In response to Polly Toynbee's article in the Guardian.
These personal attacks are just laying the scent for a massive Tory fox hunt. The Jacqui Smith scandal is designed to make subsequent attacks on the public sector acceptable.
The orchestrated Tory attack is nasty and vicious attack aimed at preparing us for a massive campaign of cuts. This is how it works. Shadowy Tory groups with the help of friendly newspapers, spindoctors and top flight PR companies, look for the weakest links: the weak sisters, of the public sector and then attack them.
First they attack social services for making mistakes and play on the salary of the person forced to resign, then they look for a poorly performing hospital and attack it, then they look for at MPs expenses and attack them. Freindly newspapers start publishing planted articles about over paid public sector bosses and then, it never fails, they find a juicy little sex tidbit and link it to their attack on the public sector.
Bingo! A vile populism comes to the fore. The afterbirths of this concerted PR attack on the public sector are going to be cuts, cuts and more cuts. Every single future cut in our public services starts from the moment you accept this false narrative of an ineffective public sector.
Of course it could be better, but the public sector is pristine and pure when compared to the bankers and the corporations and the armaments industry and all the rest of that money grabbing lot. People become nurses and doctors and teachers and fire people and police people and civil servants to help the community. They have a vocation of service to their fellow humans. Unlike many in the financial sector who are usually just in it for the money. I may not agree with Jacqui Smith and this government about civil liberties but I cannot deny that she has a vocation. It is a very tough job.
The state and taxes and the public sector are the way that wealth is redistributed fairly in our society. Tories hate this, because it means money leaves their pockets to subsidise the poor. Moreover, the very well off are the powerful unelected economic constituency of any government and no one votes for them but, arguably, they have at least as much power as the electorate and a constant influence over the lifespan of a government.
Every time I see a teacher or a nurse or an ambulance worker or a public servant laid off or let go I will think of the billions upon billions poured into the maw of the greedy banks and I will think of Camerons double speak and I will remember the attack on Jacqui Smith as a particularly vicious and personal beginning.
Get ready for the following scenario: Of course, soon, all public sector spending will be scrutinised and subsequently demands made for the "fat" to be cut from the public sector. Soon you will notice cuts in all your public services and unless you are earning a massive amount that will affect you. Why let yourself be manipulated?
The game has changed since the Credit Crunch began. We are not talking about "corrupt Labour" any more. We are talking about a situation where the market economy has failed us and the public sector is now being asked to pay the price. Given the kneejerk reaction to Jacqui Smith’s expenses, we have a lot to learn from the cool headed approach of seasoned journalists like Polly Toynbee, after all.
Polly Toynbee's said:
"The anti-politician bile I predicted is certainly flowing here today. Easy to see why. It is plain wrong to cheat - especially for MPs. But please keep this in some perspective with the grotesque kleptocracy we have been witnessing in the private sector which has helped bring the world economy to its knees..I am disappointed few have picked up the point made by Ishouldapologise - The present concerted and cleverly orchestrated assault against the whole public sector is a deliberate means of softening up people not only to vote Conservative, but to clamour for public sector cuts. Be careful what you wish for. Of course there is always fat to be cut from public services - but it is between difficult and impossible to cut just the waste. Cutting is as crude as spending. Political tribalism has a point, rooted in very real decisions to be made which will be harder and nastier ones over the next few years than for a long time."
Think how much money one of the right wing papers will pay, how many millions. Vastly more than all the MPs ever fiddled advertantly or inadvertently on their expenses. Exactly how much did it cost to find that Jacqui Smith had inadvertently paid for two porn movies at a few quid each? It costs a lot to throw mud at our political system and damage its reputation. Sabotaging someone's carreer is an expensive business and it requires a lot of malice and planning to do something like this.
But go back across the years, my fellow goldfish, and see what expenseswere claimed and by whom and you will find a system of expenses that is messy and organic and without proper definition. This is not the fault of New labour. What is surprising is that more people don't come out and bat for Jacqui in government. I would have expected Harriet Harman to do it, but she hasn't.
Someone has got them all on the run, frightened of skeletons, but skeletons as small as bathplugs and movie bills. And you applaud that? This false outrage demonstrates pure ignorance and bullying. Standards in public life indeed!
I'll tell you where standards are broken. When BAE has to give a £1,000,000,000 sweetener to a member of the Saudi royal family in order to win a contract. Now that's real corruption. The private sector pisses on the public sector when it comes to corruption. The private sector is master of corruption. What about the way it finds ways to avoid paying billions of money on tax. As Marina Hyde said. Thanks for the charity, now pay your taxes.
