Thank fuck the Prime Minister watches Downton Abbey..

At last, a plan. If you were a public sector professional, suddenly finding that your professional knowledge no longer means a job. Finding you face a lifetime of nothing, the Prime Minister has a new plan to help you.

Those nice ladies who lunch will be given tax breaks so they can create you jobs. Jobs washing their floors, scullerying their parlour. Ok, I admit I don't know what a scullery is, but I better get prepared to maid one. In other news, if you are bright young wannabe fashion journalist, and you are committed to a career. If you have already completed one or two internships at fashion magazine, there is an unpaid opportunity for you. You can do the work for the ladies what lunch, while they are at work as well. HURRAH. Equality is alive and well in 2012. Potential scullery maids need not apply.

This blog...

I have moved over to blogger after my blog was mysteriously suspended from Wordpress. If this blog is mysteriously suspended, I'll move to another platform. Will take 5 minutes. If that is suspended, I will then host my own. The internet is a funny thing.

Idle pondering...

Leveson isn’t journalism on trial. It never was. It is our political, and politically motivated media. Our newspaper industry.

What if journalism has left it too late to stand up for itself within the media?

Trolling as political debate...

I made a comment this afternoon which was construed as me taking disablism to a whole new level.

This was the point I was making. For my entire lifetime, political debate for many people in this country has been little more than trolling. The debate politicians offer on welfare, is accusations they know are false. We know they are false. This means that instead of discussing the very important relationship welfare has with our economy, ,and the economic inequality it should allow us to measure- we have people responding to accusations noone believes. Spartacus showed that.

Trolling being the flinging of accusations to elicit a response, or keep everyone busy.Instead of discussing our public services role in society, we are defending ourselves constantly from unlimited accusations. It used to be just the ill, the unemployed, increasingly over the years, disabled people, (not that that ever died off really). In the years since the banking crisis ‘ended’, the pool of people subject to that trolling has widened considerably. The trolling a necessary side effect of the positions of all political parties.

We are now actually seeing people in receipt of Disability Living Allowance, the benefit that has nothing to do with the groups who were previously being trolled, being attacked by our political establishment. People whose children are disabled. People who live in rented houses after a property boom intersected with inequality to mushroom the housing benefit bill. Even older people, being trolled while they lose those homes and the social care which is meaningless to Westminster.

It doesn’t matter how much evidence is thrown at these accusations, it doesn’t matter how wild they get. It doesn’t matter that this discussion appears to be more important than the economic cliff we are flying towards. It doesn’t matter that the pool of people being trolled is now so wide, that it includes workers who are being attacked for doing the job the government employed them to do, mothers. Hate crime is on the increase. With full parliamentary approval and little press challenge it is the norm now. The only role for the people at the heart of this in mainstream debate is defending themselves from it, or be grateful when the left perpetuate this by taking part in the discussion about which people are disposable.

The point I was making was that political debate on so many issues now was trolling, that we perhaps have to stop having the debate on those terms. Instead of special interest group against special interest group vying for the attention of a left perpetuate it by offering defences rendered useless by their lack of understanding? Because this debate has had since the late 70s to move on. Ask why our media have not done this.

We are told equality is a vague thing. We are sold equality in pictures of various ‘identities’ competing, and noone brings our attention to certain facts. The welfare state masks clear economic inequality. Inequality is measurable. And the inequality that the welfare state masked is being felt across many groups, who have all suffered the same thing. Inequality has been exploited, and made worse because those suffering it are structurally invisible to political debate.

That inequality a problem we have to get to grips with, if we want any kind of credible economic alternative. It cannot not be adequately explored, if we disability in isolation and in competition with others. Even if disability is at the root of the poverty faced.

Maybe we could look at Leveson, and ask whether what is being revealed there has anything to do with why our political discourse has been little more than trolling for three decades? The received wisdom that allowed this trolling crumbled this year.

