Anger Is An Energy

So, its been a while. Living under a Coalition government has been slightly depressing, in as much as there isn't any real horror to rally against(yet), more the sensation of bearing witness to the slow, gradual dissolution of people's lives and livelihoods, the idea that it is perfectly acceptable to be selfish in terms of how you form an opinion on the 'reforms' that are coming down the pipeline rather than consider how lucky we did have things generally. The reason I am not overtly horrified, is that, well to be honest, you knew they were doing to do this sort of thing, regardless of whether the Liberal Democrats were involved or not, because the Tories do not fuck around on this sort of thing. Even the 'u-turn' was heralded as a victory, a gesture of courage which speaks to the blanket media training every politican receives these days.

Labour are farting around, aside from Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, Ed Miliband is proving to be a disappointment, failing to support the unions last Thursday which makes me feel I wasted my vote on him, hoping for someone liberal, dynamic and determined to form a genuine consensus that would take us away from New Labour was wishful thinking on my part.

Still, it is gratifying to note that Rupert Murdoch continues to enervate my sense of rage and decency with the latest revelation about phone hacking, which I feel needs to be put into perspective:

Your daughter is missing, presumed dead but you still have her mobile phone. You keep it charged, the police purchase credit for it and in that, it becomes a symbol, a thing of hope that maybe the nightmare gathering on the horizon might pass you by, that you can entertain hope when the world constantly demonstrates otherwise. Family and friends leave messages, entreaties, pleas - if her voicemail message was personally recorded, it would be a chance to hear her voice again.

Now imagine discovering that someone has hacked that phone, listening and erasing messages to ensure that there is always content and access to that content. That those messages erased were a conversation never ended nor started, hanging in cyberspace, shining points of light, prayers to the universe, possible clues or motives that might provide closure or justice and yet someone out there made the decision that the content was theirs to erase. That the direction of the case may have been altered, that false hope may have been entertained because a 'journalist' wanted the story so much, he was prepared to violate your daughter's memory to do it.

That's what happened to Milly Dowler, I would consider that akin to french kissing her corpse at the wake, and this fucker deserves to go to prison for doing it. Her parents suffered the worst thing imaginable, and then had to suffer Bellfield's defence team pawing through their lives in search of mitigation and then had to suffer this rat fuck revealing he had been phishing her phone as the case and the search continued.

Rebecca Brooks nee Wade was editor of the News of the World at the time, married to Ross Kemp and a close personal friend of David Cameron. If she knew, and didnt immediately stop it, she deserves whatever the law can throw at her. Resignation is too easy, I would like her to apologise to Milly's parents, only because no apology could ever do, I want to see her and everyone involved confronted with the causal, indifferent horror of their actions.

It might seem a small thing to be irate about, to some. But I respect certain institutions, families, a free press and when I see them corrupted or sullied, it makes me horribly angry and frustrated. Which is key to understanding me, I am an idealist, a romantic and when I become discontented, I try to encourage others to feel the same. Mostly I fail at it, but it makes me feel better to know that I still care - like the PiL song says, 'anger is an energy'.

i want to escape the prison i made

Note: This is a work of fiction and as such is to be interpreted as such, it is solely the work of the author, and not intended as a comment, analysis or opinion upon any organisation or individual nor is any offence inferred or intended. If you cannot read something without believing it to be fiction I have taken the liberty of forcing you to highlight the text in order to read it.

i want to escape the prison i made

To whom it may concern,

I wish to apply for the position advertised in this weeks issue of the Advertiser, because I am desperate. I currently work in retail, one of the big ones, although to be honest, the experience of working in small versus large stores is the difference between being sick and soiling oneself. Its one of the big ones, big enough to afford to pay C-list celebrities fees that I would have to work years to accrue a similar amount in salary. When I say desperate, you deserve an explanation:

I put things on shelves: hoovers, toasters, microwaves. All in different boxes, all essentially the same product and for the most part made in cramped factories by prisoners of conscience. Sometimes people ask me what is the best of a particular range? Time was, I used to discuss the differences, cosmetic as they were and was genuinely interested in trying to meet their expectations and desires within the confines of their budget. Nowadays, I usually fight back tears and ask them to send word to the authorities of the conditions we work under, or alternatively, I have developed an entire routine where I fake a seizure. Eyes rolled back, foaming at the mouth, I contort my hands into little claws of contempt.