Get a perpective!
But of course there are outrages. The worst, in my opinion. The suspicion is that during Blair's last months in government our foreign policy was completely hostage to his future job offer as a "Yo Blair" Middle Eastern Gofer. Millions of pounds coming into Blair's accounts from the US and US organisations in return for betraying his country's interests. In return for treachery. That's the way many of us see it.
"I may not agree with Jaqui Smith and this government about civil liberties but I cannot deny that she has a vocation."
ReplyDeleteIsa, please...you're embarrasing yourself. Smith is an odious, 3rd rate apparatchik, incompetent lobby fodder and living proof of The Peter Principle (articulated over 30 years ago by Laurence J Peter).
These self-serving swine are crypto-fascists and you and the grotesque Toynbee are fantasists. I voted Labour all my life until the Iraq war. Now, I want to see them wiped out. I want the present generation of Labour scum to be purged completely from the party they've destroyed. Maybe 10 years in opposition will help Labour regain the priciples they've abandoned. They are Tories in all but name. Fuck them.
Watching the vile Smith, the revolting McNulty and the rest of these parasites lose their seats at the next election will put a song in my heart.
No amount of the hypocritical Toynbee's nose-pegs could induce me to vote for these authoritarian, amoral, war-mongering scum again. You need to get a grip. You sound like a nutcase.
...and how can you, of all people, even think of supporting a government that colludes in torture? Shame on you, Isa...
ReplyDeletePrimary definition of 'vocation' from the OED-
ReplyDeleteVocation: The fact or feeling of being called by God to undertake a specific (esp. religious) career, function, or occupation; a divine call to do certain work; a strong feeling of fitness or suitability for a particular career etc...
Do you have any idia just how absurd...no, offensive...it is to use 'vocation' to describe a loathsome, unprincipled hack like Smith?
OK Misha,
ReplyDeleteBut I was making a point about what I perceive as part of a concerted attack on the public sector. The standard technique is to ventilate some peccadillo - in this case obviously an oversight.
OK. to say vocation is a stretch, but who would want her job and in comparison to someone who dedicates all their lives to making money she does indeed have a vocation.
What I am trying to do is to help mount a defence of the public sector.
I have no particular respect for Jacqui Smith and in terms of her approach to civil liberties I oppose her 100%.
But let's not let pourselves be lead by the nose and manipulated by Tory PR companies and spin doctors.
People's angry reaction to Smith is playing into the hands of the public sector cutters.
That's it. Public sector. Most of the rest I am opposed to.
ReplyDeleteWe can't allow ourselves to be stampeded into voting for a party that's done so much damage.
ReplyDeleteDo I really need to list what these swine have done, Isa? The selling off of the public sector to Blackstone and others, the PFI, PPP and the rest of it, the private prisons, the outsourcing to tax-dodging grotesques of work formerly done by the public sector...Jesus, Isa, these worthless fucks make the Tories look like Trotskyites. The arseholes even sold the Inland Revenue buildings to...a company based in a tax-haven. You couldn't make it up. Even the Tories were never this shameless.
The only hope for Labour is a few years in the wilderness and a purge of the scum who have their hands around the party's throat.
And don't forget, the last Tory govt left a larger public sector than they found when they took office. Allowing these unspeakable, crypto-fascist to go unpunished is unacceptable...
Jon Cruddas: The time has come for a new socialism
ReplyDeleteWe only thrive as individuals when we have a sense of belonging
Wednesday, 1 April 2009, The Independent
The economic crisis is a turning point in the life of this country. For a brief period, history is in the public realm and ours for the making; the opportunity will not come again for generations. People are angry and they want justice. We have to rediscover our capacity for collective change.
The recession has dealt a serious blow to the neo-liberal orthodoxy. It was the sale of council housing that helped to secure its popular support. In the name of a property-owning democracy, the modest economic interests of individuals were aligned with the profit-seeking of financialised capitalism. It was a new kind of popular compact between the market and the individual.
A similar compact between the business elite and shareholder value created a tiny super-rich elite – and became the unquestioned business model of the era. Its values of self-reliance and entrepreneurialism legitimised market-based welfare and pension reform, the drive to a flexible labour market and the transfer of risk from the state and business to the individual. New Labour entered government in 1997 having accommodated itself to the neo-liberal orthodoxy and with plans to deepen and extend its compact.
