Category: Politics & Opinion

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The stress of moving

We are moving from the flat we have lived in for about fifteen years. We’ve found another place to rent in Streatham or as the marble mouths who want to gentrify the borough insist on calling it, St. Reatham.

Our current landlord has been great but periodically, for one reason or another, floats the idea of selling. The last time was earlier this year. He eventually told us to hold fire but it put the wind up us a little so we kept looking.

At some point he was going to sell. Better for us to jump now rather than wait to be pushed. Finding the right place has taken a while but we think we’ve found somewhere nice but more importantly somewhere that has the potential to be long term.

The idea of finding somewhere quickly is horrible, not least because it puts us at the mercy of that loathsome profession, the letting agent. I hate letting agents! I hate dealing with them. I hate being at their mercy. I find them unnecessarily rude. They have the social graces of an autistic teenager. And worst of all I hate feeling like I’m being ripped off. How they justify charging twice for the same service is beyond me? They charge you for finding the landlord a tenant while charging the landlord for their services. Make no mistake a letting agent works for the landlord. The landlord hires them to look after the property not the inverse.

Thankfully we found our new place through a friend of a friend so we’re being spared the stress and indignity of dealing with an agent. We, like most people, would love to buy somewhere. The relative security of property ownership is attractive but because we rent the prospect of buying is an Everest of a problem. Even if we were pulling down above average earning, which we’re not, there wouldn’t be a lot left to save after you pay ever increasing rents, utility bill, travel and the basics of living. Bottom line, the cost of living in the United Kingdom and London in particular, is too high.

Cost of living high. Prospect of saving low. No savings. No deposit. No deposit. No buy house. Even if we took advantage of the governments new help to buy scheme we’d have to find more than £17000 to place a five percent deposit on the flat we currently live in.

We, like an ever increasing number of people, have to face the idea that we will never own a property of our own. This is a problem on so many levels it would take a book to cover them all.

The immediate political problem is that if there’s a generation who have no choice but to rent, something must be done to help them, improve their rights, make it fairer, more affordable, less vulnerable to the vagaries of the market, more long term, and most of all devoid of autistic teenagers.

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Motorway driving

For reasons that I don’t really want to go into, I’ve had to do a lot of motorway driving recently. I must’ve done two thousand miles up and down the M1 between London and the North East. It’s exhausting, and not because you have to sit in the same position for an extended period of time, but because it’s so stressful.

Driving on the motorways of the UK is nothing short of playing a twisted game of Russian roulette. But not the kind that has you chamber the round, spin the cylinder, aim it at your head then pull the trigger. This is the kind they play in Géla Babluani’s 13 (Tzameti). The kind that has you chamber the round, spin the cylinder, point the gun at the guy in front you and pull the trigger. The kind where you choose to play the game but someone else kills you.

As I understand it the rules of motorway driving are relatively simple. They stipulate that you drive along the inside lane at no more than seventy miles an hour. The two adjacent lanes are intended for overtaking slower moving traffic. Once clear of the slower vehicle you should then return to the inside lane, all the time keeping the correct stopping distance between you and the vehicle in front.

Yesterday I did about five hundred miles. In no particular order here are a few of the things that happened. While overtaking an articulated lorry, the driver decide he wanted to overtake the vehicle in front and suddenly pulled out. I was lucky there was no one to my right. If I hadn’t pulled over as quickly as did he would’ve hit me.

On another occasion, on a fairly congested section of road, a car suddenly cut in front of me. I was forced to break hard or hit him. He just decided to pull over without following the basics of the highway code.

There were a series of incidents involving drivers who seem incapable of using the inside lane; the middle lane hogger. I approached one vehicle from a clear inside lane. There was no reason for the car ahead to be in the middle lane. Rather than undertake him, very easy to do but illegal, I had to cross to the outside lane. Not so bad until I got level with him and he woke up, decided he didn’t want to be overtaken and started to speed up. I returned to the inside lane as he pulled away. Five minutes later, a few more cars on the road and I overtook him?

On another congested stretch of road, caused in no small part by these cruise control junkies hogging the middle lane, I found myself in the outside lane. I maintained a steady speed, had enough distance between me and the car in front until someone pulled in front of me, halving the stopping distance I had built up.

This relatively minor action feeds a couple of other much more serious behaviours. There are the drivers doing significantly more than seventy miles an hour, who insist on driving bumper to bumper with the vehicle in front. They stack themselves up like cards ready for a death match of fifty two card pickup. The sister to this is the light flashing tailgater. At one junction somewhere past Sheffield I pulled into the outside lane to give those joining the motorway room to do so. I passed one car as it speeded down the slip road and watched in my rear-view mirror as they joined the motorway, cut across all three lanes of traffic, until they were behind me, lights flashing for me to pull over because apparently I was in their way.