The First Aiders stopped coming if the call originated from my department, and when they did arrive, it was too late for the temp who had lied about his asthma on his application form. He seemed nice, although I never caught his name, he borrowed someone else’s name badge so he died with the name Richard who worked on checkouts and liked football, which is ironic.

I look forward to hearing from you

Roo-Neh

So as the majority of people are sat around wondering what the fuck is going to happen to them, spare a thought for poor old Wayne, having his agent haggle his way out of a club that made him into an icon, preparing for a birthday party that will no doubt make the pages of the weeklies, snide comments about his sexual appetite and attendant lack of impulse control even as they write cheques for access. Poor old Wayne Rooney.

I have actually read his autobiography, and found on paper, he seems quietly pleasant - loves his missus, good at a sport that people revere as much as religion - someone you could probably have a drink with and not want to glass him, but why do we revere these people so much?

Not in terms of their talent, I think that we all are drawn to the the work, the expression of a great talent in a way that goes to our subconscious but are you not a little bit fatigued with the football coverage in certain parts of the media?

The sport leaves me cold - in comparision with something like MMA, which is all sports boiled down to the essential conflict, and populated by far less gang rape and drunk driving, football is cossetted and overly effete. If we are going to have conflict, make it real instead of private boxes and subscription - although the thing I do like about football is the love it gets at the lowest levels, my brother coaches his stepson's team and his enthusiasm is palpable.

Still, if and when Rooney bags a good deal, he'll be scorned by all the United fans and former team mates, the press will tear even more chunks out of his hide and I cannot see him at a foreign club - imagine Rooney eating at an Italian restaurant and his disappointed childs face that his spag bol isn't made with Ragu, eh?

Cuts

This won't be a forensic assessment of the numbers because, although I do dazzle myself a bit, its dry and heavy-handed. Ultimately, we need to discuss the impact of the cuts in terms of people, which goes to my first point.

1. Do not make the mistake of assuming that everyone is exactly like you. If someone hasn't worked for twenty years, and you have been fortunate to have remained or thrived in the job sector, and your judgement is based entirely on your subjective experiences, both good and bad then the mistake is yours and you are paddling in the shallow waters of stereotypes.

You project your own experiences onto others and assume that were you in that particular circumstance, that you would behave differently from everyone else in that environment, when your experiences were shaped in a different environment and therefore would not accurately reflect a life lived in said environs. You make the best choices that you have available to you, in any given situation.

2. Now, as you are sat there reading this, let me point out that most of the deficit came from bailing out the banks, bailing them out of a situation that they created in order to make massive profits without any regard for the consequences, and yet it is ordinary people that will suffer for it - policemen and nurses, soldiers and council workers. The financial industry threaten to move business elsewhere if punitive measures are enacted, well call them on it.

3. Disability is something that can happen to anyone of us -either an inherited progressive condition or by an accident. Removing DLA, which is actually paid to people who work as well as who cannot, and goes some way to helping with costs attendant to their disability actually makes it harder for some people to continue working. In addition these cuts ignore the stigma that exists against the disabled.

4. Work should pay more than benefits, but the trick here is that rather than attempt to regulate or insist on a living wage, they are cutting benefits. One side of the equation serves the interest of ordinary people, the other allows the private sector to do what they want. We demonise those who are seen to sacrifice their earning potential to be of service, that somehow they are giving something up when the truth is, is that maybe they are trading temporal gain for something more substantial. When you look at the people who appear in the business pages, the parodies of achievement that populate The Apprentice, and then you look at a nurse or a fireman, who do you think is happier?