Growth in the UK depended on this compact. It was driven by mass consumption which required consumers buying cheap credit. The housing market turned homes into assets for leveraging ever-increasing levels of borrowing. The credit economy created an indentured form of consumption as it laid claim to great tranches of future earnings. The lives of millions were integrated into the financial markets as their personal and mortgage-backed debt became the economic raw material for global capital. This commodification of society engineered a massive transfer of wealth to the rich.
The neo-liberal model of capitalism generated unprecedented affluence for many. But it corroded the civic culture of democracy. Commodification and huge inequalities helped create a social recession with widespread mental illness, systemic levels of loneliness, growing numbers of psychologically damaged children, and an increase in eating disorders, obesity, drug addiction and alcoholism. It created monopoly forms of capitalism and an increasingly authoritarian, technocratic and centralising state. A ruling class accrued a dangerous amount of power and became a financial law unto itself. The gulf between the political elites and the population widened as economic restructuring destroyed traditional working-class cultures and communities.
While asset prices rose and the economy boomed these problems were evaded by the government. But the recession has exposed how the neo-liberal model has weakened our capacity to weather the economic storm. Britain fell into a recession with personal debt standing at £1.4 trillion, of which £231bn was unsecured. In the three months to January this year GDP declined at the annualised rate of 7.5 per cent.
This speed of collapse heralds a possible depression. The partial dismantling of the welfare state, and employment deregulation has undermined the economic stabilisers that act as buffers to deflationary pressure – secure jobs, decent wages and proper benefits. This lack of structural solidity is made more severe by government neglect of the manufacturing industry. The declining share of manufacturing in GDP, and the relocation of industries to low-wage economies, has reduced the income base of the working class.
The recession has destroyed the neoliberal compact that provided the economic and cultural glue of its market society. What kind of social values shall we put in its place? The Government has no alternative and nor does the Conservative Party. In all the fear and turmoil, the political elites offer no analysis of the crisis and no leadership. Their goal is to return the economy to business as usual. But the status quo has vanished, and there is no turning back to the past.
It is time to rediscover our capacity for collective change and to address questions of how we live as well as how we make money. We believe that a good society can be created through drawing on our traditions of socialism. We only thrive as individuals when we experience a feeling of safety, when we feel respected, when we feel we are worth being loved and when we have a sense of belonging. These are the basic social needs of human beings which a good society must value.
We need a new socialism not dictated by the few from above, but made by the many from below. It should be grounded in the interdependency of individuals and the value of equality. It should be democratic, because only the active interest and participation of individuals can guarantee true freedom and progress. It should be ecologically sustainable and pursue economic development within the constraints placed on us by the earth. And it should be pluralist, because we need a diverse range of political institutions, and a variety of forms of economic ownership and cultural identities, to provide the energy and inventiveness to create a good society.
The political fault lines of a new era are starting to take shape. They divide those who believe that privileging the market and individual self-interest is the best way to govern society and those who believe that democracy and society must come before markets. These fault lines cut across party lines and divide them from within: Thatcherite politics versus compassionate Conservatives; market Liberal Democrats versus social Liberal Democrats; neoliberal New Labour versus social democratic Labour. The pro-market factions of all three main parties have lost credibility and there is now a growing crisis of political representation.
From the youthful cultures of cosmopolitan modernity to the conservative cultures of mainstream working-class life, people feel disenfranchised. They have no political organisation to give voice to their hopes and fears. For many Labour is seen as a party of war, injustice and insecurity. And despite their lead in the polls there is no great enthusiasm for the Conservatives either. As a priority we need changes to our electoral system to revitalise our democracy and create the conditions for new political alliances and new forms of political organisation.
The task is not to win the political centre ground – it is gridlocked and dead – but to transform it. A new social politics of democracy must be capable of creating the conditions for recovery, and setting out a set of principles and a political direction for the future, and it must also address the threat of global warming. The boom is over. In the future there will be less to go round and so let us share it out fairly amongst ourselves and embark on the deep and long transformation that will bring about a good society. It will be the great challenge of our time, and it will shape the lives of generations to come.
Agreed - to some extent.
ReplyDeleteJohn Cruddas sounds like he could be our man.There are a lot of good people.
But I hope we do not get a Tory government. My fingers are crossed and I hope for a hung parliament.