My point was not that disability does not bring inequality. I am an able bodied woman, and I have very limited experience of living in a world not set up for the way my body works. My point was that disability was only one part of an identity, and that inequality like identity, is made up of many intersecting things. That it may be more effective to address the root of the problem, and stop refuting increasingly ridiculous accusations about moral fecklessness, from the one part of our society that is on trial for it’s complete lack of morality. That that might be more effective than have the symptoms pf the problem competing with each other. And that when the reason people were targeted was their invisibility to political debate, it was up to those who had visibility to remember they were fighting because they have the ability to. That by definition those hardest hit would not have that ability.

Rather than complying with the structure of debate our media offers- whichIS special interest group against special interest group, vying for the attention of the left. Providing stories sad enough to make the ‘right’ salivate and the left feel pious. Maybe it was time to learn from the past year, and have the debate on different terms and start asking questions about the implications of what we have learned about the way our political establishment operate. Start demanding answers instead of defending against accusations.

Worth a blog post on it's own..

B

The downside of living in a global village is that the number of global village idiots idiots increases exponentially. HT@bophelen

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Digital Natives

I am not a digital native, my daughter is. I got my first email address after I turned 20, and have since watched as this realm has become central to all our lives. Our banking, shopping, communicating. Before anyone had ever heard the word social networking, before Facebook, I was using the internet. In Britain the demographic that use the internet most(at one point anyhow) were mothers, hence the last election being described as the ‘mumsnet election’ ha. I suppose when a baby keeps you in the house all the time, that makes sense. In a world where women find they don’t have the traditional support structures when they become mothers, it would seem fairly understandable.

When you use the internet, you don’t know who you are talking to. This is a lesson most of us learn fairly early on. You gradually look at how people use the internet. If someone is living in pain for instance, or bedbound, or is trapped in a situation where there are few releases, they may use the internet as an escape. Possibly even a fantasy, I would say this is perfectly normal, understandable, and possibly even a very good thing that the internet offers. It certainly shouldn’t be a problem.

In online communities, the lesson that everything may not be as it appears is central. The woman who has posted to say she has had a dozen miscarriages in three years may be living with a hellish situation, or she may be saying it because she wants attention. That she is saying this for attention does not make her a malicious liar, it just may be easier to construct a fantasy to deal with her pain than deal with the real thing that is causing her unhappiness. You learn gradually the implications of this. But the lesson seemed to stop with the emergence of a blogosphere and twittersphere which made the lines between the public and a previously hermetically sealed media bleed.

The perception was always that this more or less artificially constructed ‘political blogosphere’ was likely to get people involved in politics,. The perception from many of the journalists and media types I spoke to, was that they felt this was a way for people to get into their world. I don’t think it occured often that the window that was offered was two way, and that the difficulty adjusting to this new environment was theirs. For me, this window has opened my eyes to the severe dysfunction that our political media create.

Social media has bigger implications for our mainstream media than falling newspaper sales.This window did not remove the inequality that is inherent in the relationship between society and the media. It highlighted it. One word from a media figure can cause massive changes in someone’s life. Change the way the police deal with them, bring about attention they may not want., Bring about attention they may want.

Those celebrities and journalists with 24-5000 followers, for whom people are little more than a username who may interest them for a second, need to start recognising the power they have. The potential to create real risk and to do real harm. Because people elevated by celebrities and journalists used to being able to operate completely oblivious to the effects of their actions, do not just disappear when that celebrity has gone ‘oh shit’ and dropped them.

If they want the freedom of no regulation they need to act responsibly. No other organisation which interacts with the public is allowed to behave without any codes of practice. NOt social work, not shops. not anyone. If a drug worker ro someone who works in education or social work fails to report a child protection concern, ignorance is not an excuse. If a media organisation fails to act on information about vulnerable people, they just don’t have to answer the phone and they can watch their social network close around them. This being the culture which allowed their disconnection in the first place.

Social media will eventually evolve so that people create that accountability if it does not exist. The lack of accountability highlighted by Leveson is bad enough when the media is a sealed bubble. When that bubble has immediate access to change people’s lives without thought, that lack of accountability becomes more dangerous.

