a hypocrite. Obviously not.

There is familiar stuff in the leaflet about how MPs “have betrayed Brexit”. Apparently, “our great nation” is now being “humiliated” and we must “fight back against our failing MPs who have defied 17.4m of us”.

Unlike Farage, I can only speak for myself. But personally, I don’t feel “humiliated”. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments when I feel myself to be in a permanent state of face-palm frustration and bemusement – and possibly even some embarrassment – but I haven’t spotted any personal sense of “humiliation” yet.

Farage also seems not to have noticed that, among the MPs per se that he condemns in the leaflet, there are quite a number that support Brexit – and in several cases, they fancy the harder Brexit the better. That group would include former Trotskyist Unionist Kate Hoey, who did a Titanic routine with Farage himself on a boat on Thames and appeared with him at the start of the Great Brexit March.

Or, more to the point, Farage has condemned an entire group because the people he is trying to appeal to will swallow the simplest messages and not bother with the facts.

It’s all rhetoric – empty rhetoric. The rest of this leaflet is no better. Candidates for our region are quoted as saying that “we need to keep our democracy intact for future generations”. Joel Chilaka – medical student. What does that even mean?

“We must take our waters back and restore our costal communities.” June Mummery – “fishing industry”. One wonders if she’s asked Farage why he attended so few meetings of the EU fisheries committee, when he could have actually done some work on this very issue.

“Left-wing democrats should vote to deliver the referendum result” – this from ‘former’ Trotskyist Claire Fox, the individual who still believes that IRA bombings were okay and (allegedly) that viewing images of paedophile abuse should not be illegal. She’s on the ticket locally because, presumably, any leftie will automatically be convinced to vote for her like.

“I do deals for a living. Taking ‘no deal’ off the table is bonkers.” Ben Habib – boss of First Property PLC, who clearly doesn’t actually understand what ‘no deal’ would do to the country or doesn’t care.

“Our country deserves better leadership.” This is Richard James Sunley Tice: private school educated ‘man of the people’. Oh – and Brexit Party chairman.

“The Conservative Party has failed to deliver Brexit and damaged trust in our democracy.” And so declares Annunziata Rees-Mogg – journalist and intellectual prodigy, who claims to have joined the Conservative Party at the age of five and, three years later, been out “canvassing, proudly wearing my rosette.”

“I fought for our country. I’m not prepared to see it humiliated.” James Glancy CGC – decorated Royal Marine.

Dear Christ. My mother only sent me out delivering Christian Aid and NCH (as it was then) envelopes shortly before I was in my teens. Should I have to bow before Annunziata's genius? Or indeed, is she really such a genius – or just an entitled brat?

Any meat on the bones? Any policies? Nope. Not a one.

But there is more.

“83% of Labour MPs back a second referendum.”

Because the democracy they’re whinging about being under threat or broken would be further underminded by, err, voting.

“92% of Brexit voters feel betrayed.” This apparently appeared in the Sun, which is hardly a trustworthy organ. However, since polling in recent months has increasingly suggested that support for Brexit is no longer a (small) majority position, this could mean that those Brexit voters feel ‘betrayed’ when realising how many lies they were fed by Farage and others.

“498 MPs promised to honour the result.”

We live in a representative democracy. It is not the job of MPs to push ahead with policies that will damage their constituents and the wider country. Jobs have already been lost as a consequence of the vote – even before we leave the EU. The cost of living has gone up as sterling has gone down – again, as a direct consequence of the vote itself and then as a result of the prime minister setting in motion Article 50.

But of course: “Politics is broken. Let’s change it for good.”

Yes – our political situation is a mess: our political (and public) discourse is a mess. Neither have been helped by liars and spivs like Farage and his fellow Brexit high priests – or David Cameron.

But change it for who’s “good”? For what “good”? Indeed, does “good” here mean ‘permanently’ – potentially then suggesting something anti-democratic – or for ‘better’?

And there you have it. Brexit is Brexit is Brexit. There is only one Brexit (actually, there are probably as many Brexits as people who voted for it). Nothing else matters. There is no degree of Brexit. Only Brexit.