5. Do not just take on one opinion, the perseverance of belief can be strengthened in the face of contrary evidence but never take one opinion, even as it might hurt to do so. I have, and still I remain unconvinced that this has done anything than hurt those who have the least and allow those who have the most to keep on living as though nothing has happened - although they will have to fake some sense of propriety.

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Countering-the-cuts-myths

I come from a place of compassion, there are alternatives and I wish that there had fairer, more progressive procedures to reshape the economy into something ethical and sustainable. We live in a world that allows the bankers to pay themselves billions in bonuses whilst millions of people live on less than a pound a day and that to me, is nothing less than a tragedy. There are enough resources for all of us to live comfortably, despite what we have been led to believe - I am more sad than angry, but still angry enough to care.

Single parents, the disabled, the poor, the public servants and the young - these are who will bear the burden financially but socially the cost to us all will be immeasurable. Poverty is corrosive in ways that do not show up on a balance sheet, mental illness caused by stress and deprivation, crime and drug abuse(which I characterise as entirely different from drug use) these are the children of the cuts to come, and we all lose out in real terms when we forget the simple truth of our humanity - that we are all connected on some level and that we all share the same planet. That our perceptions differ is recognised, in that there are those who refuse to recognise this common connection and some of those people are in government, cheering at the potential loss of half a million public service workers - denying that those people are much like them, in their ambitions and dreams.

I could respect conservative ideas more if they were genuinely about offering the least some form of opportunity, but the free market fundamentalism has allowed them to reap the fruits of madness and claim them as something holy.

Strategic Defense Review

When the Coalition of the Willing won Iraq, one of the many fundamental errors of the transition process from occupation to functioning democracy was the en mass sacking of the Iraq Army and police force, allowing trained men to fall under the influence of the insurgency bringing with them the skills and discipline to wage urban warfare.

I remind you of this as we go into the Age of Austerity.

A grim sort of humour has captured my imagination of late, the Army is planning on losing an entire deployable brigade out of six which if it maintains current operations, will be achieved through the terrible process of waging a war to save a land that cannot be saved by force of arms, only engineering, education and incentive all of which undermine the tribal structure that keeps Afghanistan in constant chaos.

Why is it more expensive to go through with a contract than to cancel it? Does this say something about the balance of power between the private and public sector? I think that we are seeing our military being reorganised around the principles of maximising the profits of the defence industry rather than true flexibility and strategic jurisprudence, happening in degrees that escape the notice of most.

I personally believe that our military would be more effective serving as a compromise between a deterrent to adventurism and with an increased element of rescue and engineering service - more mobile, assistance to disasters, immediate and ongoing relief in any situation than in a traditional militaristic sense - more of an emphasis on special elite units with tradecraft for the militaristic operations and training indigenous allies to police themselves. By this, the bulk of military personnel would move to this new role with the incentive of qualifications that will directly transfer to civilian occupations. Imagine a military that people were glad to see?

The Big Society

I feel an increasing sense of unease with the encroaching cuts, all in the service of 'The Big Society' and 'Cutting The Deficit'. It is going to mean that the simple covenant that we all had a reasonable expectation of seeing a doctor, posting a letter, calling on the emergency services, educating your child and providing them with the opportunities to make something of themselves - all now going to be available to those who can afford it.

I really wish I was joking, that I could believe that these are going to be the socio-political equivalent of ripping off a plaster -painful and instantaneous but ultimately relief and healing set in afterwards but I cannot. This is, as Naomi Klein wrote about, disaster capitalism - setting up in the ruins to build a world that will better suit their ideology.

The government are acting under the auspice of sharing the pain around, but the fundamental changes that would actually redress the deficit - a Tobin Tax, a higher banking levy, the scrapping of Trident, addressing tax evasion and avoidance -shit even legalising or decriminalising some of the softer drugs would bring in huge amounts of revenue. But no, these cuts are about reducing the state to a point where the private sector will turn everything into a race to profit fastest and first.