The society that provide the social part of social media, already know about the media. We have learned. Perhaps it is time for the media part of social media, to take the time to learn about society and the effect they have on it.

Update..

I have been a bit busy recently.

Anyway, I accidentally summed up the entire world situation in 140 characters on twitter. It alarmed me.

Global political vacuum, meet, everyone has had enough- meet military industrial complex. Meets financial system collapsing.Double fuck.

As I am now doing a blog post, I thought I would add- a media in crisis, which is completely ill equipped for this.

This is the picture of the bangles I have been making in my attempt to defy the economy.

They are a bit rough at the bottom- have only just perfected the molds. I believe this may be a more effective way of fighting what is happening than my activity of the last year.

Wby Hester Kept his Bonus

Because it was a contractual obligation. Agreed by Labour and the Tories, even if the signature came from a Labour biro. Like the agreement that we would pour several times our national expenditure into a bank bailout scheme that would do little more than prolongue the crisis and guarantee the bust would be huge. We don’t talk about the banks still being responsible for the creation of our money supply. I would have thought, at some point since 2008 we would have had a conversation about whether that was wise. But no. Apparently we are still working on the bonus thing. Do you remember Hester telling us we needed to learn there is no such thing as a free lunch?

PS: Added later. I have seen conflicting reports about whether or not it was a contractual obligation.

The Story so Far..

A new blog. The reason? The old one was a waste.

I started my last blog at the beginning of the ‘anti-cuts movement’. The politics of dissent has established pathways. Unfortunately they are designed to be walked by people from a white, male dominated, middle class ‘sub culture’ of ‘activism’(aside: which, in an orwellian turn means ‘circle -jerk of similarly inactive narcissists, achieving little but occasional disruption. Convincing each other of what they already know, with occasional bouts of accusing interlopers of being an undercover police officers). Wannabe journalists, politicos, and posh kids. This exogenous body have to be sought out. Mainly mingling in fashionable areas of the our great capital or in colonised enclaves of sufficiently deprived yet fashionable areas. You may find them in spots of environmental significance. The left.

Those who are visible are mainly the younger generation of the elite occupying our political and media establishments(you can spot em: they are very concerned about the poor as long as the poor are marvelling at their altruism and intellect). A working class awakening is desirable, their plot demands the proles wake up so they can get on with utilising the ensuing political capital. Elitism and misogyny an unquestionable long held tradition, as is the neo-liberalism at it’s ‘moderate’ heart. To smash the state on the backs of the cause of public sector workers trying to preserve it and the things they built within it. Not the awakening I was looking for. Luckily they’re mainly harmless and come with their own echochamber.

While I was wasting my time, a more important but disturbing picture became crystal clear. The word ‘cuts’ faded. We are in a democratic crisis, most of the received wisdom which has distorted our political debate for decades just crumbled, our institutions of power globally and nationally are in crisis, and in the midst of internal power struggles. Power has to be maintained without the comfort of people’s disbelief being suspended. There is no glorious post-capitalist alternative on the horizon, the flow of global capital is just shifting, and our time is up. We now see globalisation from a new perspective, and geographically the prize Atlantic spot we occupy was just devalued. Australia, with it’s proximity to Asia is becoming Obama and Hilary’s ’special’ geo-political spot du jour.

Swathes of the country are fully aware they have no political representation, welfare is being used as a weapon on a unnecessarily dependent working class, and we are heading off a cliff economically, into decline. The days of welfare and social housing being anything other than a tool for punishment and control, gone. We need a knowledge based productive economy, but starved and fractured our education system, and dismantled our industry. We are attached to the US as they enter their latest steps into decline, and we are apparently keen to use our foreign policy to protect their economic interests. Especially if that is at the expense of Europe. Equality for women has been rolled back, unless that woman ‘fails’ to procreate or is independently wealthy. Some political dealing means attacks on disabled people may slow, but that is unlikely and even if the politicians stop being mean, their housing benefiit was already slashed, and so was their care. There are no functioning means available for people to access democracy, and access to the legal system has been shut down. The tribal screeching that is left of mainstream political discourse, little more than expensive trolling and gaslighting. A summer of riots show that social cohesion is not holding up that well.