It’s just a case of ‘get Brexit done – whatevs!’

Farage and Tice give no indication of how leaving the EU will benefit the majority of ordinary working people.

That’s because neither of them care about British working people, per se.

They are on the economic right – and harness the social right to support it. They are disaster capitalists who believe that profit has no downsides and that those on the receiving end of profiteering corporates are acceptable collateral damage.

It’s worth remembering that Rees-Mogg’s dad wrote the text book on disaster capitalism.

The Brexit Party is an organisation that nobody can join, that has no manifesto, no policies, no internal democracy and no transparency about where it gets its money from.

It is facile and wrong to label all those who voted for Brexit as intellectually challenged. But if The Brexit Party’s empty election literature convinces you that it is the answer to anything, then you really are probably too foolish to have understood the question.

Time to care

Over on Facebook, someone started a very serious and sensible discussion about integration of health and social care services. Because of family events in the last six months, I now have personal experience of some of the issues, so replied at length.

But it struck me that what I have observed might help to inform a wider audience of some of the issues – a post here didn’t sound like a waste of time.

What follows is essentially my comments on the issue of integration of these services – based on my personal experience of the last six months. I think it’s clear why I have become drawn into the day-to-day reality of the situation.

This is most certainly not about condemning staff working in really difficult situations. Nor is about condemning any specific council or region, so I am not specifying those.

Indeed, I recommend reading the Ethical Care Charter – a document from trade union UNISON, which addresses a lot of what I have observed in the last half a year. Disclaimer – these days, I work for UNISON, but was not involved,ved in putting this document together, although I have reported since on councils signing up to it.

In the last six months, I’ve become a carer (one of several, in effect) for my father. I have power of attorney for his financial affairs (but not health) and increasingly – albeit erratically – adult social services in his area talk to me, since while my father is not ga-ga, he is increasingly divorced from a sort of gritty reality and certainly very forgetful.

The Start team from social services looked after him to begin with. He’d had a fall and a heart attack at the beginning of April, was released from hospital almost a month later and became a widower five days after that.

However, at the time, he said he had no ‘personal care’ needs – he could get himself up in the morning, dress etc and do the reverse in the evening. This impacted on what he was considered to need, within the parameters of some pretty strict rules that are based on funding.

I was asked (told) by adult social services to get a toaster so he could make his own breakfast. He’ll make himself toast occasionally, but it’s not guaranteed. I have attempted a form of bribery to get him to use it – the sort where you tell him that he can toast his own crumpets and slather as much butter on them as he wants, without my mother being censorious about him having “butter with bread”.

In the summer, social services decided he didn’t need them: he could have meals on wheels for lunch (with a sarnie in a bag delivered for his tea) and have visits from district nurses bookending the days to ensure he took his medication.

In the meantime, he has been going deaf, due to wax build up. The carers cannot apply unprescribed ear drops. The doctor hasn’t prescribed any. He had a GP visit him at home a couple of weeks ago – but not to do his ears, even though the GP themselves couldn’t get entry to the house because my dad can’t hear the doorbell at present. The GP had to ring someone to get the safe key code. Yet my father has now been ‘referred’ to some other ‘community practice’(?) to do his ears.

The district nurses couldn’t do that, and indeed, complained to an Age UK carer that he pays for, that his is not the sort of case to justify their £150-a-visit cost.

I had his head case worker on the phone a week or so ago saying that the district nurses had noticed that he is dehydrated. He doesn’t drink enough. Since then, she’s put two carers a day back on – and the district nurses have now disappeared into the mists of memory.

This is a classic case of people being bounced between budgets – between the NHS (district nurses) and local government (carers).

She told me the other day that she is confused by my father. She doesn’t want him to be so dependent, yet apparently cannot comprehend why he won’t get himself a drink.

Frankly, he’s not even eating much more than his breakfast (sometimes) and his meals on wheels lunch at present. I arrived at 10am on Tuesday: he hadn’t even had a drink, let alone anything else, since lunch on Monday. His first carer (who is wonderful) arrived just as I was making him tea and toast.