I find this behaviour particularly infuriating. Vehicles doing well over the speed limit pulling in behind you and flashing their lights demanding you do something that usually isn’t possible. These are just a small percentage of the reckless behaviour I witnessed yesterday. I have no understanding of other road users behaviour.

Part of me thinks they’re the product of a society dominated by rampant self-interest. I’m the only person of worth, you lot are a hinderance to my progress, and should be forced to one side. Some might say this is just the law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest. You’re not fit enough to have the money to buy a massive SUV or Saloon car so you’re not fit enough to be on my roads.

I think on a very simple level the chaos of motorway driving is an indication of some fairly serious underlying social problems to do with a general lack of respect each of us has towards the other. Alternatively, there’s a kind of class war is being played out on the motorways. Just a thought?

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Margaret Thatcher’s authoritarian personality

Margaret Thatcher died on Monday. In death, as in life, she divides opinion.

Personally I think she was the worst thing that happened to this country since World War Two. All the problems we currently face have their genesis in her premiership.

The financial collapse of 2008 was a direct result, not just of the economic strategies she initiated, but more importantly a way of thinking she promoted. The senior managers and business brains of the banking sector, were the Young Turks of the financial industry when she came to power. The mantra of rampant self-interest she espoused, and they took to with such vigour, is the same “I’m all-right Jack” attitude, that lets these big-bonused-bankers do business the way they have and continue to.

Her devotees say she was a strong leader. For me she was a “strong leader” only to those who need that kind of guidance. To the rest of us she was nothing more than a bully. I think there was a callousness in her leadership that was nothing short of sadistic. She had a viciousness about her that I see in the “tough decisions” fiscal policy of George Osborne. No to a plan “B”, “C” or “D” is all-right when your worth £4.3 million, have a Notting Hill property worth £1.8 million and a wife who’s father is a life peer. A life peer who interestingly was also a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet.

Recent entries about Carrion, specifically those regarding Anthony Reiner, have made me realise something about Margaret Thatcher. Her success was due in no small part to her authoritarian personality. At this point it might be a good idea for you to take a look at Erich Fromm’s 1957 article “The Authoritarian Personality“. I referenced it in posts that grapple with the totalitarian mindset of prohibition and Reiner’s authoritarian personality.

Fromm makes some interesting insights, notably the symbiotic relationship between the passive and active authoritarian. If I were to characterise Reiner as a passive-authoritarian, an individual who belittles himself so he can, as part of something greater, become great himself. I would characterise Thatcher as the active-authoritarian, the sadist who feels strong because she has incorporated others.

To those who say she encouraged people to be free of the state, to go out there and do it for themselves, I say the free market is not freedom. Ask anyone struggling to pay a utility bill, or trying to buy a house, or even secure a living wage, how free do they feel? Market freedom is only freedom to those who have. If you already have it, you’re free to take it somewhere else. What if you don’t?

That argument aside, one of the most interesting thing for me, in realising Thatcher had an authoritarian personality, is realising how many people have the emotional need to follower her. The irony of her message of self-reliance and freedom is actually a message of subjugation. You must supplicate yourself at the alter of Thatcher or you’re one of “them” and if you’re one of “them” you’re vilified, blamed for everything that is wrong with the world. If we rid ourselves of them, things will be better for us. That people is the dynamic of totalitarianism. Which is perhaps Thatcher’s real legacy.

Personally I do not mourn her passing, because unfortunately I have to survive the world she created.

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Sugar is a drug

The other day I had another of those discussions that crop up periodically about drugs. In my experience people usually pool into two groups. The first, containing those who’ve done drugs, escalate into a series of anecdotes about their experiences. The second, filled with those who’ve never done drugs, descends into a lecture about how bad drugs are and the harm they cause. The exponents of this view always extol the party line. They’d never do drugs and invariably view those who have as if they’re sub-mental.

At some point in the conversation I always drop in the line. If they discovered sugar now, it would be banned, categorised as a Class A drug like Ecstasy. Most of the time I do it to agitate the argument, make people think differently about what a drug is. It’s fun to watch them try and dismiss the assertion as frivolous, but in the end it’s hard to refute the argument that sugar is a drug.

Last time I Google’d “sugar is a drug” I got about 139,000,000 results. High up on the search results was an interesting post by Robb Wolf. In “Sugar is a drug” Wolf outlines some interesting facts about the addictive nature of sugar. Basically “excessive amounts of sugar can lead to the release of increased amounts of dopamine“. For those who don’t know dopamine is the substance released when you take heroine.