Oh yes, the expertise of the private sector - ok, I want you to watch the Apprentice. That is the expertise of the private sector right here, arrogant soulless cunts who exist on the personality scale from fragile defence of obvious personality flaws through to sociopath who dresses in the skins of children - people who actually have conversations that could be randomly generated from a computer programme. Imagine being diagnosed with schizophrenia and having to go some of the people you see in suits on shopfloors and in offices to request their assistance, or wondering if you can raise the money for chemotherapy, go on that is what some of you voted for - oh well you could work harder -but jobs don't exist, so fuck you.

Fuck you. That is the true message of the Big Society right there, they will never address the gross excesses of private industry or government, the true hypocrisy that we all sense on a subconscious level but is wholly acknowledged. Me, I am preparing for the worst and will try to negotiate this sick new world we all live in - I stopped blogging because I wanted to not be so angry, but I cannot help how I feel and I know I want to talk about it. I only hope that someone listens

Ed Miliband

So, the Labour Party has a new leader and the attacks against him are around his links to the unions, ooh, the unions what with their desire to take society back to an age where people got decent wages and better terms and conditions, a golden age of prosperity that NEVER FUCKING EXISTED. Never mind that only 8.7% of votes cast were by the unions, but it sent out a clear message that just maybe Ed appealed to ordinary working people. Ordinary working people, you remember them, they serve you in supermarkets and build stuff that you use, they aren't as sexy as celebrities or millionaires and yet when they do pitch up and decide to do something, it gets done.

He talked about a living wage, in real terms on how it would be an actual win/win situation, for businesses and individuals - in particular when my industry, retail, has some 257k minimum wage jobs within its borders - all of which would benefit immensely from the implementation of the same.

He admitted New Labour made mistakes - which is a sign of maturity, and more importantly, did not lay the blame at any one individual and then apologised for it. I respect that, it is a good sign that there is a political leader who can admit to a mistake.

He talks about a foreign policy based on values, which might mean that we stop tolerating some of the ambient abuses that go on in the world and that our next government might stop propping dictators up.

He talks about limiting markets - which if previous governments had done so, would have prevented the financial collapse - ok, so a few less billionaires but we can all live with that.

He seems determined to break with the past, in a positive way.

Plus, for me, personally he seems willing to genuinely speak out against the old guard, not so willing to follow the paths set before him. I could be wrong, I sometimes believe I was fundamentally wrong on my support for Obama and hey it won't be down to me to determine whether he fails or succeeds. I look forward to hearing his views, and I hope he will take the best lessons of history and attach them to new ideas.

With the possibility of mass protest being more likely than not, here are some of my ideas with which to make a much larger impact and to strengthen the overall body of argument against media scrutiny and wilful misinterpretation:

1. Uniform. The success of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States had many factors to it, but for the purposes of this argument, I will draw upon one: they looked smart.

No visible piercings, shirts and ties for the men, dresses for the women. They looked like the aspirational ideal of the middle class who, to a certain degree, control the direction of public opinion. They related to them in a way that has been denied by the overall cavalcade of anarcho-class tourists, dreadlocked jugglers and countercultural scene kids that we experience today. This is no way a slight on those who express themselves thusly, but in order to win greater arguments, a certain degree of discipline is not anathema in service of the greater good. Dress like you are visiting an elderly relative or going for a job interview that you actually want.

2. Non-violence. This should go with saying, if we are to occupy the moral high ground then there is a cost to that, and again, it goes towards discipline. Self-defence, I would argue, is permissible but only so much that you can extricate yourself from the situation. As in several schools of martial arts - you are either in or out. Be out.

3. Performance Art. Make it subtle, one of the great ideas in Cory Doctorow's For The Win is a protest in which the participants merely organised a flashmob in which they arranged to meet, eating an ice cream with the further variation that they would appear holding a second, which they then would pass to a passer-by. Which confused the authorities, but it makes a good point, being imaginative, being viral is arguably so much more effective in campaigning for your particular cause.

4. The Corser Cost. We have social networking and email, flashmobs and SMS/MMS, why are the Trades Union Movement not using them