But I have realised that, for him, drinking is inherently social. Tea is a drink to share over a chat with someone. In the past (he’s a retired clergyman), he’d visit the local Catholic priest where they’d gossip over whisky; he was no stranger to the local pub (that was a down-to-earth social life away from the church); he spent his days in pastoral visiting (much of that to elderly women who would make him a cuppa or pour a cream sherry into a delicate little glass).

When I ask him if he wants a cuppa, his first response is to ask back if I’ll have one too.

The clues are there.

Time.

What carers need to really do their jobs, is time: time to chat, time for a cuppa. One of the biggest problems that the elderly face is loneliness. This is no secret: this isn’t rocket science.

They also need a properly-funded NHS that doesn’t palm off something like ear syringing so that a vulnerable, frail person cannot even hear the fire alarm for weeks.

They also do not need the piss-poor excuse that passes for tea from my Dad’s meals on wheels service. Every time I go, I find uneaten sandwiches (which we pay for, incidentally – it’s not free) in the fridge. And I cannot blame him – they look awful. Utterly unappetising.

Just as we feed hospital patients dross, because we have forgotten the connection between health, recovery etc and proper food (or have conveniently decided to forget it for the sake of cost) the elderly don’t lose their taste buds – but they do need to have them tickled.

On Tuesday, I heard a groan as he looked inside the paper bag that contained his ‘tea’. It was a meat paste sandwich – so unappetising that it would make supermarkets’ own-brand sarnies look like haute cuisine. I nipped back to the shops and bought a few things – ready-to-eat Cornish pasties and sausage rolls, cream cakes (I can guarantee those will never be left to moulder) and Cornish clotted cream and Golden Syrup.

Back in the house, I made ‘thunder and lightening’. It’s an old Cornish treat that I remember my (non-Cornish) mother making when anyone sent us a tub of clotted cream from the south west.

Take a couple of slices of plain white bread. Butter both. Add a sheen of syrup to one side and then spread clotted cream on top of that. Put the other slice of bread atop. Cut as needed. Eat.

My (Cornish) father didn’t remember having it before, but at the first taste, his face lit up. I have passed on the recipe to his Age UK carer, at his request.

Now, you can tell me ’til the cows come home that this is not ‘healthy’ – but between ‘Dad won’t eat’ and ‘Dad will eat’, which do you think is healthier?

So, in short: proper funding for all. Time is a serious time: time for carers to care, with proper recognition that actually, company is a genuine health issue for the elderly.

I can most certainly see advantages in services being linked – but it is far from the major problem that social care faces.

Why have we, as a society, apparently stopped seeing the bleedin’ obvious?

The bank that wants your democratic rights

Once or twice, I've used the Thomas Mann quote that “Everything is politics”. Today, in prefixing a piece with that, I'm going to do something unusual for this blog and ask you all to do something political – or at the very least, to be aware of some things and pass a message on.

I'm long enough in the tooth by now to think that few things could shock me.

But thanks to Richard J Murphy (and one thing that you can do is to follow him on Twitter or read his blog regularly), I have today found myself absolutely seething.

It seems that JP Morgan has decided to publish a document that calls for 'progress' to be made in a number of fields.

The main thing that should concern us all is that a part of this 'progress' would be to ditch all employment rights and even things like the right to protest.

The bank declares, quite openly, that such rights were reactions against dictatorships such as those of Franco and Hitler, that this was unfortunate, and that now is the time for these things to be 'corrected'.

It beggars belief that a non-democratic and, therefore, unaccountable corporate body is even discussing such things as desirable – let alone (presumably) actively pursuing such policies.

I want to start simply by asking: who the hell do they think they are?

The motive is obvious - corporate greed and power. We already live in a supranational corporatocracy, where the bankers remain unpunished and unchastened for causing the global financial crisis that is having a continued, real impact on millions of people's lives across the world.

That's millions of people, it should be reiterated, who did not cause that same crisis, although some did buy into the culture of greed and rampant consumerism that were created and promoted in the 1980s and that laid the foundations for it.