I wonder if people like Cruddas flourish under Harman in a hung parliament. That's the best scenario.
Like you, I hope for a hung parliament. I voted for Galloway in the last general election. He may be a bit of a charlatan, but no one can deny he has principles and acts on them. I see from the newly published MPs claims list that Galloway doesn't claim a penny of the allowance that all the swinish Labour London MPs claim.
ReplyDeleteI'm delighted to see the loathsome Smith get some of her own medicine. Isn't she always telling us that if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear?
One understands, now, why Smith and her fellow swine were so against having this information in the public domain. The fuckers want to know all about us but God forbid we should know how they spend our money.
I mean, honestly Isa...how can anyone in good conscience vote for these scum? Smith earns more money than %99 of the populace, pays her hubby 40 grand from the public purse and claims 88p for a bathplug. At the same time, this revolting woman is all for prosecuting some poor single-mother who might have pulled a small fiddle in her benefits claim (claiming to live alone when her boyfriend resides with her, for example)...no, no, no. My loathing for these hypocritical parasites has become visceral.
I'll vote Green, I think. I like Caroline Lucas.
And just to remind you of what the vile Smith and her cronies have given us, this from an excellent Jenkins piece in todays Grauniad:
ReplyDeleteIn the last eight years, the same MPs who are howling at their data vulnerability have voted for the most extensive surveillance system in Europe, as well as the biggest data storage in the most expensive and inept computers. Britain under Labour has become the world capital of privacy intrusion.
A fifth of all closed-circuit cameras in existence are in Britain, despite the Home Office admitting they appear to make no difference to crime or drunkenness. Smith has legislated or approved an astonishing range of powers. She is contracting with private firms to set up a data storage device to record all emails and internet uses, costing £46m. This is a precursor to her £12bn "interception modernisation upgrade" also to record every text and phone call. This is ludicrous and illiberal extravagance.
Smith wants, under the coroners and justice bill, to "remove barriers to effective data sharing to support improved public services". Improve at what cost in liberty? She supports the Metropolitan police's evidence gatherer teams. These claim powers to "record identifiable details" of citizens at any gathering who might be "bordering on civil disobedience" (including journalists reporting them). As the Guardian has revealed, such filmed material is put on "spotter cards" and stored in a "corporate intelligence database", in gross breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
ID cards and NHS computers promise to store the defining details and medical records of the entire population. As data sharing spreads, these records will be virtually open to public view. In 2000, just nine organisations were allowed warrants to access secure government records: the figure is now almost 800. For a small fee, anyone will be able to learn anything about anyone else. It may be illegal, but like computer downloads it will happen.
This means every patient's medical history will become available to insurance firms, rendering some uninsurable. Court and criminal records will end the privacy of a spent conviction and make many, including those who have committed no crime, unemployable for being on a police data system. It was reported last week that terrorism laws are more used for local government and crowd control than national security.
As she battles to extend detention without trial, traveller surveillance and electronic databases, Smith will incant the presence of safeguards. Like most ministers and Whitehall officials, she is putty in the hands of high-pressure computer salesmen. She believes what they say, against all the evidence of the liberty lobby and computer failure. Perhaps she now knows better.
One of the few home secretaries who dominated his department rather than be cowed by it was Lord Whitelaw in the 1980s. He boasted how after any security lapse, the police would come to beg for new and draconian powers. He laughed and sent them packing, saying only a bunch of softies would erode British liberty to give themselves an easier job. He said they laughed in return and remarked that "it was worth a try".
Now the try always works. What is extraordinary is the weakness of the liberty lobby in opposition. It almost never wins. The Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne is proposing an excellent "freedom bill", repealing repressive legislation in 20 areas, from pre-charge detention through DNA databases to children's records. But it stands no chance of enactment. Nor are the Tories any longer libertarians - witness Chris Grayling this week absurdly protesting inadequate security for the G20.
The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust recently recorded just 15% of 50 government databases as "effective, proportionate or necessary". It concluded that 10 actually broke privacy law. Yet a staggering £100bn is to be spent on them in the next five years.
The only hope is that now MPs have been hoist by their own petard, they might be more mindful of the liberties - and privacies - of others. I would not hold my breath.
Sorry, but I feel very strongly about this...
I do too, and thanks for sharing your thoughts with me, but I don't want us all to fall into orchestrated Tory attacks on the public sector. Peoples emotions cause them to be easy to manipulate. Your visceral reaction, though completely on song, is something that a right wing PR organisations and right wing Tory (Labour?)organisations harness.
