Writing's a fight and this boy needs a battle
Armand D’Angour argues in the The Conversation, the ideas of Aspasia of Miletus, Socrates first love, are at the root of Western philosophy.
Just another example of the phrase that may or may not have been said by Napoleon Bonaparte.
What is history but a fable agreed upon?
Quote Investigator
It’s not hard to see how or why patriarchy has marginalise Aspasia of Miletus. Interestingly the website Quote Investigator, who investigate the source of quotes, attributes it to someone else. Ironic.
I’m just going to park this here for now. Greek economist, politician, and former Greek Minister of Finance, Yanis Varoufakis unpicks capitalism for Double Down News.
An answer prompted by George Monbiot’s article in The Guardian.
I agree with Monbiot that “government policy has created heaven for landlords and hell for tenants”.
I’m a tenant, I always have been, and probably always will be. Not through choice but because I’ve never been rich enough to buy. As tenants we’re treated like children, constantly reminded, it’s the landlord’s house we’re living in, not a property we’re paying to call our home.
All tenants are made to feel beholding, as if we should be grateful to landlords for letting us rent their property. It’s a completely asymmetric relationship. How would you feel if someone turned up at your door, and just let themselves into your home? It makes you feel vulnerable, as if you have no agency.
I think we need a radical approach, one that puts tenants front and centre. Yes we need rent controls, but also guaranteed long term leases. Terms of five or ten years should be the standard. Everyone needs that kind of stability to make a life for themselves.
There should be a register of landlords. You need a license to drive a taxi, you should have a license to rent out property. Tenants should be able to report poor conditions, neglect of a property, or abusive behaviour, without fear of eviction. A register of landlords would go some way to keeping both parties safe.
I think the owners of a ghosted property should be fined. Not small, slap on the wrist fines, but value of the property fines. Investors then have a choice, sell their ghosted property, or let them at rent-controlled rates. Similarly second homes, or holiday homes, should be either treated as ghosted properties, or taxed out of existence.
Mortgages should be calculated not on earnings, but on a proven ability to pay rent. I would argue paying rent is better indicator of someone’s ability to repay a mortgage than earnings. If lenders require a deposit, they should be offered to individuals by the government, in the same way as student loans are, and similarly administered by HMRC.
The problems with the housing market have been created by decades of poor political choices.
For the sake of everyone, we need to do better.
Sienna Rodgers in Labour List announces that “Labour has launched a cross-party bid to block the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a divorce deal”.
I think there’s more at stake than just blocking no deal.
This motion is only needed because there have been calls to suspend parliament. The fact that there is even talk of suspending parliament should scare everyone, even those on the side of Britain exiting the European Union.
Their argument was that we should wrestle back sovereignty from Europe, not give it to an elite group of self serving politicians. Suspending parliament is not acceptable under any circumstance. That’s us slipping and sliding, scrambling and scuffing, open eyed towards totalitarianism.
But that’s what happens when the world gets complicated, filled with nuance, and leaders frame every argument as a binary choice. I considered exactly this “totalitarian mindset” when I was working on one of my characters for CARR-10-N. This is an extract from something I wrote in 2013.
So the question I’m really asking is; what kind of person is attracted to totalitarianism? To answer that question you first need to ask; what allows totalitarianism to flourish? The short answer is uncertainty. In his paper “How to make enemies and influence people” (2) Alfonso Montuori characterises the “totalitarian mindset” as a response to the stress of contemporary pluralism. Basically we live in complex times full of ambiguity and uncertainty. We feel threatened. And when we’re backed into a corner we have a tendency to succumb to “simplistic, black-and-white solutions.” Montuori goes on to note that “individuals all over the world have sought relief from the uncertainty of a pluralistic world in the arms of absolute belief systems of a religious fundamentalist and/or political/nationalistic nature.”