In the UK, successive governments have followed a neo-liberal ideology, backed up by the bulk of the mainstream media, to the extent that now, there is not a single mainstream political party in the UK that does not bow down to the orthodoxy of austerity for the many and continued, increasing riches for the very few.

Let's deal quickly with an accusation that rears its head on such occasions: is this the politics of envy?

Quite simply, no.

I won't be disingenuous: like most people, a few more bob wouldn't go amiss. But I'm fortunate enough to be in a better position than at any time in my working life. For the moment. Insecurity abounds.

I look at my niece, though, who worked hard for a good degree, and now finds herself struggling; underemployed in a job that, frankly, she's over-qualified for.

What this entire, far-reaching approach is though, is anti-democratic, utterly counterproductive in terms of local and national economies, damaging to social stability and well-being and, ultimately, just downright unfair.

'Fair.'

What a simple, small word, and one that can often sound really rather twee and unrealistic.

Which is, in part perhaps, an element of the problem.

A few years ago, in 2009, Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published a book, The Spirit Level. It's dry, but the key premise is that the more unequal a society is in terms of income, the less good that society is for everyone: not just those at the bottom or even in the middle, but even for those at the very top.

Outcomes on health and education are lower for all; crime and social problems such as alcoholism and drug abuse are higher.

The work was done across the developed economies – plus a subsidiary survey comparing  all the states of the USA.

Some of it seems counterintuitive - not least negative impacts educationally and health-wise on those at the top of the income tree - but the findings are consistent. And, as far as I know, nobody has yet been able to debunk those findings - and there have been efforts to do precisely that.

So fairer societies become something that we all seek, even if we ourselves seem to be doing well. Call it enlightened self-interest, even if not a philosophical commitment to fairness.

Yet for all that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have signed up to the language of The Spirit Level, this country is seeing quite the opposite.

And when you see huge multinational corporations such as JP Morgan demanding a pound of flesh from the majority of the population, one's heart is hardly lifted. Because big finance and big business already have far too much say in national economies and in how many national governments behave a irrespective of the will of the people.

Just think how difficult it is for a community and the council that is supposed to represent it to defy Tesco when that company (or any other that is massively financially powerful) is determined to open a new store.

Ad pleased do not fall for the fallacy that UKIP is an alternative. That party wants to do away with all employment rights too - and scrap public services. Nigel Farage and his fellow spivs are little different from the likes of JP Morgan – they just add anti-Europeanism into the mix, while Farage himself is sucking on the teat of taxpayers as an MEP.

The idea that the post-war settlement was an unfortunate mistake is frankly disgusting.

But the crisis we face goes further than some statement from a bunch of bankers.

At the same time, we have the farcical situation of a government being caught out spying on millions – and then insisting that the whistleblower is the criminal and a traitor!

A situation where the police are accused of spying on the family of a victim of murder, who are campaigning for justice, never mind targeting infiltrating and having sexual relationships with those that they ‘think’ is opposed to the system.

Where does it end?

Do we sit there, thinking that at least we can choose to buy from a vast range of jeans – sweat-shopped produced in factories with no 'elf 'n' safety – or do we say that enough is enough?

Grassroots politics is boring and soul-destroying and difficult. But the very least we all need to do, if we consider the current situation as bad, is to inform ourselves and pass the message on.

Isthmus about saying that profit is bad? No.

s. And that, in other words, is people who work.

Indeed, over 80% of all housing benefit is paid to people who are in work – as is over 60% of the entire welfare bill. So in other words, taxpayers are subsidising the profits of private landlords – and private companies.

And here we have JP Morgan, suggesting that it would be ‘progress’ if our right to protest, and our employment rights were withdrawn.

Make up your own minds what you think about such corporations – and the individuals that constitute them.

And pass the word on.

Richard J Murphy on JP Morgan’s declared policy (includes a link to the entire document from JP Morgan).

@RichardJMurphy on Twitter.

Keep them hungry, keep them compliant

At least some people will have felt a warm glow today, as British Gas announced that its profits had been boosted by the colder weather.