The pathology goes something like this. When you take heroine the body releases dopamine and something called gamma-Aminobutyric acid or GABA to counteract it. The heroine stops the GABA from doing it’s job. The brain is flooded with an unchecked surge of dopamine. This is what leads to the feelings of euphoria. The crux of Wolf’s argument is that a high sugar foods are addictive.

Most people dismiss the impact of sugar on their system. You get the odd joke about experiencing a “sugar rush” but for the most part the narcotic effects of sugar are perceived as something relatively mild.

Now imagine experiencing sugar for the first time. Most people have been using sugar since they were children. Repeated use of any drug build a tolerance to that substance. I recently started drinking coffee again after a long period of abstinence. I now feel the effects of every cup on my system.

Viewing sugar as drug creates a seismic shift in the way we understand drugs. It throws up a whole bunch of questions about the role of drugs in society, or more specifically the role of prohibition. If sugar produces the same effect on the individual as heroine, why is one controlled and the other not?

The more I think about it the more arbitrary, and politically motivated, prohibition seems. I think the next time I have one of those discussions I’ll pose the question. If society can accept the routine use of sugar, why can’t they accept the routine use of Ecstasy?

Wonder what the answer will be?

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Why aren’t there more riots?

A couple of days ago I flicked past Newsnight and heard the term “feral rich” for the first time. Two words you don’t often hear said together. They were referring to an article by Peter Oborne.

Open Democracy

Originally written for The Telegraph, I found a copy on Open Democracy.

Mr Oborne’s article highlights the “terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite”. He points to the scandal over politicians expenses. The hypocrisy of the government’s efficiency adviser Philip Green, sending a billion pound divided off shore.

While their actions may well have been within the law, they were not in Mr Oborne’s opinion, or mine, moral. Mr Oborne notes that “an almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up” among those at the top. He offers the example is Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who in the House Of Commons debate about the riots remarked “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.

While Mr Oborne racks up a steady count of politicians all guilty of hypocrisy. Exposing the “get what you can” mentality that infects our society from top to bottom, and argues “that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society”. I think you have to go back thirty years, to the government of Margaret Thatcher, to understand the true causes of what happened a couple of weeks ago.

Put simply you reap what you sow. Mrs Thatcher’s period in office set in motion a series of social changes that we are only now starting to pay for. Her premiership brought with it a social shift that positivity promoted an ethos of rampant self-interest. It is my opinion that the recent banking crisis was caused by individuals who began their careers while she was in office. Her ethos rose with them through the industry. It was her brand of greed that ultimately brought the banks down.

Prompted the massive bail outs, that has lead to the cuts, caused the unrest we saw in May, and ultimately exploded in recent lawlessness. The looters wanted what those at the top of the pyramid have, and got it, the way those at the top get it, by taking it.

I think Mrs Thatcher’s legacy roots deeper still. She changed the nature of our economy, from manufacturing to service. In doing so she condemned an entire generation of people to a life on benefits. Those people who now live the nightmare of joblessness, are exactly the same people who would have found work in manufacturing. Those failed by the education system, are now forced to compete in an employment market that is saturated with graduates. The irony is, with graduate unemployment now at its highest since the mid-nineties, even the most menial job is hard to get. What’s left for those without a university education? Minimum wage jobs that make befits seem like a pay cut?

Cutting benefits is not the solution. Creating jobs is the solution. Jobs that pay enough to give people a decent standard of living. How can that happen, when the cost of living is rising, and those at the top of the Sunday Times Rich List are able to increase their wealth by eighteen percent? It can’t. Because to create jobs you have to spend money, and this government is intent on deficit reduction. A deficit that should be paid off by those who caused the problem in the first place. The bankers put their interests about everyone else, and we’re paying the price. Not just in cuts, but in the social misery of poverty. Those at the bottom don’t have the luxury of walking away from their debts, why should the “feral rich” at the top?

The question shouldn’t be why did the riots happen? The question should be. Why aren’t there more riots?

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Why they won’t stop the war on drugs

I read a headline in the Metro last week. “The war on drugs ‘just isn’t working’.” Apparently the Global Commission on Drug Policy has called for the legalisation of drugs. Noted elders argue that “the war on drugs has failed to cut drug usage”. Adding that it has filled jails, cost millions, fuelled organised crime, and caused thousands of deaths.

Despite evidence from Portugal, that problematic drug use and drug related deaths fall when drugs are decriminalise, they decriminalised drugs in 2001, a Home Office spokesman said they were going to ignore the report. “We have no intention of liberalising our drugs laws. Drugs are illegal because they are harmful. They destroy lives.”