2013/02/08
If that doesn’t describe the current mess nothing does. Jeremy Corbyn has been criticised for a “muddy” position on Britain exiting the European Union, but muddy’s what we need. We need nuance not black and white choices. Black and white choices are what got us here in the first place. There are no easy answers in any of this, but sleepwalking a totalitarian government into office is not the answer.
I agree with Adanna Shallowe that we need radical solutions to the problems of poverty in the United Kingdom, but I don’t think an “emergency response” is the answer.
I would argue an “emergency response” allows wealth to abdicate responsibility for poverty, as if they have no part in the cause of hardship. We also need to recognise, a government engaged in hostile actions against the poorest among us, cannot be trusted to respond urgently or adequately?
The grim reality is we’re born into a very specific set of economic circumstances. A family, community, society, country, and world, with conditions that govern our progress from day one. In fact I think it goes back beyond that, nine months, minus several generations, as far as can be remembered. Those conditions, that history, define how we think and our ability to prosper.
That said, we need to remember, current levels of poverty in this country are a direct result of Tory attempts to dismantle the welfare state, while also making the poorest pay for the sins of the richest. Those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are paying for the greed of a banking industry that crashed the economy in 2008.
Wealth treats poor as “other”, as something to be feared and demonised, a burden to be survived. They think of us as feckless beggars. That’s why I don’t like the idea of an “emergency response”. We risk falling into a hole dug by the Tories, a bear-trap, that lets them treat the poorest as lesser citizens.
We are not victims of a natural disaster that destroyed a costal village, or flooded a delta, or swept away everything in a tidal wave. We are the product of an economic system that puts the accumulation of wealth above everything else. One that seeks to fatigue “you in every way – physically, mentally, (and) financially”.
Framing poverty as if it were some kind of natural disaster, and using an emergency response to sort it out, asks us to give cash so those who have lost everything can be helped. Charity is a short term solution, for an acute problem, and allows wealth a choice, they can choose not to give.
We need solutions that are mandatory.
I agree with Ms Shallowe, we need a universal basic income, and legislative recognition of social rights. To achieve this we have to unpick everything, repurpose trousers into a skirt while trying not to flash our arse. It’s possible but not easy. The poor of this country are not charity cases deserving of handouts. We are full citizens who should be afforded all the privileges one of the richest countries in the world has to offer.
This is a clumsy example but is the clearest way to explain. A child born into wealth gets a private education. That child will do better than someone born into a family with no money. The former has a better chance of getting a well paying job, and living a longer life, than the child who lives without the instruction manual.
I use the term instruction manual to make the point, wealth get to navigate the world they live in. The poor get no such chance. We must learn for ourselves how to survive, while all the time being told, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, as if it’s the natural way of things. It is not.
The narrative of “emergency response” should be replaced with one of equal rights. Frame poverty, not as an an economic issue, but as an abuse of our human rights. As citizens of the fifth largest economy in the world we have the right to a fulfilling life. And in this world, the right to a life means having money.
We are not poor through choice, we are poor though circumstance. Poverty is not a lack of character, it’s a lack of money. Give it to those who have none and they will use it. They will be happier, and more productive, and the world will be better for it.
A study says the UK and territories are ‘greatest enabler’ of tax avoidance in the world.
I’m guessing the vested interests pushing for a no deal Brexit are doing it, in part, to weaken the European Union’s hold on The City of London.
The European Union wants to bring in tighter rules on financial services, and try to stop the kind of enabling, that ranks British territories and its dependencies among the worst offenders.
The only people who will benefit from a low tax Britain are the wealthy. For the rest of us less tax means no money for schools, infrastructure, or the health service.
If we crash out of the European Union, and stronger regulation, the City will become the perfect host for all kinds of parasitic tax avoiders.
Robert Booth reports in The Guardian, “United Nations poverty expert has compared Conservative welfare policies to the creation of 19th-century workhouses”.
I wanted to write something angry about this government, at the way they have so wilfully and aggressively attacked the poor, but I don’t have the strength to list all of their many failings. I know this, their attacks on the poor are an attack on us all.