But while the Centrica-owned company was busy patting itself on the back and promising nice rewards for shareholders, Anne Robinson, director of consumer policy at the price comparison website Uswitch, had a different take on the matter.

“Seven out of 10 of us actually went without heating at some point during this winter,” she commented. “Over a third of us have reported that we feel it’s actually affected the quality of our life and also our health.”

Rising energy costs is just one of the factors meaning that an increasing number of people in the UK go hungry, because they find themselves having to choose between heating and eating.

In 2011-12, foodbanks fed 128,687 people nationwide. In 2012-13, the Trussell Trust, one of the major charities behind foodbanks, anticipates that number will rise to over 230,000.

The trust itself says that rising costs of food and fuel, combined with static income, high unemployment and changes to benefits are causing more and more people to come to foodbanks for help.

“With over 250 foodbanks currently launched,” says the trust, “our goal is for every town to have one.

The first Tressell foodbank opened in 2000, while the UK Foodbank Network came into being in 2004.

According to the trust, many of the people who are seeking help are in work.

So even setting aside the vexed issue of What To Do with the feckless, idle unwashed – for which there is far less evidence than David Cameron would have you believe with his ‘three generations who’ve never worked’ routine, itself thoroughly debunked last autumn by research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which could find no such family – we are left with the issue of many families with members in work but who work, but cannot afford the cost of living even at a basic level.

There’s plenty of other evidence for this: debt counsellors for the welfare arm of the trade union UNISON, for instance, are seeing an increase in calls and referrals.

As one of the counsellors explained to me recently, this is not people who are living it up and spending massively on luxuries.

Many are simply struggling to pay the mortgage – and then falling into the trap of taking out loans with pay-day loan sharks.

Let’s face it, the national minimum wage for an adult over the age of 21 is £6.19 an hour. If you’re lucky enough to be in full-time work, that’s £216.65 a week, gross.

Just to give you an idea of what that means, according to rentright.co.uk’s residential price index today, there is no one-bed accommodation for rent in Hackney for under £270 per week (studio flats start at £230 per week).

If you were lucky enough to be getting the Living Wage, (£7.45 in the UK, £8.55 in London) and be on 35 hours, that would mean £299.25 gross in London – so still little to actually feed and clothe yourself, never mind pay for heat, light and water or, heaven forfend, anything like a TV or a phone, after you’ve paid for a roof over your head.

So it’s hardly a shock when, with rising fuel bills (British Gas raised their costs by 6% last autumn, remember) increasing numbers of people are finding themselves in serious difficulty.

Yet the idea has lovingly been nurtured by substantial elements of the UK media that even the working poor are somehow ‘undeserving’ – or at least guilty of nicking the hard-earned money of the better-off via benefits paid for by the tax.

It’s classic divide and rule, and a return to the Victorian belief that the poor are in that state because they somehow deserve it.

Oh, we might have grown past the idea that sin was the reason anyone was in poverty in the first place, but little else seems to have changed.

Now since this started with British Gas and increased profits, let’s, for the sake of clarity, stress that I am not opposed to profits.

But the search for ever-increasing profit, and the need to appease the City on growth (and arguably the agencies who decide whether you’re getting an AAA battery or just an AA one) is also the reason for the horsemeat scandal that continues to rumble on and on, encompassing ever more of Europe.

Lengthened supply chains increase the number of companies that are involved and need to make a profit.

Unless the retailer at the end of that chain then hikes the price to the customer, someone is either going to have to see their profits reduced – or find other ways of maintaining profit margins.

Here’s a non-food example. London’s Victorian sewers are currently being replaced. One of the main contractors is Murphy, a major civil engineering company. But look at the vans if you see one: ‘working in partnership with Optimise for Thames Water’.

So, whereas in the bad old days of nationalised utilities, it would gave been one company doing the job, now it’s three. With three lots of staff and three lots of shareholders to pay.

And this is efficient?

It really isn’t rocket science to see that, when you cut through the crap, this is at the root of what has happened with all those burgers and meatballs and cottage pies.