I am not surprised by the Home Office’s attitude, it’s the patronising parental attitude always displayed, the blinkered vision that completely ignores the reality of drug use in the country.

DrugScope, the UK’s leading independent centre of expertise on drugs, “estimated that over 11 million people aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales have used illicit drugs in their lifetime”. That’s about 6% of the population. They estimate there 6408 drug related deaths between 2000 and 2004. In that same period there were anywhere between 25,000 and 200,000 alcohol related deaths.

The “drugs are harmful” mantra is repeated ad infinitum, as if repeating it makes it more true. It doesn’t, and not because drugs can’t cause harm, they plainly can, it’s because the “drugs are harmful” mantra masks the real reason drugs are illegal.

Drug prohibition isn’t about public health it’s about public control. I’ll say it again, it’s not about public health, it’s about public control. Think back to World War One, the government imposed closing times on the public houses, so munitions workers would go back to work in the afternoon. The government imposed limited prohibition to control its workers. Not because of fears for their health, but to get them back to work.

What’s the difference between that, and the laws that stop people dropping an “E” at the weekend? Ecstasy is a Class A drug because dropping an “E” at the weekend might interfere with your work on Monday.

If prohibition was about public health, they’d ban tobacco. Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances known to man. Its use causes no end of health problems, from heart disease, to strokes, lung cancer, to tumours. Ash, the anti-smoking charity, estimate there are 12 million smokers in the UK. That’s about 7% of the population. DrugScope estimate “that each year in the UK around 114,000 people die from tobacco-related diseases”. Yet you can walk into any corner shop, buy a packet, light up, and get high.

Cigarettes are proof, if proof were needed, that prohibition is not about public health, it’s about public control. Prohibition is a panacea of public control for governments around the world. It’s a device nations use to endo-colonize their population. Endo-colonization is a term coined by French cultural theorist Paul Virilio. In his text of Pure War he describes the general militarisation of society, in which economies, unable to expand by colonising other countries, start to colonise their own population. The state, in the form of a civilian military, that’s the police, have “come to settle among and establish political control over (the indigenous people of an area)”.

Drugs is not a public health issue, drugs is a civil liberties issue, and we should demand our freedom to take drugs if we so wish. I say legalise the lot. Regulate them the way we regulate cigarettes. From cocaine to tobacco, you should be able to walk into a chemist, order your desired brand, at your preferred strength, and go enjoy yourself for a few hours, without fear of retribution from the state.

The war on drugs is a war on freedom, and should be condemned as antithetical to an individual’s human rights.

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It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!

I see the MiddleClass as psychopaths. When you say the word psychopath, images of axe wielding homicidal maniacs come to mind, but the truth is considerably less histrionic, and comes in the form of the compulsive liar who always gets what they want, the social butterfly who leaves a whirlwind of destruction in their wake, or the “interspecies predator” who controls others to satisfy their own selfish needs.

I have always been suspicious of the MiddleClass, never really able to understand their demeanour, but when I came across Dr. Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, it all fell into place.

The checklist is the psycho-diagnostic tool most commonly used to assess psychopaths. It is a clinical rating scale of twenty items.

  • Glibness/superficial charm
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth
  • Pathological lying
  • Cunning/manipulative
  • Lack of remorse or guilt
  • Shallow affect
  • Callous/lack of empathy
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
  • Parasitic lifestyle
  • Poor behavioural control
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals
  • Impulsivity
  • Irresponsibility
  • Juvenile delinquency
  • Early behaviour problems
  • Revocation of conditional release
  • Many short-term marital relationships
  • Criminal versatility

When completed, the test subject is scored anywhere between “0” and “40”. The prototypical psychopath scores the maximum “40”. A score above “30” diagnoses the subject as psychopathic. I see scores above “30” manifest all the time in the attitudes and behavior of the MiddleClass. Individual members may not be psychopathic, but as a class it’s a different story. Take that core member of the MiddleClass, bankers, I’d score their behaviour as follows.

  • Glibness/superficial charm (2)
  • Grandiose sense of self-worth (2)
  • Pathological lying (2)
  • Cunning/manipulative (2)
  • Lack of remorse or guilt (2)
  • Shallow affect (2)
  • Callous/lack of empathy (2)
  • Failure to accept responsibility for own actions (2)
  • Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom (2)
  • Parasitic lifestyle (2)
  • Poor behavioural control (2)
  • Promiscuous sexual behaviour (2)
  • Lack of realistic long-term goals (2)
  • Impulsivity (2)
  • Irresponsibility (2)
  • Juvenile delinquency (1)
  • Early behaviour problems (1)
  • Revocation of conditional release (2)
  • Many short-term marital relationships (0)
  • Criminal versatility (2)

That’s a Checklist score of “36”. They should be banged up, but they’re not, they’re allowed go about their business, in the name of the free market, and a profit.