For as long as I can remember they’ve promoted an agenda of individualism, while absolutely refusing to see how we individuals interact with all of the other individuals around us.
They can’t see and don’t care, not everyone was created in their image.
Take social care. When you reduce spending on social care, old people who end up in hospital will stay longer. They can’t go home if they don’t have the right kind, any kind, of care waiting when they get there. Most people don’t have the privilege of a private nurse to look after them. Longer stays in hospital are one of the many reasons waiting times in accident and emergency are so long.
Consider the recent rise in knife crime. I have no problem saying it’s a direct result of Tory cuts to youth services. At risk individuals who would’ve been helped by a youth club or a social worker, have been abandoned to the care of gangs. When individuals with little or no self-respect start demanding respect on the streets, challenges are met with violence.
These youngsters aren’t getting the kind of care and support most of Tory politicians enjoyed growing up. They’re being sent the message you’re on your own, you have to survive by any means necessary, but without the wealth and self-belief you need to survive in a world of individuals, fighting other individuals for a slice of the pie.
It’s easy for the Tories to blame bad seed individuals for young people dead on the streets. They point blank refuse to see their part in the problem.
As wealth inequality rises, crime will rise, and the Tories will blame the criminals, not considering their crimes in creating a society in their image.
I know they’re deaf to anything but their own voice.
How else could they behave the way they do?
Sienna Rodgers reports, LabourList readers think “Boris Johnson is biggest threat to Corbyn and the country”. I’m not sure you can extrapolate LabourList readers to represent the wider population, but some of the statistics are a concern.
“Which of the following potential candidates do you think would be most difficult for Jeremy Corbyn to beat in a general election?” Readers fear Mr. Johnson the most at 45.2%. Why? Is it because he’s the Donald Trump of British politics? A “strong personality” who can charm people? A hook upon which the dissatisfied can hang their frustration? Isn’t that Nigel Farage’s unique selling point, a voice for the angry and disaffected?
I think Johnson has a better education than Trump, and is more articulate than Farage, but when the bombs start landing I’m sure he’ll do what’s best for Boris Johnson, not what’s best for this country.
I heard the end of an interview on Radio 4 a couple of days ago. Two pundits talking about Johnson and the possibility of him becoming a Prime Minister. One extolled his virtues as a “man who lights up a room” when he enters. The other highlighted his considerable lack of moral character, and his bumbling indiscretions as Foreign Secretary.
Personally, I’m not sure I want someone who “lights up a room” as Prime Minister. He might be able to light up the country, but I fear he will start fires we’ll find hard to put out.
Nicola Woolcock’s headline in The Times has me reaching for expletives. “Parents fear social engineering, says leading head.” Fuck off! What is the system of private education if not social engineering writ large?
The children of the wealthy are no more intelligent than the children of the poor. Poverty is not a lack of character or intellect, it’s a lack of money.
Allowing these businesses to keep, to profit from, the huge sums of money that should be paid in VAT, means the state is subsidising these privileged educations.
It’s the arrogance of their presumption that is so infuriating. I have a private education so I have a right to a place at Oxbridge.
This reminds me of some rosey cheeked fop on Question Time, in May 2017, answering a question about Labour plans to remove VAT loophole from public schools.
His lack of awareness when saying “it would deny the brightest and the best” is infuriating. The charitable status he is trying to defend denies revenue to the state. That money could be used to fund an equal or better education system than the one he has benefited from.
He may well be the brightest and the best, but the brightest and best what? Lightbulb? Nurse? Bus driver? Insurance broker? Hedge-fund manager? The brightest and the best means nothing if you’re standing on someone’s neck to be there.
I’m afraid he comes from a long line of likeminded souls who think they’re the cream and we’re the milk. Personally, I think they’re the smelter and we’re the molten steel, but who’s comparing?
There is one final irony in this story. The full article sits behind a pay wall, keeping out anyone too poor to pay £26 a month for their propaganda.
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