It’s like the dodgy tobacco from China that’s full of the sweepings of the floor, and probably some even less pleasant things. Or the ripped-off vodka.

It’s all about selling something cheap – and still making a profit.

There’s a slight difference in that the horsemeat in various products may not be harmful – although there are questions about the presence of veterinary drug ‘bute’, which may have illegally entered the food chain.

But one aspect of this that is particularly distasteful, though, is that the entire business highlights the exploitation of the working poor. It’s no coincidence that the scandal has centred on ‘economy’ and ‘value’ ranges.

If the CEO of Centrica, for instance, eats horse, then it’s likely to be a piece of prime meat and with knowledge.

It all raises questions about the food chain, about sustainability and about localism – even if secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs Owen Paterson was trying to use a speech at the National Farmers’ Union conference today to push the case for GM, despite it’s own inglorious record.

Still, that might help secure him a job with Monsanto if his political career ever ends, and help keep him from the doors of a foodbank.

In Germany, development minister Dirk Niebel has suggested that horsemeat that has been mislabelled as beef should be distributed to the poor.

Which raises an interesting point. It’s pretty dire reading of all these products being withdrawn and, presumably, destroyed. This is, for the most part – on the basis of what we know – safe to eat.

Now a policy of ‘giving it to the poor’ is just downright patronising and paternalistic, but why not sell it at a substantial knockdown, relabeled as containing (or possibly containing) horsemeat, and let customers decide for themselves?

It avoids vast amounts of wasted meat – something that is surely close to criminal – gives people the option of buying a very low-priced product and even means that the retailers get something back on the product instead of nothing.

But the hysteria around the issue – talk of products being ‘contaminated’ is but one illustration – is a block to coherent thinking like this. Although it does help to cloud the real issues.

And in the meantime, it's very 'Big Society' that organisations such as the Trussell Trust are (thankfully) helping to keep people going.

However, it's worth noting that this is yet one more illustration of the hypocrisy of a government that has sought to claim that 'we are all in this together'.

Let's be clear. We are not 'remotely 'all in this together'. Because unfortunately, the likes of David Cameron and Nick Clegg and George Osborne are not remotely likely to need a foodbank any time soon.

But crucially, if we have arrived at a point where, even in one of the richest countries in the world, working people cannot afford to live without charity, then we need a massive rethink.

And we need to start seriously considering a way of organising society differently.

We don’t need to abandon profit. But we do need to remember that life must come first. And we do need to think about that life in a sustainable and people – and planet – friendly way.

And perhaps the start would be combating the notion that having people in the UK, in the 21^st century, seeking help from foodbanks is even remotely acceptable.

Imagine there's no politics

I hate politics. No, really I do. And don’t tell me there aren’t myriad things that any of you would prefer to do with your time than politics.

John Lennon asked people to imagine a life without religion – well what about a life without politics?

The trouble, though, is that for that to happen, we’d all need to see a society that we believed needed no change.

Which would mean very different things to different people – as even a cursory glance at our present situation illustrates.

Some would want to create equity and fairness by regulation; some would believe that allowing those at the top of the income tree totally free reign to make more money would benefit everyone below.

Some would believe in more state – some in as little as possible.

One might need to invoke Jeremy Bentham and his idea that the greatest good is the one that produces the greatest happiness – in other words, whatever pleases a majority.

Although, in the manner of the old adage about not being able to please all of the people all of the time, that would still leave a percentage of the people unhappy.

And that, in essence, is democracy: or so you’d think.

But for that to work, we all need to do politics. Whether we like it or not.

And when we don’t do politics, we get a situation such as we’re seeing today.

Just look at what we have found out, just recently, about what has been going on at Barclay’s Bank – and quite probably other banks too.

Unless something quite dramatic changes, the people ultimately responsible are quite possibly going to get away with it.

Yet someone who looted a solitary bottle of water during last summer’s riots was sentenced to prison.

If the latter was a crime – why not the former?

And that brings us to a fascinating question: who is the country being run for?

Look at the Olympics. Who will benefit? It won’t be the small, independent businesses, some of which are being told – in effect – told they cannot trade during the Games.