I see scores above “30” in the well dressed politician who demonstrates a complete lack of empathy by admonishing the long term unemployed. There in the grandiose sense of self-worth innate in parents who set up a school for their children, and the bankers who fail to accept responsibility for the whirlwind of destruction they left in their wake.

I have no idea what to do with this insight, but there is some small satisfaction in being able to j’accuse. “It’s ‘cause you’re psychopaths!”

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Embarrassed by The Apprentice

If capitalism were a brand, what kind of brand message is THE APPRENTICE sending? I didn’t sit down and watch last nights episode. It was already on when I got in, and stayed on in the background while I busied myself with other things. In that half aware, peripheral vision, wallpaper kind of state, I was struck by how juvenile it all is.

I realise these people are there as much for entertainment as anything else, but if these are the brightest and the best, Lord Sugar’s business is in trouble. They go about their task like a blind man in a patch of brambles, staggering here, tripping there. As far as I can tell, they’re so busy trying to elbow their way to the front of the line, they don’t see the others in their team as anything but competition.

The worst of it comes when they get to the boardroom. The team with slightly better result is rewarded with a trip to a peep show circus, and the others, the ones who did that bit worse, get to play the greasy spoon blame game.

The post task autopsy is like watching a child caught pinching a sibling. They shift the blame, and obfuscate, while holding their knees together, hoping Sugar will believe them. If they are, it’s off to slime another day. If not, they’re on their bike, doomed to poverty, and the arbitrary nature of the labour market.

If I were the brand manager of capitalism, I’d be embarrassed by The Apprentice, and what it says about my product.

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Infantilising the political system

I can’t help thinking the royal wedding, no to the alternative voting system, and today’s release of “THE KING’S SPEECH“, are linked in some way.

The royal wedding was marketed as a national event we could all unite behind. A resounding “no” to the alternative vote was affirmation of “business as usual” for the political class. And today’s film release is the icing on the cake of the heroic triumph over adversity myth that surrounds the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

I think the cycle of recent events provides a bloody nose to those of us who would like to see this country as a republic, because it does what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha always does, distract us from the real and lasting political change needed in this country.

When I tell people I think we should elect our head of state, they look at me like I’m demented. “You want a president (insert the name of the politician you hate the most)?” I would actually like to elect every person who represents me, because if I elect them, I can un-elect them, make them accountable for what they do in my name.

That doesn’t seem to be enough reason for most monarchists. As if wielding my franchise is somehow a silly idea, and I should know better. When I ask them what exactly the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does for us, all they seem able to come up with is tourism. As if having big houses for commoners to visit is justification for infantilizing the political system in this country.

Ultimately that is what the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha does, it treats the people of this country as a “child or in a way that denies their maturity in age or experience”. I wish we could grow out of it, the way I grew out of crazy hair cuts, but as long as the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha remains in place, we are doomed to suckle on their breast, treated as children unable to emancipate.

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Hypnotised by television

The argument about the harm television does to children is back on the agenda.

When people start on about this, I get very uncomfortable, it’s often the precursor to a demand for censorship. Censorship won’t solve the problems they harp on about, because none of the research that tells them content caused this or that behaviour, ever takes into account the act of watching as part of the causal relationship.

I think the act of watching television causes more damage than its content. I am not denying there is some relationship between behaviour and content. We wouldn’t have adverts if television didn’t affect behaviour, but for me it’s the act of watching that has the most significant effect.

If children stare at the screen to the detriment of all other social interactions, it’s no wonder certain damaging behaviours start to manifest themselves. It could be argued that the rampant self-interest of the last thirty years is caused by watching ever more television.

Generations of us have been brought up on an increasingly mailable television services. Multi-platform, interactive, streaming, on demand, have allowed us to bend television to our individual wants. As a result, we relate to the world, the way we relate to television, in very self-centred terms.

We pick and choose what we care about, the way we pick and choose what we watch. If our primary relationship is with the screen, it’s inevitable that we treat our lives thusly. If we don’t like what we’re watching, we change the channel.

The real danger of television is not the content, but the way we interact with it, the way it hypnotises us, keeps us watching.

Think of it in these terms. It is less the sex and violence on television, and more the sex and violence of television that causes harm.