The inevitable consequence of globalisation was governance devolving down and federalising up. Power devolved down organically, but the financial crisis which should have triggered the checks and balances our democratic institutions offer, didn’t. It turns out they got turned off sometime in 1986, when Wall Street and the City of London merged and were set free. Now patriotism is allegiance to the City. In Europe, the federalisation of power occured, but it doesn’t appear to be very democratic. Nothing is going to stop what is about to happen. Whatever is coming is going to play out on it’s own, And a world full of ‘neoliberalismfuckedmeover’s’ are waiting to deliver a smackdown. The pre-recorded war drums sounding are as familiar as that first brilliant Amy Winehouse album, and capitalism doesn’t appear to be in crisis, it appears to be evolving.

Last year the majority of people around me had a job, and I was the only one who didn’t. Now, I work at home and there is no shortage of daytime visitors, as work everywhere dries up. I remember this point vaguely when I was a kid. All the protections that existed then have been rolled back, and we haven’t seen the worst of this crisis yet. I can tell you those who may never work again, and those who probably will. Our kids prepare to work for free at Tesco and Poundland. Neo liberalism has stripped our economy of productivity and unsuccessfully tried to shatter our communities for my entire lifetime, to serve the sector that is about to blow. We are seeing the final push as everything is shovelled into it in the hope that it will magically be 1986, and not 2012. Thatchers children grew up watching this happen all over the North. We know it’s protracted, we know which bits you don’t notice, and we know where it ends. It was apparently called ‘managed decline’, but has more often been seen as urban degeneration and blamed on ‘chavs’.

2012 will be known as the year of the enormous ginormous neo-liberal global clusterfuck. So I need to starting off by defying the economy. I have already failed at one business, and I don’t have a career any more, not much to lose and might as well keep trying, there are many around me who can’t. This one is a goer. And there isn’t really much of an alternative. You can’t respond to an economic attack by hanging around with Oxford students offended more bye the heels than the holes in your shoes. Hoping to change a debate where the centrist position is ‘you should have kept your legs shut’, when you have to repeatedly start from there without repeating the word cunt too often. Watching politicos argue vocally over ideological differences fostered so they can differentiate themselves from their peers and their families. Becoming a party tribalist willing to repeat whatever lie your chosen party tells ad infinitum for the greater good, not my bag. Writing is fun, but the pittance it brings alongside copywriting doesn’t make it a long term financial future, and shouting from the source of manufactured dysfunction that you would like it to change seems a frustrating exercise.

There is no mysterious disconnect between politicians, the media, and the population. The disconnect is one that is carefully cultivated. Now that the internet is threatening to pierce it, there is considerable unease among those making their livings from it. Our mainstream media has limited allocated spots for the Oxford and Cambridge left to represent the chavs, wimmin and token ethnic minorities. It can only accept special interest group competing against special interest group or the poor proving they are deserving. Tokens are welcome if they can be polite and don’t expect the debate to move on, but party supporters are preferable.

Occupy has crystallised the unease that no-one could quantify, and embryonic as it is it cannot be undone. Globally, the idea will evolve and grow, and exists way beyond the tents. The Arab Spring did not start in Egypt, and was not confined to the Arab region. There is no need for an artificially constructed debate to give what is happening meaning, we all share the same problem, are able to name it, and we are beginning to understand it.

Once I have finished setting up what am doing at the moment, I plan to write. A lot. Knowing full well I can’t change anything at all. So this is a new blog. It isn’t the eighties, this time we can all write. Even if it is only to say we can’t stop you, but we know damn well what you are doing.

I apologise for a year of writing bogged down in left wing politics. Had I realised that that was, is, and always has been the sole purpose of it, I would have just stuck with what I was doing in the first place.

So now we get down to business…

Look forward to talking to you.