This has been done in order to ensure that big, multi-national businesses that have paid some money to be Olympic sponsors face no competition on advertising in and around Games venues and coverage; no competition at Games venues – McDonalds will be the only ‘restaurant’, for instance – and then, to cap it off, the same companies are being exempted from paying any UK tax between March and November of this year.

So how are ordinary taxpayers, who have paid for the whole shebang, going to benefit? Bread and circuses, tied in with a dose of patriotism?

Well, a £60m ‘retail boom’ has been predicted – but that’s primarily going to be to the benefit of the big businesses that are already making the big bucks.

Unless it becomes part of the ‘Olympic legacy’, unemployment have not noticeably fallen, suggesting a vast boost to employment and the economy as a whole from hosting the Games.

But let’s move on.

Look at the health service. The other day, GP and Private Eye correspondent Dr Phil Hammond tweeted that private health insurance companies are already giving patients (customers) money to go back to the NHS for costly cancer care rather than the same private health care companies finding their profits hit.

That, in a nutshell, is everything that’s wrong with private healthcare – and exactly why the NHS is so precious.

But surely health secretary Andrew Lansley must understand this?

Well, he’s been privately funded by private healthcare companies for years. If he sells off the health service – as he is trying to do – does anyone seriously think that, if he loses his seat at the next election, he won’t have loads of lovely, lucrative directorships to step into?

So is he doing what he is doing out of nothing more than personal greed – or because he really believes that the public will genuinely benefit from his overturning everything about the health service (something that renders David Cameron’s pre-election promise of “no more top-down reorganisation” in the NHS a total lie, incidentally)?

That’s one of the other things about politics – is everyone really behaving with the best interests of Bentham’s masses in mind? Are you sure? Can you be sure?

Is there a sort of national naivety that still generally believes that all politicians of all parties many be misguided but are generally benign in their intent?

Recent affairs suggest otherwise.

You need a modicum of pragmatism as well as some ideology in politics, together with a bit of enlightened self-interest.

By the latter, I don’t mean greed – but to say that things that improve society as a whole are usually better for yourself is self-interest, and it’s pretty enlightened.

If you have less crime, for instance, that’s better for everyone. More crime is committed by people with very little financial resources and decent work than by those in an opposite situation.

So how about helping to ensure that as many people as possible have jobs – and that those jobs pay a decent, living wage, as well as ensuring that the police and judicial services are properly funded and staffed too?

Okay, that might mean a slightly bigger state than you’d ideologically say that, ideally, you approved of, but the end surely justifies the means – and you benefit as well as the people with jobs and a decent income.

Yet some people really don’t seem to get this. Could it really be rocket science?

In the US, for instance, some neo-liberals and laissez faire free-market fetishists are still whinging about the stimulus packages that rescued the US motor industry.

At the simplest level, it kept people in jobs – and that is better for the economy and society than them being out of jobs, which is hardly a cost-neutral situation for society.

That’s hardly a statement of ideological idiocy, is it?

Come on – who are the idiots here?

On the one hand, that should be easy to answer. It’s the people who, in our own times and situation, still continue to believe that austerity works and is the only way.

Except that that’s not true.

Some of them don’t believe that austerity works (or that it’s ‘the only way’). What they do believe, however, is that it’s a great excuse to strip away the state, to strip away regulation (because that’s what caused the financial crisis and the subsequent recession in the first place) and to open up everything possible to themselves and their friends to make as much money as personally possible.

As the Thatcher era taught us: greed is good. Loadsamoney!

And so many have been caught up in the belief that austerity is the only way; that the deficit is a simple matter – just like having spent too much last month and have busted your overdraft – and even that the problems were all caused by spending on schools and hospitals, and ‘gold-plated’ pensions for the people who care for the elderly and clean the wards and take your 999 call.

And here’s another little problem with politics: because in a sense, I am, right here and right now, saying that they’re wrong; that they’re possibly naïve or gullible – and that I know better.

And in essence I’m assuming that most of you reading this know better too.