ReplyDeleteI'm less worried, Isa, about attacks on the public sector, where nobody can deny there is a great deal of bloat, than I am about the attacks on our freedom.
ReplyDeleteWe are marching, or being marched, into a police state. How long before Smith and her ilk demand we all have microchips embedded in our skins? After all, Isa...if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear...right?
Although I don't usually comment, I've read all that you've written about your father and mother. All that I've gleaned suggests that they were fine people with a powerful sense of what's right and what's wrong.
Don't you think they'd be horrified by this so-called 'Labour' government?
Of course they didn't like the New Labour government and despised Tony Blair. But more in sadness and dispair than anger. Some of the problems in Africa really do seem rather intractable - hence Donkeyshott.
ReplyDeleteIf you think that my mother first went to Mogadisciu in the time of Siad Barre and was enthusiastic about the improving situation of women in 1974 and subsequently worked with refugees in Hargeisa for many years in the 80s only to see a lot of her work (and my father's) undone by the Somali civil war. To use an analogy.
Noone would ever be in favour of an imperialist and expansionist US foreign policy
BUT
My father spoke of their role in Somalia admiringly. They were truely being altruistic there and making sacrifices in order to bring order to that terrible mess.
In other words. Though we may despise New Labour and most of what it represents - "Most" (or all) does not equal "some"
We have to be nuanced about thing and react, not always as poets to situations, but keep a cool head and think.
In this particular situation who is trying to manipulate us and why.
Perhaps one of the reasons I dislike the attack on Smith through her husband is that it is a standard knobbling technique. It's not fair play.
In the old Soviet Union they used sexual blackmail. In the case of Jacob Zuma he was acquited of rape, but smeared by gender activists. These are dirty tricks.
But what can we do to sabotage a growing police state except to understand that that state works in the interests of its sponsors, the electorate. But also it's other sponsors -capital, private enterprise. The security measures are necessary in order to perpetrate an unjust status quo. If we can change the status quo and make the electorate more important then politicians will listen to the people nore, the electorate and less to the denizens of Mansion House.
That's my take anyway.
The thing is Ia, the attacks on Smith are perfectly fair. To be sure, her venality is on a small scale, but she and her party are supposed to protect us from the bigger sharks. Instead, they're just as bad.
ReplyDeleteIf Smith could have worked out a way to pocket millions, 'within the rules', don't you think she would have?
These people are the enemy, Isa. The suck up to the bankers and oppress and abuse the electorate. I would to God we were more like France, where the govt lives in fear of the people.
Labour, unsurprisingly, is following the US model, where the electorate fears the govt. How to change this pernicious scenario?
Well, not by re-electing Labour, that's for sure. You know as well as I do, they won't change until they've had a brutal shock.
As it stands, they're a worthless degraded gang of parasites and toadies.We have to get rid of them before they make it illegal to vote for anyone else...
Misha,
ReplyDeleteI can't bring myself to vote for Galloway. Though he gave the US senate what for. Nick Clegg is another Blair clone - and highly opportunistic.
By the way Misha, why don't you pan New Lab on my blog.
Send your article to my email
philiprichardhall@googlemail.com
I am sure you can dash it off in five or ten minutes. Give them what for.
I am looking through the list of political parties and all I can find are:
the Green Party of England and Wales and Respect
By the way, are you sharp and ready for Hay?
One of these:
ReplyDeleteCommunist Party of Britain
Green Party of England and Wales
Socialist Equality Party
Socialist Labour Party
Socialist Party
Socialist Party of Great Britain
The Greens strike me as the least trapped in tired dogma. They are essentially pragmatic. Endless growth, as promoted by Brown and the rest of them, is clearly a bad joke. Oil will run out. The planet is warming up, bringing dire consequences, some of which are impossible to predict, etc, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe Greens are addressing themselves to creating a sustainable society. Marx is being proven right. Capitalism is consuming itself. I think that my conscience dictates voting Green. And if these dreadful New Labour creeps had actually addressed electoral reform (as they said they would) and brought in some form of proportional representation, the Greens would actuall be in a position to have a serious impact on policy, as they do in Germany, for example.
I dunno. Watching this shower--Labour, Tory or Lib Dem--leaves me more pessimistic than I think I've ever been. Remember what Einstein said? " Two things are infinite--the universe and human stupidity and I'm not certain of the former."