Oh, I can point out that there is a heavily biased media in this country and that, in general, it has peddled that mythology; that the Fourth Estate of which I am a card-carrying member has, in many ways been emasculated by the greed and lack of responsibility to fairness and truth of media barons and magnates, of which Rupert Murdoch is simply the biggest.

But then, in many ways, I’m saying that people aren’t very bright if they simply accept what they’re spoonfed by such media.

I don’t actually like that. Or rather, I don’t feel particularly comfortable with it.

But if I try to claim that the views that I hold (on any subject) hold up no better than those of anyone else – that all views are ultimately subjective and owe nothing to differing levels of evidence etc – then ain’t that relativism?

And when it comes to such things as politics, I like to think that at least a chunk of what I eventually decided is right, wrong or somewhere in the middle, is actually based on facts.

Austerity is not based on facts – or not on what its proponents tell you are facts. Even the International Monetary Fund (hardly a bastion of lefty thinking) has admitted that austerity doesn’t work and that austerity isn’t working.

So when certain figures or publications tell you that ‘there is no alternative’, they’re either deluded themselves or they’re telling porkies.

Which, of course, brings us to why.

Greed. Self interest without any enlightenment – and without any responsibility or accountability that matters.

I mentioned Lansley earlier. What will it matter to him if the electorate vote him out at the next opportunity? He’ll have done what he set out to do, and he won’t be suffering.

You could look at Tony Blair too – lining his pockets further by helping a despotic regime in Kazakhstan. That’s a country that – entirely coincidentally – has oil. Perhaps the former PM is looking the place over for signs of WMD …

There are times when I think that a heaven and hell would be a nice idea, if it meant that shits like Blair and his prayer buddy Dubya actually paid for what they did. Since there isn’t, let’s hope someone actually manages to arrest him one of these days – there is a bounty on offer to anyone making such an attempt.

Is there really anyone left who doesn’t realise that Blair was Son of Thatcher – a neo-liberal to his own core, who took up where she had left off, deregulating (so that it would be easier for the banks to screw everyone else) and selling off even more stuff so that private firms could crash down wages, sack staff and offshore in order to increase their profits.

It’s utter economic imbecility and short termism.

If you have an economy that is dependent on the service sector – including retail – then you need people to have money to spend in that sector.

If they don’t spend, companies go bust, more people end up unemployed, paying no tax but claiming benefits and with no money to spend in the service sector, thus ensuring that ever more business go bust – and so forth.

People need jobs. And they need to be paid a living wage for doing them. That is the only way to gain growth and cut the deficit in the short term. Rebalancing the economy is essential in the longer term, but cannot happen over night.

And this is hardly rocket science. I’m not some sort of economic Einstein in claiming that. It’s straightforward common sense.

But let’s have a look at the Eton boys – full of a belief that they were born to govern. Does anyone really believe that they care about the country or the bulk of the people therein?

I don’t. There’s hardly a politician in any party who has an inkling of ‘the real world’ (I know – I‘m squirming even as I write that cliché, but it’s true). And in the case of a lot of the current government, I don’t think they care either.

And that, when I’d much prefer to be doing other things, is why I ‘do’ politics to some degree.

It’s because I do care. And also because I’m a pragmatist – and a realist. And because, horribly as I get older, I realise that it’s just plain old bleedin’ common sense.

It is worth pointing out that there's nothing much new about corruption in politics. Take a look at Hogarth's pictures of English life or read Dickens on elections and bribery in The Pickwick Papers (see ilustration).


So let's avoid getting caught in a trap about imagining some halcyon time in the past.

The moral of this, for want of a better word, is that if you aren’t prepared to do even a tiny bit – by which I mean voting and trying to keep yourself informed and thinking past the knee-jerk headlines – then you don’t have the right to whinge when you get walked over.


Put up a bit of a fight, in other words.

As the great German author and Nobel laureate Thomas Mann put it: "A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries."

Mann, who at one time was mooted by some as the first post-war German president, said that: "everything is politics".

He also noted: "Every reasonable human being should be a moderate socialist" – which considered construction should get the brain cells churning.


Oh – and I still hate politics!